Drugmonkey on My Back

You know when you finally get around to visiting your grandmother and you have to sit for what feels like a millenia on a plastic covered couch sucking on the 10 year old piece of candy she squeezed into your hand when you came in the door, in a room that's about as hot as the inside of a volcano and all she does is drone on and on and on and on about her arthritic knee and her high blood pressure and her faulty pacemaker? Very valid complaints, those. And you know that you're supposed to deeply care about all of it, that it matters, and that she has every right to bitch and moan because getting old and decrepit is just total suck. But fuck it all, you can't wait for it to be over because it's just so incessant and upsetting and why the fuck is it so god damn hot in here? Well today's blogger is your grandma, except instead of complaining about goiters and osteoporosis he rails against those that are supposed to help treat those things, namely "Big Pharma" and those who are fundamentally (and, in his opinion, stupidly) opposed to a government run health care system. There's a lot of negativity to take in, but just like that visit to your grandma, in the end it's kind of worth it.

Drugmonkey is a pharmacist and he has acquired a lot of knowledge about the important topics he bitches about in his 20 year career. He comes off as somewhat condescending and is highly dismissive of those who hold opposing opinions. I'm not saying that he's wrong. In fact, I agree with his stance on a lot of these issues. I'm one of the few relatively young people I know that has needed to use my health insurance quite a bit. And it saddens me to think that there are millions of people who don't have the same option to get their healthcare needs met easily and affordably. But that doesn't mean I want to spend my time reading post after post espousing government run healthcare and exposing the deceptive tactics of pharmaceutical companies.

Luckily, Drugmonkey can write well and his angry tirades are infused with a healthy dose of humor (Oh sweet Jesus, that was an unintentional pun. I fucking hate puns but I hate rewriting sentences even more sometimes. I'm so lazy). His "Pill Counting" posts are particularly funny. For some reason those "day in the life" of your sometimes friendly, neighborhood pharmacist stories were more compelling and interesting to me than the more heavy "sick teenage girl denied a liver transplant" fare. Honestly, I thought this was hilarious. There really are so many morons roving about. Drugmonkey and I have this in common: we are both simultaneously disgusted and fascinated by stupid people.

I'm not usually one to care so much about the way a blog looks as long as the content is interesting and the writing is kick ass. But this blog template is so unbelievably boring that it bears mentioning. The white text on black background makes me feel like I'm being schooled. The only thing that's missing is a green alphabet header image. In fact, it currently has no header image, so anything would be an improvement.

This blog's subject matter is very important. It makes me ashamed of my own blog's content, which is so petty in comparison. Drugmonkey's anger about the health care crisis is fueled by his compassion and his desire to help people. He cares enough about health care reform to devote a lot of effort to educating people about it and also to incite others to action. So for his quality writing and admirable cause I dispense

Newsflash: If you tell me you're funny, you already suck

Imagine a friend sets you up with some dude. When you ask what he looks like, your friend can't even remember, probably because there is absolutely nothing about his colorless appearance that distinguishes him in any way from the 6 billion other people walking around. He's blander than cardboard dipped in liquefied brown rice.

But you can get beyond looks and so you agree to a phone conversation that could potentially turn into a date if he dazzles you with his personality.

The dude calls you up and for a few seconds seems normal, even coherent, besides the fact that he speaks about himself in third person and goes on and on about his childhood for the first 20 seconds of your conversation, and has a terrible habit of repeating stupid shit he's already said. You decide to let it slide assuming maybe he's a poor planner and didn't know what the fuck to say.

Before you have even had a full minute to decide how this person comes across, he informs you that he is funny, and lets on that he has Humor Bloggers Disease, the bloggers' STD of self-flattery usually based on the number of morons they can get to click on a banner in their ugly-ass sidebar. In mere seconds, his lexical frying pan just killjoyed your disappointed face.

Now that he has prematurely publicized his funniness, thereby insulting you by assuming you lack the wherewithal to decide what funny consists of, every single thing that now comes out of his unmemorable pie hole is examined with unmitigated scrutiny. This then renders whatever would have been even remotely funny no longer fucking funny at all.

Three fat jokes, one Muslim joke, one Mexican joke, and one retard joke later and you tell him:

You know what?









And you hang up the phone.

I Kissed a Girl and I Liked It

When I saw the title of today's blog, Lessons from the Kissing Booth, I was filled with anticipation. I mean kissing usually leads to sex, and who doesn't want to read about sex? Alas, the title was a big tease as there was little kissing to be found and I was left scratching my head wondering how the blog title was at all relevant to the content of the blog. Considering Samantha was an English major maybe it's a reference to some great work of literature or something completely symbolic that's gone right over my simple little head.

