The NBOTW this time is actually an off-shoot of the site owner’s main blog.  I fell in love right away over there.  I mean, how can you not love a self proclaimed “idiot”?  Oh wait, the quote is about a wife proclaiming idiocy.  No matter.  He still just cracks me up with  his fresh and lively content.

On this site, he is a word vandal.  Not too many of those critters around, me thinks.  And with good reason.  When you go aand visit there, you’ll find that Derek waxes poetic about a great variety of topics.  It seems that his primary occupation is to get folks to think – a herculean task these days to be sure.

Here are his postings in January.  Prolific somehow seems inadequate.

• Free Is Still Alive
• Left Or Right?
• I’ll Buy An iPad
• Inglish
• Gathering Dust
• Socially Speaking
• Ahhh Rochat!
• No News Day
• Food Grows In Plastic
• Pathetic And So Soon Forgotten
• To Kindle Or Not
• Fantastic Fondue
• My Old Friend Louis
• And The Winners Are! Da! Da!
• An Apple Tablet
• Nothin’ But Blue Grammar
• The Big English Present
• Raw Sausages
• That Mystery – Cricket?
• When Is News, News?
• Twitter Confessions
• I Got It Out
• Those Nasty Red Lines
• Writer’s Nightmare
• Fly. Be Free!
• The Power Of The Pen
• The Coolest Verb
• Johnny
• Rough Uncouth Australian Bastard
• Don’t Feed With The Fish
• The Ultimate Idiots of All Time

So, I think that Derek Haines has a site that is certainly worthy of the NBOTW.  I encourage all of you to skedaddle on over The Word Vandal and have a look-see.  When you’re done there, go over to his main site and get muy entertained.

Cheers, Derek.  Thanks for puttin’ it all out there.

For this 200th post (yippee!!) here at Tumblemoose I am proud as can be to be highlighting this particular new blog of the week.  I discovered her a few weeks ago and since, I’ve just been waiting for the right time to spring her on you.  Sometimes it’s hard to find these blogs and sometimes they are right under your nose.  This one was right under my Twitter nose.

If you’re like me, you follow a lot of folks on Twitter.  You see them in your timeline and you rarely (if ever) interact.  Then one day you see a tweet from them and think, “Wow, that’s a beauty.  I better check them out a bit.”  Such was the case when I saw a tweet from @jdistraction and headed over to her site.  What a cornucopia of humor and sage.

This is from her “More About Me” page:

Often to avoid writing. Here’s a list of the other stuff I do – a list that doesn’t begin to get at the terrible neurotic ambivalence I feel toward my writing, the love-hate-euphoria-depression-delusional-paranoid-grandeur of it all.

1. I do laundry.
2. I grow tomatoes.
3. I check email. A lot. And tweet. And Facebook. My distraction knows no bounds.
4. I mess with my dog’s face so she looks like a pit bull or a hound dog. She is neither.
5. I make lists. For everything.
6. I edit things, sometimes for money and sometimes because I can’t stop myself.
7. I listen to political pundits. Compulsively.
8. I clean the refrigerator (the sure sign of a bad writing day).
9. I brush my teeth. I have great teeth.
10. I walk my dog (to make up for messing with her face).
11. I Google EVERYTHING. If I can wonder it, I can Google it. That simple.
12. I hike, bike, boat, wake board, workout, do yoga.
13. I read. I often fall a little in love with the authors of the books I read.
14. I daydream. (Michael Chabon is a favorite dream subject.)
15. I go on larks and do inadvisable things. Like start a blog…

I mean seriously.  I fell a little in love that day.  What a hoot!

Recent post titles include:

My Warning Label

All Over But The Shouting

Twitter and Me… a romance

Okay, if the titles aren’t enough to grab ya, how about the categories?

posts my mom will like

j’epiphanies

stuff that makes me smile

Besides these wonderful things, there are images to caption, lists to share and some overall good-hearted goofiness.

I’d like to introduce the New Blog of The Week:

Zebra Sounds by Judy Clement Wall

Let’s all head over and sound off at her place!

Congrats, J-Dawg!

I knew when I received the Twitter message that this guy was going to be worth a follow.  Since I’m always on the hunt for a New Blog Of The Week I clicked on Gordie’s profile link to his blog.  Woot!  Too much fun.  I mean, anyone who starts his “About” statement with the words, “Hello, Gorgeous!” has got my vote (and my attention).

