Vagabond Scholar's Best Blog Posts of 2011

I thought this was fun, something carried forward in the tradition of the late blogger Jon Swift (see the intro for explanation).

It's a list of the author's self-chosen collected Best Blog Posts for the current year. It focuses mainly on small blogs, those with much good writing and loyal, happy (but often small) readerships.

Click through for a great number of treats. I'll offer one.

A personal favorite of mine is Tbogg, a modern humorist who writes the best Walt Whitman on the planet. (Clearly, my Achilles Heel is style, though I'm still no fan of Christopher Hitchens.)

Here's Tbogg's nominated entry, "Bristol Palin’s Airing of Grievances".

A taste — the first half details how poor Bristol "wrote" in her book about being dissed by Meghan McCain and then included details of her romance with Levi, the father of her child. Here's how Tbogg phrases it:

Then Bristol complained about how her future baby daddy stole her innocence by plying her with Bartles & Jaymes (snowbilly champagne) and afterward they pinky-swore a solemn blood oath to never ever have sex again until they were united in the eyes of White Jesus, and that lasted until there was nothing to do, what with it being Wasilla and all, and they were suckin’ on chili dogs outside the Tastee Freeze and Levi was all “Dribble off those Bobby Brooks and let me do what I please plow you like a snow-choked Salmon River Road” (snowbilly poetry) and Bristol finished off her fifth chili dog and said “Whatev’s” and wedged herself into the backseat of Levi’s Ford Escort. Then, next thing you know, Bristol was knocked up before getting married (just like her mom!) and she pooped out possibly her second child and this somehow made her role model for abstinence to the kind of people who will pick up her book along with 5-gallon tubs of Cheezy-Bacon Corn Syrup Puffs at Wal-Mart because Bristol Palin’s life is like a fairytale or something.

But with meth.

The end.

That long paragraph is two sentences, every word in place. "...and that lasted until there was nothing to do..." Westcoast Whitman poetry.

Do check out the other posts in this good list; there are a number of bloggy treats — some for style, some for the point made — and all deserving of your attention.

GP