BLOG LINKS
After adding a few more links to other blogs (look to the sidebar and scroll down) I feel like mentioning a few things:

*If I haven't linked to you and you've emailed me or have been linking to me for some time yourself, please don't take it personally. I am not very prompt at replying to emails, I don't check my stats every day, and my methods for determining who goes on the linklist are inconsistent and scatty. Feel free to try emailing me again though it's not a guarantee that I'll have time to check your blog and link to it (assuming that it meets my unpredictable standards).

*I don't even read all of the blogs on my linklist. I link to some of them because I think they'd be interesting to my readers and members, I link to some of them because they're friends, I link to some of them because they've sent me a lot of traffic, I link to some of them because they have good information. I link to some of them because I *want* to read them . . . someday.

*There are a lot of blogs I really don't enjoy reading even though they're "good" or appealing to other people. I'm pretty sure I wouldn't bother to read my own blog if it weren't interesting to me from a purely narcissistic viewpoint. Just because I link to it, doesn't mean it has my personal stamp of approval . . . just that I think YOU might like it.

*More on my unpredictable standards: I had a hard time adding Alexa's blog to my list because of the apostrophe thing. Call me narrow-minded, but it really nags at me. I also have a hard time reading blogs told from the viewpoint of very submissive women or very dominant men. In most contexts I cringe and feel uncomfortable (sometimes downright unhappy) reading stories involving a lot of female submission and male dominance. I try not write people off for reasons such as these, but if there is a *big* focus on poor spelling, improper punctuation, or women whose pleasure revolves around submitting to men . . . well, those are difficult hurdles for me to jump. I surprised myself by making the leap for teenpuppy (you can read her introductory entry here) and linking to her, but I'm not sure how regularly I'll be able to read her.

I also avoid blogs that try to be too witty, too "smart", too full-of-obscure-references and inside jokes, too thick with bullshit and contrivances. Additionally, I steer clear of blogs enriched by quoted song lyrics, chat logs, and/or many entries referring to substance abuse or boyfriend/girlfriend drama. I'm also uncomfortable reading or linking to blogs written by people who are underage, though I support their right to self-publish on any topic they want to write about including their own sexuality.

*I don't have a superiority complex about my blog, I don't think it's a work of genius, a must-read, or even "better" than many of the blogs that make me want to barf. Sometimes my own blog makes me want to barf.

*My favorite blogs to read are those of people I know personally (the ones I've marked with exclamation points). Although I've never met Mistress Matisse, I enjoy reading her blog every day because it's well-written, coherent, and fairly consistent making it an EASY read. I also love reading Violet's livejournal, even though I hate livejournal and Violet doesn't even go by that name anymore. She's one of the few people I became acquainted with early in my webwhore game AND has maintained a journal ever since then . . . for some reason hers is the blog/journal I feel the most sentimentally attached to.
posted by Trixie at 2/21/2005 02:32:00 PM -