Today I’m traveling back in time. I’ve got the iTunes set to play only music from before 1990. At least, it started out that way. It threw in some Beethoven just to piss me off, so I added a clause about how it had to be from after 1982, and then another one about how the songs have to be rated one-star or better. So basically I’m revisiting all the music from my teens.

Right now, it’s Edie Brickell and the New Bohemians. Choke me in the shallow water, .

This is what the blogosphere is supposed to be. Not a bunch of people passing around the same tired links to Flash games and Web personality quizzes.

Yesterday I ate like a starving man and I don’t know why. Rich-doctor-roommate-who-just-bought-a-new-BMW-and-who-by-the-way-is-kicking-me-out-in-a-few-months-that-bitch says it’s because I’ve been exercising a lot lately. I don’t think she quite grasps just how much I’m not exercising. I run five or six days a week, sure, but I’m lucky if I can do two miles. I’m not a runner. I’m not one of those guys who can go seven miles on bare feet and blisters like my friend Jank. Jank’s motto, incidentally, is “Being smart got me fat.” He’s one of the good ones. I’m lucky to have known him.

Speaking of people I’m lucky to have known, let’s talk about Darleen Click. Dar’s one of those amazingly rare people who have three qualities simultaneously: She’s got something to say, she says it well, and she calls herself my friend. All at the same time.

Her latest article touches on private schools and elitism and — God bless her — moral parsimony. This is what the blogosphere is supposed to be, y’all. Not a bunch of people passing around the same tired links to Flash games and Web personality quizzes. Darleen’s work wouldn’t be out of place on the opinion page of a major newspaper, except possibly by virtue of being too good for its company there. And she’s just one gal writing about her life. That’s what the blogosphere is supposed to be.

Also in the category of people who make the blogosphere a better place is Wizbang’s Jay Tea. Jay breaks one of my cardinal rules: He writes under a pseudonym. I understand his reasons and all, but I just find it really hard to take somebody seriously when he’s hiding his identity. But Jay’s writing is so good, I can totally overlook that stuff. And those of you who know me know how hard it is for me to overlook anything.

Today Jay writes about what he calls “America’s dirtiest little secret.” He flubs the metaphor in his opening paragraph — sorry, Jay — but look past that and read what he has to say. “Houston had plenty of warning,” he writes, “and still evacuation was a nightmare. … Our cities are simply not built to be evacuated in any sort of reasonable time or effort.”

The blogosphere is like everything: Ninety percent of it is crap. I don’t say that to deride any of my fellow bloggers, but it’s true. Ninety percent of everything is crap. It’s that lingering ten percent that keeps us coming back.