Via Waxy, a story about why one ten-year attendee is skipping SXSW this year. Considering the volume of boring newsfluff pouring out this year, I’m not in the least bit surprised.

“Yeah, if they take what I say seriously, they’ve got a real big problem.” Miss Piggy, a puppet, calls out Fox News as not being news, but the fact that she did so was not in fact news. In other non-news, my head hurts.

Former THL fave Chuck Klosterman turned a misinformed rant on an album into an incredibly stupid commentary on gender, prompting rebuttals all involving different varieties of the phrase “Old Man Yelling” to varying effect. However, Jen is the only one to connect the dots and realize that if Klosterman isn’t our generation’s Andy Rooney, he soon will be.

You may or may not have already heard my news. I’ve written about it twice, and it’s going to start getting really redundant here. And wait, yes, it is about to get really redundant right here. That’s right. I’m saying goodbye again. Hold your horses, this one’s directed at THL. With all of these posts, it kind of seems like I’m dying not just moving 20 minutes north.

As the new music editor at the New Times Broward-Palm Beach, I will be saying good-bye to Miami, moving to Broward, and to The Heat Lightning – the blog which I birthed with Alesh a year and a half ago.

I’m not a public emoter past anger, furious anger, and the occasional hurt feeling tear. Every time I try to be a human, I feel like Data when he was implanted with the emotion chip. That’s why writing this farewell has taken me forever, or a week to be accurate.

When I moved to Miami as a kid, I hated it. I really hated it and everyone in it. It was only in ninth grade when I met my best friend Liza a recent arrival from New York that I fell in love with this shitty city. Liza illuminated all the beauty of this foreign place with her always seemingly rational perspective. The banyans, the sun, the sand. How could I not embrace it and make it my home?

The best part about the SOPA blackouts? Watching people on Twitter flip the hell out.

Mid to late January is good for one thing only: waiting for February, which itself is only good for contemplating suicide. So here are some links to take your mind off the fact that you’re not being showered in gifts and egg nog at the present moment.

• Is it funny that I’m posting this on SOPA blackout day? I mean I think it’s funny that I’m posting this on SOPA blackout day. How to access Wikipedia on SOPA blackout day. Also: the R.I.A.A. is still staffed by total dicks (even when it isn’t SOPA blackout day).
• Fake product reviews are the glue that hold internet comedy together.
• Did not wearing a helmet save Gene Hackman’s life when he was hit by a car while cycling in Key West? Of course not, but assuming that helmets are the one-size-fits-all answer to bicycle safety only creates a false sense of security, argue the folks over at Lovely Bicycle.
• Between the Republican Primary catfights and football, there have been a lot of non-story stories going around. To that end: Tim Tebow exists, and people write godawful crap about him.
• Related, sort of not really: G.O.P.-Friendly Super PAC or Mary J. Blige Album?
• The Story of my Life, bro.
• Tax season is more or less upon us and yet again I seem to be the only person I know who actually does their own return. If you can add and you actually care about people, AARP is still accepting volunteer applications for their Tax-Aide program. I’ll be writing about my own experiences doing volunteer tax prep shortly.
• I’m going to go on record and say that the last Magnetic Fields albums was farcically disappointing. “Oh you people like goofy pop songs? Well here’s 30 minutes of overproduced chamber music. Hope you like harpsichords!” Anyway, people seem to have high hopes for the next album Love At The Bottom Of The Sea, the first single for which is streaming online now. It features guys in drag and is woefully short. Fun!
• In closing, someone needs to get Eddie Murphy and Dan Aykroyd on the phone.

We love everything Bleeding Palm does over here at THL. We’re super creepy mega-fans, and that’s the honest truth. We like them better than we like ourselves. That is why I wrote up a post about their newest site on the Florida Turnpike for the Miami New Times. Make sure to click on it and poke around and appreciate Bleeding Palm’s sick mind(s).

The story of Pinochle written by KT Kieltyka for The Hairpin reminds me so much of my own delusional yet magic filled youth. I can’t even begin to tell you the things I believed for too long. I hope I have kids one day that trust the lies I tell them till they’re in middle school. Life’s too short. Enjoy.

The Miami New Times’ annual People Issue will probably be stacked in green metal boxes all over town by tomorrow, but today, it’s up online. Read about Jimbo Luznar of Jimbo’s, activist Vanessa Brito, and Oba Ernesto Pichardo. I mention them in particular because they’re interesting people, and, of course, because I wrote those. Enjoy!

If you watch just one minute of Patrick Swazye at a disco with a PBR today, make this that minute.

Hey everybody! Long time no see. I wanted to let you know about On The Fence, a podcast I’ve been doing for the past few weeks with Steve. Basically, we shoot the breeze about whatever’s going on in the world. Posted on Friday was yet another episode about the #Occupy movement, with Misael Soto on board for a first-person perspective. And there’s a new episode coming soon. As in tomorrow. Subscribe it in your iTunes, add it to your Google-plus-one, like it on Facebook, and retweet it to your followage.

It’s been said before but it bears repeating: modern Journalism needs to stop screwing itself.

Yeah you’ve already seen this by now, but I really didn’t expect a picture I took at a costume party last week to wind up on it. By the way, the answer is more or less “both.”

Here are two wonderful links for the day.
Musical goddess Kate Bush’s new album 50 Words for Snow is coming out on November 21 and her single “Wild Man” hit the web. It’s dedicated to the mythical beast bigfoot, of course. Listen here.

Another artist that I wish were my pal Manu Chao held a concert in Arizona and kinda almost met with America’s douchiest sheriff. An article on the event begins: The stage was set for an impromptu public debate on Arizona’s immigrationpolicies when Sheriff Joe Arpaio stepped out for a sandwich Tuesday afternoon, Sept. 20, and found a press conference assembled just outside his office to call attention to Manu Chao’s appearance at Festival de Resistencia.
Read the full story here