Blogroll Amnesty Day

Bloggers Jon Swift and Skippy the Bush Kangaroo are the kind of friends a small blog like litbrit needs and wants. These gentlemen actually believe in helping smaller, less-famous blogs get ourselves and our ideas out there. They cite noble reasons like supporting freedom of speech and counteracting the echo-chamber effect of the A-list blogs monopolizing the Readersphere and getting most of the press while saying essentially the same thing all the time; however--and feel free to call me sentimental or wishful in my thinking (you wouldn't be the first)--I think they're doing it because they happen to be classy, superswell guys, as well as stand-up gentlemen of the highest order. Skippy says:

Today marks the three-day weekend celebration blog-burst of b.a.d., or blogroll amnesty day for short, and literally dozens of participating blogs will be participating.

Each blog will celebrate the unity of progressive infrastructure amenability by posting links to a handful of smaller blogs, thus giving exposure to diverse voices thru-out blogtopia, and yes, we coined that phrase!

We figure the only way to fight the great echo chamber of the hardly-ever-right is to create our own, and the best way to do that is to give linkage (hey, it's free!) to other writers with our same goals.

And Jon says:

I remember how difficult it was to get people to notice my blog when I first started out. "Build it and they will come," apparently only works with magic baseball fields. The only way to get anyone to notice my blog was to get them to link to me and that was not always easy. I linked to other bloggers and clicked on those links hoping they would notice my link in Sitemeter. I sent emails to other bloggers asking them to take a look at my latest piece or to add me to their blogrolls. I instituted my "Liberal Blogrolling Policy" offering to exchange links with anyone who linked to me. As more blogs began to link to me and add me to their blogrolls, a curious thing began to happen. More people came to my blog from those links and from Google. And many of those readers then visited the blogs that I linked to. Though it cost nothing to link to someone, I realized that on the Internet links are capital. Every link has value. And when two bloggers link to each other, they both profit.

In the spirit of the event, I'd like to turn readers on to a few of my own favorite reads:

I Am TRex is the recently-born brainchild of TRex himself, surely one of the funniest and most felicitous writers to grace the blogosphere. The best way to describe TRex's take on blogging is to tell you what he is not: he isn't politically correct (though he's most definitely politically astute); he isn't afraid--of criticism, Michelle Malkin (whom he's famously dubbed Stalkin' Malkin) or mean people in general; and he isn't a man who just thinks he's funny--he actually is. Bitingly so. But don't take this admittedly twisted Brit's word for it--go read him for yourself.

Harp and Sword, written by a breathtakingly erudite, multilingual, half-Apache/half-Irish retired Navy Seal and Vietnam veteran professional musician in recovery (whew!), offers grand stories of Native American ceremonies; outrageous recipes for all manner of foodstuffs as well as truffle-making adventures; gut-wrenching tales of surviving a life onstage (he never name-drops, but music aficionados can sometimes read between the lines, so to speak), all while addicted to the Bad Stuff; memories of warriors and war; and achingly beautiful descriptions of horseback rides through his beloved land in Arizona.

Darkblack is the Vancouver-dwelling musician and artist behind the infamous Joe Lieberman blackface illustration that some people didn't bloody get because, well, I have this theory involving deeply submerged PC heads and unforgiving intestinal tissue, but anyway. Without a doubt, DB's political illustrations pull no punches, and his wit is equally evident in his eloquent prose. (As an aside, I think his Nosferatuliani art was one of the best bits of lovely to hit the 'tubes last year.) You'll often find Darkblack's pics, including one of the keyboard-toting theropod himself, posted Chez TRex, too.

Movin' Meat is the blog of the mysterious Dr. Shadowfax, who describes himself as a "semi-accidental ER doc." He's also a family man, an Apple computer fan, and a wise and witty writer who chronicles the ups and downs of life in a busy emergency room located in the Pacific Northwest. Currently he's planning to shave his lovely head of Irish hair to raise money for children's cancer research. Visit him soon and throw a few bucks at St. Baldrick's, the aforementioned fundraising effort.

Poor Impulse Control is written by the irrepressible Tata. How does one describe Tata? She's wry and funny--a thinking Mama who defies categorization--and she recounts her life and times in a series of vignettes that are, like all good stories, quite habit-forming.

So, if you've got a blog of your own, consider adding these worthwhile reads to your blogrolls, and, of course, do e-mail the bloggers to let them know. Feel free to use Comments to let me in on any lesser-known blogs deserving of more attention.

Will I sound too much like the archetypical Dirty Hippie if I urge people to Share the Love? Fair enough. I'll do it anyway--Share the love!

Also at Cogitamus.