Writing for Metblogs has the potential to be the most rewarding experience in your entire life. It’ll make you rich, famous, good looking, will help you lose weight, make your clothes fit better, and get you a super good deal on a new car. It will make you the most well known person on the entire planet. Yes, each and every one of you. Really.

OK maybe not. Actually those are all lies, but it’s fun at least. The truth is Metblogs is the largest network of locally focused blogs on the web, covering almost 60 cities around the world and we’re looking to add a few new bloggers/writters/authors to this fine site. If you wanna know more about us check out this wikipedia entry but it’s kinda boring so I won’t waste time repeating it all here again. If you wanna write for us, here’s the scoop:

• All author positions are volunteer. That means you don’t get paid.
• You must live in (or very near) the city you plan to write about.
• Anything you post must relate to the city somehow. That means you shouldn’t post a movie review, but talking about going to see a movie at a local theater is fine.
• There’s no requirement for how much you can or should write, but we ask that if we set you up as an author you make about 3 posts a week.
• You can post about things you love, you can post about things you hate. It’s entirely up to you

Additionally, because of our global network, there’s plenty of options for things you write to be read by people all over the world. Interested? Want more details? Post a comment and we’ll be in touch!

As many of you have heard by now , a cop-shooter is on the loose, after gunning down four officers ,killing one , in Cutler Ridge,early this afternoon. He was last spotted in Central Broward heading north, accompanied by a woman and two children. Read The Herald for continual updates.

On Monday of this week, 108 low-wage janitors, groundskeepers, and maintenance workers at Nova Southeastern University were thrown out of their jobs. This turn of events comes after the workers fought a year-long campaign for a decent paycheck, affordable health insurance, and the democratic right to form a union.

The some 350 workers at Nova have been living in fear that they would lose their jobs for speaking up in search of respect in the workplace since they voted and won a union last October. It was clear from that very day that Nova had no intention of improving the lives of those cleaning and maintaining its campuses, and instead announced they would cancel their decade long contract with UNICCO Services Company. Nova instead brought in multiple companies in a “divide and conquer” strategy to defeat the workers’ spirit.
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According to Weird News, Joey “Jaws” Chestnut gobbled 21 pretzels in 10 minutes to win the 2007 Pretzel Twister World Pretzel-Eating Championship in Miami,” this past Sunday What the article fails to mention, but you can find out by checking out the IFOCE website (International Federation of Competitive Eating) is that homeboy didn’t just win, he broke the dang world record of pretzel consummation. In our very own city! Now let me ask you honestly, with this kind of entertainment available, do you really care how strong the mayor is?

I do wish I had known about the event ahead of time, I feel like I would have given Joey a run for his money, or at the very least had the privilege of being part of history in the making. I’d love to hear from anyone who actually went.

Just in case you were wondering what the future holds for us this year in Florida, the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta is here to tell youthat the slowdown in the housing market is going to create “headwinds” and “mixed prospects”, notably via a “reality check” in the housing market. For those of us who are renters, I guess this is good news. Maybe I’ll finally be able to buy Paulina Rubio’s house on Star Island for $5.00 just like I’ve been telling Eira all along.

Speaking of the spiralling cost of Miami real estate, has anyone else out there been following the Take Back the Land campaign? On a city-owned lot at the corner of Northwest 62nd Street and 17th Avenue, activists and homeless people have come together in a protest/community dubbed Umoja Village. The brainchild of activist Max Rameau, Umoja Village, according to a recent op-ed piece in the Miami Herald, consists of “32 makeshift homes — wooden pallets covered with painted cardboard — filled to capacity with 40 residents, including a family with an eight-week-old baby. There’s even a waiting list.”

This begs the questions: How bad off do you have to be to put yourself on a waiting list to live in a shanty town? And what kind of operation is Miami running where residents would prefer to live on a bunch of pallets and beat up couches rather than anything that the city can provide?

Part of the point of Umoja is to draw attention to the failure of Miami’s city government to provide affordable housing. The affordable housing crisis (highlighted in the Herald’s House of Lies series last summer) has been abetted by the city’s mismanagement of funds and destruction of 500 units of public housing between 1998 and 2000. These public housing units have yet to be replaced, even as luxury developments have boomed throughout Miami-Dade. Take Back The Land hopes to make this point all the more effectively in the media spotlight that will come with Miami’s hosting of the Superbowl from Jan. 29 to Feb. 3rd.

Just this week, Take Back the Land won a major political victory when the City Commission voted to table an ordinance that would have given Miami Police the right to evict homeless people from city owned vacant land.

It’s disturbing, effective and I gotta say I’m not quite sure what to make of it all, but I’m fascinated and wondering what anyone else thinks.