I had lunch today with my old pal Jason and we were talking about the fact that so many women in male-female relationships in NYC are now the primary breadwinners. I don’t find this surprising but I do find it problematic, economically. I told Jason that I strongly believe NYC has been really psychologically devastated by the 9/11 attacks, in ways that are not really economically quantifiable. The numbers don’t show the fact that business has slowed, that people are out of work, that productivity is down, that people are living in fear.
The US government should focus less on rebuilding monuments and more on helping the NYC economy build up its employed – and underemployed. Jason, who is going to business school in a few months, agreed.
[Look ma, no links!]

Giving Thanks for Ruling in March
March appears to be a good month for me, a Pisces. I’m honored to write that The Morning News, one of my favorite news area sites around, has awarded MANOVERBOARD.com a “Site of the Week.”
So cool. It’s up there now with Metafilter and ArtKrush (hi Chris!) and 0Format (a very fine, smartly written blog by dueling writers and Web developers).
What is even better is that slightly above the post is the Album of the Week, awarded to The Trail of Dead’s new record. TOD is only one of the greatest bands this side of Texas. All of this, to say the least, rules.

Okay, I know I’m not the first one to notice this but there’s this serious cabal (and I use this word lightly) of folks who run, manage, own, distribute and otherwise ARE the Blogger group. Smart blowhards. Smart though.
All these folks I greatly admire. But there’s such a self-gratifying, self-congratulatory air about the whole SXSF thing that I think I want to throw up now, having just read Matt’s a.wholelottanothing.org. Is it envy? Is it?
Like gag me with a spoon – or whatever! Cool people of San Francisco, what have you done? Well, you’ve done good.

The Angering Web Sites
Okay, I’ve had it with listing Web sites that are nice, pretty, charming, or otherwise fine. Here is a short list of ones that are either useless, non-functional, decrepit, or otherwise horrendous. And worse still is that you often have to use them.
Network Solutions: They have always had terrible navigation and impossible instructions.
MSN: Between them and Netscape and CNN, it’s like, “Could they possibly put more links on their page?” Put Slate, MSN’s thingy, on this sublist.
eBay: No new news here. Just ugly and not fun any more. Give me Amazon and PayPal any day.
Angering P.S. Here is a verbatim copy of an email I received today. I don’t get it but I got it anyway. The subject of the email: “Hey Fred.”
Fred,
It was nice to talk to you today I will send the proposal tonight.
Thanks,
Heidi

Must Get DSL
A few links for those of you who, when it is either possible or affordable or both, get DSL:
Mr. Beller’s Neighborhood: A smart site that is slow. Buy the book, which delineates narrative and other differences “Before” and “After” September 11, 2001.
Heavy: It’s thick, it’s gamey, and it’s quite good.
Edge.org: An overtly, overly digital exploration of the digital world by self-named digerati. It really is, however, a compendium of articles and ideas by the Who’s Who. And yes, it’s an appropriately ugly site.

I’m reading a mildly interesting book called the The Mouse Driver. It’s not an interesting title, nor is the idea behind the book interesting, but conceptually, it’s fascinating. It essentially documents the amazing, hellacious, beatific and also bizarre days of 1999 and 2000 when money flowed from the coffers of VCs and the statistic in SF was that 25 new millionaires were sprouted each day.
The MouseDriver concept itself has got to be one of the dumbest I have ever heard, however — two men with MBAs building a PC mouse made to look like a golf driver. Jeezh.

Delayed Reactions
1. All this talk about Shadow Governments coming out after, way after, September 11, kind of makes me think about my own delays in writing lately. I was recently laid off from my permanent position at OVEN.
2. This post is a delayed reaction to that layoff, which is why I haven’t written lately. Also because I need DSL. I don’t know if the company will surive at this time, but I do hope it will. OVEN, unlike so many other companies and businesses and crap firms, actually produced extremely high quality, innovative and beautiful work. So we’ll see what happens. This is not a plug as I got paid and I don’t hold no grudges.
3. The third delayed reaction is to one of Canada. Congratulations y’all. I’m not a big believer in sports generally, but here is one country that defied the odds internationally and received recognition at last.