My favorite internet establishments these days:

www.slate.com
I particularly love the Culture Gabfest. I mean, I pretty much just wait for Wednesday afternoons so I can download the podcast and get a little intelligent conversation. Even though I don’t get to talk. Its good practice for my listening skills. As a point of fact, I downloaded the iPhone app, so I don’t have to download anything anymore.

www.thisamericanlife.org
If you don’t listen to this podcast, you must be living under a rock. I took about 50 episodes with me to Nepal to help me get through the worst days. Another great free iPhone app.

www.dooce.com
I love Heather Armstrong. It is true that she writes a lot about her kids, something I can’t relate to very well. But I love her snarky self-confidence and I like the way she writes.

www.homesicktexan.com
Even when I am not looking for a recipe that closely matches my mother’s, or my grandmother’s, Lisa Fain is still a Texas girl-turned-New Yorker who writes about food and life. No wonder why I like her so much.

www.susanpiver.com
The Open Heart Project is Piver’s latest amazing outreach to seekers who do not have Dharma friends nearby. To the Buddhists in Alabama and Omaha, this is for you.

www.mcsweeneys.net
In some ways, this speaks for itself; in other ways, not. McSweeney’s is a tribute to the contemporary art of writing, in all its glorious post- and post-post-modern forms. I go here for inspiration, giggles, creative direction, and just to feel like the aging, post-Brooklyn hipster I am.

www.aldaily.com
Arts and Letters Daily is a news and web-lit aggregator published by the Chronicle of Higher Education (which I also haunt from time to time). Seems to always have news I am interested in, and it makes me feel smart.