Don't bother relaxing, it doesn't help

Being a headmistress, I have had my share of dealing with children. I know all too well the sour smell they exude after an hour of playing soccer. I know that they defy social norms of personal space and breathe heavily and open-mouthed through oversized teeth that they must be bribed to maintain clean. I know that they favor objects of school property for their snot to take residence as opposed to neatly folded tissues. I know they are rowdy, misbehaved, unmanageable and in need of severe correction-- for the most part.

Despite this, I want children of my own.

But you see, like today's reviewee, I find myself dangling above the inaccessible jungle of parenthood, hung from the blasted trees by the tangled parachute of delayed fecundity with no one to rescue me yet. Meanwhile, the storks that fly overhead drop nothing but liquefied disappointment on my shoulders, while carrying bundled happiness off to other people who have landed safely and quickly on jungle grounds.

I have been dangling in frustration for a fraction of four years Womb4improvement has spent shagging ineffectively and soiling in vain any indicator sticks that dare cross her pee stream. But already I want to shove a protractor up someone's ass, particularly my pain-loving sperm donor/school custodian in the dark confines of broom closet shame. Every time a new menstrual cycle begins, I deliver him a hefty whipping of probably unsubstantiated worry and tears, lamenting that we are officially one of those childless couples that has anthropomorphized their cat into a hairy baby. I then oblige him to partake in yet another month of coldly-timed vanilla humping, where I have to beat his buttocks with a metal-beveled ruler to keep him from instinctively directing the essential gravy of his manhood onto the darndest of places above my waist. This previously standard practice is no longer permitted in the repertoire of baby-makin' broom closet bangin'.

For these reasons, I had a biased interest in today's reviewee from the moment I read the URL, and more sympathetic to her unsuccessful spawning, I could not be.

Were it not for this kindred interest, though, I might not have been so readily captured.

First of all, her template looks like a doodled-on desk that some 4th grader threw up his radioactive split pea soup on in art class. Despite the slime-green color, which I will leave to a matter of personal taste, knowing that a whopping 2% of the population actually likes it, our reviewee really has kept her desk acceptably neat, obviously having done some homework. She gets two glittery smiley-faced stickers for that; one for each heretofore unchapped nipple.

Moving on. Womb4improvement, we have editing issues, my child.

The first paragraph of your About Me page alone made me want to will my hand through the computer screen with all of the capacity of my pedagogical wrath and throttle you back to the third grade where you should have learned proper sentence formation. Your entire blog is riddled with post after post of sanity-hijacking errors, and an odd hatred of commas. Seriously, your husband has better punctuation when he sends text messages.

Before you hit publish, please do the following, so you don't send an educator like myself to another totalizing institution:

1). Read your post while asking yourself if your sentences (every one of them) flows properly. Ask yourself if you have denied any commas a right to life or have forgotten any connecting words like "and" whose absence will make your readers want to poke their eyes out with a geometry compass.

2). Edit.

3). Read your post again, noting that there are still an assload of mistakes you didn't catch the first time.

4). Edit the shit out of that still-mangled bastard.

5). Step away from your computer and partake in non-vanilla sex with the husband, even if you are not ovulating.

6). With a clear mind, read the post again, making any minor corrections that may still be needed.

As to your About Me page, the level of boring oozing off of it that your average visitor will be affected by narcoleptically is more toxic than the unmanaged asbestos in the school cafeteria, unless there is some off-chance that the visitor is also desperately TTC*. While occasionally you fall into the temptation of lazy, factual list-making and reporting inane details when you are clearly capable of narrative, your About Me page should reflect the best of what you can do, not the worst. Womb4improvement, please, for the love of a healthy womb lining, get rid of that monstrosity of a timeline and post it on a new page linking to it from your home page for all the TTCers who might give a crap about the mundanity of your torment. Then rewrite your About Me page generally indicating how long you've been humping in desperation and peeing on random pieces of plastic and include all of the heart and soul and pain and frustration and desperation and humor in the face of difficulties and love and gratitude and hope and strength that is found throughout your blog.

You've shown me your desperate moments, your relationship with the husband, how troubled you are by your own envy, how hopeful you can be, how hard it is to go through this without your mother, how imaginative you are and what a truly enviable attitude you have towards life even when things aren't going your way. Throughout your blog, your lovely subtle humor has made me want to dry hump your leg (which would apparently be as effective in terms of conceiving a child as what I'm doing now). You have reeled me in with a unique voice and story.

So for now I can give you these in the hopes that you will improve your editing and knock it off with the factual reports and lists and boring details, and will start exploiting your storytelling ability.



If you do so, you can count on the fact that I will read your blog far into mommyblogdom.

And now I pass you over to the alumni association to either haze or praise you.

Eternal Sunshine of the Nerdy Mind

Miss Missives has a dirty little secret. Fine, Miss Missives has quite a few dirty little secrets in her back pocket, but here's one out of the bunch. I love nerds. Love them.

There I said it. Some girls like the suits, the jocks, the bad boys, I like the late-to-bloom nerds.

Dictionary.com defines nerd as:

a stupid, irritating, ineffectual, or unattractive person, or an intelligent but single-minded person obsessed with a nonsocial hobby or pursuit.

No, no, no, they've got it all wrong. Nerd, unlike the other n-word, does not have to be pejorative. Urbandictionary.com more accurately lists among its definitions:

An individual persecuted for his superior skills or intellect, most often by people who fear and envy him.

An individual who does not conform to society's beliefs that all people should follow trends and do what their peers do.

A person who gains pleasure from amassing large quantities of knowledge about subjects often too detailed or complicated for most other people to be bothered with.

A four-letter word but a six-figure income. The person you will one day call 'boss'.

Today's reviewee, Matt Stratton, is like the alternate nerd universe's Mark Ruffalo.

Mark Ruffalo:



meet your nerd doppelganger, Matt Stratton:



In Matt's own words, Matt's blog:

focuses on the areas Matt finds interesting,

which leads me to one of my only problems with nerds. What the average nerd finds interesting versus what the average nerd-lover finds interesting, are frequently universes apart, as hottie patottie Mrs. Matt can attest to.

Matt posts a bunch of Tech Tips, Wordless Wednesdays, Follow Fridays and his personal fitness challenge. The tech tips are well-written and understandable even to the relative technophobe. The Wordless Wednesdays, well, they are wordless and on Wednesday so whatever. The Follow Fridays were lost on me because I really have to admire some one's tastes before I care to read what they read.

