Justinsomnia and other local bloggie stuff

For some odd reason I have not followed Justin Watt's blog Justinsomnia since he left Chapel Hill for some California sun (Hi, Justin! The computer did not work as a whole, but I scavenged it for parts! Thanks, man). Perhaps it is because he's not aggregated on NCBlogs any more.

Now, I see he's become a mini-celebrity, ACLU defending his sweet little parody billboard against the nuts of Exodus International (so, why don't they, well, exode somewhere internationally and leave us alone?). You can get more information on his blog, of course - just visit Justinsomnia, which looks so much nicer and spiffier since the last time I visited. Or, you can check out the commentary by other locals who know Justin, e.g., Arse Poetica (who I had great fun chatting with last night at the Blogger MeetUp) and Will Raymond, who, after a short slump after losing the darned election, changed the blog name to Concerned Citizen (but could not make it last night to the meetup) and is going at it full speed again.

Will also posted a nice list of local political blogs that are a Must-Read if you live in the Triangle (I guess Pam is now too stratospheric to be included in this local list, although she was up for Koufaxes in the State/Local category for some unfathomable reason - and she missed the MeetUp, too!).

Speaking of the Chapel Hill/Carrboro Bloggers MeetUp, there were nine of us there last night. I had a particular pleasure to finally meet in person Abel PharmBoy (no, when you get a comment from him it is not spam, as Anton thought) of Terra Sigillata, another rare science blogger in the area. I made him tell the story of the crossword puzzle that brought him thousands of British fans!

Speaking of Anton, he is hosting this week's Tar Heel Tavern, not on his main blog, but on StoryBlogging, in order to give the storyblogging concept and action some more prominence among the local bloggers. So, have you submitted your entry yet? (Shame on me, I have not...yet).

Speaking of storyblogging, we had an idea to try to recruit non-bloggers to write stories and guest-blog on our blogs, or, if they are more comfortable that way, to be interviewed by us and the interviews posted on our blogs. I immediatelly thought of my mother, my brother, a professor who's been everywhere in the world, a student who is doing AIDS research and educaton in Lesotho... I'll try to twist some arms and get that to happen.