Sharing only the best from over 500 webposts read daily so you don't have to!

Next, I'd like to introduce you to Google Reader!

Google's "Reader" feature is what's called a "newsfeed aggregator," which is just a fancy name for a website that lets me boil down all the websites I like to follow into a friendly, portable text format that I can skim far more easily than if I tried to browse all-day-long all 66 websites I'm currently following! Sure, it's not nearly as pretty as the original webpages, but it is infinitely quicker to read, and is totally portable on ye olde new iPhone!

In the process, I even can point out the rare needles of particular interest from among those massive haystacks of information, and share them with you in the left sidebar on "Michelle's Mental Clutter." I hope you'll find this a great way not just to avoid information overclocking (since out of the over 4000 items I've eye-scanned over last week, I've only shared a total of NINE!) but also to discover for yourself the eclectic little nuggets o' fun 'n' knowledge that I've been only too glad to mine for you!

To give you an idea of the kinds of myriad things you'll be finding there, here's a review of what's resident in the sidebar RIGHT NOW at 2:53 pm on Wednesday, June 11:

• Gorgeous Images of the Sky, From 200+ Miles Above it: The clouds alone are AMAZING!

• The Suitcase Wont Close Day-saver!: A handy how-to from Instructables.
  

• The RiffTrax Blog: Do you miss "Mystery Science Theater 3000"? Well, miss no more!! Some of the usual suspects from the Satellite of Love are still, as they say, not making movies, but making them funny! Golden oldies but badies and new releases get the MST3K treatment through Rifftrax... "Meet the Spartans" should have just released their commentary of "300" instead! It makes the Battle of Thermopylae the knee-slapping romp it was always meant to be!! ("THIS... IS... SPART-... ... ... of a balanced breakfast!")

• No glove boning for me: If you're like me and read cookbooks as brain candy, what's your own personal "deal breaker" for trying a recipe? NY Times asks the question, and Lifehacker and Metafilter respond!

• Classic photographs done in LEGOs: Just what it says, but gorgeous! Clearly a labor of lego love!! (Pictured at left)

• Patching Old, Crumbling Walls with LEGO: Not only is it pretty (as you can see above right), but I love the idea of a modern, plastic simulacrum literally bolstering its ancestral reality!

More to come from the road all this summer! Enjoy!!

Twitter and Twinkle

Ah, summertime... and the bloggin' is easy!

Yes, another year, another gadget... And right now we're tweaking "Michelle's Mental Clutter" to get the most out of our new iPhone mobile blogging!

To wit, at left in the sidebar you'll see a couple of new additions...

First, there's Twitter! If you're familiar with the status updates on Facebook, then you already have an idea what Twitter is all about. If not, well... as the website says, "Twitter is a service for friends, family, and co–workers to communicate and stay connected through the exchange of quick, frequent answers to one simple question: What are you doing?"

According to the all-knowing Wikipedia, many prominent people and organizations have embraced this technology, "including the Los Angeles Fire Department who put it to use in situations such as the October 2007 California wildfires." (Not to mention that the great and august The Onion is, too!)

I first really experienced Twitter through what turned out to be a couple of its greatest uses ever... The incredibly plugged-in and insightful "microblogging" of Rex Sorgatz on Fimoculous and the raising of the legendary digital truisms (pictured at left) of contemporary artist Jenny Holzer to its logical, ubiquitious, and glorious Twittery conclusion!

Now, all this incoming informational minutia might seem a bit overwhelming. But there are a couple of fun ways to narrow it down...

• Favrd collects the best of Twitter.
• Twitstori is both a digital art project and "the first step in an ongoing social experiment based on twitter"... What does the world say that it loves, hates, believes, feels or wishes?
• Ever overhear something surreal, stupid, wise, etc. and want to share it with the world? Overheard.it is a fun site that pulls in all the fun things which people twittered, saying that they've overheard.
• The ultimate in citizen journalism is TweetWire.com, which tries to build a newspaper out of Twitter posts.

I am personally twittering mostly through the iPhone app Twinkle, which sorta guestimates location by trianangulating with cell towers, plus can let you add pictures (both of which can only be seen on the iPhone, so hope to see you on one soon!)

Gearing Up for Summer... (Literally!)

Ah, summer... Where the days are longer, the nights are stronger than moonshine!

It's nearly time for my annual transhumance from Maine to Venice! That can only mean one thing... that "Michelle's Mental Clutter" is about to leap out of its usual 9 month-long semi-hibernation into vibrant blogurial life, and I will again be pontificating on the adventures, life, the universe and everything of an American abroad in Italy.

To celebrate, we're adding some zippy features to MMC before the event! I'll be introducing them to you one-by-one over the course of the day...

The first of course is Michelle's swank new iPhone (unlocked, jailbroken, first gen!) Finally, I hope to bring true (laptop-less, so to speak!) mobile blogging to MMC... The trial in the last post was a great success, and I'm looking forward to bringing you field updates from your woman on the scene in Venice. Hopefully, you'll find them more pithy and original than the ironic and oft-copied telegram sent by absurdist humorist and journalist Robert Benchley over half a century ago, that is, "Streets flooded. Please advise."