If I want to know who to read, I'll check in with David Sedaris. If I require a restaurant recommendation, I'll ask Thomas Keller. If I want to know where to get my heroin, I'll hit up Amy Winehouse. If I want to know who I should follow on Twitter, Matt man, it's not coming from you. As for the Fitness blogging, I see the benefit of keeping yourself accountable and trying to garner some much needed moral support but my problem is all of these things mixed together creates a bit of a jumble in the demographics department. I have a hard time figuring out just who Matt's reader would be. I liked this but for me it was one of just a few things that got me to slow my skim.

As for design and layout specifics, Matt, Matt, Matt. What I would hope for is that you are one of those techies with a catalogued system for their software and power cords labeled, almost artfully bundled. In fact you are more like the guy with lonely hard drives scattered on his desk, boxes of Star Trek figurines shoved in the back of the closet getting crushed by your camera bag and a jumble of stray cords piled up on the floor.

Now literally, just minutes away from pushing publish on this review, I discovered that Matt has substantially altered the layout of his blog. Perhaps he realized Miss Missives was picking through assimilating her review. He did make some changes for the better but Matt, you still need to cleanup the DOUBLE sidebar and move some of that stuff onto your tabs, which need to be merged to one set of tabs by the way.

So Matt, for Miss Missives, you get one smoldering look because you are the kind of guy more women need to get to know(yes Mrs. Matt, I know he's taken, I said the kind of guy). Your blog however, gets a Meh.








But Bill Gates offers up a High Ten, compadre:



Side note to the women currently traversing the dating world: give the nerds a chance. They might seem goofy on the outside, but you can always work on the clothes, glasses and haircut later. They are so great for so many reasons. They are good with the nookie. Think about it, all that time thinking about sex, imagining sex, dreaming about sex, coupled with a desire to make you happy? Give it to them and they are grateful. They are trustworthy. They're not going to flirt with or ogle other women. First, they don't have the social confidence. Second, they're more interested in the nearest electronics store. Third, they really respect you. Forget the alpha male and embrace the beta guy, trust me, you won't be sorry.

The giggle of eyelashes*

In graduate school I learned to sing the body electric. The program I attended was more about souls and songs and art and heart and expression than it was about lectures and footnotes and appendices and theses. We created and explored. We put font to music. We made books and paper and poetry.

At first, I balked at the artsy fartsyness of it all. I wanted to be a serious student, with serious success, large textbooks, late nights at the library over microfiche, bibliographic complexity. Instead I got professors who encouraged us to open class with an African blessing to the dawn, who wanted artistic presentations on feminist gods, who expected me to dig, dig, dig deep into wells of pain and self and remembrance and hope to create art. It was all so much kumbaya and not enough cross-referencing. At first. But gradually, with eye-rolls and exasperated huffs and hesitant inchings toward release, I succumbed to the power in their poetry, the worth of their wonder. And I'm a better writer for it.

Today's blogger reminds me of that time in graduate school, when I sloughed off some of that rigid academia to embrace the tickle of words. Maya at One Paragraph at a Time is a poet who would have fit in nicely with my crowd of wordmongers.

I hesitate to tell you her blog is almost entirely poetry. But wait! I know. I thought the same thing at first. A whole blog? Over four years of posts? With nothing but poetry? Pass. But stick with me here because Maya can write some damn poetry. I actually like it. Kind of a lot. Her writing is contemplative and introspective and deliberate and lovely and tactile and thoughtful. She writes about nostalgia and sex ("he was all hers, one locked muscle of utter fealty") and lies. Her poetry is honest and mature and revealing. Every word is revered, precisely chosen, and treasured.

I just read an entire blog of poetry. I can't believe it, either, but I did. And I loved it. Oh, the template is boring, and Maya could stand to roll up her archives. But the template doesn't even matter because her artistry is on the screen, in those words I want to roll around on my tongue, those words that delight my eyes. This is not some angsty teenage blithering with rhymed, insipid dreck. This is real, this is art, and this is good.








*My title is stolen from Maya @ One Paragraph at a Time.

Stuck a feather in her cap and called it "maccaroni"?

People. When you misspell your blog's name in its bloggy address, and then I click into it and find that you're still, still using a blogger standard template that you haven't even bothered to modify, I fear for you.

I fear that I will be forced to rip you a new asshole, even when I'm feeling all happy and lovey-dovey. And then, your mini-cadre of readers will start going on and on about what big meanies we are here, and I'll have to rip new assholes in a whole new set of fannies. Some of which will be unaccustomed to such rough ass treatment, but probably need it.

And, after spending a nearly perfect weekend relaxing, I'm so not in the mood.

Seriously, why must you people suck? Why can't you be bothered to read our FAQ? Why do you bother submitting if you can't even follow simple directions to make your blog less sucky? Why do you keep making me write the same damn things, week after neverending week, whilst you don't listen? Don't you think I get enough of telling people to do stuff that they have no intention of doing with the teenagers who live in my very own house?

How long do you expect me to be patient and keep reading crap that people submit, when it is obvious that no effort, whatsoever, has been made to improve their blog and/or content?

Dammit. Now I'm all peevish and bitter.

So, without further ado:

Today's blog:

1) It's macaroni. NOT MACCARONI.
2) Create an "about me" and move that shit off your sidebar.
3) Find a cleaner blog design, preferably with tabs so you can clean up your sidebar.
4) Get rid of the gadgets and crap, they look messy and add nothing.
5) Stop posting youtube videos in lieu of content.
6) Learn to write dialogue without killing it. (See example).
7) Irony, thy name art maccaroni.
8) If you don't have something good in the first ten posts, no one in their right minds is going to go digging, including me.
9) Actually, if you don't have something good in your first 3 posts, most people are going to click on to the next possibility, and you'll have lost a reader.
10) If you're going to blog, make it a point to distinguish yourself, in some way, from the other 41,683,205 mommy bloggers online.

You get a meh, and should be thankful for that. It was a merciful meh.

The Setup, The Facts, The Good, The Not-So-Good, and the Ugly

I can’t tell if I drew the long straw or the short straw. On the one hand, today’s reviewee has a very digestible number of posts and I was able to read his entire output in a single sitting without feeling over- or under-whelmed. On the other hand, today’s blog is Project Kickass, the personal playground of longtime commenter and AAYSR mainstay Chris. I think Chris has been here at AAYSR longer than I have. So … what do I say? Am I being set up?

Oh well - I must press on. I have a task at hand. And Project Kickass is waiting patiently...

Chris – this bit here is just for you and no one else. The following review is merely one person’s take on what will make Project Kickass kick more ass. I have my preferences, and I like to think that I speak for more than just me, but let me be clear… There will be those who will disagree with me. (Mind you, they're wrong.) And you may choose to listen to them and not to me. But think about what I have to say, because I mean it all in the best possible way.

