Tootin' the Horn

My favorite witch Maeve has tagged me with a "Thinking Blogger" award. I hope it's more for the times when I actually wrote some longer pieces, and not so much for my photos of The Divine Miss Marilyn (although I'm pretty proud of those, too)... but I'll take it any way I can get it, I guess.

In this case, however, I really have been thinking about this honor and challenge for about a week, trying to figure out just which bloggers I'd really like to point a spotlight towards. Oh, I could choose one of the usual suspects, but there are some other fine folks who really should be getting more readers.

In no particular order, here they are:

Darren, who fearlessly shares his struggles with depression and anxiety, his move from New York City to Richmond, Virginia, the development of his relationship with Heather, and delivers it all with candor and astonishing good humor. For example:

The two most exciting things that have gone down this past week? I cleaned up an awe-inspiring dog-related mess in the bedroom the other day, and I bought a new coffee mug.

As for the bedroom… Sweet Jesus. Rufus had evidently eaten something that didn’t agree with him, which resulted in what looked like a one-quarter scale Hershey plant had exploded in our bedroom.

He reminds us all of what it's like to be young, have fears and aspirations, and be brave enough (or foolish enough) to choose to pursue the latter and worry about the consequences later. And he reminds us again and again just how powerful laughter can be.

Patty, whose White Pebble blog has a soothing, zen-like quality with a dry sense of humor... despite the fact that she's currently in a tough battle with cancer. Yeah. Wrap your head around that concept. Better yet, here's an example:

The birthday again. 51. Again, I am a prime number. I rather like being a prime number, but I don’t know why.

This morning, I spent a couple of hours at University Hospital speaking with a few people in the anesthesiology department, getting a lot of information-gathering out of the way in preparation for tomorrow. We went over what’s going to happen, and what I’m taking, and what I’m allergic to, etc. I am clear on what they will give me, and when, and why.

I hate the waiting. Why can’t we do it now? I can’t really get into being the desperately happy birthday girl today, even though my friends are coming this evening for dinner and Stupid Television.

Right now, I have a pretty bad martial arts movie on, with Michelle Yeoh in it. She deserves a better movie, I think. At least, she deserves a better wig.

A new find, and one who's also going straight to the blogroll is Mr. Regular, who would fit right in with some of the better yarn spinners I know. Let me just steer you to these three posts, that had me in stitches. Hell -- I could practically smell the ozone:

Dad had a bird dog that loved to go off. If you didnt’ chain this sucker down, it would be all over the damned place, and usually was. Dad’s answer to this was to get an electric fence charger and put a single strand of hot wire on the top of our chain link fence, and the dog stayed home. It convinced the dog so thoroughly that the mere sight of the wire was enough to keep it from jumping, so dad was able to eventually leave the charger completely off. Not, though before John and I had learned about pissing on a fence wire.

Rosie, of Smokey Mountain Breakdown, is another relatively new, but highly prized find and friend. Her writing has a "painterly" feel to it -- there's true passion and artistry in her posts on subjects ranging from friends and family to hand raising goats to snake-handling holy rollers to food pr()n to cocker spaniel rescue. She also posts gorgeous, gorgeous photos and outstanding fiction. Here's a sample:

Peggy was a massive woman. She stood 6 feet in her hunting socks and had a bit of a weight problem. But her height allowed her to carry her 400 pounds much better than a shorter woman could. She had considerable trouble finding shoes that would fit her size 13 feet, so she usually just wore men's hiking boots. Today she was wearing those as well as a denim mini skirt that was stretched like paint onto her massive thighs. Her orange top had little spaghetti straps that kept slipping to reveal a black and buff leopard print bra. Where she had found that neon green banana clip holding her mass of frizzy black hair was anyone's guess.

Everyone said Peggy was a really sweet girl when she wasn't drunk or stoned...or both. Really she was. But those days were few and far between. It wasn't that Peggy was a mean or angry drunk. Peggy was a slutty drunk. A hyper-sexualized drunk can get in a world of trouble here.

I'm telling you, Rosie writes pure gold.

Finally, Murphy of What Now, Murphy? fame is my favorite political snarkist. Whether you agree with her politics or not, you've got to hand her a merit badge for eloquence and ardor:

The strongest of diplomatic measures is the pimp slap of the B-2 bomber, belly pregnant with the promise of America's Finest Fireworks, a.k.a. nuke.

But apparently taking public office, whether it be the U.N. or the American presidency, requires putting the beans up on a guillotine. Nobody has shown any hint of testosterone in this mess, except for those jackasses in picnic tablecloths.

So there you have it -- five very different bloggers whose work knocks me off my pins on a daily basis.

The participation rules are simple:

1. If, and only if, you get tagged, write a post with links to 5 blogs that make you think,
2. Link to this post so that people can easily find the exact origin of the meme,
3. Optional: Proudly display the 'Thinking Blogger Award' with a link to the post that you wrote (here is an alternative silver version if gold doesn't fit your blog).