Digital Delicatessens

Let me take a moment and compare the vast reaches of the internet to food. There is a hell of a lot of data floating around out there, and me, being slightly obsessive-compulsive, I have to try and categorize it. At least a little bit of it, anyway.

You should see my favorites list on the Internet Explorer at work. It is divided into topics, subdivided, then subdivided again. Everything neatly categorized into its place: Job-related, News, Personal, Politics, Humor, Weather, Blogs... and the list goes on.

Here goes my half-hearted attempted at classifying internet sites according to food types:

• McDonald's: The flavorless drivel that usually gets spammed around email servers for years on end. That, and most news sources. This kind of stuff most likely won't catch your eye if you have a pulse.
  
  
• Golden Corral: Places that are so huge and unsorted, that you could literally spend hours there checking the place out. Usually a balance between some genuinely good stuff, and lame crap.
  
  
• Ruth's Chris Steak House: Higher quality stuff, for people who like to savor the flavor of what they're reading. Could be in several different varieties, but the data is usually well thought out, and well-written. Funny, having said all that, I've never been to a Ruth's Chris. I'm going on testimonials here.
  
  
• La Caille at Quail Run: Salt Lakers will know what I'm talking about here. A fancy-shmancy place at the mouth of Little Cottonwood Canyon, where a good dinner might cost you as little as $100 per plate. When speaking of data sites, it's usually stuff that's too highbrow for most normal people to stomach. Too many intellectuals with their big fancy words hang out in places like these.

Now, having gone through that little exercise, I followed a link kindly provided by KOM, and found a delightful site along the lines of a Ruth's Chris Steak House. It's called McSweeney's International.

The article that KOM linked to was about how improbable the trash compactor in the Death Star was. I love it when people can actually spend time thinking of things like that!

Another one was "Alternate Endings To Famous Literary Works As Written By A 15-Year-Old With A Grudge."

Another good read is "Open Letters to People or Entities Who Are Unlikely To Respond"

Check out McSweeney's. What a great place to enjoy some data. Thanks, KOM, for giving me yet another place spend my time during the workday. Oops, did I write that?