Here's the order in which I check for new shit on the internet to amuse myself:
1. Email
2. Twitter
3. Comment threads I've posted on
4. My RSS reader
5. The Onion
6. The Onion A/V Club
7. My wife's blog, to check for new comments
8. Facebook
9. Flickr
10. Huffington Post
11. Drudge Report
12. CNN
13. Fivethirtyeight.com
14. Random comment threads on newpaper websites
15. Chat Roulette
16. Hacking acquaintances' email
17. Casual Encounters
Just kidding about those last three, but God help us all if there's nothing new on any of my sites. I mean, it's pretty obvious that I'm scraping the barrel with the Huffington Post, but it turns out there is more material underneath the barrel, not to mention the possibility of reconstituting whatever was in the barrel from barrel shards trapped in amber in the stomachs of prehistoric termites.
My insomnia-and-boredom-induced browsing this evening has only reinforced my conclusion that the internet is going to destroy civilization as we know it. Democracy simply can't endure the existence of newspaper website comment sections. If Thomas Jefferson had read the comments on any article linked to by the Drudge Report, I have no doubt in my mind he'd have been all "fuck this shit, I'm just going to be king of America."
"ppl are just so fucking dumb lol"
That being said, the internet has brought us much to enliven our lives. For instance, this Gawker article which highlights the "conspiracy theory" (is there a term that does more to discredit the word "theory?") that President Obama (PBUH) was in the video for Tag Team's world-changing 1993 hit "Whoomp! There it is." (My love for this song, and the inanity it represents, is well-documented.) Also, there's a certain amount of satisfaction that results from the schadenfreude (HOLY SHIT I SPELLED THAT RIGHT ON THE FIRST TRY) of watching my distant relatives' nuttier friends utterly lose their shit over the continued presidency of secret Muslim HRH Mr. Obama.
I thought about doing a post where I rate the relative idiocy of Huffington Post commenters and Drudge Report commenters (via articles he links to, since there are -- wisely -- no comments on the Drudge Report itself), but I got depressed coming up with the criteria. Both sites' readers score high on the Reactionary / Didn't Read The Article Before Commenting matrix, but HuffPo readers would probably wreck the curve on Hypersensitivity portion of the exam -- as would the Drudge readers for Vigilante Justice / Internet Tough Guyism.
Anyway, I think I've now bored myself enough that I might be able to get to sleep. So, let me just add this one last thing: HAPPY 30TH, JAMIE! You've had 'em all. You are a super-ho. I bet you're doing something regrettable right now (well, it's 7am where you are, so you're hopefully sleeping it off by now) but I wish you my sincerest well-wishes on this, the anniversary of your birth. You make the world a little bit better; may you continue to do so for the next 30 years and beyond. Prosit!
