Chocolatopia and Vanillaville

Wow, I'm totally unmotivated. So is the rest of the crew on Ask, as if you couldn't tell that. This week, as a reward to myself for actually reviewing a blog, I treated myself this one.

You know I'm white, right? If you needed confirmation of that, just check the avatar at left. Whiter than white, y'all.

Today, though, I'm crossing the blogosphere's vast color divide and reviewing fung'ke blak chik.

And, all I can say is: MORE. Please. It's okay if you piss people off. We like it.

She writes:

This afternoon I was talking to my friend Rippa, and I told him that if I really wrote about half of the stuff I think on a daily basis, that I’m guaranteed to get even more hate mail and so-called anonymous emails (remember people nothing is EVER anonymous) than I already do.

Our philosophy here is, if you don't like our opinion, we'll stab you in the eye. I can't help feeling there are commonalities between us. Clearly, either of us would happily throw down and cut a bitch. And, I think that's a beautiful thing. You should do it more often, Fung'ke. Let it all hang out, tell us what you feel, give us front row seats in your brain. I like it when you do that.

Apparently, blogging is on the list of "stuff white people like," because blogs written by people of color are drastically underrepresented on the blogosphere. That may be because black folks aren't as hopelessly narcissistic as white folks, or as interminably emotionally needy. All I know is that the melanin-deficient are online in droves, making the sphere relentlessly monochromatic. Nonetheless, I can't help wishing that blogging would start falling into the realm of "stuff black people like," right next to rims and crunk. (Also, why isn't there a stuffblackpeoplelike.com)? WTF? That could be some funny shit there. I see that stuffeducatedblackpeoplelike.com is also gone, and that's too bad. My co-worker Sam and I used to laugh until tears ran down our faces over that shit.

Beyond that, do you know who else is missing from view in American society? Middle class, white collar, educated black people. These folks are not only missing online, but they are missing in media coverage in general. I mean, Will Smith and Jada Pinkett Smith are on Entertainment Tonight all the time, and you can't watch a news broadcast without seeing more than a helping of coverage of your standard issue crackhead/junkie/gangsta/pimp/thugs, but just plain old regular black folks? M.I.A.

I'm not sure if CNN doesn't know these folks exist, or if they just don't care, but I think there are too few blogs like fung'ke's out there in the sphere.

Having said that, it's not perfect.

Here's what you should work on, babycakes:

Your template is...weird. I don't like that strange freaky thing you do where your more recent post is dragged up into your header. It's confusing. I don't like the second line of text in the header describing your blog (:adj. characterized by originality and modishness; unconventionalism) because black on a dark gray background is a waste. Either bold that shit up and put it in white, or just delete it entirely.

You have entirely too much bling. You know if you saw some girl walking down the street with a grill, and hooker shoes, and way too much cheap gold jewelry, that you'd roll your eyes and be all, "Who she think she is?"

But, apparently, you don't think a thing about tarting up your blog until it's ghetto fabulous. Stop it. It's fine to mention you're on facebook, but you don't need an advertisement that's 4 inches long cluttering up your sidebar. I'd investigate coding in a drop-down list for your archives. And, you should highlight your BEST posts in your sidebar, not necessarily the ones that have the most comments. Pick them yourself instead of having some gadget pick them for you. You know what you've written that you're most proud of, highlight 6-8 of those posts so people can easily find them. Get rid of the stupid thingfo, and the stupid live feed, and the stupid ads. Every single gadget that you put on your blog is going to slow down your page loading times and make it less likely that someone will take the time to read your words. Beyond that, it just looks trashy.

The posts are interesting, ranging from an exposition of CNN's Black in America series to a truly horrifying period.

The posts can run a little long, and are truly expository writing, each blog is on a particular subject and usually ends up as a full-blown essay. The posts need editing (for grammar and punctuation issues), and could benefit from a thorough purging at times to make them cleaner and less wordy. But they are an interesting read.

I like her. Also, she has great tits. And for some of you, that will be enough.

I give her two stars: