FeedThink, ReadThink, LinkThink, WinkThink

Permit me a little meta-blogging.

I’ve never had the time or the stamina to blog everyday, despite that nearly everyday I come across things of interest on the interwebs. I tag them, share them, email them around, etc., but I don’t always get around to blogging them. This is rarely an editorial decision. As much as I like longform posts, or posts of various shapes and sizes, I also like the old fashioned form of blogging — or as some would have it, the “original intent” behind the endeavor: actually “logging” the things one comes across on the web, perhaps with a line or two of commentary. That’s closest to what I do via del.icio.us (though a tumblelog is perhaps closer, and offers more freedom — o how I wish that delish would let me add as much text as I’d like to my tagged items). And indeed, over the last several months, I’ve gradually incorporated — when possible — these other bloggish activities into my sidebar in order to bring some of that “logging” into this space: e.g., by adding a del.icio.us feed to the column (aka, LinkThink) or, more recently, a Google Reader shared-items feed (aka, FeedThink).

Regular readers might have noticed some of these subtle changes (which I haven’t really gone about publicizing), especially in the last week or so — that is, unless you yourself only read from a reader, which I can understand, having recently signed on to one myself (which is, at this point, the only way — albeit a deeply dangerous timesuck — I can possibly keep tabs on the 101 blogfeeds to which I currently subscribe). As usual, I have to thank Becca, my babymama and webmaster, for making these changes even more subtle, breaking crappy widgets (just give us the codes already dudes — must you design 4 n00bz only?) and helping things to look more wayne&waxy (and justified!) on the sidebar.

I’m afraid — or, depending how it rubs ya, happy to report — that a lot of the things I’ve been sharing via Google Reader have to do with the 08 presidential election. For those who might find the intrusion of explicitly political content here unseemly, I should say first that you are perhaps missing a lot of implicit political content here more generally. But perhaps it will come of some consolation that I expect FeedThink will provide an outlet for me to address mainstream political (i.e., qua political) subjects here, especially for anyone interested in what I think ’bout such things, while allowing me to continue to focus my blog posts largely on music and cultural politics (though I really can’t ever say what I’m gonna blog about; I do have my tendencies and interests, but these change over time).

I hope that the now-daily linkthink I’ve been publishing — which is basically another del.icio.us feed — doesn’t simply seem lazy. I suppose if you already have me in your network or routinely check out the sidebar, then these posts might read as redundant. But I don’t think very many of the readers here necessarily do those things, and so I’d like to foreground my bookmarking & tagging activities a bit more & integrate them into this messy expression of what I’m thinking about, looking at, listening to.

I should note — tho it goes without saying — that I also share my del.icio.us items, as well as my del.icio.us tags (aka, “TagThink” on the sidebar), as a form of open, distributed research, as a way of sharing some things I’ve flagged and glossed, and I invite you to join the endeavor and return the favor by adding me to your network and sending me items if you come across something you think I might be interested in.

Of course, there’s also the TagCloud over on the right, which represents my own tagging of my own blog posts — something I’d like to make a little more consistent, copious, and curious. And there’s also TubeThink, a selection of my recent faves at YouTube (also viewable here). I’ve resisted adding a flickr badge so far. In short, this site now contains lots of ways of sharing what I’m up to, what I’m linking, reading, sharing, watching, tagging, etc. For those of you who actually visit the site from time to time, I include these things to make w&w a little more rich and dynamic. For those who simply access via a reader, I’m now putting some of this activity a bit more in your face. After all, I wouldn’t want you to miss a good Sesame Street remix before it disappears into the e-ther.

Still, if you think the linkthink posts are overkill and annoying, I’d like to know. Otherwise, thanks for reading, linking, and thinking. Onward and sideways —