The Canadian Midwest

A week ago, I ran a rather lengthy and dry post about what I was doing with a few of my short stories. At the beginning of the post, I offered to write a post about the first two people who were able to identify the lyrical snippet and/or group that the post title was connected to.

Suffice to say, I had two winners who correctly identified the song title, "Words", and the name of the group, Missing Persons: Bearman and Sparkling Red.

So without further ado, here is a post about two of my readers who happen to write a couple of blogs that I've been reading for the better part of two years.

Bearman

Bearman is a self-proclaimed "hack" cartoonist who hails from Cincinnati and who can be found at his blog Bearman Cartoons, skewering most things related to pop culture, local culture, national culture and everything else in between. For those of you who peruse Facebook, Twitter or Google+, he can be found there as well.

I'm not really sure how came about to be reading his blog back in 2009, but if I should hazard a guess, I probably found him via another WordPress blog that I happened to be reading one day. I do remember the post that I commented on when I'd first visited his blog, which was about the lack of black superheros in the movies (I think I got the post right), and after spending about a week or so reading his blog, I decided to stick around for the duration.

What is unusual about this particular blog, at least as it applies to me, as it remains the only cartoon oriented blog that I consistently read/subscribe to on a daily/weekly basis. Which says a lot about me, since I have some 115 blogs that I subscribe to, and out of those 115, there are only two devoted to cartoons and cartoonists that I read. The cartoon is Bearman's, which I can honestly relate to, since he often reminds me of our local editorial cartoonist here in Connecticut, Bob Englehart. The cartoonist is a blog hosted by John K, of Ren & Stimpy and Mighty Mouse fame.

So if you like your cartoons home grown, down to earth and actually relevant to the day's events, along with a lively discussion for each one, check out Bearman Cartoons. You'll be glad that you did.

Sparkling Red

Sparkling Red hails from Canada and writes a very interesting slice of life blog called Adventures In Sparkland. I'm not quite sure how I stumbled across her blog but if I was to hazard a guess, I probably found her while exploring a few profiles one day.

When I say "exploring profiles", that means that I decided to click onto the comment portion of a blog post and check out the various commenter's profiles. I will admit that I am very shallow when it comes to checking blogger profiles, in that if the avatar that a person uses is interesting, then I'll check out the profile. Dull avatar means that I skip over the profile.

Anyways, Sparkling Red's profile pic intrigued me, so I decided to click on it to see what was what. What was what, was a very fascinating slice-of-life blog.

Now what I mean by "slice-of-life" blog, is that the person had chosen to write about certain aspects of their personal life, either semi-censored (like mine) or relatively open, like hers. Sparkling Red's blog is what I considered to be a relatively open slice-of-life blog that seldom leaves any stone about herself unturned. I won't say it's a religious blog, but it's more in the way of a spiritual blog. A journey of self-discovery, one might say (at least that's the impression I get from it).

If you enjoy learning about things from another country, or simply learning how deal with life's little problems, or even relating to the trials and tribulations of someone who is successfully dealing with life's little inconveniences, then give Adventures in Sparkland a whirl. You'll be glad that you did.