Jumbled Words

So, I’ve been adding to this list for more than a fortnight, never quite getting around to finishing it. And then Jeremy from 365,000 words (I think, that’s what his header image says!) gave me what’s referred to as a One Lovely Blog award. I have tried to follow the links backwards to see whose idea this originally was, but I can’t seem to find the beginning of this little chain of awesomeness.

So, my list is going to be a bit different from the original thought, which I believe is “link to 15 blogs you have recently discovered”. Because, you know, I can never do things in a normal way. And personally I love blogs that are thought provoking and tells me things I’d never thought about on my own. I’m not entirely sure if it’s butchering this award horribly by linking to blog posts about rape, chronic illness, self harm, motherhood, feminism and, um, soccer, but hey. Let’s go for intense rather than lovely, shall we?

Mostly because I have been working on this list for some time now, and decided to basically use this as a reason to FINISH IT ALREADY. So, here we go.

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Having made two lists of 30 in the areas music and books I was very pleased to see that such a big portion of them were actually female. Without me even doing a conscious decision about it. 22 and 25 out of 30, respectively. So, I decided to keep this list-making up. Because what do we read more than books? Blogs. So, yes. Here are 30 blog posts that I enjoyed immensely. Many of them have a lot of comments that deserves a read as well.

Divided into English and Swedish for ease of reading.

Number of blogs written by women: 24 or 25.
Number of blogs written by men: 5 or 6. Probably.

(Trying to tally this up I realised, which I should already know, that gender is not binary. I don’t know for sure that the blogs that are written by more than one person (Feministing, Shakesville, probably more) don’t have a male-identified writer in the bunch. And I have no idea where to put Sugarbutch. So yeah. This particular definition leaves a lot left to offer.)

Number of blogs written in English: 20
Number of blogs written in Swedish: 10

Number of blogs by Swedish bloggers: 10
Number of blogs by American bloggers: 13
Number of books by authors of other ethnicities: 7, that is, 3 Aussies, 1 Brit, 2 Irish, 1 Canadian

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10 BLOGS IN SWEDISH THAT I ALWAYS READ (AND 13 POSTS YOU SHOULD READ):

Always Keeping It Real;
It’s very cool to see a person you’ve known for years become a blogging/journalist/radio personality. Elin is smart and talented and I love the fact that she and I have used our mutual interest for writing in such different ways. She writes about politics, feminism and other important issues. I… make up stories. Two posts of hers that I really like are “Jag våldtar hellre mig själv än blir ditt offer” and “Att vilja ha barn men inte kunna”.

Easy Conversations, There’s No Such Thing;
Yeah, this is the blog of my sister and one of her best friends, so they could likely write their shopping list or rattle off the phonebook and I’d still read it cheerfully, as it’s the only way I have to keep in touch with them. Except that while I composed this list they moved BACK HOME and I can now see them any time I want! “Great with music and vibes” is a post that makes me giggle. It’s written by Ania, a 27-year-old who is wondering if she shouldn’t have a steady job, a relationship that’s lasted more than a year or… a driver’s license at that age. Much like myself, actually.

Hela Hustrun;
I don’t often read this blog, because I recently had to trim my feeds down in order to remain sane(ish), but “Jag har lurat mig själv för många gånger nu” is about living with a chronic illness, about feeling bad every time it rears its head (which it always does), and possibly skipping meds because they make you gain weight. We’ve all been there…

Helena Bergman;
Helena writes beautifully about queer stuff, random politics and vegetarianism. And sex. And… yeah. Lots of stuff. I love reading her entries, because they say what you would think yourself, if you ever took the time to contemplate this stuff. Two good ones are “Det måste vara skönt att vara så jävla tolerant” and “Våldta på, ha så kul”.

Julia Skott – pangbrud och skjutjärnsjournalist;
“Spikmattor och rakblad” made me giggle like a loon. Because, okay. In Sweden there is right now much talk about the acupressure mat. The idea is that the pain releases oxycotin, which makes it easier to sleep, relieves pain in neck and shoulders, etc. Julia is the only person I’ve heard about who dared to point out that the effect of this mat being the same as you experience during self-harm. Which, personally I find hilarious, because one is The New Thing and the other shamed and scoffed at.

