Some of you may have noticed that I’ve rearranged my blogroll, gotten rid of some old stuff and added some new stuff. Here’s a couple of the new things:

1. Balsbaugh7 and Ithilien Exile, are two that I’ve found to be quite fascinating. They are both written and managed by Jon Balsbaugh, a former teacher of mine and fellow brother in community. Knowing that he writes both of them, and figuring out what each story represents makes it a delight to realize the different crossovers and make the connections that he sometimes sets up between the two. Through both of these, it really paints a brilliant picture of how Jon sees the world.

2. Good News Film Reviews is a site that I stumbled across not too long ago. It’s run by a guy named Scott Nehring, and while I don’t always agree with what he says theologically, I find it refreshing to find an outwardly Christian guy who seems to appreciate film as much as I do, and doesn’t like the soft, sometimes weak stance that a lot of mainstream Christian society has taken towards decidedly “mainstream” films. For example: “I won’t let my 10 year old see the Star Wars Episode 1 cause that guy in it has devil horns.” Lame.

3. Jeff Gerstmann, Brian Ekberg, Rich Gallup, Ryan Davis. All of these guys work, or at one time worked, at Gamespot.com, a video game news and editorial review site hosted by CNet.com. I could probably write multiple long, tedious posts on what these guys and others at Gamespot have meant to me over the last couple years, but I’m not gonna do that, cause that would be dumb. Suffice it to say that if you get those four guys in a room together, and just have them talk to each other about video games, or music, or food or whatever, it’ll be super funny, kinda weird, and perhaps even informative as well.

In fact, they used to get together every week, along with other Gamespot editors, and put out a video game news podcast called “The Hot Spot”, which I used to listen to religiously. I would explain why I don’t anymore, but I don’t want to devote all the time and space to rehashing old news, so I’ll just let the articles speak for themselves.

4. The Hater. A regular contributor of The Onion A.V. Club, Amelie Gillette’s blog serves as my only window into the weird world of pop culture. Sometimes funny, usually kind of interesting, and incredibly cynical, The Hater appears to be the only outlet covering pop culture who’s coverage doesn’t amount to, “These Hollywood movie stars sure are kooky, but we still love them, (and have to keep paying attention to their every move) don’t we?”

“No, we don’t. They’re all idiots,” says Amelie.