There were 6 years worth of posts to peruse so I could only read a sampling of them. At first I found the blog to be a bit tedious, but after a while I began to appreciate that Samantha is a skilled writer. I found myself melting into her blog, hypnotized by her pretty, pretty words and lulled by the musical quality of her work. Though quite beautiful, her writing has an aloof quality that has the tendency to distance the reader. I get the sense that, at times, she is more interested in flexing her verbal muscles than in sharing a part of herself with us. There are moments when I feel she is being purposely vague about something important, while still managing to artfully capture minor details of an experience. I find it frustrating. Sometimes people are too poetic for their own good. I did find a few posts that elaborated on some rather personal and painful history, so there may be a reason why she tends to skirt around some significant details of her experiences. Not everything can be faced head on.

Samantha is a well-rounded, well-read, well-educated and well-traveled single woman. From what I can tell she has dealt with a lot of tragedy in her 26 years. Despite all that she has endured, she still seems to be enamored with life and all it’s small miracles, beauties and possibilities. It’s an outlook I admire. I wish I could see the world through her lens, in such sharp and illuminated detail. I kind of love her, actually. How could you not?

So. Hello there. I'm samantha. I like dirty jokes and cursing like a sailor, red shoes and argyle, potato chips, puppies, beer, and the word "pulchritudinous." I like to spend weekday evenings in bars or at home with my tambourie and the Northwest's finest indie pop. I do not like people who cheat, telephones, doing the dishes, lettuce, or the look I get when the bartender doesn't think I'm old enough to be in there. My doctor has confirmed that I am finally 5'1" tall. I weigh less than three numbers but no you cannot lift me up to see.

I like daisies, most of all. Daisies and hugs that last just a little too long.

I suggest that Samantha use the preceding paragraph as her "About Me" because it is far superior to what is currently there. In fact, when I read the About Me, saw the butterfly header image and the dismal grey background, I wasn't too excited about reading the blog. Which is a shame because it really should be read. The one complaint I do have is that her archived posts are not titled. She does, however, apply titles to her posts in the “Sometimes Worth Remembering” and “Traveling” sections. The lack of titles in her archives made it impossible for me to link to some of them here.

I don’t think “Lessons from the Kissing Booth” is a blog for everyone. If you want funny, down to earth posts then this blog is not for you. But if you want artfully crafted introspection, give Samantha a read. I have bestowed upon her:

Land of wonder, spices, mystery, and incredibly dull bloggers

India has attacked us again. I blame Crowley, who I'm certain is somehow responsible for the fact that all of the blogs up for review in the queue right now are from India.

Fuck me sideways with a pickle. One of these pieces of refuse is clearly dead, so I'm discarding it. One has opted out on being reviewed. The other two aren't enough, singularly, to deserve an entire post.

First, Summer Diary. Ugly black & white template, and I have no idea what this person is doing. I like teenagers, I had a house full of them on Saturday, but this blog is like attempting to decipher meaningless gibberish posted on random coconuts and tossed into the ocean to arrive willy nilly on the shores of our brains.

I feel dumber for having spent 20 minutes on the site.

Fuck you for submitting to us, you stupid twat.



Secondly, this one. God save us from the unrelenting angst of teenagers. Were we all this inwardtwisted awkwardness? But some of it holds drops of promise. To that promise, I say...use good grammar. Choose your words more carefully. If you write dialogue, make it cleaner and more clearly identify who is speaking. Keep writing. Clean up your sidebar, and find a better place for the quote under your header bar. Don't try so hard to be unique, but instead focus on distilling your words until they are really and truly yours.

I give you a single star, work upwards to the rest.



These are my missives to India, sent in a digital bottle.

p.s. More importantly, if you were going to be an ironic, made-up superhero, who would you be?

Catcher in the Why, God, Why?

Indian bloggers tend to fare poorly on review around these parts. So when I received my assignment and saw that it was, in fact, a young Indian blogger I'd be reviewing, I was understandably apprehensive. But I'm an open-minded gal so I delved right in, determined to form an unbiased opinion. One thing became perfectly clear to me right from the start: The author of Slow Tumbling Life is afflicted with that naval-gazing disease which renders him overly fascinated with every little thought in his head. I empathize; I too have suffered from this same affliction. But he has an exaggerated case of this particular illness. This guy is so fascinated by his own mind that he expressed a desire to buy some techno device that would enable him to have a conversation with himself.

