Earlier this month, the DIA blog quietly turned two, making this this our third Blog Day. I find I'm not able to write this with quite the gusto of years past, and indeed I'm in an overall bit of a blogging -- well, let's say "fallow" rather than "lull", shall we? Look, the Internet doesn't exactly need another post bemoaning overall powerlessness in the face of some truly awful stuff, so I won't write that post.* But without wallowing in the awful particulars, it's kind of a drag to muster true enthusiasm for the art of building Facebook groups for interchangeable office-seekers in the current climate. No? Well, I never claimed to have the strongest stomach. In such times, though, everyone needs a few gin joints full of amity and sorrows, still hanging out on some fringe of suddenly-choice real estate where the margins would be better if they just sold to Hooters like the joint across the way. Here's the company with whom I'm drowning my troubles these days:

• Arthur Silber's the designated driver, because he's liable to drive you to drink.
• Dennis Perrin knows from funny and from deadly serious.
• UFO Breakfast Recipients has a whole crowd of weird friends you're always happy to see knock down the door and jeer the respectable types. (This is the only blog whose comments feed I subscribe to ... and it's nothing to do with the fact that Scruggs did this for me.
• If it's all too much of a bummer, indulge no more than a healthy measure of escapism with Chicago-based design and advertising shop Coudal Partners, whose freaky, random "Blended Feed" of miscellaneous cyber-nuggets (something between next-gen advertising and dot-com era workplace decadence) not infrequently unearths gems of unexpected luster in its link farm.
• Okay. Enough daydreaming. Who is IOZ? is here to interrupt your dogmatic slumbers.

Man, that's a dark mood to take into the phony-holiday weekend. Don't pay no mind to that crazy guy in the corner. He's just had a long summer. Really, everything's going to be super. We're problem-solvers here in the U.S. of A., and we can solve 'em by the mashup or solve 'em by the megaton. Either way, everything's sure to turn out well in the end. *Reserving the right to write it later, naturally.