blogs that (make me) think

i should do this now so i don't put it off indefinitely. well, thinking girl was good enough to hand me a thinking blog award! seems a little wrong since i'm not really blogging (yeah) and i promised i wouldn't do tags anymore - but i'm really flattered to get the award from someone who in my book definitely deserves it, if anyone does. and it's not just because of the name match! :P

the idea with this award is as follows:

1. If, and only if, you get tagged, write a post with links to 5 blogs that make you think,
2. Link to this post so that people can easily find the exact origin of the meme,
3. Optional: Proudly display the ‘Thinking Blogger Award’ with a link to the post that you wrote (here is an alternative silver version if gold doesn’t fit your blog).

so after much deliberation here's my list (i have a feeling i'm about to say "awesome" a lot):

0. jenn @ thinking girl, because her feminism and philosophy blog rocks, she's both rational and passionate in how she writes and what she writes about, she comes at topics from a deep social justice perspective and she shows a lot of patience and consideration to all (i love how she puts effort not only in writing thoughtful posts but answering all her reader's comments as carefully and thoughtfully as possible, too!). but as she already got the award like 5000 times, i believe that allows me to bend the rules of participation and actually pick 6 blogs total to recommend. :)

the rest are in blog name alphabetical order:
1. liz @ as the tumor turns - i used to be an avid reader of her old blog, granny gets a vibrator (i wish it were still online), and now i'm following the current one, which she started while going through some rough times; whatever liz writes is awesome and insightful and hilarious and witty and... everything! her sharpness and honesty make me think of virginia woolf, for some reason. which given my worship of v.w. is high praise indeed.
2. summer @ fecundmellow - she's quite honestly my favorite writer on the web. i don't remember how i found her blog - i think one of the first things i read of hers was a letter to queen latifah - but i immediately loved it, both the style and content of her posts. summer's just among the smartest and awesomest bloggers around and if it were up to me she would be a blog-land superstar!
3. emiko and chad @ food fight! - the blog of the vegan grocery store/mail order business from portland, which is always bursting with bits of info, mostly vegan and animal rights related but also other political stuff and lovely randomness.
4. jenn @ reappropriate - possibly the most thoroughly activist blog i read (and i read mostly political, radical and/or activist blogs), and the writing there's always guaranteed to be thoughtful, eloquent, original. that's why it's super awsome, activism should be about a continuous cycle of action and reflection! there's so much good stuff in the archives, it boggles the mind! i admire everything about this blog, all in all i guess it's my favorite one.
5. sarah and candy @ smart bitches who love trashy novels - the ladies who brought us the bill napoli google bomb (and when i say "ladies"... i don't really mean that); they make me laugh, really laugh, and they make me think. together with the rest of their readership i say thank god for this blog, which has hosted some excellent discussions that you can't find in too many other places... did i mention the bitches are quite possibly the funniest, wittiest women alive?

that's my top, but, although they're listed over in the side bar at all times, my friends-with-blogs (that are active) also deserve awards and shout outs, 'cause they all make me think: jon, brooke and lian, cassie, jen, frank, ileana, marius, janna, hajni, letitia, cristina, ana, nita, luiza, jenn again. and not only that, but they are also AWESOME so check them out (sorry to non-romanian speakers, some of those are in romanian)!

and now i hope i get tagged again 'cause i have so many other favorites i'd like to recommend! (ok, i don't hope i get tagged again, but maybe i'll start recommending "thinking" blogs on a regular basis from now on, just because.)

ps: this is a perfect opportunity for me to mention again a quote that articulates really well some things i've been ruminating lately:

...I think a lot of people identify themselves through things like their diet, and I don't. I feel that to put our behaviors or practices or these sort of things to the fore somehow suggests that that's what we are before we are human beings. It suggests these things are novelties and they can be dismissed as such. I'm already dismissed enough as it is! For being sort of an iconoclast or somebody who has really stuck to his principles, it isolates me. So using my diet or something like that to identify myself, or even straight edge as a form of identity, suggests that I'm not just a normal human being - but I am. That's sort of always been the point of punk rock for me, that anybody can do it, anybody can make anything.
So I avoid getting into long discussions or polemics about my diet on the record. I don't want to be the vegan. I don't think my work is to spread veganism. My work, I hope, is to spread thoughtfulness. That's what I think of music and art and all these sorts of creations, what they require, hopefully, is thinking. ... (Ian MacKaye)