A MMC First: Blogging about Venice & Bottled Water via iPhone

Ah, mobile blogging comes to MMC! Enjoy!!

BBC NEWS | World | Venice in fountain drinking drive

Apparently the pigeons aren't the only things dirty in San Marco...

Apparently this guy has been following women around the square and furtively videoing over 3000 butts over the last two years! More at BBC NEWS World Europe Furtive Venice snapper arrested

Newsflash: "Officials in Venice warn tourists: Please don't feed the pigeons!"

Food Blogging Stateside: The Ethereal Jams of Maine's "Appledore Cove"

As I've mentioned before, I don't often have reason to food-blog when I'm in the States. But every now and then I discover something locally that I have to tell the world about!

This time, it's Appledore Cove... By now, many folks already know about Stonewall Kitchen, yummy jams and condiments sold from their Martha-Stewartesque company store in York, Maine. Don't get me wrong... I love their stuff, and I had never tasted jellies and jams so good before. (I'm particularly partial to the Raspberry Peach Champagne Jam myself!)

That is, until I discovered this week Appledore Cove's "Strawberry Honey Lavender Jam" made right here in N. Berwick, Maine... What a revelation! Elegant in its simplicity... You can taste each of the main ingredients, but it's the beautiful marriage of these flavors which outdoes Stonewall, in my opinion!

Yes, it's also a bit pricey... but as long as you don't indiscriminately slather it on PB & J, it's totally worth it! We had ours on toasted butter croissants this morning, and it was out of this world... So good that it need not stop at breakfast. According to Applecove, the jam is also excellent "as a topping for ice cream or as a filling between cake or pastry layers." I don't doubt it!! Trust me... try it and you'll love it!

Venice on Ice

Venice on ice is a rare sight.

This anonymous painting shows Venetians skating between the north shore (le Fondamente Nove) in Venice and the tiny island of San Michele (now the city's cemetary island) in January 1709.

I've known Venice for almost 15 years now, and I've never seen such a thing! The closest we've ever come was when we were trying once in January to take the Alilaguna shuttleboat from Venice to the airport like we had a million times before, but this time the boat's engine started to overheat because the water injectors were getting clogged with ice... So, they were force to detour to the car park at Piazzale Roma, where we had to get an automobile taxi to take us the rest of the way! I thought we'd never make it...

But now you can see this rare and strange event from the comfort of your own computer without ever getting your feet cold (or risk missing a plane!) From the "Serenissima" discussion group, a beautiful video of when the Venetian lagoon and canals froze over in 1929... Enjoy!

Venice to give up mineral water for Lent?

"The diocese of Venice is encouraging people to give up mineral water for Lent and start drinking tap water in a campaign to raise funds for charity..." (more at Rome general News: Venice gives up mineral water for Lent.)

What's more, Italians are already "locavores" when it comes to their (natural, not tap-filtered!) mineral water... Take that, Dasani!

Venice, the City of Love (Lost?)

According to a survey by Teletext Holidays, "Venice is one of the worst cities in the world for romantic bust-ups"! (from The Press Association: Holiday bust-up hotspots revealed)

Can the Venetian Carnival Become Any More Irrelevant for Venetians?

I've dissed Carnival before... and Venetians hate it. (Oh, and while we're at it, they despise masks too, and most of the ones you'll ever see were made in China, so there.)

And just in case you needed any proof that Carnival is completely irrelevant to the 60,000 or so Venetians (whose average age is somewhere in the 50s... Not a joke, a fact!)



Usually, a small fake dove (as you can see on the embedded video, when it works) flies down on cables from Saint Mark's belltower and release confetti from its insides to inaugurate the start of Carnivale. This year, it was apparently instead the rap star Coolio! (You can even see the picture at Venice Daily Photo.)

I'm (nearly) speechless!! And I don't even want to know how he released the confetti. Nothing against him personally, but it's not like all the resident octogenarian little old Venetian ladies I know are huge fans of hip hop!

Ladies and gentlemen, the Venice Carnival is now officially a sham...

VIDEO: Thousands of balls released on Rome's Spanish Steps

Longtime readers of MMC will remember that I'm completely enamored of the Sony Bravia commercial in which a quarter of a million super bouncy balls were released on the steep streets of San Francisco.

First, there was the beautiful original... (which you can't even fully appreciate unless it's in ultra high resolution!)

(How'd they do it? You can see here!)

Then there was the great British Tango fruit juice parody...


Now it's been done on Rome's famous Spanish Steps (strangely, as what is apparently an incredibly abstruse political demonstration to protest the ongoing appalling garbage crisis in Naples)

(via Decio: Il Blog)

My comment (#27) about this prank should be appearing any minute here on Boing Boing.

'Bout Time!

Venice to put speed cameras in canals - Telegraph

Hopefully, they'll have better luck with enforcement than the Italian automobile traffic cameras do!

UPDATED: The Cute Little Self-Interested Pets of Neatorama

I've just really discovered Neatorama (which somehow had never really managed to hold my attention before...)

