California is a Recipe For a Black Hole was one of my first reads in the land of blogs. The author was one of my original/sole commenters as well, back in the day when people didn’t scramble for Techorati and Google rankings and the only thing anyone was even remotely concerned about was their ecosystem rating in TLB. MoJo is one of the few who has remained true to the original intent of his blog. He writes what he wants. He doesn’t concern himself with what others want to read, or how his first paragraph will affect his search engine rankings. He doesn’t follow people throughout the blogesphere leaving random useless comments hoping to scrounge up a reader or two. He is blogging pure. If I’m not mistaken he may even still be sporting his original template.

Through this blog you will become familiar with a character who loves the Red Sox, follows Rilo Kiley, and would probably be comfortable living his life in Victorian Nova Scotia — obsessed with Avonlea as he is. A romantic and a perfectionist, you will read about relationships which were, or which could have been. You’ll be privy to the author’s thoughts as he wanders through the why’s and what if’s. You see clearly his attitude, his mood, his habits. You will become familiar with his most unattractive personalty traits.

California is a Recipe For a Black Hole contains fiction, stories of life and feelings. You get to know the characters through storytelling, their poetry, and their conversations. There are several characters now, “breasier” and the fairly recently introduced young “dw”, however, MoJo Shivers, aka Patrick, is the driving force behind the blog. There is no pretense here, you get what you get, the author doesn’t pretend to be a nice guy, doesn’t hide his most unattractive traits to make you love him more, but it’s precisely because of this you do.

Grab a cuppa something and check out California is a Recipe for a Black Hole. You’ll be glad you did.

On 9th December 1948, the United Nations General Assembly adopted the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide.

It had taken five years from the time Raphael Lemkin first published his idea of ‘genocide’ for it to become defined as a supreme international crime, in one of the most potent legal and political documents of the post-war international order. Yet sixty years later, genocide has recurred on the international agenda from Cambodia to Bosnia and Rwanda to Darfur, and international political and legal action to ‘prevent and punish’ it remains very limited.

Politics trumping humanitarianism over and over again.

Please join the Save Darfur Coalition’s “Be A Voice For Darfur” postcard campaign http://addyourvoice.org. This campaign seeks to ensure that Darfur is a top priority for President-elect Obama, who has already promised “unstinting resolve” to end the Darfur Genocide. Their aim is for for no less than 1 million postcards to be emailed and snail-mailed to President-elect Obama within his first 100 days in office. With your help, we can draw desperately-needed political attention to the ongoing genocide in Darfur.

You’ll find a blogger tookit here.

When you write about it let us know either in the comments or via the contact form. We are collecting links to those who write about this campaign and add their voice even as they encourage others to do so.We will post the links at the end of the week at Darfur: An Unforgivable Hell on Earth.

For Facebooker’s:

Facebook Causes and Save Darfur just launched their new petition application for the campaign. The new Facebook petition will be a gamechanger for cause-based social media marketing. If you’re already using Facebook Causes, you can access and sign the petition here . (As an incentive, Save Darfur is offering a free t-shirt to anyone who recruits 100 signatures.)

You may right click, view selection source, and copy and paste this whole post in full to your blog if you would like with no linking necessary.

Cross-posted at Wonderland or Not.

Peace