Fly Favorites: May 2009

This month, I've run across several interesting Internet items that I thought I'd share with you, my dear readers, starting with:

• My most recent, original, brand spankin' new essay, "Of Sacrifice and Uncertainty," over at Travellious.

• The newest tome from The Art of Non-conformity's Chris Guillebeau (inspiration personified), The Unconventional Guide to Art and Money, available in affordable "Starving Artist" and deluxe "Picasso" editions.

Photo uploaded by CitySkip

• A bittersweet homage to New York (Fuckin') City's bad ol' days of the 70s at Vanity Fair.

• The world's crappiest flights, hotels, meals, and toilets razzed by noted travel personalities over at the Titanic Awards.

• Newsweek's poignant, stunning photo essay on that enigmatic, rising Middle Eastern power formerly known as Persia, titled "Emerging Iran: Poised Between Tradition and Modernity."

Photo by fadogirl

• The English meanings of place names like Malibu, Chicago, and Lake Tahoe (plus fun-to-say places like Chattanooga, Okeechobee, Tuscaloosa, and Idaho-Udaho-which-one-is-a-state?) with National Geographic's interactive map, Native Names. Bet you can't find which names mean "person of dirty water," "let's have intercourse," or "falling hair."
  

• An Associated Press reporter's wacky seven-day swine flu stop-over, "Week's Quarantine in China," at MSNBC.

• The Los Angeles Times on South Korea's somewhat misguided attempt at rebranding its international image.

• Aerial views of the concrete swirls of Spaghetti Junctions, Mix Masters, Mixing Bowls, and Hillside Stranglers from around the world, featured at wejetset.

Photo by Marcelo Gregorin Coelho

• America's Next Top Model coverage of fashion in Brazil's biggest burg, favela-style, and the funky new English-language print and virtual travel guide to my favoritest city on Urf, Total São Paulo, which debuts with hot-spot reviews and a salacious call girl interview (kudos to TSP for 'going there' with what most people, myself included, love about Brazil...the sex!).

• Fodor's breakdown of the ins-and-outs and fine print of European budget airlines.

• Brandie at Out and About Africa's design-conscious travelogue of a boat trip down the Nile.

• Bogotá's Sunday-morning ritual of bike-riding, roller-blading, and general promenading through high-altitude streets in Streetfilms' ten-minute short, Bogotá Ciclovia. This makes me miss living in the Colombian capital.

• World Hum's humorous inner-workings of American state travel booths at this year's "Visit America Pageant" in Miami Beach. Also, celebrating their eighth anniversary, World Hum rounds up their "Eight Great Stories on the Travel Writing Life" that might make you want to drop everything and go Hemmingway.

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