Lalandakid;
This blog is written by the mother of a girl who was born with a mental retardation, autism and ADHD. Yes, all three. She lets you peek into her world, and see how hard it is to live with a child that has special needs. It’s well worth a read. I tried to find a post to recommend above the others, and I think I read a full year’s worth of posts trying to find one that stood out. I couldn’t find one. They are all amazing, so read the whole thing.

Linna Johanson;
“Amma, pappa, barn” is about chosing not to nurse your baby, and how some women – including this woman’s midwife – gets aggressive and takes it personally. I love reading Linna’s blog for some alternative parenting methods. Also, she posts the best food pics and recipes and stuff.

Niklas Hellgren;
This guy can writes really funny and really sad. He writes a lot about politics and always have something smart to say. If it wasn’t for people like him I wouldn’t know anything about the political climate in this country. Just saying. “Världens tråkigaste sex” is funny as hell and “Utkanter” is one of the saddest things I’ve ever read. Both brilliant, though!

Sjumilakliv;
I just started reading this blog, so I don’t really have much to say about her, but she talks a lot about handling a fulltime job and chronic depression and trying to get the two to work together. Two posts of hers that I really like are “Nån Jävla Måtta” and “Frågan Jag Önskar Inte Hade Ställts”.

Älskade Dumburk;
This blog is all about nostalgia. All old TV shows, jokes from your childhood, movies you can’t remember, and so on. It’s quite a trip back to before and I love it. I can’t even decide on a post I like more than the others. Maybe “Älskade Tracks”, which is about recording music on tapes from the radio, and having the music cut out by traffic announcements and such, which is something our kids will never do…

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20 BLOGS IN ENGLISH THAT I ALWAYS READ (AND 27 POSTS YOU SHOULD READ):

Amanda Palmer;
Amanda, former singer of the Dresden Dolls, currently doing her solo thing and doing it well, shares a lot of her personal life, pictures and stuff on her blog. I enjoy most of the stuff she writes, but two favourites are “On abortion, rape, art and humour“, which talks about using humour as a defense mechanism and her video for the song Oasis that has been banned all over the place, and “The queen of sheep retires to her London digs”, in which there is a recording of a ten-year-old girl singing Hallelujah in GAELIC.

Arse Blog;
Okay, so, this blog is probably completely uninteresting for anyone that doesn’t follow Premier League. But really, you have to admire this bloke’s way with words of this bloke: “I didn’t so much drown my sorrows last night as beat them to death, chop them up into little pieces, piss on them, wrap them in shiny paper and then dump them in a lake in a weighted down bag.” From the quite old post “Man United 2-1 Arsenal: We throw it away, United fans and Mike Dean a disgrace”. There are other ones just like it, and should you want examples of just how many times you can say “cunt” in one post, look no further. (The answer, btw, is nineteen.)

Baby Power Dyke;
I haven’t read this blog for a long time, but it has quickly become one of my favourites. The post “I know. I’m surprised by how good looking I am too.” is absolutely amazing and counters the “ew, dyke” stare by listing exactly where she had bought her clothing, and how much it cost, “All signs point to crazy” effectively takes apart the current debate about health care in the U.S. in the most hilarious of ways, but my current favourite is “Somewhere over the rainbow”. It’s about being a person of colour and an actress and this pretty much says it all: “There is a dearth of opportunities for black actors. I experience this first hand when I scan casting calls for auditions. I learned very early in the auditioning game that unless the call specifically says, ‘black’ or ‘ethnic’ there’s no need for me to read any further. In calls for actors, ‘American’, ‘pretty’, ‘girl-next-door’, ’smart’, ’shy’, ‘friendly’, ‘LEAD’, ‘Principle’, ‘quirky’, ‘neurotic’, ‘proud’, or ‘happy’, means that the people behind the table aren’t looking for someone who looks like me.”

Crazy Aunt Purl;
A feel-good blog if there ever was one. Laurie writes about traffic, cats and her garden. Nothing too exciting, but nice to read. And her subtitle is The true-life diary of a thirty-something, newly divorced, displaced Southern obsessive-compulsive knitter who has four cats. (Because nothing is sexier than a divorced woman with four cats.) I had a hard time picking out just one post that I like more than the others, and went for “A little email Q&A day”, because it covers a lot of territory, including the topic of travelling alone.

