Friday, February 01, 2008

Well, Sinead O'Rebellion. Shock me, shock me, shock me with your deviant behavior.

Let me be clear. Crazy Man Jones isn't quite as deviant as I'd like it to be. The posts have a meandery tendency that could/should be cleaned and tightened up. There is no cockage. WTF? I haven't seen cock in so long (in a blog or otherwise) that I may just up and explode one of these Fridays.

So, the skirts ain't short enough, the momma ain't pierced enough, the pictures ain't kinky enough. And, to make it worse, it is kind of a mama blog. Oh, lordy. And, on a friday too, when we should all be doing shots of the quila out of Calamity's belly button.

But...having said that, it isn't bad. The design, by cuppycake designs, is clean, simple, and cute. It is a three column-blog, but unlike three column blogs from HAYULL, the main column is wide enough, and the side columns are uncluttered enough, that it is easy to navigate and it doesn't put me into a head-desk ADD frenzy.

I am not sure I would read this blog every day. The posts are cute, but I tend to like more of a train wreck, and teh crazy here isn't even close to teh crazy at my house. It's really a kind of sanitized cute that tries to pretend it is crazy. And, that's really the word for this blog: Cute.

Crazy Man Jones (her son) is cute. Her husband is cute. Shar, the blogstress, is cute. Her daughter is cute. Her posts are cute. She's skating on the edge of very good here, but she misses the mark and lands in the cute zone just about every single time.

And, I guess that's my only real criticism. Cute is good, don't get me wrong. Cute is fine. But, when it's all said and done, is cute enough?

I'm still not sure.

I'm going to trot out, just for object lessons, a few of my favorite mom bloggers who skate on the edge of cute but remain just edgy enough that angry bitter sarcastic punk rock moms like me can still read their blogs without throwing up a little in our mouths from cute overload:

Drunken Housewife
Here in Idaho
Hahn at Home

The one thing you need to do Shar, to rock this blog, really really rock it like a hurricane, is to FOCUS. I talk a lot on here about tightening up your writing, but what I mean by that is:

1. A blog post should have a clear beginning and ending.
2. A very good blog post ties both of those together.
3. ONE THING. Just one thing is enough. Really. I promise.

For instance. If you read Drunken Housewife, or Christy from Here in Idaho, or Lori from Hahn at home, each post is about ONE SPECIFIC THING. One adorably cute sentence a child said. One specific topic.

Let's break it down even further. Just because I'm lazy and just read it earlier this morning, take a look at Housewife's current top post. See how tight it is? There isn't a single wasted word in that post. It doesn't meander around. It goes from point a to point b, cleanly. You know clearly what you are reading about and yet: it's snarky and so funny I spewed coffee on my keyboard.

You can do this, Shar. You have "the stuff." You just aren't quite there...YET.

You can be cute. But, as we all learned in high school, cute isn't enough. Don't be the "cute" girl. You're old enough to transition to something entirely different. Be the interesting girl. Be a bit more intense. Be...(muahahahahah) a little subversive. Do it. It's fun over here on the dark side.

If you're being reviewed, I'm assuming it is to add readership and/or to learn to take it to the next level, kaizen, bring it on. You're almost there.

As it stands, I give ya:

And, no spankings. It doesn't suck, but it doesn't rock my world, either. And, now I'm off to make out with a hot guy and listen to sugar high. ciao, babies.

5 comments:

  1. Cute but doesn't suck is exactly what kept me from getting dates in high school.

    I do meander, as I don't know what I'm going to write most days.

    I'm going to take the constructive criticism and run with it.

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  2. So, to me, Shar, what you are missing is a middle step: EDIT.

    Look at what you wrote, and figure out what the one best thing about that post is, and then trim, trim, trim it down to be about that one thing.

    If you do that, you will indeed rock my world.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Hey, if you want to borrow some cock, I'm, like, over-burdened up here...it's like stuffing a fire-hose into a ziploc-bag every morning.

    Crazy Man Jones? Colour me crazy, but I fucking LOVE that header.

    Honestly...almost as much as I love ellipses.

    ReplyDelete
  4. Thanks, once more, for the shout out. And ellipses are the bomb...yo...

    ReplyDelete
  5. The girly-girl in me loves the design. Way cute.

    ReplyDelete

Grow a pair.