Link: www.5ives.com

Back in the early days of the 'net (and by "early" I mean the initial Netscape IPO era, ca. 1995-ish, when we non-tech-types started surfing and putting up our own personal homepages, not "early" as in Xerox PARC and Arpanet and all that), a mandatory component of every non-commercial website was the obligatory links page, where amateurs like, well, me, would include a list of links to pages far more interesting than our own, so random folks who happened to stumble across our home page could get back on track with something worthwhile. My links page came down some time ago (probably around the time that the bubble burst, free server space started drying up, and the number of dead links seemed to double every day). Of course, it seems that most bloggers these days follow this rule as well, with a list full of like-minded bloggers in a separate column off to the side. Still, I do miss the shout-outs to silly pages of note... and the chance to point out fun little time-sinks that can suck up your entire day. Which is why I'm taking a second to mention my current favorite...

...The 5ives. Some blogger named Merlin who intermittently posts wholly random "Top 5 lists," usually focusing on snippets of his own life, snide observation of the people around him, and pop culture artifacts. As this Merlin fellow is a fellow San Francisco resident, and appears to have come of age roughly contemporaneously with yours truly (i.e. college circa mid-80s) and shares some of my musical taste and cultural touchstones, I find many of his observations particularly pointed. I could note a few examples here:

Five bad signs about the band onstage (i.e. "large gong behind drummer," "anyone wearing own band's t-shirt")
Five excellent TV girlfriends (including Farrah Fawcett-Majors, Jill Whelan, Martha Quinn)
Five things the yuppie on the Harley doesn't want you to know (i.e. "If it weren't for his wife's IPO, he'd still be kickin' it in the Caravan"
Five things I suspect I'm not supposed to think about when watching those bands with messy hair who sound like Joy Division (i.e. "That bass player has nice skin for someone who's so unhappy," "Would it kill them to get a tambourine?"

But that would take the fun out of it. Check it out yourself, but be prepared to blow an hour.