Tuesday, December 02, 2008

Hardly Cringe* Worthy

The great part about keeping a journal is that you can write anything you want to or need to without fear of censure or hurting someone's feelings. You can put your most closely held desires on paper, acknowledging them without putting them up to the scrutiny of others. You can ease the burdens of painful experiences by letting part of them go in a safe place.

With daily or almost daily journaling, you can date important events in your life for later and get a glimpse of yourself in your younger days. You can see the way you wrote, how you felt about things and because it's you reading words you wrote, you can almost step back in time and remember what that felt like.

But when you keep a Livejournal and you invite others to read it and you submit your journal for review, you lose most of these wonderful things. You also seek attention or validation for things that are never going to be interesting to other people. Unless your life is truly fascinating or you write exceptionally well, someone else's journal is mealy meat loaf, tinny tasting overcooked greenbeans and tuna casserole. It might be food but it's not a meal. It's like the three-recipe repertoire homecook trying to compete along side the Iron Chef, sure it's not in the ballpark, but really it's not even the same game.

Now many writers who keep blogs, chronicle parts of their lives in a way that's akin to journaling but we read them because of their humor or eloquence or ability to perfectly capture something we have felt or experienced. We read them because they have a knack for storytelling and can spin nearly anything into an entertaining tale. There are also some people who use their blogs almost exclusively for journaling and maybe they aren't natural storytellers but they have a highly compelling individual story, no matter how it's told. So what do you have when you have a journal keeper who lacks specific writing talent absent a compelling story? You have Crazy Stuff in My Head.

I won't soften it, I don't like this blog. One reason is Livejournal which just feels to me like a handful of the worst of Myspace and Facebook without their better features. Did you know that Livejournal's mascot is Frank the goat? Well, Miss Missives wants to kick Frank in the teeth. I cannot link to anything specific here because the entries don't have their own page. Frankly, it doesn't matter because none of the entries are written for a larger audience. The topics are mundane and the writing is cursory and thoughtless. There is also very little information about the journal keeper adding another difficulty in connecting with this material in any way.

Now I'm not suggesting that she shouldn't keep a journal or that it lacks any purpose or meaning, only that this particular journal is important to only one person and interesting to maybe seven more. She shouldn't stop writing the mundane, everyday happenings of her life just stop looking for reader's or stranger's approval.

As for the space itself, it needs a header. The whole thing is very nondescript, much like the writing. The font is too small but the space is spare and the sidebar relatively clean. This whole thing feels like your mom's tuna casserole. If she's your mom, yeah, you'll eat it but you would never ask for the recipe, pass it along, order it out and you're definitely not having seconds.

For you, a trifecta.







*Cringe is an open mic reading series where brave souls come forward and read aloud from their teenage diaries, journals, notes, letters, poems, abandoned rock operas, and other general representations of the crushing misery of their humiliating adolescence.

17 comments:

  1. Um,"Girl, they tryin ta kill you round here? Looka all dis reviewin you be doin. Dey shou pay you. For realz."

    Seriously, pulling mad weight, MM, great review, missed you too mutha. I'm going to my room to hate myself for this comment.

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  2. The coveted Trifecta. That takes SKILZ.

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  3. Mr. Lady, you left out an 'L'.

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  4. Gok, are now the repository of gansta?? Oh btw,nice work breaking the hookers vag.

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  5. All the hooker told me is that you're bonerfide.

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  6. You could be David Sedaris and Michael Chabon's 3-headed love child, and if your blog was on LiveJournal, I still wouldn't read it. Damn, that's one ugly medium.

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  7. stepping cautiously into the comments section...

    For future reference, if you want to highlight (humiliate) a specific LJ post, click the comment link and remove ?mode=reply from the url (or technically leave it in, your call). Just offering a piece of information.

    Also? I agree with your assessment of this blog.

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  8. For a Live Journal blog, the "design" isn't bad. But that's not saying much.

    You nailed that review. Again.

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  9. Thanks for the review. Do you have any pointers besides move from LiveJournal? I've been there 6 years, and while I'm not entirely attached to it, I'd like to bring all my posts with me. You might say they're not worth bringing, but the pride in me says they are. I'm not trying to whine or bitch - just get some pointers on how to improve the blog. Perhaps I'm a lost cause, but I'm genuinely interested.

    :-)

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  10. FF, you got a phone call from Ghost and I telling you that he loved your wax job. Wasn't that good?

    Oh fine. Next time you're wax deep in my vagina I'll motor boat you. You've got the boobs for it anyway. They scream, "DPH, motorboat me"

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  11. I got bored. I didnt read very long. But I gotta say GOK, this...
    "Pride can be an ugly dress, make sure you have some bitchin accessories"
    Cracked me the fuck up!

    whos motorboatin? Where?!

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  12. DPH, after that is Gok going to do you, with the candlestick, in the parlour???

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  13. I believe it will actually be in the dumpster.

    Where the hell is LB lately? Too much cock (foul) at Thanksgiving?

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  14. "I cannot link to anything specific here because the entries don't have their own page."

    Actually, they do but only if you mouse over "Feedback" at the bottom of each post. If you do that, it'll display an URL with a series of numerical characters (i.e. the unique post id).

    Having said that though, it's a longwinded approach to obtaining a permalink. Yet another reason why Live Journal is teh suck.

    P.S. I submitted my page for review although the domain got bought out last month. If you guys could remove this from your queue (cultofqelqoth[dot]com), I'd be most grateful.

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  15. Thank you for your help!

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Grow a pair.