Tell me, sister morphine, how long have I been lying here?

After a hiatus that has gone on far too long, the Professor is back. I’ve missed you, my little askers and receivers, but some unforeseen personal relocation trauma kept me all tangled up. Hopefully I’m back for the long haul now, so let’s get on to business.

When I read the name of my assigned site for the week, Peanut Butter & Pickles, I cringed in anticipation of yet another mommy blog. So, it was a pleasant surprise to click over and find that I had a whole different sort of animal in my sights. That sense of relief didn’t last long, I’m afraid to report.

The author of Peanut Butter & Pickles uses the pseudonym Marvin the Martian. This conceit of author as alien observer is a bit dopey and doesn’t really make Peanut Butter & Pickles stand apart from the legion of personal blogs out there. It doesn’t add anything to the blog and it occasionally takes away from it. Everyone needs a good pen name and if Marvin the Martian does it for you, that’s fine, but when you go all sci-fi for a couple of sentences in the middle of a post about spurious law suits it just sort of shoots your credibility to shit. There's a fair bit of wing nut brand politics and a sense of morality that makes my skin crawl a bit - who knew Martians were such reactionaries.

Template is standard Blah-ger, in fact I’m pretty sure it’s the default. Why so many people see this template, with it’s shades of dull green and say to themselves “This is what I want to represent my personality to the whole interwebs” is just beyond me. Marvin doesn't junk it up too much with tat, so it's nice and clean if a little bland.

The writing. Marvin says that he writes for a living but that it’s pretty boring writing. That sounds about right. The writing on Peanut Butter & Pickles is kind of like recreational morphine use – sedative, numbing and not as much fun as you thought it would be. Marvin seems to have a strange and probably unhealthy attraction to death, which comes off as less cutting edge than creepy. There's a fair bit of wing nut brand politics and a sense of morality that makes my skin crawl a bit - who knew Martians were such reactionaries.

Now, Peanut Butter & Pickles is not all bad. I like the eclecticism of the site; Marvin covers music, politics and family minutiae without coming off as all scatterfucked. I don’t like his politics and find his music taste erratic, but that’s not my business here. It comes off as a healthy mix. He also posts some quite nice images, but they’re far too small. I don’t know if it’s a Blogger size limit thang or you just doesn’t know what you’re doing. But big them up and edit what you’re posting and Peanut Butter & Pickles will pop despite the shit template.

But, it’s the writing that makes the blog and the writing here falls well short. The longer I read PB&P the more numb and vaguely irritated. Reading Peanut Butter & Pickles is a little like coming down - the very essence of “Meh”.