Unfocused Guy Seeks Shiny New Distractions

I went to the final night of my novelists’ support group coffee klatsch last night — no more meetings until September.  More than half the group was absent, each with a different personal reason, but it’s hard to have these kinds of meetings once June rolls around.

One of the things we talked about is how the web forum for the organization that hosts us never took off.  I compared them to the Absolute Write forums, and pointed out that at the most, there would be maybe a couple of hundred people who would even consider using the studio’s forum, versus the entire world of amateur and professional writers who might be interested in AW.  No one else in the room had ever heard of Absolute Write, an experience I’ve had when I’ve brought up other web distractions resources (Twitter events like #queryfail, etc.), leading me to believe that I may spend too much time screwing around on the internet.

That said, I need more intellectually justifiable distractions (yes, I’m already aware of collegehumor.com, thanks) like I need a hole in the head, because sometimes I want to screw around on the internet and there’s nothing on.  I get to the point where no one’s active on FB or Twitter (thank God for the Losers Of Friday Night On Their Computers and why can’t we have Losers of Tuesday Night also?) and if I watch one more Onion News Network video I’ll scream.  I know that’s when I should jump over to Write or Die, but that’s not always going to happen.

So where do you go on the net when you’re looking for something not totally mindless?