It's difficult for me to describe what exactly this blog is about. There are posts about time travel, boring, overly detailed descriptions of mundane events, and fictional conversations with his dog, Cookie (which are, in essence, conversations with himself). This blogger can write very well, actually, but the problem is that you have to dig through a lot of boring shit to find the good stuff. His blog about being sent to boarding school at the age of 6 was one such treasure. But then he gives us this, which is quite frankly the most boring combination of words I have ever had the misfortune to lay my eyes upon.

He likens himself to Holden Caulfield, which is really annoying to me. Instead of an actual profile we get a quote from Catcher in the Rye. Great. I liked the book as much as anyone, but I feel as if Holden is such a typical hero for angsty teenagers and young adults. They need to get a new fucking hero already. The blogger is of the opinion that "you are branded super intelligent almost as soon as you feel, or rather you convince others that you feel, alienated and that angst runs through your arteries." And this couldn't be further from the truth as far as I'm concerned.

He has an aggravating way of jumping around to different topics on the same post. Sometimes the beginning part of a post will be excellent and funny and then the end will suck. Such as on this post which starts off about his confusion at bathrooms that are gender identified by elephants' asses and ends up about some boring movie or something. I don't know.

Some of the descriptions of events in this blog are downright baffling to me. Take this for instance (as he describes how he is crazy like Holden Caulfield):

I really do some of the same crazy things, though. Honest to God. Like I remember a few months ago our family (my parents, my brother and sister in law, and me) got into this terrific war. It must have lasted for about 6 hours. Me against all of them. All of us fell sick after the fight I remember, it was so ferocious! But I remember at one point I left everybody to go to the loo; and inside I stood in front of the giant mirror and smiled and made crazy faces for quite a while. I wasn't upset at all. Then I went back and rejoined the ruckus. I was laughing silently and all in the loo. This and other such insanities are an integral part of my daily existence...

What the fuck is that about? Am I the only person who finds this family interaction slightly creepy?

The template is pretty standard and non-offensive. The site is easily navigated. I actually like the header image and it seems appropriate considering that this blog is basically a virtual explosion of its author's brain. The blogger readily acknowledges that fact. Personally, I prefer more heart in my blogs. The bloodier, the better. And this blog is desperately lacking in heart. I wish this blogger would take his own advice:

I think one should write if they have something interesting to say; not try and say anything in an interesting manner.

And stop thinking things like this: "things might change around me but slowtumblinglife’s life will forever be inherently tragic." You went to a fancy boarding school, have a good job, come from a nice family, employ a cook, a maid and someone to iron your damn clothes for you. I'm having a hard time seeing the tragedy.

Maybe this blog is great and I'm just not intellectual enough to grasp its utter brilliance. Maybe I can't enjoy it completely because of the cultural differences that exist between this blogger and me. As I said above, this blogger can write well and I found some parts that I really enjoyed reading. They were just too few and far between.

So, it's a .

Paint me some water colors

I haven't always been a rod wielding, pain inflicting pedagogue, you know.

Not so many years ago (okay, it was 1995, shut up), I had the rod pointed in my own face, was accused of having no direction, no attention span, no motivation, and no ability to sit still and shut the fuck up long enough to allow some knowledge to seep into the bored-looking thing that sat between my shoulders with all the stupid piercings hanging off of it. I was a budding 18 year old whose sole outlet for creativity and brain power was to find a way to convince a certain bass player to take my virginity or to bribe anyone of age into buying me some Boones at 7-11. I spent my time in smoke shops wishing I could afford another cool glass blown pipe and more meaningless bumper stickers for my beat up Chrysler. I loitered around coffee shops pretending I was studying and not scoping out anything that looked like it might have had a penis attached to it. Happiness, for me, was a Jimmy Eat World show, a new Jerky Boys tape, ditching Chemistry class, and scheming a way to sneak to California for the weekend to take acid.

I didn't write, I didn't sing, I didn't play music, I didn't dance, I didn't paint. I sure as shit didn't study.

My only motivation for going to college was to locomote after my beloved bass player like a pathetic caboose and it was no surprise that he soon realized I had nothing whatsoever to contribute to any conversation or creative process and duly told me to go play in traffic.

If I were to look back on journals written during that time, I would likely find the flying brain chunks that were the residuals of a self-conscious, immature pre-adult obsessed with any boy that would make eye contact with her for longer than five seconds. The entries would have no point to them, no overarching theme and they would likely have the literary value of the wall in the toilet stall of the girls' restroom near the freshman lockers.