Having read the entire offering at Project Kickass, here are what I consider to be certain immutable facts…

Fact: Chris lives in Arizona.

Fact: Chris hates Walmart, but paradoxically keeps finding himself there.

Fact: Chris is funny. He writes humorously without being a humorblog whore.

Fact: Chris works in IT or sales at either an Apple store or an AT&T store – I am leaning toward AT&T.

Fact: Chris appears to have zero tolerance for stupid people or rednecks or inbreeders.

Fact: Chris had an accident/injury at one point that has left him partially incapacitated.

This last fact bears discussing. It seems that Chris desperately wishes to downplay this injury and incapacitation and yet it comes up time and time again, as tangents in his stories. Like spices in a stew. We learn that as a result of this injury, he has a big ass scar on his periodically bald head. We learn that he has poor hearing and has lost the vision in one of his eyes. We learn that he writes with his left hand because his right hand, previously his dominant hand, no longer works the way he'd like it to. We learn that because of this injury, his written verbal skills don’t work the way they used to and so he misspells things or gets ideas twisted around.

I sympathize. One of my best friends has incredibly bad dyslexia, and one of my jobs is to take what he has written and translate it into what he really meant. And as a teenager, my best friend was a stroke victim who also lost the use of his dominant right hand and was relegated to his left. So, let me just say for the record that your editing was off the table for this review. Yeah, you misspell things. You’ve addressed it. No more needs to be said about it.

Okay – enough of this bullshit. Let’s get to what you’re doing right and what you could be doing better…

The Good

The almost complete lack of clutter in your template. There are no distractions – just content content content. And that translator thing – of no real use to me but actually fun to play with.

Your About Me is an excellent introduction to what is served up at Project Kickass.

You are funny. (Have I said that before?) You rarely fail to make me laugh. And your posts are almost always the right length. That alone has kept me coming back to visit you over the last few months. But lest you think that your shit does not stink at all, please note the following:

The Not-So-Good

You tend to repeat yourself. I think you have the nerd pick up lines gag in there three times. Maybe just twice but it feels like three times. There are other times when you feel like you’re digging into your “standard list of humorous situations about which to write” (e.g., this is what happened to me at Walmart) rather than really crafting something new. But this is only occasional.

Your timeline is disorienting. I don’t know exactly how you do it (or indeed why you do it), but at least on the main page, your posts are not always in chronological order. So you have posts there from three months ago in front of posts from last week. And it seems to be a bit random. And I personally do not care for it.

It feels like bullshit. Outside of the occasional glimpse at the real Chris underneath things, I feel a bit like David After Dentist (No, I will not link to it. That asshat has gotten more than enough unwarranted publicity at the expense of his child.) when reading your blog; I find myself wondering “Is this real life?” Trouble is, I just don’t know what’s real and what’s bullshit. Are you the type of person who picks fights with rednecks in the Walmart parking lot for shits and giggles? Or are you a Walter Mitty who writes about the time he wishes he picked a fight with the redneck in the Walmart parking lot? Maybe that doesn’t matter, but I am left with a question mark in my mind next to the "immutable facts" listed above. Making me wonder if they are also, possibly, bullshit. Hell, maybe none of it is bullshit. But it still feels like it.

Presuming it isn't all just bullshit, you could be less superficial. More daring in your writing. Write in detail about that lost love, about how you were injured, about how you feel about where you are in this fucked up world we live in. You can do this and be funny at the same time. Johnny Virgil over at 15 Minute Lunch does a great job of mixing the personal and hilarious, albeit he takes WAAAAAAAY too long to get to the point sometimes. Here’s the thing – as I have said, you are funny. But having read it all, it is starting to feel like Will Farrell funny. The trouble with Will Farrell (for me) is that when he’s being funny, it’s kind of the same shtick over and over. And if you like that, that’s great. But if you don’t…? I’d prefer more realness and more variety.

The Ugly
Your template. Let me cut to the chase on the whole light text on dark background thing. (At least for me…) I have astigmatism. I won’t bore you with details, but with astigmatism, my eyesight is worse the wider my pupils get. So, the light text on the dark background causes my pupils to expand causing the bright light text to be blurrier than dark text on a light background. Meaning, more work for my eyes. (Thanatos has a different theory on this, but he’s not writing this review – I am.) If the only reason you have this template is because of that slidey thingy at the top, there are ways to tweak the styles so you can fix the template without losing the slidey thing. I promise. Please do it.

For now, I am giving you these two stars:






And I am keeping these in my back pocket for later, because you really can be a four star blogger, if you do exactly what I tell you:

Eh, How About... No?

Here is the thing about today's review, there isn't going to be one. Trust me, it's for the best.

I sat down at my computer and I placed my hands on the keyboard and started to type and when I looked at the screen all I saw was:

Fuck you.

Feeling just a little like Jack Torrance, I hit the backspace, cleared my throat and started again. When I looked this time I read:

Fuck this!

And, the more I tried, the more I wanted to put something real onto the page, the more resistance I was met with. Clicking away on my keyboard, I realized I'd rather be sitting in a bar, drinking imaginary things and speaking with dead people. You see? It seems that I've got one foot out the door this morning and it's refusing to come back inside. I don't know if it's writer's block or just a lack of caffeine. I could try to force it but I felt like today's reviewee deserves better.

Her template deserves to be set on fire, but she, the writer, the blogger deserves better than I can offer up today. Mostly, because she seems extraordinarily thoughtful and I'm quite thoughtless.

So I offer up my apologies to the reviewee and to you, the reader. This review will happen. Just not today. I just don't think it's fair. Despite what some might think, we do try to offer up fair reviews around these parts.

I should probably mention that I just told the man who signs my paychecks that I'd rather just not be at work today. So it's not you, it's me. Drunken, rattling around in an empty hotel, playing with ghosts... me.

I will write in blood on forgotten walls...

If I lose the light of the sun, I will write by candlelight, moonlight, no light. If I lose paper and ink, I will write in blood on forgotten walls. I will write always. I will capture nights all over the world and bring them to you. - Henry Rollins

Kelly is a writer. How do you preach to the converted?

I believe that blogging can transform your life, if you let it...It is through blogging that I learned to understand and accept my own narrative. Blogging is the accumulation of all of our stories, all that passes between us in posts and comments, in private e-mails, Facebook, and Twitter. All that we learn, all that we are.

I want to share this story, my story, so that maybe one person sitting out there in the audience hearing it, or you sitting at home reading it, realize. No matter the past you carry in the deep pockets of your own flesh, you have the right to lay it down. We are all scarred. We are all human. I just want you to know that there is someone out there who will understand. There are people that are listening.