Dooce;
I know. Everyone reads Dooce. EVERYONE. And sure, she’s funny, and there’s the boob talk, and the poop, and the TMI. All over it. But the reason I love it is because she talks openly about her depression. After she had her first baby she got post-partum-depression, and ended up in the hospital from it. “Familiar territory” is about how she was affected after baby #2, and how a small tweak of her meds made her able to appreciate motherhood this time around. There’s a million other good ones, but it’s a start.

Feministing;
Feministing provides me with almost all my political news. They are feminist, pro-choice and usually liberal. It’s really nice having a community that picks out the big happenings as of late and gives you a run down on them. Because of this it’s hard to find a post that stands out, but I really like “Snarky answers to invasive questions transgender folks get asked way too often” which goes to an awesome YouTube video with two transgendered people answering questions like “what’s your birth name?” with “what’s your birth name?” It’s quite lovely. I really enjoy their weekly recaps as well, and always end up reading a good portion of the pieces they link to in them.

Fuck Politeness;
Another feminist blog I accidentally tripped over. Two good posts are “Cry me a river, dickface”, about the man that went to shoot down women in a gym because he hadn’t gotten laid for two decades and thus every woman above the age of 16 that is alive has rejected him (no, it doesn’t make sense to me either), and “A man rebukes, a woman snaps apparently”, in which she speaks about Hillary Clinton pointing out at a Q&A that she is the secretary of state, which media then turned into her snapping. In short, she speaks about current events in a way that is nothing short of awesome.

Fugitivus;
“Another post about rape”. This is one of the most interesting posts I’ve ever read on sexual assault. It talks about conditioning and how we are brought up. A small quote that doesn’t make it justice at all: “Women who are taught that physical confrontations make them look crazy will not start hitting, kicking, and screaming until it’s too late, if they do at all. Women who are taught that a display of their emotional state will have them labeled hysterical and crazy (which is how their perception of events will be discounted) will not be willing to run from a room disheveled and screaming and crying.”

Girlie Jones;
GJ writes a mix of personal, feminist and book publishing entries. She runs Twelfth Planet Press, and I really enjoy reading about her experiences in small press publishing. It’s very neat. What I love even more, though, are her posts on feminism and especially feminism within publishing. Two great posts with over 50 comments (each!) are “Female empowerment – it used to be called feminism” and “On Writing Voice”.

Grumperina;
Grumperina is the technical sort of knitblogger. Which means that she writes about techniques, about the makeup and feel of different yarns, and her amount of finished projects is staggering, both in terms of amount of projects and the difficulty of them. Her posts is a wealth of information, so read all of them. Or, you know, a few. She has been doing this for five years after all. Read her page on combined knitting to learn how to knit faster! (Random fact: Here in Swedcen combined knitting is taught as the “default”.)

Justine Larbalestier;
I read a lot of authors blogs. It’s lovely to live at a time when this is possible. Not too long ago these people were barely actual human beings. Justine had a big of a debacle surrounding the cover of her last book, Liar. The two main posts about it is “Ain’t that a shame”, which talks about people of colour in fiction and authors input on covers, and “New cover” in which she makes it public that the shit storm after the previous post actually got her publisher to change it.

Lee Wind;
Lee Wind writes reviews about books with gay teens in them, throws in politics when they are related to the queers and shortly, is made of awesome. Most recently he’s written the post “The BEST Gay Marriage AD I’ve Seen… It’s from IRELAND, and it’s GENIUS!” in which a straight bloke is walking door to door to ask four million people for permission to marry the girl of his dreams.

Maureen Johnson
Maureen writes awesome books of which I have sadly only ever read one, but more are on my to-read-list for this year. Her blogs are what got me into her stuff, and her post on Romeo and Juliet as the #1 dating fail of all times is absolutely amazing. Search her blog for “book ban” or “query letter” for more awesomeness.

