A guest review by Rassles:The Ask Overlords wanted this review days ago. It’s like fucking homework.
No, I lie. It’s more like when you’re itching to play baseball, because at one point in your life you made an outstanding third baseperson, and then ten years go by and your friends are all, “play on our team” and you’re excited and first, and then you’re all, “okay but I’m superbusy and distracted right now because there are pressing episodes of Legend of the Seeker to watch on Hulu” and they’re all “what’s that” and you’re all “nevermind I mean It’s Always Sunny” and then the roguish Rajah of Reference in the group starts singing ‘Dayman’ and everyone laughs heartily, secretly thankful for Netflix, and you remember when YOU were the roguish Rajah of Reference back when you drank for sundayfundays instead of watching WGN all afternoon in your Double Dare sweatpants.
And that preceding paragraph is my formal apology for both (a) lately turning in my very long review and (b) neglecting to write a more suitable introduction. Then again, I could just take what I know about this blogger and my sweet intro and whip it into THE ULTIMATE MASH UP.
Speaking of which, when did “mash up” join the Common Tongue? I don’t know if I like it. Speaking of liking things, this blogger doesn’t like anything. Or anyone. At least, that’s what he wants us to believe, fucking hoser. Probably. It’s a theme he sticks to early in his blog (he’s only been writing this one since April) and lately he’s straying. It’s fine.
I Probably Don’t Like You is basically a collection of satirical essays on whatever pops into The Professor’s brain. That is not his official name but it’s the one I’m giving him. Yeah, he teaches at a college in Canada. Toronto? Probably. And even though he probably don’t like me, I really like him, despite the salty essay-ness of his posts.
I’m officially taking a stance against using an essay format in basically any form of writing, because it makes me feel like I’m reading a goddamn essay and essays are wicked dumb. But with his writing – okay, it’s like during each introduction he’s taking a slow, deliberate, annoying-ass cruuuuuuunch from a fresh apple right behind my fucking ear, and my neck trembles and locks in aggravation and I want to swing around and drive the whole royal gala up his nose with the heel of my palm, but then he offers me a bite and I accept, lingering through the crunch myself, and I can’t help nodding in savvy satisfaction, because it’s a pretty damn good apple.
For someone with the dry, acute skills of The Professor, the expository essay is acceptable. I don’t drift towards it naturally, because I like to be thrown right into the fuck of things from the get-go, but it’s a personal style issue and I’ll overlook it. He’s adept and deadpan in an affable, jaded kind of way.
I do not like the read more links. I DO NOT LIKE THE READ MORE LINKS. Professor, I understand you want them there because you’ve got some long ass posts, but I hate them. Drives me bonkers. It is a damn good thing you’re funny. You have solid pacing and generally well-placed asides.
Most posts are ironic anecdotes wrapped up with a buh-dum ching epigram that’s full of cheese. And cheese is delicious. This is not a day-in-the-life blog, but it is a unique opinion blog, which makes it personal, but I’ve said this before, and I am an Expert In Everything: put a little more self in there, because it’ll smooth personal credibility into the tartness of your words, helping readers distinguish your intelligent business from everyday snark blogs. Things will feel more genuine like they do in this post, which I am linking three times because I love it.
Like with many other bloggers, readers must endure the two most frustrating banes of blogging following blatant douchebaggery and the daily rehash: his shit is long (we can smell our own, sir) and he’s a humor blogger.
Cool points: The Professor efficiently name-drops the fuck out of things I support, like Robert Heinlein and Gilligan’s Island and Firefly and Proust. Okay, maybe not Proust. Okay, sometimes Proust. I’m a big fan of the name-drop, but more importantly I’m a big fan of not necessarily linking said drop, which he doesn’t. He assumes his readers are in-the-know, and I fucking like things that way. Good golly, he’s on his way to being a Rajah of Reference, but not quite…more like the Knave of Reference. With tart. Buh-dum CHING.
Get it? You know, because of the Knave of hearts, and he stole some tarts? Get it? GET IT?
