Is This Actually My Secret Slushpile?

Hi folks -- I've talked about my blogging slushpile a few times, but have I ever shown you a picture of it?

My slushpile or...

In book publisher slang, a slush pile is a stack of unsolicited manuscripts (that don't come through an agent). I use it to talk about my slushpile links, which are links that I've collected that I might want to blog about, but haven't gotten around to yet.

So if that's not my slushpile, what the hell did I take a photo of? A giant powered donut? A melty golf-ball? Leave your best interpretation in the comments.

Here's some stuff from this week's pile:

* In Defense of Ultragrrrl [some language] -- a Village Voice article about blogger turned music tastemaker Sarah Lewitinn -- no, I've never heard of her, but I have heard of some of the bands she's discovered, highlighted or supported, like the Killers, My Chemical Romance, and Franz Ferdinand.

AOL Search factors into the story, oddly enough -- it's how she met future My Chemical Romance bass player Mikey Way, and Spin music journalist Marc Spitz. And the rest is history...

* The Ol' Bait and Click -- this article from the Washington Post talks about how scammers on eBay and other sites "game" reputation and feedback tools to establish good reps, then later use them to take advantage of people for high-value items. One warning sign? A string of positive feedback given for low-dollar value transactions.

* Wired News' Resdesign -- They redesigned. They shared some feedback. My opinion? Still have to give it some time, but I think it looks an awful lot like the now-evergreened Sploid main page, which is not necessarily a good thing.

* Sinbad Is Not Dead (Yet) -- in another one for the "can't-believe-everything-you-read-on-wikipedia" file, actor/comedian Sinbad was falsely reported as dead. I'm not going to make the obvious joke, because that would be mean.

* People Can Be Really Mean in Comments -- Two weeks ago, a 420-pound woman gave birth just 2 days she realized she was pregnant. The story hit the media, and generated a lot of comments -- many of them nasty ones. The OC Register did a followup story about those comments, and some of the things media Web sites are doing to maintain their open commenting. (Link via Obscurestore.com)

There's a lot more stuff in my slushpile, including a double-amputee who may soon compete against regular runners and more Money Origami, so check it out.

Got anything else you want to see added to the slushpile? Leave a comment or send me mail and let me know.

Thanks -- Joe

Tags: slushpile, ultragrrrl, auction scams, my chemical romance, sinbad, wikipedia