Favorite finds.

First and foremost: The Mugshots of KTVZ. Wow. I'm totally fascinated.

I gaze on these pictures and wonder, What are they thinking, right now?

Do they do the Tom DeLay thing and smile as if nothing's wrong? Do they scowl? Look bewildered?

One thing's for sure, there is some hard living going on.

To read the same crimes in a paragraph in the Bulletin is to read a denuded report. Pictures really do tell a thousand words.

I'm thinking -- is this like Dorian Gray, and their character is reflected in these pictures? Or would anyone look bad? Or, as I've read somewhere, some monsters just don't show it.

These aren't monsters, just people who somewhere along the line got addicted to something, most of them.

But I can't avert my eyes.

Oh, and either they have a buzz cut, most of them, or the wildest hair imaginable. Tough life, tough night.


The second finds are business blogs that are real. That is, they aren't just puffery.

Very few of these, understandably. My blog is a business blog because it's what I do for a living, and thus what I talk about. When I actually created a Pegasus Blog companion, I decided to keep it to the basics. Not as interesting, even to me.

I think it has a lot to do with personality. Don's Sunnyside blog tends to talk about his customers and employees in the most glowing way, probably because that is his focus. Lyle (Jake's) also tends to have a more humanistic approach rather than a business approach, which is also his manner.

I know that some of the most popular blogs locally and nationally are pretty innocuous, but I don't find them all that interesting.

I like Keeneye's blog about her pizza parlor in Baker City. But even her mild reactions to the craziness of customers has caused her problems.

One of my inspirations to this blog was a guy who started a comic shop back east. (Riot Comics). He immediately started making some strange decisions, but it was fascinating to me to watch him crash.

I have found a couple of business sites I like a lot. Calculated Risk is written in a very interesting way. I don't even agree with much of what they say, but I like the way they say it. And, as I've mentioned several other times, I love the KeyPoint Partners Retail Roundup. Some of the latest headlines: "More Shopper Spurning the Mall": "July Sales Flat as School Season Shopping Starts": "Retailers Pull Back, At a Cost": "July Sales Tough for Retailers."

I can't tell you how unusual it is to find a professional business site that is this honest. This is the business world I experience and see, not the puff pieces I see most everywhere else. They could just as easily aggregate only the good news (it seems about half and half, currently) and I really appreciate the opportunity to see that other retailers are -- in fact -- not all that far off from what's happening to me.


And of course, the local and national bubble blogs. Who would've ever thunk I'd be fascinated by real estate, or all things. As I've mentioned before, I enjoy a good rant, especially if it's creative and humorous; and we've got a couple of practitioners here that are both: Paul-do on Bendbubble2, and Bilbo/Busters comments on BB2. (I think Buster tries too hard on his own site, but let's loose on BB2.) I also think HBM is fairly brave on his Source blog. He's been more willing to take on local misdoings that I have, at times.

So there you have it. I'm pretty sure these are quirky favorites, and probably a little weird. Just like me.