Oh, even my weak jokes crack my shit up.
Also, he has an unhealthy obsession with posting pictures of Avril Lavigne,. It’s freaky. She fucking looks just like my sister and I keep on wondering who dared her to get Glamour Shots.
So this mash up is a failure. Whatever. In the end Professor, I’m giving you three stars. I dig this.
Hello, everyone, and welcome to THE LONGEST REVIEW EVER.
ReplyDeleteThank you for turning in your homework, Rassles. I thought I was gonna have to beat yo ass.
ReplyDeleteI found The Professor through Humor Bloggers Dot com - HA! so there.
ReplyDeleteAnyone, he's one of the good ones and deserves at least 3 stars.
I meant "Anyway"
ReplyDeleteGreat review! I really liked the post about "last times" too. I wrote a similiar post a few months ago (well similiar in that it's about not knowing something is the last time..but his is probably better)
ReplyDeleteHere's the link if you're curious
http://www.warmchocolatemilk.com/2009/09/last-time.html
Good call, Rassles. I like this guy. That last times post gave me goosebumps.
ReplyDeleteHumor Bloggers is still a waste.
ReplyDeleteKind of like how no one on "How I met your mother" is funny except for Neil Patrick Harris. Sometimes Jason Segal. That doesn't mean it's a good show - because all of the other characters make me want to kill myself - it means NPH is funny. And sometimes Jason Segal.
I don't have the attention span that this blog
ReplyDeleteWhat were we talking about? Oh yeah, that "read more" thing? He sure isn't shittin, there's a whole LOT more.
I think he might be hogging the internet and not leaving enough words for the rest of us.
I don't have the attention span for any blog right now. Especially my own.
ReplyDeleteIt's like I have so much fucking reading to catch up on I'm afraid to look in my reader.
Yeah, he's got a lot to say, but he says it better than 80% of the other bloggers out there.
ReplyDeleteI'm actually surprised I liked it so much. I am also not cut out for reviewing blogs, I realized, because I focus waaaay to much on the rhythm of people's words as opposed to what they're actually saying.
Blues, don't you find that lately blogland's all a-blurring together? And you're kind of annoyed with it?
ReplyDeleteHey, I got a question. How the heck do you get a link to work in a comment, anyway?? Anybody know?
ReplyDeleteAll Toronto blogs are excellent. I think there's something in the water up there.
ReplyDeleteBlatchtie Christford.
ReplyDeleteJust gonna sit and smugly get that reference for a while.
Talk amongst yourselves.
Rassles, except for my loved ones that I've been visiting forever, I can bring myself to visit another blog, at least not right now. I don't even want to like a blog because I don't have time for my all time faves. And the less I read, the less likely I am to write.
ReplyDeleteI guess you call this a rut. It sucks.
That blurring effect I think comes from not reading a certain blogger long enough, though, even when they're decent. I don't find the blurring with my favorites that I've gotten to know. But it's only cause I've given them time. And cause they eventually kick ass.
I concur. With just about everything. Also, FIREFLY!
ReplyDeleteSo this is what's been going on! I've had over 250 hits in the last two days -- that's more than I generally get in two weeks. I guess I owe it all to you.
ReplyDeleteThat said, however, I do feel the need to correct a rather glaring error in your review. You say that I write "long ass posts." That is completely untrue. A "long ass" post would be a post about a long ass, and I have never written such a thing. What I write are "long-ass posts," with the hyphen indicating that "long-ass" is acting as an adjective.
I'm also a bit annoyed that you mentioned "mash up," questioning its inclusion in the "Common Tongue." In a recent episode of Glee the combination of two songs was referred to as a "mash up." This caused me to miss part of the rest of the probably clever dialogue as I yelled at the screen, "It's a frickin' 'medley' you rootless morons!"
I like "rootless moron" as an insult. It combines the nastiness of "moron" with the peculiar, yet oddly negative quality of "rootless," and will often puzzle your target long enough to give you a running head start.
Not that this is important when yelling at the television set, but it could be valuable information for you in the future.
