Every time I write to my grandmother, she compliments me on my vocabulary.  She then asks me if I read a lot, since the best way to enhance your vocabulary is to read.  I always tell her that I don’t find much time to read what with school and work hoarding all my time, but it recently occurred to me that just because the words I read are projected on a computer screen instead of printed on a piece of paper doesn’t mean I’m not reading them.  As it turns out, I read quite a bit.

I subscribe to numerous RSS feeds in a broad range of topics.  I prefer to use Google Reader as my RSS reader of choice.

Here you will find The Things That I Read, with convenient groupings, links, RSS links, and descriptions, alphabetized by category and title for your enjoyment.  Hooray!

Comedy

• Amir on AIM (RSS) – a fictitious site based on the humor of Jake and Amir (see below)
• Best of Craigslist (RSS) – The best humorous postings from craigslist.com.  Has been updated more frequently than usual lately.
• College Humor (RSS) – CollegeHumor.com.  Sometimes crass, sometimes subversive, always funny.
• Jake and Amir (RSS) – Amir Blumenfeld and Jake Hurwitz (both editors for collegehumor.com) created these characters with a very distinctive comedy style.  Definitely one of the funnier comedy duos of our age (Tina Fey and Amy Poehler are number 1, in case you were curious).
• Jakke and Amir.  Title goes here, brotha.  Hello? (RSS) – Similar to Amir on AIM, this is a site based on the characters from Jake and Amir.
• MY ROOMMATE IS SUCH A DICK! (RSS) – Stories from roommates describing the people they live with and the shenanigans they get into.  Sadly, this hasn’t been updated in some time, but I keep it in the reader in case it ever gets new life.
• Stuff White People Like (RSS) – Title is pretty transparent.  There’s a book published by the operator of this site.
• Where is Bob? (RSS) – Not about me, sorry to say.  This is a blog run by a University IT department in which they record the antics of Bob, their lazy supervisor.
• White Whine (RSS) – Run by Streeter Seidell (see Personal Blogs, below).  Very similar to (and predating) Stuff White People Like.

Entertainment

• /Film (RSS) – Movie news and reviews
• Ain’t It Cool News (RSS) – Movie news and reviews
• DestroyTheCyb.org (RSS) – Comic book reviews

Personal Blogs

• Amir Blumenfeld (RSS) – College Humor editor and half of the Jake and Amir comedy duo (see above)
• Ann Ethel (RSS) – My very dear friend, Annie.
• cabel.name (RSS) – Potentially a tech blog, but often of a more personal nature.  Cabel is an employee of Panic, the software company responsible for Transmit, Coda, and CandyBar (among others).  Cabel is also the archnemesis of Wil Shipley (see below).
• Erich Vargaz (RSS) – A roommate of mine.
• Felicia Day (RSS) – If Geekdom had a queen, it would be Felicia Day.  Perhaps best known for her role in The Guild (which she created and wrote), she has also been seen in Doctor Horrible’s Sing-Along-Blog, the season premier of House, and the last season of Buffy the Vampire Slayer.
• John Hodgman (RSS) – Perhaps best known for his role as PC in the “I’m a Mac” ads, John Hodgman is a brilliant humorist with a new book out.
• Jake Hurwitz (RSS) – An editor for College Humor and the OTHER half of Jake and Amir.
• Jonathan Coulton (RSS) – Computer programmer turned professional musician.  Best known for his songs “Code Monkey” and “Still Alive” – the latter of which was featured in the closing credits to Game-of-the-Year Portal and which can be seen performed LIVE by JoCo and Her Majesty Felicia Day here.
• Kevin Smith (RSS) – One of my favorite film directors.  Kevin Smith is the mastermind behind Clerks, Mallrats, Chasing Amy, Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back, Jersey Girl, Clerks 2, and the upcoming Zach and Miri Make a Porno.
• Mike Matas (RSS) – Former developer at Delicious Monster who was then hired by Apple and stopped posting .
• Noël Elizabeth Schellpfeffer (RSS) – The most talented poet I have ever met.  The words she writes make me want to cry.  (Note: this is a facebook note feed and you might need a facebook account to view it)
• Paul Scheer (RSS) – Most know him for his work on Human Giant, but I know him as Donny on 30 Rock.
• PostSecret (RSS) – People anonymously mail in their secrets, the best of which are posted on the site.
• Randall Munroe (RSS) – The creator of XKCD.
• Streeter Seidell (RSS) – Editor at College Humor and creator of White Whine (see above).
• Violent Acres (RSS) – General writings about life.  Kind of hard to characterize, now that I think about it.
• Wil Wheaton (RSS) – You may know him as Wesley Crusher, but he has since gone on to become a brilliant writer and incredible blogger.

Tech

• Engineering @ Facebook (RSS) – A blog maintained by some of the engineers at Facebook, in which they discuss some of the more interesting engineering aspects involved with working on such a massive project.
• Geeks Are Sexy (RSS) – General geek news.
• lbrandy (RSS) – I think I got here from Reddit once.  He’s a software developer from Pittsburgh.
• stevenf (RSS) – Panic developer who writes about programming.
• Steve Yegge (RSS) – A Google employee
• The Daily WTF (RSS) – That’s, “Worse Than Failure”.  Coding humor.
• Hank Williams (RSS) – Posts about computer science.
• Wil Shipley (RSS) – “Chief Executive Monster” at Delicious Monster.  Also, my #1 professional role model.

Video Games

• Zero Punctuation (RSS) – He talks about video games really fast and in a funny accent.
• ChannelFlip Games (RSS) – rarely updated video reviews of video games.

Webcomics

• Cyanide and Happiness (RSS)
• Penny Arcade (RSS)
• xkcd (RSS)