Turns out that Dare isn't the only 'softie writing a .NET RSS browser... Joe Beda (no blog to speak of, yet!) also wrote one and forwarded me the code, etc... hopefully he'll let me post it. As a side note - Joe wins for the best product name "Aggregator of Syndicated Sites" or "ASS" for short.
Dare, Joe, can't we all work together on this? :)