Polypropylene Fete

Before I begin with reviewing World According 2 Lisa, I want to go on the record and say that this review almost did not happen at all. The simple explanation is that I found the template it is on to be such a challenge, it was nigh unreadable.

Light text on dark background, highly busy background, sidebar cluttered with pointlessness, buried archive navigation... If it weren't for Google reader, I would not have been able to read this at all. So, point number one, Lisa. If you want me as a reader, or people like me, you have to do something about that template. Post haste!

Anyway...

What is this blog all about? Well, it isn't so much the World According 2 Lisa as much as it is Lisa's Life. A blow by blow account of what she did today and what she's planning to do the next few days. Some days she tells us her opinion on things, but those things are very, very local to her. For some people, especially people that know Lisa, maybe that's okay.

But I was left ... wanting.

In my opinion, this blog is the online equivalent of a Tupperware Party. If you like Tupperware Parties (and some of my favorite people in the world do love Tupperware Parties, so it's cool with me if you do), then you will probably like this blog. If your idea of a good time runs more to the realm of jazz concerts or independent film, then maybe this isn't for you.

A few notes for Lisa on how I would go about improving, if including people like me in your readership is a goal, which it certainly doesn't have to be:

Some things are funny once in a while, but not all the time. For example:

1. In a month and a half's worth of posts you used the phrase "giddy in my giddy up" multiple times. In my humble opinion, once was just about enough.


2. Strikethrough text, when you type what you really want to say, and then format it as strikethrough text and then type a more politically correct thing -- yeah, that was hilarious the first time I saw it done ... ten years ago. Why not just type what you really want to say and leave it at that?

What else? I have a few pet peeves that you fed Red Bull to.

• Like, the pet peeve of using the wrong word in a common expression. "Allusions of grandeur" should be "delusions of grandeur." Unless you really are "alluding to" grandeur. This is just one example. There were others, but I am not being paid to be an editor.


• Or the pet peeve of misspelling "y'all." "Y'all" is a contraction of "you" and "all," and as such, the apostrophe falls between the "y" and the "all." Unless you can convince me that it is a contraction between "ya" and something that ends in "ll".


• Or the pet peeve of using text speak in written communication. Your blog title uses a "2" instead of writing out the word "to." Did that extra keystroke push you over the top? You're a teacher. You should, in my opinion, know better.

Tone down your template. Constantly switching font colors and typefaces doesn't do you any favors. Dark text on a light background is infinitely easier to read than light text on a dark background. And that background image may be the perfect image to tell the world who you are, but it's so busy that it makes me cross eyed.

My last advice may be the hardest to apply, but here you go. Write deeper. Writing about the superficial details of your day and your week are okay here and there, but when I read a blog, I want to be inspired to think about things differently, to have portions of my mind stimulated. And, sadly, for me, that did not happen. Hey, maybe that isn't your goal. Fine. What is your goal? Because the way it reads right now, it sounds like you are trying to be funny, and being funny -- really funny -- is almost impossible to do, even for the most brilliantly funny people in the world. Being real is so much easier, and ultimately for readers like me, more fulfilling.

If you want more than a "MEH" from me, you need to give me something more. Something real. Something not made of Tupperware plastic.