Neil Gaiman
Neil writes great books and awesome blogs. There are years and years worth, but a favourite is “Entitlement Issues”, which is more known as “George R.R. Martin is not your bitch”. A quote: “I remember hearing an upset comics editor telling a roomful of other editors about a comics artist who had taken a few weeks off to paint his house. The editor pointed out, repeatedly, that for the money the artist would have been paid for those weeks’ work he could easily have afforded to hire someone to paint his house, and made money too. And I thought, but did not say, ‘But what if he WANTED to paint his house?’ “

Questionable Content;
The only comic on my list of feeds. They give you a new strip Mondays through Fridays, and they are usually awesome. A favourite is “An Inexact Science”, in which Hannelore, who has severe anxiety and OCD is put on new medication. This comic features a boy with floppy hair, two snarky brunettes, a lesbian baby sister and a girl who is a total nerd and an online gamer. My favourite characters are hands down, Faye, Hannelore, Amanda (Faye’s sister) and of course, Marigold, the online gamer.

Sarah Rees Brennan
Sarah has a writing style that is pure awesome. It has been carried through into her recent book The Demon’s Lexicon as well, which made me very happy. I very much enjoy her posts under the category “stumbling towards publication”, but she also writes amazing parodies, of which the current one of Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince is a favourite. Because, come on:
HARRY: You rang, headmaster?
DUMBLEDORE: Just wondering if you’re single!
HARRY: … Oh my God, what?
DUMBLEDORE: That a yes? Not tapping Hermione Granger on the sly?
HARRY: No! Oh my God, could this be any more inappropriate?
DUMBLEDORE: Excellent. Glad to know you’re single. In a totally unrelated subject, I’d like you to cosy up to Professor Slughorn. Get some information out of him. Aaaany way you can think of.
HARRY: … I see I asked a silly question.

Shakesville;
This is another new discovery. I was linked to them because of the post “The Nightmare I Built My Own World to Escape—My Terrible Bargain”. It’s about being disabled and having to rely on friends and family and sometimes complete strangers for things that the rest of the world takes for granted. The comments are amazing, and tell stories of people with a number of different disabilities.

Shapely Prose
One of my absolute favourite blogs at the moment. Kate Harding is awesome, and so are her co-writers. A favourite is “The BMI project”, in which she has compiled pics of a number of people, together with what they ’should’ be according to the BMI scale (which, btw, wasn’t invented by a medical professional, but a STATISTICS PERSON), or go check out this post at Salon.com, which, among many other things includes the following: “For much of my adult life, I’ve worn plus sizes, struggled to fit into airplane seats and been clinically obese according to the body mass index (BMI) charts that determine everything from the price of my insurance premiums to whether doctors will hand me a Weight Watchers brochure when I see them about an ear infection. I once asked a doctor for help with excruciating knee pain following a spill down some stairs, and the only prescription she offered was “Lose weight.” (Oh, OK. But since I’m probably not going to lose enough to reduce pressure on my joints in the next 10 minutes, and my knee hurts RIGHT NOW, do you think maybe you could MAKE WITH THE PAINKILLERS, BITCH?)”

Sugarbutch
Another blog where I can’t name a specific post that is more awesome than the rest. Sinclair Sexsmith is in his own words, a “chivalrous kinky writer, queer butch top, feminist sex educator in New York City”. He writes about sex a lot. Like. Yeah. Always. Lots of sex. Reviews of sex toys, little stories, TMI in every way and form, and yet… one blog I keep returning to. Check him out here.

Yarn Harlot
I am a total fangirl for Stephanie Pearl-McPhee. I have two of her books and want the third (or is it fourth?). I enjoy her blog posts immensenly, especially when she foregoes the knitting and spinning for, say, other stuff. One of her greatest posts of all times is (in my personal opinion) “A problem in the wiring”, in which she writes about parenting: “Nature hard wires you to want them close and worry about them for their whole lives, and then demands that if you’re doing it right that they then really boldly walk away into their own destinies and leave you standing there, still feeling like you’re totally in charge of whether or not they live or die or get a sandwich, and then, they get on a plane and there’s nothing you can do about it except for – get this, this is rich… HELP THEM GO AND TELL THEM IT’S A GOOD IDEA.”