So I scroll down and the very first post I see is:

10 Things You Can Learn From Hitler About Success.

Holy crap.  How could you NOT click on a title like that?  And, the post is great.  Excellent stuff.

So I looked around a bit more and discovered that,

“The name’s Gordie Rogers. I’m an idealistic pragmatist, who teaches you how to design your life for success and happiness. Lifestyle design is about being able to design your life so you can do what you want when you want.”

Oh my gosh.  His posts are just great reading.  A wonderful writing style and the topics really make you want to grab your life, give it a good shake and scream, “Wake UP!!!”

The site itself?  Simplistic beauty.  Nary an ad in site, highly readable font and just the right amount of images.

In short: I love it.  I really do love everything about it.

I couldn’t be happier to introduce:

Lifestyle Design 4U

Go on over and see what Gordie is up to.  You’re going to like it.

During my travels for a New Blog of the Week, I come across a huge variety of blogs.  Some end up being profile pages embedded in some domain, others are straight blogs with their own domains and some are of the Blogspot variety.  When I’m looking for one to showcase, it’s not so much about the underlying web address.  It’s much more about style, design, content and my perceived value to the readership.  I do lean toward writing websites but followers of this series know that other types of sites make the grade as well.  I chose the NBOTW this time because I just felt good when I got there.

I didn’t see an archive per se so I couldn’t say for certain that this is a “new” site, but it was new to me so, what the hey.

There’s a lot to like about this site.  The layout is simple and easy on the eyes.  The posts are all excerpted on the left hand side and the images that are part of each post are consistent and kinda cool.  Since content is king, it’s important to note that there are lots of real world dilemmas tackled within the pages here.

Check out these post titles:

Slave of the mind

Senseless arbitrariness

Self mastery: the feared path

Finding myself beyond my identity

Here is an excerpt from a recent post.  Most all of the posts here contain this kind of wisdom:

Has listening become inappropriate anymore? I hope not. Still, everywhere I look I see exchange of deafness. Husband goes deaf in the form of stonewalling while wives go deaf with incessant complaints. Parents are unable to hear their child because their ears are muffled with authority. Leaders tend to not hear the bigger issues because their pride is drumming noisily on their thoughts. In every exchange I encounter, seldom do I see a person who truly listens. Most are eager to launch their say on issues without even listening to the thoughts of the other party. This foolish attitude scratches the harmony of relationship which we should extend to our self and to our kind.

I like what Walter has to say, and how he says it.  Go extend your mind by visiting the New Blog of the Week:

Lionslinger

Congrats, Walter.  Enjoy your reign!

This New Blog of the Week is long overdue for a little recognition.  I had it in my mind to showcase this a month or so ago but I kinda thought I was hitting too may writing blogs.  It’s now time to let this one shine.

Every once in a while you run across a blog whose comments section is almost more fun to read than the posts!  This is probably the truest example that I have found of that theory.  This blogger has such a loyal following and those folks leave the greatest comments, due I think in no small part to how the blog owner responds and engages his audience.

This blog is not strictly writing.  In fact there is a lot of great life stuff here.  Check out these titles of late:

When Quitting is the Only Sane Option Left

You’re the World’s Coolest Blogger If Only…

Surefire – But Often Ignored – Trick to Superb Writing

The Art of Criticizing a Blogging Buddy

And here’s an excerpt from his latest post:

Twitter lists are meant to be exclusionary

Well, Mr. Brogan, with all due respect that argument is hogwash.

That’s why they’re called list in the first place.  If you include nearly everybody, where’s the value in that?

If indeed one’s feeling hinges on the inclusion or non-inclusion to anybody’s  list then that person needs to be on a therapist’s couch and not on Twitter.  Twitter lists are meant for ordinary people like us to pass on our recommendations based on interests, passions, friendships, and other shared values no matter how banal or weird they maybe.  It’s not meant to stroke someone’s needy, fragile ego.

His style is a hoot.  He pulls no punches, yet he is gentle and responsive.

I love reading his blog and following him on Twitter because I never really know exactly what I’m going to get.

I’d like to introduce you to one of my favorite blogs:

Writing to Exhale

The blog owner is Jan Geronimo and he is just stinkin’ awesome.  Go over to Exhale and love up some of his posts, will ya?