My favorite media trend of 2013 was the rise of Business Insider editor Henry Blodget's own blogging microgenre. Best known for airline reviews, Blodgeting strips away the surly snark that's endemic to the blogging world, and replaces it with a first-person sense of wonderment. I don't plan on flying Lufthansa's business class any time soon, but I'm glad to know Blodget found one thing wrong with it, which is revealed as part of a extremely thorough slideshow review.
My favorite Blodget post of the year typifies the man-blogging-his-condition that we've come to expect. Titled simply "The Other Night During Dinner A Seal Flopped Up On The Beach" and filed under the suitably philosophical "Life" tag, Blodget pens 1000 words on an interaction he had with a seal that mysteriously showed up on the seashore while the former was working from BI's beach office.
"Another thing that happened here recently is that, during a community beach potluck a couple of nights ago, a seal hopped up out of the surf," he writes. "It was a grey seal, Google said."
To me, Blodgeting is a chance to escape the 24 hour news cycle and endless search for timely story pegs and focus on why many of us got in this business in the first place: the ability to write about whatever new thing we happen to stumble across. To pay homage, here are some photos of animals I met in Texas earlier this year while shooting our Long Shot documentary, photos that I've only now unearthed during end-of-year archiving.
I met these zebras when first arriving at Sandstone Mountain Ranch, where we went hunting with Trackingpoint's smart rifle. I was driving our rental car, a Mazda SUV, during these shots.
Sandstone Mountain is a hunting reserve, and is well-stocked with white-tail deer like this one.
There are more exotic quadrupeds too, like this Blackbuck. Blackbucks are protected in their home land of India, and native populations are recovering following serious decline due to habitat loss.
In Texas, where populations have exploded after being introduced, you can hunt Blackbuck if you can afford it. Sandstone Mountain charges $4995 for a "Presidential" Blackbuck hunt.
To keep deer populations healthy and growing on the ranch, they're fed a protein mix. The ranch manager said a recent drought had kept the ranch's deer more dependent on the feed.
We were up early in the morning to try and hunt feral pigs, and this white-tail doe wandered by to say hello. Does aren't fair game.
This is one of the blinds we waited in. Blinds are helpful for hiding while waiting to shoot animals (with a camera, in my case).
Not a bad morning. Texas is pretty cool!
I'm pretty sure this is a juvenile lechwe, which happened to wander by our house. It's tied with the Blackbuck for my favorite four-legged deer-like creature.
Along with game animals, the ranch is home to some exotic pets. This pretty lady is Miss Pearl, a buffalo that was once in the movie business according to her owner.
How's that for a famous face? Miss Pearl was pretty chill.
And here are a pair of dromedary camels. The one in the foreground was shedding at the time, hence the odd lumps.
This guy is special because he's got blue eyes, a rare trait worthy of headlines.
Majestic beast, this one.
Motherboard's Brian Anderson is a camel whisperer.
The camels were a little too friendly for my taste, so I went back to hang out with Miss Pearl. She seemed to be enjoying breakfast.
Oh, and here's a lemur eating some bread! They were in a pen at the time because apparently they can be a bit feisty, but I hear they're fun to hang out with.
Lemur jail would be a pretty cute place to be incarcerated.
Oh, and who's this? Why, it's a young kangaroo.
For some reason I have a lot of pictures of animals eating.
Kangaroos are more stoic than I expected.
I'm think this lady is a fallow deer, but it might be an axis deer. The ranch has both.
Also hanging out in a deer pen was this white doe, which is a rare coloration for fallow deer.
Deer spend a lot of their time staring at things.
After leaving Sandstone Mountain, our Texas animal spotting wasn't quite over. Driving through a mountain pass, we saw some horses.
They seemed a bit suspicious of the humans wandering around the side of a highway.
But whatever, I'm not going to worry about what a horse thinks. What a perfect ending to our Texas trip!