I am one of them.

I don't even know how many times I've told some newby blogger, prickly feathers barely poking through their pink fleshed baby bird skin, that writing is healing. Writing, sharing your hurts, your story, your real heart--can set you free.

It has done so for me, and it can do so for others, who grasp ahold of the pen, the keyboard, and use it to free their souls.

What higher thing needs to be said here, about a blog? She writes. She is a writer.



Kelly: My only advice is this: you have a template with tabs, use them to hide your categories, contact info, photo credits, recent posts and other untidiness on the sidebar. Move your archives up, above the ads, so people can find them. Make it clear that you, not secret agent mommy, are the author of this blog (I find it confusing, photo credit should probably go lower in the blog sidebar or at the bottom).

I Think War is a Dangerous Place.*

Today's review is from guest reviewer Fontaine.
And now it’s time to play ‘Pretend!’

Today we are going to pretend that something horrible and terrible and unimaginable has happened. Now put on your little thinking caps and imagine this:

Some nut along the lines of the extra super duper Christian conservative Jeannie Bladdersham brought to us from our pal ‘WAM’ over at Can O’ Whupass, has taken over the universe.

Well, Jeannie Bladdersham and her pals, having taken over the universe, have decided vibrators are an abomination and those who use them are dirty, naughty, and un-Christ-like, and should be thrown in the county jail where they will be dealt with by those big, sweaty boys from the sheriff’s department who look a king size mattress stuffed into a brown belt.

But wait! Wait! Jeannie and her pals have decided to try to look all democratic and everything by staging a so-called ‘open debate’ on the topic before they lower their iron fists of moral conservatism down on the moaning, groaning, sweating, writhing, hair pulling, begging for more, vibrator loving masses.

Don’t even try to tell me you wouldn’t be at that debate, Askers. You know you would. You would be throwing open your closets, steamer trunks, and dresser drawers. From them you would be pulling your long list of favorites:

Happy Beaver
Silver Bullet
Womb Raider
Rambone
and Forest Rump

Oh sure, it would take you a while to get out of the house after unveiling all of your favorites at the same time. I mean, who can resist? But you would do it. You would do it because you know you have to speak your mind. Because you are willing to risk it all (and a trip to see the king size boys at the county jail) for your right to vibrate! You would show up at the debate with all of your favorites and a bunch of giant signs you made in your garage by cutting poster board into giant vibrator shapes and using that old house paint to write things on them like,

“PROUD GRADUATE OF THE SCHOOL OF VIBRATING COCK!”

and

“RESPONSIBLE FOR MY OWN SATURDAY NIGHT BEVER!”

and

“I DESERVE TO VIBRATE MY OWN TEMPLE OF POON!”

The atmosphere would be insane! Can’t you just imagine it! Shoving your giant vibrator shaped sign into the face of some buttoned up, doughy assed, straight laced, Christ-loving, nervous Nelly of a woman and screaming,

“Keep your laws offa my body!”

Some of you, I suspect, would even go so far as to recognize the sheer horror of such women at having to be exposed to your giant vibrator sign. You would shove your sign at them and find a strange glee in the middle of it all when you realized you could make them squeal, dance, prance and cringe at the mere thought of being touched by anything resembling a vibrator.

Then, suddenly, you and the rest of the raucous crowd would come to a strange point of unity in your simultaneous silence as you realized loud speakers were pumping the voices of the debaters into the crowd. Together, you would realize you had missed much of the debate already and would come to a silent rest together to listen.

But you would be prepared. Prepared to boo and hiss against those who spoke in favor of this outrageous anti-vibrator law. To whistle and cheer and shake your giant vibrator shapes at the sky in support of those who spoke against the law.

Then you hear this:

What this world needs is less Veritas and more down-to-earth people who can argue a point without trying to hit delicate nerves by mentioning "murderers" and "rapists" when talking crime. I went in desiring to vote in favour with all my heart and ended up abstaining. This is what bad speakers bring to the political debate.

Why can't people stop using rhetoric and playing on people's fears? I talk individual rights, society, State, freedom, but I don't go into trying to promote my ideology by playing on people's deepest uneasiness.

Everyone would remain silent. No booing, hissing or shaking of giant vibrator shapes into the sky would occur. No one would shake their Bible or even be able to mutter some kind of praise to Christ. Just.Silence.

Yeah, that’s pretty much the gist of today’s reviewee, Luca, who writes Free Thinking Unabridged.

Sorry pal. It’s people like you that make absolutely nothing happen.

Here’s a few of these for making absolutely nothing happen. Not on your blog and, obviously, not in a world that, whether you like it or not, wants something it can sink its teeth into.



*This thought of the day brought to you by George W. Bush, former President

Mother and Child Reunion

In Mother and Child Reunion, a tune penned by Paul Simon, lyrics mention "a strange and mournful day" and "I can't for the life of me remember a sadder day". This was all fans needed to speculate as to possible meanings. Perhaps the song referenced a child given up for adoption about to meet his or her mother. Maybe the mother or child had passed and now the one was joining the other in death.

When asked about the song, Paul Simon related that the title, Mother and Child Reunion, was lifted straight off a New York Chinese restaurant menu where it was used to reference a chicken and egg dish. Get it? Mother and child reunion? I thought it was clever because rather than be deep, the title referred to something that couldn't be more fleeting, Chinese food.

Anyhow, I'll allow you a brief peek into the twisted thought processes of Miss Missives. Thoughts of Mother and Child Reunion led me to thoughts of the chicken and the egg which led me to the classic dilemma of which came first. This in turn made me think of the Chinese dish, which made me think again of the Paul Simon song, which led me to ponder, which came first, the mother or the child? In this case it is clearly the mother which very circuitously leads me to my main point(yes there is one). The mother came first and with or without the child, the mother is still a woman, or a chicken or something.

My gripe is that so many women become mothers at the loss of nearly everything else. Jesus, no wonder so many women go through empty nest syndrome(see another chicken reference), because they all too frequently define themselves by motherhood alone. If I hear one more person(because yes, we are still people) refer to herself as a mommy to anyone other than her children, I will take needles and shove them in my eyeballs.

This is not exclusively directed at today's reviewee. Lolly, I get it, you're in the first year. That first year is very difficult and balance can be nonexistent. I know it can be hard to define yourself by much else when you are enmeshed in new babydom, but I know plenty of women with babies who still talk about other things.

Mommy Is Rock 'N Roll is your garden variety snoozefest, the quintessential mommyblog where the new baby is all encompassing. I can't sugarcoat it, there is very little here. Lolly has the same excitement of most new moms, figure woes, internal debates, sleep deprivation but her writing skills are not enough to lift this common experience up to a place where others can relate to it.

