That's whack

So, you're strolling around your local mega-bookstore, sipping your chai (or whatever, your call), contemplating a biscotti later, enjoying the pleasantly erudite and learned environment, and perusing the aisles, looking for that next great read. A book catches your eye with its bright colors and shiny lettering and the word "smegma" in the title, and you pick it up. After you realize it was "Smuggler" and your dirty mind has run away from you again, you put it back, but because you're gripping your super hot but delicious chai, you fumble a little and the book next to it falls out. Great. Putting your chai down, you pick up the fallen book because you're polite and tidy and don't want to be observed walking away from your messes, which was your first -- though brief -- inclination. The book has a subdued gray cover, smallish type, and looks to be about the lives of insurance salesmen. Or an examination of funeral home decor. Possibly an exegesis of the uses for fabric softener. Or something. But the name of the author rings a bell, and the blurbs on the back actually look promising: something about hippies and skinny dipping and metalheads and study abroad and vodka. So you think, well, I've got this 25% off coupon, and I think I've heard this guy somewhere before. You buy it.

Later that night your significant other, or your cat, or your gimp finds you sprawled helpless and drooling in an armchair because your new purchase has, three pages in, put you into a coma-like sleep the likes of which neither Ambien nor Ativan can touch.

Welcome to the world of Dick Whackman.

I'm not a fan of the design, but it's not atrocious. Just boring. Like a site for dentists. Or actuaries. Definitely don't need three columns, Dick. You don't need the calendar AND the archives, and you don't need categories AND tags. Roll up your archives and your categories and you can retain the tags if you want, but otherwise it's just redundant. And would it kill you to have a header image of some sort?

Let it Blurt promises to be the wildest, wackiest place on the web! I call bullshit. Nice try, but I think I know a site that already claims that honor.

Dick doesn't tell us much about himself. It's not until four months into his blogging gig that we even find out he has children. Hell, he doesn't mention his age or marital status until a month after that. Whackjob, you need to put this post in your About section, otherwise we've got no background to go on. But edit it. A lot. Because, damn, you do go on. Do you talk like this? If so, do people often nod off in your company?

If I were to believe the about page, I would expect someone else besides Whackman blogging in tandem. But the other dude (Jay) only has a handful of posts. None very good. He's not so much a contributor as a shady co-conspiritor. Or a figment of Dick's imagination. No, seriously. He has those. Enter his imaginary twin brother, Charles, with violent mental illness. Who is actually much funnier than Richard.

The writing is strangely stiff and formal ("By listening to others make these sounds I acheive [sic] a catharsis.") with a why are you reading this, nobody cares mentality. There's potential in these stories, but he treats them so flatly, with no color or oomph or personality. I mean, come on! Hippie commune? Clothing optional? This should be intriguing stuff. But it's not.

Your posts are looooooooooooong. Seriously. This is a post about napping. Why all the words? You struggle with what to say, how much to "blurt," and in the end you don't say much at all, and you certainly don't let us in.

To be fair, he has some good stuff, like this.

Except these? Dude. Not funny. Like, Mr. Yunoshi unfunny. There's a very fine line for racial comedy, and I don't think you can walk it. Family Guy can, but you? Sorry.

If you're going to write, in the sense that you're impelled to blog, loosen up. Take your own advice. You knew this was coming. Hell, you even knew what I was going to say. But you don't do anything to improve, you don't spice it up or get real or edit or any of the shit you know you should do. What makes you think me telling you the same damn thing is going to make a difference? You're basically wasting my time, since you recognize this stuff, but, fuck, you asked for it.

Dick, you do these little intros to each of your posts, a paragraph of lead in. Stop. Just get to the meat. Like this one. Read it again, but leave out the first paragraph. See what I mean? I do lead ins, too, but mine are awesome. Clearly.

You're a smart dude, and you've had an interesting life, and you admit writing was never your thing. I can tell. It's not that you're a bad writer, you're just an unpolished one. You have stories to tell that could be downright riveting, but you bog them down in words, words, words. Words that need to be excised out with razor sharp precision. And my guess is you just don't have the experience yet to know what needs to be cut.

Your stiffness creates a barrier between you and your reader. It's like you're writing to sound like someone else, to sound, well, learned and erudite, to pull from my intro. But that shit's boring. Or it is the way you do it. I suspect your writing lacks humor because you're too buttoned up when you think about your audience. Because when you're "Charles," you're much less formal, much less regimented and "I'm going to write this way because it's how I've seen it done and it seems to work for them." No. Find your own voice. Or find Charles' and pull it into yours because he's a damn sight more readable.

Look, I like you. I think you're probably an interesting guy. And the comments you've left here have been vastly more enjoyable than your blog was. Edit yourself. Give yourself a word limit on a couple of posts and see what you do with that restriction on rambling on and on forever and ever amen (and I should know -- I'm a wordy little tart, myself). Write how you talk, not how you think you should sound. It's a blog, not a research paper. And if this is how you talk, well, shit. I'm sorry.