In any event, I was planning to write some very negative things about this increasingly pervasive term, "mash up," but now that you've mentioned it, and in a review on my own blog no less, I feel like I'd simply be tagging along.
I will, however, take the "Salty Professor" appellation quite happily.
Nice meeting you guys, and thanks for the review.
PS:
@JohnnyB -- Fancy running across you in a place like this!
@Ginny -- Nice catch!
And a comment like that one, right up there? That's how you get into my reader. Long-ass. Heh heh heh.
ReplyDeleteI agree, Professor, that this mash up business is annoying. It's in commercials, anchors use it in the news. Drives me nuts. I didn't realize Glee was that big of a deal.
ReplyDeleteI believe that someone asked a question:
ReplyDelete"How the heck do you get a link to work in a comment, anyway?? Anybody know?"
Yes. I do know.
You use HTML. It's worth learning some.
Like this.
Medved just made me spit out my tea. Funny.
ReplyDeleteI don't get how people can blog without learning at least a little html. And it's not like it's particularly difficult, either.
ReplyDeleteLook up: "How to create a hyperlink" on google. Jesus.
p.s. The term mashup predates Glee by at least a decade. Just saying. And a mashup is significantly different from a medly because a mashup incorporates elements of both songs into one cohesive whole, whereas, in a medley, you move from one identifiable song to another one.
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ReplyDeleteI've been hearing the term "mashup" for some time before Glee, but when they used it to describe what was no more than a two-song medley it flipped me over the edge. (And I like Glee.)
ReplyDeleteAs Love Bites points out, a real "mash up" puts songs together so that each one sort of overlays the other. But that's been around for a long, long time (often known as quodlibet). A good example is Peter Schickele's "P.D.Q. Bach," a fictional member of the Bach family whose manuscripts are always found in unlikely places (such as the bottoms of bird cages). His music, which Schickele has been producing since 1965, consists of segments from other pieces mashed together, often played on less-than-traditional instruments (such as the slide whistle). It's clever, but despite the often sophisticated knowledge and ability shown in its creation and performance, nobody has ever mistaken it for real composition.
This is not true of the more modern form of mashup, in which a performer takes bits from various songs, puts them together while talking over them, and releases them as his or her own "art." For that we already had a phrase: "talentless plagiarism."
And quit being mean to warmchocmilk about her lack of html skills or I'm going to have to make you sit in the "time out" chair. I can do it, you know. I have the power.
Frank, you can't bully the nerd bullies. We're on our turf.
ReplyDeleteAlso...
ReplyDelete•Being mean isn't logical, and will therefore cause you too lose each time.
Somehow, I question the qualifications of this author.
My first intro to mashup was Best of Bootie. Yes, I'm exactly that sophisticated.
ReplyDeleteAnd you can download free mashups here, for the uninitiated.
ReplyDeleteJust for clarification: that link, "Stop being mean" or whatever it is, was included only in jest. I don't want anyone to think I'd actually associate myself with the kind of lame, "let's-all-be-nice" New Age garbage it represents.
ReplyDeleteBut I'll still fearlessly defend warmchocmilk against all attacks until such times as someone actually finds out where I live and can threaten me personally, in which case I'll fold like an old road map (wrinkled and bent in all the wrong directions).
FWIW, I wasn't attacking warmchocolatemilk, although saying her handle out loud does kinda gross me out, having had three kids who would regularly leave sippy cups of chocolate milk hidden for weeks under things, such that I would wander around for days wondering "who the fuck died in here?" (And, *yes* I did just say "sippy cup". Suck it, geeks!)
ReplyDeleteAllow me to undigress: I wasn't attacking her so much as rather callously suggesting that a simple Google or Amazon search would have yielded the result for her.
I am a HUGE fan of self-serve education.
Nice review Rassledazzles, didn't seem longer than the usual ones-- I am also suffering from bloggers block, and reading block, probably due to my impending trip to Florida-- but I'll check this blog out anyway, cause if you like it...
ReplyDeletetl;dr
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