Fine I'm Meditating Now What

Miss Missives started January on a quest to usher 2009 in as the year of Zen. Rather than go around with her red pen and rule book, Miss Missives longed to let her tightly-wound bun down, slip on a pair of soft, spangled Indian slippers, read over the collective of AAYSR-submitted blogs and mutter phrases like let it be, all you need is love and gettin' better all the time. Yes, she had been listening to an anthology of Beatles while she constructed the plan, so? In her mind, gone would be the irritated directives, the smarmy admonitions, and the marginally soothing salve of tepid praise to make up for the true and real criticism. 2009 would come to show Miss Missives as friend to the people, nurturer to the tortured writer's souls that litter the internet.

Alas, this recuperative plan failed right out the gate. Maybe it was ill-advised for me to think that a peacock could change it's feathers. Maybe the AAYSR gods sent me onknees to test my mettle, challenge my commitment. Whatever the case, I've failed because I can't join hands with my fellow bloggers and sing kumbaya, let's all just do our own thing and heap praise on each other. Miss Missives is already starting to feel like blogging is becoming one giant daisy chain and I won't add to the masturbatory milieu.

Why does everyone and their uncle want to write? Why is everyone looking to get published or syndicated. Just because you slap some paint on a wall doesn't make you a painter, and just because you have a blog doesn't make you a writer. However, if you can expel gas from your rectum at will, I think you should be allowed to call yourself a f'artiste. All these would-be writers run around dreaming about book deals like it's the next great home-based biz, sit in your jammies and collect a fat paycheck. Like books just write themselves or all you need to do is type out nine-hundred random words and there will be staggering lines of editors just waiting to lap it up. Can I just ask these people, are there trees in your world? Writing is work and one of those industries that even if you have talent oozing out of your pores you may still never make it happen.

At first glance, Onknees sounds like it has potential. There is the part about being on one's knees which struck Miss Missives as appropriately submissive. Then there is the heavily glossed lips that festoon the header. The first post makes an apt comparison between Amy Winehouse and Jerry Seinfeld. Still, a dive into the content proves disheartening. There is one post where Annette regales us with the intel that she goes commando but without further details, this is just an uncomfortable non sequitur. The second part of that post is great but sadly, written by someone else. There is other good material but alas, penned by another. There are prime examples of the daisy chain I speak of. There are posts that challenge you to read through them without experiencing vertigo from all the bits and bobs going on. There is a book review that screams 8th grade homework and a post about female bosses that is a confusing mix of other's opinions that actually perpetuates the negative stereotypes about women in lead positions that it seems to criticize. There is even one post so boring I fell asleep reading it. I'm not speaking figuratively or metaphorically, I actually fell asleep.

I don't mind as a matter of democratization that every Tom, Dick and Mary has his or her dirty, little corner of the web. One of the great things about blogging is anyone can do it even those that patently shouldn't. What irks me is the utter lack of self-awareness and real critical understanding of one's talents and skills that seems to pervade the blogosphere. It's like watching the b-roll of American Idol auditions, not that Miss Missives watches that sort of thing. For every blogger who accurately measures their own ability there are ten more who think they are what they are in fact not, be it introspective, funny, poignant, snarky, you name it. Good writers can make waiting in line at the bank a good story. Good writers can make regular people seem larger than life through the way they uncover the details. There are good writers out there, there are, but the better part of the blogosphere is being populated by a bunch of sh'artistes.

You're lucky it's just one finger






Have a lolly dear 'cause you suck hard.