Under the Influence

Since I'm reviewing the blog of a school-girl today, let's start with a quiz. What do the following have in common?

Edgar Allen Poe
Stephen Crane
Theodore Roethke
Herman Melville
Delmore Schwartz
F. Scott Fitzgerald
William Faulkner
Ernest Hemingway
Jack London
Dorothy Parker
Eugene O'Neill
John Steinbeck

Any thoughts?

The answer, in this case, although there may be others: they were all heavy drinkers. And, when I say heavy drinkers, I mean alcoholics. They lived their lives looking through the blur of a whisky/gin/vodka/wine bottle. Of the seven Americans who have won the Nobel prize for literature, five were heavy drinkers/alcoholics.

I hate to segway off into meaningless trivia, so let me get straight to the point: The only thing that would enliven this blog is a sixpack of beer or several shots of hard liquor, on the part of the reader OR the writer.

This blog is the relentless inertia of an emo crowd standing in front of their favorite band. It's the slow and killing crawl of an ant across the floor on a hundred degree day with air so heavy it can suffocate you.

After spending a half hour reading it today, I either need a swift blow to the head or a stiff drink to make it through this review. It fucking sucked the life out of me, a pageful of vampiric words lying in wait to strip the vitality from the hapless reader who stumbles into its lair.

Jesus God, you're 19 years old, and this is the best you've got to write about?

Did you know that the female guppy can give birth and then be ready again for conception in a few hours?

And get this, guppies have the ability to store sperm, so the females can give birth many times, after only once breeding with a male!

I had high hopes after reading the subtitle: "wishful thinking and imaginative solutions to the demons of college life."

Alas...there is no wishful thinking. No imaginative solutions. And, demons are in short supply, as well.

Instead, there is this:

When it begins, I know my case is stronger, my argument is a blend of emotional and rational aspects and I have a loud voice, but half-way through being angry and pissed, I get bored.

And, the person you are arguing with keels over dead, a victim of your monotony.

But wait, there's more:

I feel empty. Almost like the words random words floating about in my head without meaning. Never a sentence, never an idea, just useless random words.

It has to suck to write this, but it's excruciating to read.

What's my advice? Jesus God, get a fucking life.

You're 19. It's your time to drink, carouse, and have meaningless shags. You NEED, desperately, to kiss a stranger wetly and passionately in the smoky gloom of a skeezy bar, out on the dance floor with the beat pulsing in your ears, a hard groin pressed up against your own, and the smell of old beer in your nostrils. You NEED to find a strange tongue in your mouth occasionally. You NEED to choke down some Gentleman Jack splashed with Coke and twisted with lime. You NEED to put on a short skirt, and wax your hoo-hah. You NEED to dance your goddamn ass off.

YOU NEED TO FUCKING LIVE.

Get a fucking life, and THEN write about it.

At present, your writing is like that of an 80 year old woman imprisoned in a nursing home, whose life is boundaried by the daily schedule of Bollywood Squares.

The template is fine, but colorless.
The prose is technically correct, but bland as white walls in a white house on a suburban cul de sac.

Lose this fucking colorless black white and gray world you live in, and find some...

Red. Red. *Red*. *Red*, Charlie boy. *Red*!

Red is the color of sex and fear and danger and signs that say "Do. Not. Enter."

All of my favorite things in life are red..

I give you a And, I send along the wish that you will pump all the living into this period of your life that it can hold, until it is bulging to the seams with wild exploits, crazy adventures, hangovers, meeting of strange men, and joi de vivre.

Trust me on this one...your young years are over in the twinkle of a dead writer's eye, and then you are 43, with two kids, and reliving your glory days only in your memories and on facebook.

Don't miss them. You'll regret it.