Lolly, like so many other moms, you are a thoughtful mother with a beautiful baby and almost nothing to say. If you want people to read what you write, you have to vary it a little. It's not that you cannot write about your daughter, or breastfeeding or slings or the things prolonged sleep deprivation does to a person. You can, but you need to pick out anecdotes, funny stories, unexpected things and throw in some stuff completely unrelated to Lolly the mom.

My best piece of advice? Go read great mom blogs and figure out why you like them. Are they funny, confessional, snarky, all out crazy? Figure out what they are doing right and emulate. I'm not saying copy or try to be them but it's okay to use these engaging blogs as a lesson on how to make yours more engaging.

As for the specifics, the template hurts my eyes. I don't like faux animal print. I didn't like it when Dolce and Gabbana used it, I certainly don't like it when it's splashed up on a page I am expected to read. I don't like pink font on black background but thank you for a font large enough to read without inciting some kind of violent head pounding. The sidebar could be cleaned up but it's not out of control. Get the Google ads off your site, the seventeen cents you are making a week isn't worth it. Pare down your blogroll or move it off the main page. If your blogroll is in excess of fifty blogs, it no longer means anything.

Lolly, Ask is a site that will definitely pants* you with no remorse. The reviewers here write and read and I'm not talking about Christmas newsletters or thank-you notes. While we complain about clutter and design and even grammar, you'll notice that people who can really tell a story generally get a pass. The reality, however, is that most people cannot tell a good story. Even if Princess Di and Michael Jackson came from beyond the grave to take them out to lunch, they'd still find a way to screw it up. So to turn around and write about the naturally mundane, like motherhood, is the equivalent of five Ambien and a Gin and Tonic.

Still, don't despair because the good thing about children and motherhood is everyone's baby is beautiful to them and your blog is your baby. So if Mommy Is Rock 'N Roll is what you want it to be, and you can look back over your old posts excited to read how you felt or where the baby was at that moment, then I suggest you pull your pants up and don't look back.














*d.Verb. American. To overpower someone and remove his trousers by force as a humiliation. Equivalent to the British debag. Usually only done to males as removal of the pants, the traditional male garment, is a symbolic emasculation. Pantsing in this sense may be used as an initiation rite, a punishment, or just done for fun.

The Finger In The Prince Albert Tin

The tenth year of my life was a dark and tortuous year for my tender, still fledgling soul. Leading up to that year, at the age of nine I had to confront my abusive father and declare that I would no longer be visiting him and taking the beatings he dished out. Then I turned ten.

Ten found my family moving to a new house, in a new town. A town where there was seemingly a church on every corner and all the kids seemed dirty and strange. We moved the summer before my fifth grade year and it was a long, painful, hot summer. Somewhere in that time my mother pulled away from the family, from herself and landed squarely in a mental hospital having tried to off herself in the middle of one desperate night. Being the oldest, I felt I had the weight of my heavy, upside down world sitting on my shoulders.

I turned inside myself and curled up in a ball. I spent hours reading. Being precocious in nature, I read books much too mature for my years. One book in particular will forever be seared into my soft ten year old insides. As the summer grew cool, I picked up The Other by Thomas Tryon. With book in hand, I spent days reading and absorbing the horror, the terror. I was too young to fully understand what I was reading but, I was terrified. I was utterly horrified and scared out of my little mind.

Suddenly? The world was a big, bad, mean place and I now understood that. The mind is a strange thing that can fail you at anytime, releasing the darkness from within. Darkness that you can produce but not even fully understand.

Reading today's blog gave me that same terrible chill that The Other did so many years ago when I was fragile and frightened. The blogger's 'About Me' only offers up this:

Sack Posset: I am a green glass bottle full of filth and bees.

And indeed she is. There is no sense in even going on about the template of this blog. Simply put, I doubt she cares.

Without much to go on, I started with reading a few of the current posts and was oddly intrigued. Wanting to know just exactly what, I was reading I went back to the beginning and it was there that I started the chilling voyage of Sack Posset.

Yesterday I saw the cat with the human face again. It watched me as I passed and it was still staring when I looked back over my shoulder. It insinuated itself into my dreams, where it tried to make me touch it in an inappropriate way and then disappeared under the bed.

It seems that the author is truly that, an author. An author who is deep in the mind of a serial killer, perhaps too deep. Skillfully crafted, the words flow into each other painting a picture of a mind so black and dirty, you feel intimately violated by the stark, fear inducing nothingness of her soul.

However, just like The Other did for me all those years ago, while I was petrified, I also felt wrapped in a web of comfort. I could see the spider closing in to sink it's teeth into my fly flesh, but I was paralyzed and couldn't do anything about it. And, you know what? I just didn't want to.

Step into this world and sometimes you will wonder if the "we's" are actually other people or just the characters inside her head. You'll see glimpses and flashes of the real person that is there, but then you will be tugged right back down into the murk. Snarling, angry words are cleverly twisted around the mundane like watching Britain's Got Talent .

It seemed to me that at some point the author put aside the writings of the killer she has created, and at that point the tone changed ever so slightly. It became lighter and different, but still that blackness is there.

You find yourself imagining that there might just be someone chained to the water heater in the basement, crying for help, as this person clicks away on their computer in a filthy bedroom all day.








Just stay the fuck away from me.

Please.

Another Satisfied Customer

The Sheeple have indeed spoken. Next time try reading the fucking posts and thinking for yourself. Instead of ripping on the sidebar, is it too much to ask for a reviewer to actually read the articles linked there? You're the one who sucks for not even being honest enough to admit you made such a harsh conclusion based on a small random sampling of posts. In my opinion, your review failed to make the case why my book reviews, movie reviews, concert reviews, work anecdotes, etc., are synthesizing or regurgitating when they're on my blog, but on your own individual blogs similar musings are praised to the high heavens by the mutual admiration society of your sad little coterie.

Anyway, I'll be carry on just fine, changing absolutely nothing based on your ridiculous assumptions about my soul, or lack thereof. How fucking dare you? Save the psychobabble for someone more likely to listen to your ravings.

Love, The Warden

Looks like we have another butt-hurt Barbie on our hands.

Better Homes and Bloggers

The other day a friend gave me an impromtu video tour of her lovely home. It was uncluttered and neat and comfortable, with rich colors and personal accents and sentimental corners. Lest you think I've gone all Martha Stewart on you, we were totally drunk, so that may have colored the "aren't we all girly and Suzy Homemaker-ish" vibe. Still, I am a natural voyeur, and I never miss an opportunity to snoop in someone else's home.