When I started reading Tiffany's blog, this is precisely what I expected to find. How on earth was I going to relate to this teen that whines about her braces and how her senior year is coming to an end and how she will have to say goodbye to the drama club?

But Tiffany, unlike my 18 year old counterpart, is a writer, and she knows it.

To be fair, and to bludgeon all of my pupils with the same instructional force independent of age, Tiffany does have some work to do when it comes to her blog, that is not entirely centered around aging ten years. I won't lie-- as far as my interest goes, that does have something to do with my willingness to become an avid reader, and I think it's only fair to tell the readers of ASK what they can expect. Let's face it – the repertoire from which Tiffany draws experiences to post about is limited. She herself admits that the lowest point in her life has been having chicken pox. But I don't believe she can't be a wonderful writer just because she hasn't experienced enough.

The problem with Tiffany is that she sometimes loses sight that her blog should NOT be an online journal. If she's truly in this for the writing, her blog should be a place where a greater proportion of the posts are as well thought out as all of her scholarship application essays and her short stories. On an online journal, it is acceptable to have posts dedicated to updating your readership a la letters to Grandma, and it is also acceptable to write 'LOL' excessively (I guess). On the blog of a writer, it is not acceptable. The blog is the writing outlet, my dear, not the outlet for the writer to post updates about the ho-hum details of her life, whose true writing is located elsewhere. Tiff usually gets this, but I want her to remind herself of this each time she posts.

In general, her entries stick to the point and are decently written (with the exception of a few I/me problems). She's funny, and thoughtful, and willing to accept and talk about her weaknesses which I find thoroughly inspiring. She's naive, but not despicably so. Tiff has some kind of fiery electricity exuding from her personality that I totally dig on which she has managed to transmit through her writing and that has desperately made me wish I could go back to being 18 so that I could be best friends with her and learn from her ability to focus on what will be a source of happiness in her life-- her centered creativity and the development of her voice.

Tiff, it's time to fine tune things. You know how to paint a picture with broad strokes with a synthetic paintbrush in earth tones, and you do it well, essentially telling the reader what happened to you. Now it's time to start going back over your posts before you publish them with tiny, colorful brush strokes and paint in the split ends, the moles on the back of your characters' necks, the rust stains, the subtleties that will make your readers live the moment with you, as opposed to hearing you relay it. It is rarely the actual events described in a piece that strike a reader; it is the writer's capacity to take the reader on a ride somewhere they have never been and see the world through someone else's eyes that really counts.

As to the design, it's alright, although I hate headers on principle that have the word 'blog' in them and I don't get the water bottle thing. Maybe she explained it back when she was doing the font colors and center aligned text thing but since that was making me want to head butt my computer screen in an epileptic fit, I couldn't dig much further in to look for explanations. I'm glad she grew out of that phase, by the way. She desperately needs to create tabs across the top underneath the header to contain all the madness that is currently polluting her sidebar, and to include a complete about me page (the paragraph she has proclaiming herself as a novelist is not enough – which, by the way, I hope she's aware of the kind of literary expectations this creates). I also recommend that she collect some of her best stuff, the material she is the most proud of and create a tab for it, to reel in some potential readers.

For now you get two stars. I was tempted to give you an additional star based on pure cuteness and potential alone, but I want you to earn a better score. I'm adding you to my reader. Because I really think I can fucking love you someday.





P.S. Tiff - I love that you put 'willing to learn' with a smiley face on a job application where it asked for relevant experience. That kicks ass and if I were the one hiring you would get the job.

But we unleashed a lion

Imagine if Erik Harris and Dylan Klebold had each kept online diaries chronicling the pain and humiliation ticking like a time bomb inside their lives. What if they'd kept an online record of the million persistent snubs, put-downs, and insults that built up and unleashed an atrocity? What would it be like to walk the echoing and messy chambers of their minds, to revisit those scenes of teenage angst that led up to the fateful explosion of rage?

George Sodini did, a chilling and daily cataloguing of the reasons and plans he had for annihilation.

Self Help Center gives you an advanced tasting, possibly fiction, totally true, of terror.

If you've ever pondered questions like:

What is a rapist thinking when he selects a victim?

How did the Craigslist Killer create the ad that snared his victim?

What is the last thing a man writes before spraying his co-workers with hot lead out of the mouth of an AR-15?

Or, in short, what was happening inside the brains of Dylan/Erik/George before they killed?

