Blinq Loses The Staring Contest

Hey, so Blinq has moved to the Inquirer’s in-house blogging platform and, ah, that’s the new logo. I’ve screencapped it instead of simply shrinking the original image because the page now has Harry Potter and Ben Franklin and 10 other people blinking at you aaaaaahhhhhhhh.

Meet the new blog [Blinq]

Every Time I Come Around Your City Blinq Blinq

Stunning news from blogworld! Daniel Rubin’s seminal Inquirer blog, Blinq, is being shuttered.

Rubin has been promoted to metro columnist. No longer will he summarize what people on the Internet think of a Snickers commercial or Barbaro. No, Daniel Rubin is going to fight! for! us! as a columnist in the metro section.

Lots of people are saying RIP, Blinq — or some sort of “Blinq or you’ll miss it” pun — and wondering why the Inquirer decided to close the blog instead of just have Rubin post occasionally or hire a new writer. A Summary: Community! STUPID STUPID STUPID! The shuttering of the URL, of the community that rose around Dan’s engagement at Blinq, is self-inflicted wound. Conversation! Interweb Four Point Oh! and so forth. I suppose I agree, but I can’t get riled up enough about it to post in all caps.

But anyway. Most importantly, I’ve learned that Philadelphia Will Do “just lost its only local competitor btw.” By the way indeed! Hot diggity. With Blinq gone and Philebrity’s server being down, there will be nobody to stop my reign of terror! Take that, Will Bunch! Take a kick in the knees, Jason Weitzel!

Now somebody go get me 20-odd Dyson vacuum cleaners. (I roll top-of-the-line here, none of that Oreck shit like Fumo.)

Forward, Into The Past [Blinq]
The Inquirer Closes Dan Rubin’s Blinq [Philly Future]

‘Inquirer’ Gets To Heart Of YouTube Purchase

If you hadn’t heard, yesterday Google bought YouTube for 1.65 billion dollars. (And they said you couldn’t base a business on copyright infringement.) Blinq’s Dan Rubin looks into the deal, and brings up the most important part of the whole deal, in fact, the aspect of the deal that has Wall Street buzzing today:

Will Philadelphia Will Do and the 700 Level Get to post clips of stupid local TV news tricks and Lito Sheppard’s great return?

Yeah, I was wondering what this deal meant for me, too. (Not really.) Fortunately, he then leaves it to Mark Cuban to sift though rest of the complexity of the deal. Glad to see that’s all settled.

GooTube & Yougle [Blinq]

Leftovers: The Place That Loves You Back (Unless You Overdosed On Heroin)

• If you read PW regularly, you probably already know about the state of the city’s ambulances. (Hint: Not good.) But now, an Inquirer investigation has revealed that not only is the city failing to revive heroin victims with the drug Narcan, but the city’s chief paramedic didn’t know it worked as a treatment for fentanyl, which has been tainting heroin up and down the East Coast. Sigh. [Inquirer]

• The Divine Tracy Hotel in West Philly has been sold. But where will we go to dress modestly? The story doesn’t say who the buyer is, but I think we all know what’s being done with it: Condos. [KYW 1060]

• Dr. Dean Richardson, who last operated on Barbaro, is now going to perform surgery on a polar bear with a broken leg. But of course. [AP/CNN.com]

• Matt Ciotto, Chad B. Archer and Wilbert S. Kollie. Name three people not likely to win their fantasy football league this year. [Metro]

• Geeze. We need to get a union job. [Blinq]

Blogicized: Happy Birthday To Youse

• Hey, a happy birthday to Blinq and its writer, Daniel Rubin, as it — the blog, not the writer — turns 1 today. As a prize, he gets to speak at Harvard, or something. [Blinq]

• Apparently, those touchpad voting machines are a little confusing. This is silly, since we should be able to figure out how to get people to vote without messing with their minds. Then again, this is America, and this is government. [PSoTD]

• I’ve gone a few days without reading an essay comparing bloggers to the Roman Legion. Then again, I’ve been paid to write this. (Even this pointless sentence here is earning me a very small, small, small amount of money!) [Classical Values]

Blaze Of Glory

Funny, you think they’d wait until April 20 to do the Weedend.

Blinq

Leftovers: Reefer madness

• I’ve said before that all you need to do is make jokes about weed and people will go nuts. That being said, here’s a story about Joey Sweeney and Adam Arcuragi high, and other related MP3s and goodies. [Philebrity]

• That being said, here’s some more news: Upper Darby has been chosen as a “Weed and Seed” site. You take the EL westbound to get there, kids. [KYW 1060]

• Here’s a riddle for you: What’s more boring than Blinq? Give up? A 5,000-word feature on its editor! I kid, I kid. But, still, a rimshot, please? [Blue Plate Special]

• If you’re ever down, just remember this: You don’t root for a team known as Red Bull New York. [AP/ESPN.com]

• Want to know what the (ridiculously awful) Star & Buc Wild show is responsible for? Read this: “Want to know how to sell more junk food, sweatshop clothes and Mercedes? First, you make people feel bad about their lot in life, and then offer them relief through consumption. When people feel low, they consume to comfort themselves.” I once bought a $100 pair of jeans. I blame Barsky. [Citypaper]

Blogicized: Rendell for state senate!

• Ed Rendell, who isn’t running for president, did poorly in a poll among presidential candidates. Oh no! His presidential campaign has been derailed! [MyDD]

• Yep, the Eagles have a lot of holes, but at least they have semi-promising tight end L.J. Smith. Oh, by the way, at least one person thinks they should draft a tight end. Erhm. [Welcome to Phillyville]

• If you’re looking for more Grammys fix, there’s a liveblog from World Cafe Live at the Inky. [Blinq]

• Oh, yeah, the Inquirer’s editorial page editors have a blog. Yeah. [Inquirer Fishbowl]

A new week and a new motto

Hi! I hope everyone’s weekend was good and youse won all your bets on the football games. (I knew I should have changed my NFC pick to Seattle.)

Anyway, let’s begin with a look at our buddy-in-blogging Daniel Rubin over at the Inquirer’s Blinq. On a post about a Philly sports website, Rubin did some things that are apparently verboten in the blogosphere (please, please someone shoot me if I use this word again).

What did he do? He changed the timestamp on his post and deleted a pointless comment. The nerve! Anyway, the blogger whose post was deleted took offense, and left this comment (all emphasis mine):

Well, Dan, you’ve just lost all credibility with me. Not only have you re-posted yet another post to a “newer” timestamp, this time you’ve deleted my comment. Lame. Lame. Lame.

You’re not a blogger. You’re a MSM poseur. [...]

You should be ashamed of yourself.

I don’t really care who wrote this — although, to be fair, he was last spotted saying something like “I don’t have mental illness, so it must not exist!” on a post about Liz Spikol’s blog — but I’m going to steal his fantastic idea.

Philadelphia Will Do: I’m not a blogger. I’m an MSM poseur.

Faaaaan-tastic!

Winners needed [Blinq]