My home, on the other hand, is basically decorated by my mother. I realized the other day that almost every single piece of art in the house was given to me or painted by my mother. Much of the furniture has been handed down from Mom, and every time the woman comes to visit she "reorganizes" the joint. I don't personally have much of a mark on my house, which seems to me both perfectly fine and a little concerning at the same time. But Mom is a natural decorator, and I am a natural slob, so it works out ok.

I do, however, love scrolling through design blogs and looking at pretty pictures of other people's homes, other people's ideas, other people's creative, personal, inventive ideas about how to decorate their surroundings. But chances are I'm not going to participate much in the furnishing of my own environment. As much as I might envy those who are able to make their homes unique and personal, lazy trumps everything.

So when I saw that today's reviewee was a collaboratively written design blog, I was both interested and trepidations. Interested because, you know, pretty pictures. But trepidatious because chances are no one here is going to give a rat's squiggly little disease-ridden tail about a design blog. Our tastes generally run to the more word-centric parts of blogging. The more sex-centric, angst-centric, story telling-centric, and pee your pants funny-centric parts, too.

So. Tchochkes. You're design people. Surely you can get a better blog design. I mean, orange and white: blandtastic. But then I hate orange. Three columns? Really? There's way too much clutter here. It's like those, well, tchochkes, my mother gives me that are sweet but that I don't need and they end up piling up on my bookshelves and collecting dust.

Get some tabs, use a two-column design, bump up the font size 'cause my eyes are screamin', and rethink the gadgets and popular posts in your sidebar. I'm not going to harp on the ads because at least they're relevant to your subject matter. But, seriously? "Infolinks" in your text? No. Just, no. Also, your Book Store application doesn't fit within the confines of your blog body. This is where two columns would come in so handy.

For the love of all that's holy get rid of the "Read the rest of the story" links. God, I hate these. Burn in hell, "read the rest of the story" link, you bastard spawn of coding demons. Die, die!

And from an editorial standpoint, consider dropping "such" from your tagline. Doesn't "Because a little decoration is a nice thing" sound better? It does to me.

Otherwise, it's a design site. How good can the writing really be? And how good should I expect it to be? I like looking at pretty things, and I have a boatload of fashion and photography and design blogs in my reader, but my interaction with those blogs is almost entirely restricted to looking at the pretty pictures. And looking at them quickly. I don't spend a lot of time at these sites. They're just eye candy, and I'm not personally invested in them. For example, this post? Looked at the pictures, ignored the text completely. Sorry. I mean, I can get on board with intrusive photos of people's homes because I'm nosey as hell and like to snoop -- not to mention maybe seeing interesting ideas for decorating -- but it's not gripping, evocative, literary, and lyrical stuff.

Not only is it a design site that I can't get excited about, it's a design site for people in Israel. So they've just completely dropped off my radar. I mean, what do I care about buying sheets in Tel Aviv or the predominance of poufs? I don't, that's what. I couldn't give two shits.

Look, the bloggers are no doubt nice people with good and informative things to say about decorating your home in Israel. I can see where your site would be useful to, you know, people decorating heir homes in Tel Aviv. But to me it's just another blog in a sea of them I won't read. Likely the folks who read them love them, and that's as it should be. But you won't be adding me to their numbers, especially with your current design.

All Animals Are Equal

...But some are more equal than others.

Politics are my crack. I admit it, without shame. The first blogs I ever read, after True Porn Clerk Stories, were political. I read Steve Graham (who used to blog at Hog On Ice, now defunct), Straight White Guy, Velociman, and Ellison, and I read the ubiquitous Acid Man, who passed away in 2006.

Steve Graham was actually the person who inspired me to begin blogging, and when he linked to my first post, ever, put me on the personal blogging map. I still have a not-entirely-platonic level of affection towards him, and the thought of him makes me warm in my furry parts.

These were/are all ostensibly political blogs, but they were also deeply personal blogs. Steve blogged about his inability to find a worthwhile woman, and the woman who screwed him over financially during law school, and smoking the world's most perfect piece of pork. And, Ellison blogged about his wife, and what he'd been cooking/eating/listening to recently, and his kids. Rob, the notorious Acid Man, well, he was a fucking train wreck that never ended, in addition to his political blogging. You never knew what Acid Man would be up to, and every day when I clicked in, I halfway expected that he'd have taken his ex-wife hostage with a sawed off shotgun below her chin.

Those were the wild, irreverent heydays of political blogging. You never knew who was going to get fired while working as a political intern and lifting her skirt for political bigwigs, though you could guess. You never knew who was going to get sued by someone they blogged about, though you could guess. You never knew who would die young, though you could guess. You never knew who would make it big, though you could guess.

It was wild, wooly, and a blast.

Political blogs these days are nothing too exciting anymore, particularly in comparison to those days. I still read Andrew Sullivan, of course, and I love him, especially for his ground-breaking coverage of the green revolution in Iran, but most political blogs have become decidedly mainstream, and in doing so, lost what made them fun to read in the first place, and that wasn't the politics, for hell's sake.

This blog, in particular, started off on such a promising note.

I was fired last August after over 17 years at the Transcript. Downsized, as the saying goes. Was I bitter? No, not right away. Now am I bitter? Yes. Add pissed off, panicky, directionless and you get an idea of my mental state. At first I was just relieved, because I thought I had some options work-wise. Now I kind of miss my old job, if not all the people.

(This first post is gonna suck, I can feel it, you can feel it, we all can feel it. It will get better, I promise.)

Now I am down to five stinking unemployment checks left. Five. I owe more money, to credit card companies, etc., than most Third World nations. Some of them, let's face it, are not going to get paid any time soon. And I say this to most of them: too fucking bad.

...Eventually, this blog will be a veritable cornucopia of pop culture insight, political wisdom and overall gems of greatness. Maybe as soon as tomorrow. One never know, do one? But as it stands now, I wake up every day bemoaning my situation, awash in a sea of self-pity, with the clock ticking down on my unemployment checks. Tick, tick, tick...

This is a freaking great post, a promising start. I can see why he was fired, as a copy editor, but the voice is real, and there is some train wreck here that engages me.

It stays bitter, too, and this bitter is a good thing when it renders up tasty morsels like this:

The rest of the paper includes the requisite celebrity worship and mindless designer brand name consumerism. On the cover is a picture of Eva Longoria. Why is this overexposed, talentless bimbo newsworthy today? Well, because she was seen kissing another overexposed celebrity at some L.A. club. That's what passes for news these days at metro. God help us.

