Anger Burger

Crohn’s disease

Sadly, there are close to zero independent, conversational websites about Crohn’s disease.  Most sites either openly or clandestinely attempt to sell a pharmaceutical product or diet method to Crohn’s sufferers.  This list is an attempt to compile the genuinely useful.

• Tom Humberstone’s  Everything You Never Wanted to Know About Crohns Disease, a comic by a talented gentleman with Crohn’s.

• The Crohn’s and Colitis Foundation of America’s  About Crohn’s Disease, perhaps unsurprisingly the best topical introduction to Crohn’s.  It is directed towards the newly diagnosed Crohn’s sufferer, which lends a nice concerned, frank feel to it.

• The American Academy of Family Physicians’  Management of Crohn’s Disease - A Practical Approach, an in-depth but readable breakdown of how the severity of Crohn’s is determined as well as drug therapies.  I believe the article is aimed at doctors who have never heard of Crohn’s, but it’s useful for curious patients as well.

• The New York Times’  Patient Voices: Crohn’s Disease, an audio and photographic introduction to seven people living with Crohn’s disease.  A nice range of the very sick to the well-managed.

• Sunday’s Crohn’s-a-Thon, my own tedious thorough overview of the disease.

Food

Food blogs are born and die faster than exotic particles in European accelerators, so my food links are limited to those I actually read on a daily basis.

• Georgia On My Thighs, wherein classically trained cook and destined-to-be-famous foodwriter Michele Humes attempts to wade her way through a Paula Deen cookbook, to the entertainment of everyone.

• Fine Furious Life, what Ms. Humes did before Paula Deen’s lurid, glistening piles of mayonnaise distracted her.

• Michele Humes, the lady of the above dead blogs who migrates faster than the West Nile Virus.

• Blue Lotus, or what happens when a Canadian woman moves to Japan and discovers they don’t make jeans to fit Caucasians.  Not always about food, but when it is my tummy starts to rumble.

• Candy Blog, the website that has sent me on fervent searches for sugar I never would have heard of if it weren’t for Cybele’s thoughful, almost clinical reviews of everything from super-luxe truffles to cheap-ass Easter candy.

• gas•tron•o•my, who lured me in as they shared the experience of being Americans living in Vietnam, and now share the experience of being Americans living in Pasadena.

• Smitten Kitchen, yes, we all know about Smitten Kitchen, but I just get so excited when she appears in my reader.

• bread & honey, furthering my suspicion that everyone in Portland is cute, talented and eating a hell of a lot better than I am.

• Dave’s Cupboard, a friendly-sounding greybeard who expertly mixes up junkfood reviews, personal observations, recipes and general bloggery.

• Tamarind and Thyme, because you need a trustworthy friend in London who can tell you exactly where to eat.

• Friday Gourmet, who needs to slow down with the good recipes because I’m having trouble catching up.

• Tasty Island, who repeatedly confuses my ethnic self-identification by making me think I might actually be a Japanese-Hawaiian and not a Scottish-Melungeon?

• Goldentooth, Epic Quest Eating!  Why didn’t I think of this?!

• Cooking for Assholes, well, I mean, look at the title.

• Thursday Night Smackdown, who I want on my team when the Food Network decides to film my idea for Food Blogger Thunderdome.

• The Food, because anyone that orders sides of pickles is going to have something interesting to tell you.

• Sugar Vamps, who make me wish I had an Anger Burger co-conspirator.

• Food Junk, for all those junk food review sites that are rambling and immature, it’s nice to wash your brain out with one that is succinct and immature.

Greatness

People and websites of unique excellence.  In other words: websites I’d like to share a beer with if beer didn’t turn my abdomen into the physiological equivalent of the Diet Coke and Mentos trick.

• GalacticMu, the sister website to this one, specializing in science fiction fandom.

• The 700 Hoboes Project, the astounding collection of art inspired by John Hodgman’s book The Areas of My Expertise.

• No Moods, Ads or Cutesy Fucking Icons, the personal blog of writer Peter Watts; part man, part squid, all delightful.

• Dispatches from the Island, a charming and addictive blog by Lost star Jorge Garcia.

• Further Dispatches, in the absence of Lost, Garcia continues his blog, though at a disappointingly slower clip.

• Door Sixteen, the exception to my aversion to design and home improvement blogs – this one almost makes me want to tile something.

• Catastrophysicist, while full of top-notch storytelling, had me at a post titled “I Ate a Goose Egg, Yo!” that includes no further text.

• Terrible/Perfect, wherein some smarties embark on a gene-fusing experiment not once, but twice!

• Junko Yamamoto, for when your jaws are tired of chewing and your eyes are in need of some gazing.

• Simultaneously in First and Last Place, an old friend of mine who occasionally travels but when he does, he brings it.

• Project Waldo, the place where artists go to realize that they fail and Nathaniel Simpson wins.

• Sarah Sphar (formerly known as “Midwest Girl”), who will both make you feel better about and take your ass to school on everything from America’s Next Top Model to fine tipples.

• Advanced Style, because we might be fashion-bereft now, but there’s hope for us yet.

• Little Big, you know that sinking feeling you get when a long-admired, intelligent, creative, hilarious friend of yours starts a blog that you suspect is going to be way more popular than your own?

• Cheap Shit Condos, in which what you’re thinking about modern architecture gets said out loud.

• Needled, a.k.a. how to be a gracious human being — also: knitting!

• The Leesa Leva Blog, because yes, she’s my best friend, but for very good reasons.

• Might as Rella, because I often wonder what I would have been like if I’d stuck with tattooing, I head over to Nova’s blog and pretend she’s me.

• Quaint as Fuck, for making me blow iced tea out my nose.