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Yael’s Variety Hour

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Welcome back to the variety hour! Here’s my favorite links for the week, now with music!

Gem of the Week

This You. Beautiful post (and audio) on how powerful we can be when we stop hiding.

For laughs

Local Idiot To Post Comment On Internet and I’m Afraid We Will Never Win In Afghanistan Unless Central Command Gets A Pinball Machine are two great pieces from the Onion, one old and one new.

Hyperbole and a Half: Boyfriend Doesn’t Have Ebola. Probably is a hysterical piece about those dumb pain charts in hospitals nationwide.

Ever get tired of unsolicted advice?

Me too. Here are three songs about that… in very different genres.

Sara Bareilles – King Of Anything

Screeching Weasel – My Right

Ani DiFranco – Not a Pretty Girl (cover)

Shameless self-promotion

I have quite a few pieces up on the internet this week, so here’s just a few of them.

I wrote an article for Straight to the Bar on how to get your gym on the map–literally.

I was lucky enough to get to interview teen hearthrob MMA fighter Urijah Faber for MMA HQ.

And finally, I wrote a piece for MMA Ratings, MMA Fighters: What’s With the Attitude?

Yael’s Variety Hour

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Is it just me, or was this week especially awesome on the internets? Here are seven great posts I found, plus two resources and a couple of my own articles around the web.

For Laughs

47,143 people liked this hysterical cartoon of obnoxious or annoying e-mail behaviors, so chances are good you’ve already seen it. But just in case…

From the Onion. Sounds about right.

For Foodies

Leslie Kruempel wrote this insightful article on reasons you should eat local, even if reducing your carbon footprint ain’t one. (She’s @realfoodmn on twitter.)

Michael Pollan is my hero. And who hasn’t wanted to make as many dishes as possible in 30+ hours for all meals? Got and produce and mushrooms, oh my!

For Writers and Bloggers

There are some! Kelly James-Enger explains.

Nuff said.

Without ripping them off from others.

Some recommendations

  • Wisestamp helps you create beautiful e-mail signatures on Gmail (using Richtext, on Firefox). They can also include your facebook, twitter and LinkedIn profiles as well as your latest blog post. And it’s free!
  • Remember the Milk is an awesome site for task management, including an online to-do list and other bells and whistles. Also free.

It’s Me! On Other Sites!

My guest post for Tim Brownson’s awesome blog, A Daring Adventure. I’m honored.

In which I accuse UFC president Dana White of whitewashing.

Your turn…

Any posts I missed from the past week that you thought were especially awesome? Leave ’em in the comments.

Yael’s Variety Hour

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I’ve been inspired by Marissa Bracke’s Friday Menagerie, Havi Brooks’ Item! posts and Eric Cressey’s Random Friday Thoughts, and I want to play! I tried to come up with a good title, but words like smorgasbord and random miscellaneous came to mind, and that just wouldn’t do. Anyway, here’s my collection of random thoughts, observations and recommendations.

Life Skills
I went to Chris Guillebeau’s Unconventional Book Tour in Minneapolis last Sunday night. Chris wrote this amazing book called the Art of Nonconformity: Set Your Own Rules, Live the Life You Want, and Change the World and is currently in the process of visiting all 50 states and 10 provinces on a a whirlwind book tour which you should check out if he’s coming to your town. It was nice to see so many people come out to hear Chris’ message of living a meaningful life of purpose, and I was particularly moved by seeing so many young people there who are already asking the right questions and trying to figure out how to set their own terms for living–but in a thoughtful and nonconfrontational way. (I did the nonconformity thang as a teenager, but didn’t pick up on the latter part until much later in life.) Anyway, I’d highly recommend the book, and wrote a review up on Amazon.

Creative Writing
I am teaching a series of three creative writing workshops in Chippewa Falls, starting tonight, for the next three weeks from 6:30 to 8. I’ll be drawing on the work of  Natalie Goldberg, Susan Goldsmith Wooldridge and Susan Ariel Rainbow Kennedy (aka SARK). I am pretty excited about helping people turn blank sheets of paper into those filled with prolific, insightful prose… in three very different ways. If you know of any other writing experts with great practices, please leave their names in the comments.

Contemporary Social Issues
I actually enjoyed the book Eat Pray Love, but I also thought this interesting article, Eat Pray Spend: Priv-lit and the new, enlightened American dream, offered some pretty thought-provoking analysis.

Sociology
I found an interesting article on what is called Suburban Warrior Syndrome in Psychology Today. It describes how fantasy movies can tap into our impulse to be heroic. My favorite quote? “Quiet heroism is showing up for your child’s school play when it’s  difficult to get off work, or being honest and ethical in the face of  someone’s disapproval or scorn,” says Tessina. “That’s the kind of  heroism that really counts in life.”

Psychology
Dean Rieck wrote an excellent post on Copyblogger entited 8 Bad Habits that Crush Your Creativity and Stifle Your Success. Definitely worth reading.

Phys Ed
Got tight hip flexors? Check out some tips from Coach Keats on assessment and self-massage.

Computers
Wired magazine had an amazing article entitled Sex! Hackers! Embellishment! The Inside Story of the Facebook Movie. Not only was the movie fascinating, this article is so craftfully written that it made me wish I only read Wired and magazines like it.

Extra Credit
I wrote a guest post on ProBlogger, Five Ways to Prevent E-mail Overload, which you may want to check out if that’s an issue for you.

Thanks for reading and, as always, I’d love to hear your thoughts in the comments–feedback on these articles or anything else I posted, interesting items you’ve found so far this week, or anything at all, really…