Court's in Session Bitches

The size of his gavel is eclipsed only by his wit. This weeks guest reviewer is Mr. Crowley. -Miss Missives

There’s no need for the jury to retire.

Court’s in session, bitches, and Judge Crowley slams his gavel down on the latest Indian blogger. These jerkoffs just don’t learn, do they? They get their sorry brown asses whupped over here every week, and yet they come back for more.

Anyhow, His Honour (that’s me) has been laid up in bed thanks to salmonella poisoning. His Honour is sorely wrothed. He’s pissed because he has bed sores, pissed because he’s suffering from debilitating stomach cramps, and pissed because he has an imprint of a toilet seat on his arse. This would mean that today’s lamb to the slaughter is going to be slowly, painfully, bled to death.

However, such is not the case.

The Petitioner before me is one Abhishek ‘The Snake’ Majumdar, who communicates to us today (or tries to, at any rate) his Tactile Thoughts. How touching, eh? Snakey Boy seems to hail (I suspect) from Bengal, and claims to be an industrial engineer, nomadic and a misfit. He also claims to be searching for the meaning of liff, which, I suspect, he is yet to find, as is evident from his writing.

This is my first review here, and I really, really wanted to tear Snake’s arm off and beat him over the head with it. But I can’t, because I sort of connect with this chap. He listens to metal and blues. He reads “everything from comics to cigarette packets”, Terry Pratchett, Neil Gaiman AND the Watchmen. People ask him all the anal questions I get asked every fucking day of my life, he quietly bitches about Chinese spam, and the man knows what it feels to be held up by irritating people at a rock concert that you so want to not miss (but which sucked all the same).

Prima facie, therefore, this Court finds that Snake is not too bad at writing.

But then this Court asks itself, is all of this really ‘writing’? It’s not. Unless, of course, you can call 56 posts over a period of 2 years ‘writing’. Hell, the only person who seems to read your blog regularly is Harmonica, er, Harmony. Snake, my lad, you’ve got a sense of humour, and a slight flair for the dramatic. USE THEM! Your posts read like you’ve jotted your thoughts on paper and left them lying around for unsuspecting persons who try to read them and go, “WTF?”

This is not good writing. This isn’t writing at all. Look, nobody expects you to be William Bloody Shakespeare, but when most people read a blog, they want to smile, smirk, and roll on the floor in fits of laughter. They want to abuse you, rail and rant at you, call you names, pick up fights with you, and the coup de grace – they want to stalk you. Because, they like your writing so much that they, secretly or otherwise, want to BE you.

Let me give you an example you will relate to. Christopher Marlowe is literature. Emily Bronte is literature. Terry Pratchett is not (not in the traditional sense anyway). So why is Pratchett more popular than those Victorian stuffed shirts I just mentioned? Because, fuck it, I don’t want to be Heathcliffe or Dr. Faustus. I want to be Moist von Lipwig or Samuel fucking Vimes or Anthony Crowley (well, I am a Crowely. Ha).

You want to see good writing? Peek into Rassles’ world. The shit she writes about happens to all of us. Everyday. But I love her life more than I do my own. Each post of hers that I read, I wanna be next to her, slapping her back, stuffing pie and beer down her throat and telling her to get her sorry ass off the floor and into a pub crawl (No Rossie. This ain’t no marriage proposal). Why? Not because I hang out with her (though I’d love to), or because she pays me cash to say nice things about her or anything. It’s because I want to live her life. Just by reading her blog.

And, let’s face it Snake. In this day and age, a blog no longer remains your little bed-side diary. It’s an extension of you. This is how e-land sees you. It is not to be treated as a monologue, as you claim it to be. A good blog should be treated as a dialogue. It should be treated as a frigging chimpanzee convention. With lots of bananas.

But if you, my friend, don’t want to post regularly, make your shit sound interesting and sound like you’re talking and not muttering to yourself, get more people to read your blog, and spice up your drab template, then what’s the point of blogging? Why the FUCK are we even here, Counsellor?

So, you gotta ask yourself one question: ‘Do I feel lucky?’ Well, do you?

The verdict of this Court, Madam Clerk, is as follows:

Snake gets 1 star for putting out a few decent posts, and for not being emo.




He also gets 2 blazing fingers for putting up ONLY a few posts, and for talking to himself in a corner.






Dismissed.