There, they have an ongoing theme about the adorable self-interestedness of pets, both cats and dogs. Indeed, this may be why I'm now so taken with them, since this past year we acquired our own self-interested cat (pictured at left). Very sweet, excellent-dispositioned, but we foster no illusions: she loves us because we know how to open the pantry.

About once a day (after breakfast even!) she goes on a long meowing jag... at which point, I ask her, "What's wrong, Isabella? What are you trying to tell me?? Did Timmy fall down the well?!" (I don't think she appreciates the sarcasm.)

But Neatorama knows what I'm talking about! Firstly, in "The Lassie Experiment: Will Fido save you in an emergency or just let you die," even Lassie's legendary reputation of poor, unfortunate (or is that just plain klutzy?) Timmy's well-saving is called to task!

"'Timmy fell down a well' is perhaps the most quoted line from the Lassie TV show. So much so that Jon Provost the actor who played Timmy titled his autobiography Timmy’s in the Well. However, although Timmy endured many calamities during the show - including falling into a lake, getting caught in quicksand, and being struck by a hit-and-run driver - he never once fell down a well."

Such disillusionment! But what if he had?? According to Neatorama's "Go Fetch Paw!"

Surely, that's unfair, you may say! What about those valiant beasts who are frequently recognized for having saved their masters' lives, like Winnie the Cat?

"A 14-year-old domestic shorthair named Winnie [pictured at right] saved the Keesling family of New Castle, Ind., in March from carbon monoxide poisoning by jumping on a bed and meowing wildly as poisonous carbon monoxide fumes filled the family’s home from a faulty gasoline-powered water pump in the basement. Winnie woke up Cathy Keesling by nuzzling her ear and caterwauling."

God forbid this should ever happen in my household, but if so, a CO-leak might just be completely coincidental, as this fantastically funny Neatorama animation so accurately demonstrates...

Then again, maybe the wonderful, all-wise and all-knowing Nicole Hollander (who, if you don't already know, is the world's singlemost knowledgeable expert on cats, along with pretty much everything else!) has it so right here and here... that the curse of these poor, misunderstood felines is to have their heroic and altruistic actions constantly horribly misinterpreted by us humans of little faith!

Either way, I'm sure our cat will take pretty good care of us... (at least until she learns how to open that pantry!)

UPDATED: "Venice kisses in New Year Eve"

Ah, Venice! Sounds lovely... Certainly better than catching a flying prosecco bottle to the head, which is what you normally risk on New Year's Eve in Saint Mark's Square!!

"TENS of thousands of people took part in a giant New Year's kiss in front of Saint Mark's Basilica in the romantic Italian city of Venice.Under a sky lit with fireworks some 60,000 people kissed in the 'Love 2008' event, organiser Marco Balich said.The city staged the event so people 'begin the New Year with a gesture of love, peace, brotherhood, and passion', it said on its website."

(Article from Agence France-Presse, via news.com.au)

UPDATE (1/5/08):

Apparently, I wasn't far off with the prosecco bottle quip! Here's a great comment on this post that I thought I'd go ahead and cut and paste into the original...

Miss Expatria said, "I love your blog! I read Cat Bauer's myspace blog as well - she lives in Venice - and she wrote a really interesting take on what happened AFTER the kissing stopped."

Wow, what a story! I'm sorry that Cat had to face all that, but frankly it's why I stopped going to New Year's Eve in Piazza San Marco years ago... It's too damn dangerous! Please don't get me wrong... as Cat suggests, Venice is a notoriously safe and mild (almost to the point of being dull!) city 98% of the time. This however changes with the addition of vast quantities of alcohol...

Now, Venetians themselves are famous throughout Italy for their habitual drinking. Typically, any "Foster Brooks" style character on Italian television often has a nice, strong Venetian accent. But Venetians still do not approve of boisterous hooligan-type drunkards or dangerous behavior... They just start early in the morning with a caffe' corretto (espresso with a shot of grappa!), may nurse a slow buzz all day with a periodic spritz, and then down a bottle of wine with dinner (which is supposed to be okay healthwise, as long as it's not the cheap stuff!)

Which reminds me of an anecdote... According to the Xenophobe's Guide to Venetians (from the great Xenophobe Guides series), a Venetian water-bus captain once had his annual checkup in which the doctor asked how much wine he drank a day. The captain replied [in Venetian dialect], "'Na roba normal... un litro, un litro e mezo ma solo queo bon" (that is, "Oh, just what's normal... a liter or a liter and a half, but only the good stuff!")

Anyway, FYI... One only tends to encounter out-of-control, completely blotto drunkards in Venice on just three occasions:

1. Any random night in Campo Santa Margherita (which has become the local partying mecca for students who want to tie one on...)
2. Carnivale
3. New Year's Eve

It doesn't mean however that these occasions should be entirely avoided necessarily... It can be worth seeing once, if just for the people watching. You might consider bringing a hardhat with you, though!

P.S. Before anybody worries about the safety of Venetian transportation, fear not! I know from my Venetian friends that public transport drivers are not allowed to work if they test positive for alcohol in random testing, so accidents are no more frequent on public transport than they are in the U.S.