Then, you should go and read.

But, if you can't stomach envisioning how a sort of sickness creeps into a man's soul and taunts him to do the unthinkable, you should stay away and read a pleasant mommy blog.

As far as those of you--the core Ask readers--who remember, with some degree of enthusiasm, when we directed a really crappy Indian blogger to kill his roommate to spice things up, this blog will totally be your cuppa.

What's really disturbing, and what makes for compelling reading, is that you're never really sure if Romius T is writing fiction or prose. This is truth spilled in black and white on a computer monitor, truth that plays itself out in America day in and day out.

Whether you can handle this much truth is another story, entirely.

Now, this is where I'd generally tell Romius to spruce up his rather ugly online habitat, clean up his sidebar, and choose a less generic template. But, by doing so, he might undermine the "realness" of the blog.

So, don't change. Keep writing, stay creepy, and let us know when you've finished the next American Psycho.

I am at home with the me, I am rooted in the me who is on this adventure.

I knew a girl in college who wore long, flowing skirts and no makeup. Her hair looked how it looked with no product or styling or coercing. If she felt like dancing she danced, if she thought something was funny she laughed loud and long (I remember that laugh still: "ha, ha, HAH!" with her head thrust back), and if she wanted to touch you she would. She'd lean in close when she talked, in your space, looking you directly in the eye. Rebecca liked people, liked getting to know them, finding out what made them tick, figuring out how their minds worked, why they did what they did. She hated shoes and clothes and artifice. She liked boys and girls in equal measure, and typically they liked her, too. They couldn't help it. She was light and direct and earthy. And she was the most present and carefree person I think I've ever know.

Rebecca made me uncomfortable while she was making me interested. She just didn't hide. She'd loop her arm through mine and snug her chin on my shoulder, smelling like patchouli and sunshine. She confronted and questioned and she just was so very much her own person. You could take her or leave her and she wouldn't mind either way.

In some ways, Hope's blog Hopenminded reminds me of Rebecca. She has that same carefree directness, that same hippy-dippy, woo-woo peace and love mentality, where they just delve and ask and explore and analyze.

Hope has, by her own admission, a darker experience. There's an edge to her lightness. Her hopefulness is hard-gained and bruised. She is honest (if maybe a little defensive?) about who she is and where she's been. She really is open and hopeful, and based on the glimpses she's given of the life she's lived, it's really a wonderful thing to see. She's chosen -- and probably has to make that choice over and over -- to live simply, peacefully, and joyfully. And for someone like me, who tends to piss and moan about every little inconvenience in her my-god-I've-had-it-damned-easy life, this mentality is really rather instructive.

Now that I've admired the hell out of Hope and appreciated her for drawing out the memory of someone admirable and slightly complicated from my past, let's move on to the nuts and bolts of blogging, shall we? Good. Because Hope needs some help.

Getting the design stuff out of the way, there are three empty tabs. Hey how about taking them down until they're actually useful? You have way too much shit in the sidebars, and you don't need two of them. Get rid of the random posts and recent comments and either stick with the tag cloud OR the categories (categories, please), not both. And your blogroll? It's not really a blogroll. Take it down until it has something in it, or better yet move it to a tab. The design is fine, but consider bumping up the size of your font -- it's way too small.

Now, the writing, which is what Hope and I (and you) care most about. She faces some marked challenges in her writing, with (apparently) little training or education. It shows. But that's ok. You hear me, Hope? That's ok. You keep at it, dammit. You love it, and there's no reason you can't do this if you work hard enough.

But yes, to be honest because that's what we do here and that's what you expect and you can take it, your writing needs some work. You don't need me to tell you there are considerable spelling and grammar and construction mistakes, but I'll do it anyway: there are. You show your rookie roots with rambling, unedited, uncrafted writing. You write because you love it, because it's cathartic for you, because you have to. That impetus is fantastic and can't be taught. What you need -- and what can be taught -- is polish. You need to keep reading good writing that speaks to you, you need to sign up for a local writing group where you can learn from more experienced writers, you need to challenge yourself with writing exercises, and you need to edit the hell out of yourself.

This post here, where you're watching people and recording? That was good (and so was this). Keep observing. Keep figuring out what makes people tick. Write often and always go back and clean up your writing, find the good bits, prune the unnecessary bits, and get to the heart, the poetry, the art of your writing. Your passion is there -- now practice.





P.S. You have a category called "I'm Fingering it all out." I kind of hope that's on purpose. You finger the hell out of life.