Or this:

That's two strikes against Air America in my book, getting rid of Marc Maron and now, at least temporarily, no more Mike Malloy raving against Bush & Company. That's substantial fucking with stuff I grew to like. It's kind of like when Au Bon Pan discontinued their chicken pot pies and, ultimately, their spinach and cheese croissant, but obviously on a deeper, more gut-wrenching level. You don't miss your water till your well runs dry. I think Shakespeare said that. Or maybe Hank Williams.

I liked this blog in 2006. However, by early 2007, the Warden starts getting on my last good nerve by doing nothing more than synthesizing news articles and regurgitating them. He also begins to play with his fonts in unattractive ways, so a blog post starts out in a nice normal 11 pt arial type, and then morphs into 10 pt Times New Roman, and then segways into 14 pt blue Arial Bold, and then changes back into 11 pt Arial. Din't yer mama teach you not to play with your fonts, particularly in PUBLIC?

WTF?

Knock that shit off, you typeographical tool. It's fucking annoying.

And, your blog design is crap. From the over-populated sidebar to occasionally posting in centered or left-sided text, to whateverthefuck you have going on with your undersized header bar and the intelligible type below it, this shit needs work. I'd like to encourage you to trash this design, permanently, and go with something standard. If you don't want one of the generic blogger designs, how about something simple like this? Just try not to fuck it up with a bunch of pictures in your sidebar that are meaningless to everyone but you.

So, Warden, what are the fucking odds that you could locate the soul that your writing once had? If you did, I would consider reading it. As it is now, though, it isn't anything that isn't being done more professionally and better by the Huffington Post, the Pajamas Media people, or others.

It's the soul that sets these things apart. You had it in 2006, and somewhere, you lost it. And, that's a shame. Maybe it's impossible to blog for 3 years without losing your way. Your blog makes that case, loud and clear.

All I know is that you didn't suck, but now you do, and you've sucked long and hard for years now. Can that level of suck be fixed? I don't know, and frankly, you've given me no reason to care.

Guest Reviewers

We need some.

Go here if you're interested, and apply for the job.

A Litany of Langorous Longings

Ah, summer, what power you have to make us suffer and like it. -Russell Baker

Yes I'm back and yes, I am aware you probably didn't even notice I was gone. I cast off the dominatrix gear in favour of the gauzy livery of the season. I traipsed across some of the most bucolic beaches, I savored the most theurgical sunsets, I sipped potent potions until I settled into the halcyon disposition I yearned for. And yes, I took my thesaurus along fuck you very much. The summer has just begun in earnest and here I sit, ready to review a blog whilst I down my umpteenth Arnold Palmer and try not to wilt.

Susan, in an entry dated back in April, contemplates whether the malefeasants here at Ask actually read the blogs they have been punished, uh, I mean assigned. Sadly Susan and not entirely lucky for you, we do. Our personal quest to bring readers read-worthy blogs like this and this and this means we have to slog through blogs that are as feculent as the end of the state fair's overfilled port-o-pottys.

Susan also considers the crew here when she tells us,

they fucking scare me. Yikes. I mean, how about that guy with the big eyebrow? Holy Mother of God. Of course, one lucky blog submitter landed herself a "guest reviewer", who was actually kind of nice. Well, she only tore up about half an ass that day. I would take half an ass tearing anyday from this group.

Susan punctuates that with a nice little graphic at the end.

Now dear, if you did indeed get Nutjobber, I'm sure the whole acorn in the arse thing would be right up his alley, pun intended. However, you got Miss Missives, and I am less about ass tearing and acorn shoving and more about spiky boot poking. Hope you're not too tender fleshed.

Your design is okay. I can get behind the header but the small font on the red background gave me a temple-pounding headache. I am biased against the three column design because I never know where to look. I would ditch the three-column and add some tabs for things like your blogroll and awards, as they are better suited off the main page. Things like your About Me and Archives should be at the top.

As far as the writing goes, I think I know what you're going for but you're not quite getting there. The kid stuff is fine, contrary to popular belief, we are not fundamentally anti-mommy blogger around here, but it should be tight and it should be funny. This has potential as does this but they need to be heavily edited and scrap the openers which would have made me quit reading before I had ever got to the good stuff were I not reading in the capacity of reviewer. This is a good example of tight, it's the on-two punch and it's funny.

On a personal note, the reading experience for me was a bit whiny. I know, I know, it's your place to vent as you cautioned in your About Me. Listen, I know how difficult it must be to navigate the waters of divorce and exes and current husband's exes, and ex-exes and currents of exes and new ones and those other ones and well, their kids too. In the realm of divorce, it's rarely about just one parent being the bad guy. When you go on and on about your husband's ex-wife it makes you seem threatened or bitter and I don't think that's you. Seriously, she does not deserve mention on your About Me page. You are so much more than that and I know you have so much more to say. I think you have some good reasons to be angry but I would focus your writing, when you feel compelled to get something off your chest, on what she has done versus your opinion of her. Readers will get the gist based on her actions and you won't appear to have New Wife Syndrome. Or don't, what do I know.

As a whole, this was a little Meh with a side of one wee Star. Most posts went on too long, editing would go a long way to making this far more readable. Susan has snark but she needs to know when to stop writing. There is a lot of potential for great stories like crushing your kid's lemonade stand hopes, but seriously, you need to put a few stitches in that gaping hole because that shit ain't tight.

"When you can take the pebble from my hand, it will be time for you to leave"

I didn't know how to start this review. For the first paragraph or so of my reviews, I generally like to pull out some piece of the personality or experience of the blogger I'm reviewing to relate to or make fun of. I think of how their lives relate or don't relate to mine, I tell a charming or embarrassing story from my past, I make fun of myself and them, I tell you who I am and who they are: pretty much I find some way to make it about me, too. Because I'm just that self-centered. Also it makes for good story telling. Don't tell me it doesn't because I won't believe you (Remember? Self-centered.).

I feel like over the past year or so of reviewing blogs I've started to know what I'm doing. I've been feeling rather old-hat, really: like I've seen it all now, the good blogs and the terrible blogs and the blogs that are getting by but need some work. There haven't been all that many surprises for me lately, and the reviews come quick and dirty and easily. More often than not, frankly, I feel better than the unwashed blogging masses, which sounds really puffed up and full of myself, and, guess what, I am sometimes. (Both better than the unwashed masses and full of myself, at the same time and independent of the other. I'm also over-explainy and unduly fond of parentheticals.)

But this week I struggled.

First impressions: Nice design, organized, good about page, love the tabs and the FAQs, hate the ads, but in today's economy I'm becoming more lax on that (shill!). The archives are all tidy, but I don't like how they automatically roll back up -- sometimes static wins.

Digging in: The dating chronicles are amusing, although she reveals a slight tendency toward superficiality, which is probably forgivable under the auspices of online dating. Also, she realizes she has issues, and I like people who own their foibles. She wears Black Phoenix Alchemy Lab perfume, which is my absolute fave (I wear their O). But I can't figure out why she sometimes writes "noh" instead of "no."

I want to read the entire thing from the beginning, which is a good sign, although there is a marked gap between 2004 and 2008. Anna, I'd like a bit of a re-introduction when you start blogging again in 2008 -- what happened in the meantime? Now all the sudden there's a kid and a husband.

There are posts about things and products and such, which is fine by me. I'm a material girl and I like a review once in a while. And, true to her tag line, there are pop cultural references (I've never watched a single episode of John & Kate, but I don't have to -- the internet tells me all I need to know.) and thoughts about being a mother that in no way step over the line into dreaded cutesy mommy blogger territory.

Here's where my struggle comes in: I feel like I can't really critique her. Anna has got this shit down. She posts often, she writes so very well, she's insightful and charming and she's got a blog design that works and matches her personality. I like her. A lot. If I didn't have all this pesky work to do, I'd have pulled up close and clicked through her entire oeuvre. I no doubt will at some point. She strikes a balance between revealing herself in bits and pieces and just downright entertaining us. She's a smartypants and she knows it but isn't all sneery about it, and I love that. But she's also totally neurotic and acerbic and funny and honest, which I love even more. I find myself in the unenviable position of wishing she'd review my blog instead of the other way around. I figure she can teach me a thing or two.

Then come sit here beside me.

July 6, 2:41 p.m., I'm on my ass on the couch, watching America's Next Top Model. Unwashed, sexed up slept in hair, still in a satin babydoll nightie. I haven't even brushed my teeth yet this afternoon. Oh, yeah. You know you want somma this.

So, today's blog is called If You Can't Say Something Nice. You'd think that would be a hit here. But, it's a miss.

Randi was reviewed back in January, and has since moved to wordpress and done some house cleaning (something I haven't gotten around to today). But, her work isn't finished.

Randi, your new blog design LOOKS a lot better, but you've only gone halfway. You've left a lot of shit lying around in your sidebar that should be tucked neatly behind those header tabs: About me, your blogroll, and pictures. You also should consider a drop-down archive list to make things even cleaner.

But, even if you do all of that, you still aren't going to be my afternoon cuppa coffee. Your blog is so much like a girl on ANTM who just doesn't bring it. You're there, you're doing stuff, but there is no life or spark or fierceness to it.

I mean, you're writing about why you WON'T be seeing a movie (and using someone else's words to do it). Do you really think anyone wants to read that?

Your blog is still just a recounting of your day's or weekend's activities, with no spice or focus. One thing that would really help your blog, I think, is to make each post about ONE THING. Just one. Not a list, not a weekend activity regurgitation, but ONE SUBJECT, and ONE SUBJECT ONLY. This post, for instance, is really TWO posts, and should have been broken up into two: The story of your husband's crankiness, and the story about your dogs and the chickens. You spend way too much time on "I was here, I did this," and not enough on fleshing out the event or focus of the story. A blog isn't a chronicle, it's a place to tell the stories of your life. And, unless you tell those stories, you won't suck people in and make them interested in your life.

For instance, you tell us about your 4th of July weekend, and mention that you took the best pictures, ever, but you don't tell us how you did it. You tell us you went to a parade, but you don't make it come alive for us.

I've never been to a 4th of July parade in a little town in Vermont. Your experiences would be novel to me, and yet, you don't share the details that would bring the parade to life...the smells, the sights, the small town fire crew blaring their sirens on their fire truck.

In January, Ginny told you:

The average person who looks at a blog isn't going to slog through hundreds of posts to get back to that one story you told that was worth reading. You've only got a few seconds to catch us lazy-asses.

My advice? Do your blog Kegels, Randi. Tighten that shit up. Only post when you have something to say.

She was right six months ago, and you still haven't followed her advice.

So, let's try this again, in photographer terms. Look at your blog posts as pictures. You only have a few seconds to catch a reader's interest, so you have to say a lot with a little bit. You have to narrow in your focus, find a single item in a large landscape, and go for a piece of the whole.

A blog post is this:
















(Image by Chris Ridley.)




Not this:
Does that help you visualize what you are shooting for? In telling a story, it is the small stuff, the little details, that matter, not amount of words. It's a single snapshot, not a novel. It's a door, not a mansion. It's a moment, not a lifetime.

Who am I to say your blog sucks? I'm a mom whose kids are out of town, sitting in all my unwashed glory on a big comfy couch on a Monday afternoon, taking a day off work.

But, your blog bored the bejesus out of me. You aren't stretching, and you aren't ready for this review, yet. But, you are so like 75% of the blogs that submit here weekly that I'm reviewing you anyway, in hopes that they (and you) will learn something.

Don't bother with the new tricks, just shoot him

I had two choices yesterday evening, sit and watch more Michael Jackson breaking news, or write up this review of a 'Gringo in paradise'.

(Is that one choice, or two?)

Anyway, I went with the gringo, because he has more life in him. Barely.

Gringo doesn't put himself forward very well, he describes himself as 'an average 50 something who has retired early'. If you haven't slid off your chair in excitement, let me add that the blog is visually terrible.

I think Blogger are having a chuckle amongst themselves by offering it as a template, but seriously gringo, do YOU like the too-much-fibre shade of brown your efforts are decked out in?

You live a life of leisure on a Mexican island, why not brighten it up a little?

Onwards and er...upwards. You bored the hell out of me. Really. I went back as far as March and had to stop because from a starting point of just being bored and feeling a little sympathetic towards you, you ended up making me bored and irritated.

You are fixated on the act of blogging (and bloggers), and not any art that may accompany it. You meticulously churn out posts without putting an ounce of effort into crafting them.

You nearly made me cry when I saw you write this:
'Normally I spend Sunday afternoons putting together my five posts for the week. All neat and tidy, ready to go at 6:05 AM every morning.'

Jesus, Mary and Joseph. If you spent that afternoon writing one post with a bit of heart or spirit instead, it would be time much better spent.

Whether you live in Rome, or New Jersey, or Tbilisi, or Mexico, it will never make interesting reading to dedicate a post to how you got some cheap limes.

You wrote the only account of civil disturbance in existence that is FDA approved for treatment of insomnia. Bullet holes do not equate to bullet points.

I lost all hope when I spotted a glaring contradiction when you moan about kids not wearing shirts in town, or 'gasp' a woman's bra strap showing, yet you have no problem in perving on the topless beach and posting individual's pictures on the internet.

Dirty old man. Dirty boring old man.