Monday, February 22, 2010

Spawn of the Dead

Hey peeps. I'm back from the undead, and ready to rumble.

Lucky Scary Mommy is taking a spin at Pacific Playland today.

I should start by saying, ever so sarcastically, that I love a mommyblog. I especially have big love for a mommy blog that includes all of my personal pet peeves.

For instance:

Cash for posts? Check.

Boring, substandard content? Check.

Pictures of children I don't know and in whom I'm uninterested, in lieu of content? Check.

Pretending to be hyperbadassfoulmouthedcoolmom? Check (and god, I am thoroughly sick of this one...)

This is formaldehyde-scented death wrapped up in a shiny red & white package. The posts are stiff, the content feels posed, and there isn't a single uncontrived sentence on this blog. Oh, goodie. I've encountered the undead Kate Gosselin of the blogosphere.

Up front, a quick list of the things I hate:

I hate the three-column template with 1 main post and additional posts shown as snippets underneath that require additional clicks. I particularly hate that this template makes it difficult to get back to the main page.

I hate the ads that "scary" mom is using to subsidize her blogstyle.

I hate the content.

I don't hate the kids, but I hate that their mom is using them to create a name for herself and build an evil undead mommy blogging empire (muahahhahahaahahah!). Scary Mommy is begging for a nail-studded baseball bat and a sharp pair of hedge trimmers.

Scary Mommy is never real. For the record, real bleeds. Real sweats, real cries, real poops. This is what real looks like:

...no words I put down can fully capture the aching emptiness I feel at giving birth to babies and coming home from the hospital without them. What we endure to bring our babies into the world is easily forgotten when we cuddle the thing so hard won. When we smell its soft head, trace our fingers down a chubby, pink body, whisper silliness and love into its ears. But I don't have that now. I sit alone in rooms and wonder about the new lives I just ushered too early into the world. I carry guilt heavy in my chest. Why wasn't I strong enough to carry them to term? What defect brought on labor at 33 weeks?

...read more


Real moms agonize. They blame themselves, they address their fears of not being good enough, they bitch, they moan, they show their asses. They say, "This shit ain't easy, and it ain't for suckas, yo?"

Scary Mommy is not real in any sense of the word that is meaningful, at least to imperfect mothers like me. She's glib, heartless, and flippant. She died a while ago, but no one has noticed since she plods along in exactly the same happy dead way.

My objective system of blog rating goes like this. If the blog so fascinates me that I'd drive 60 miles out of my way on a business trip to meet the blogger, it's a damn good blog. If I'd drive 10 miles, it's decent. If I'd consider running the blogger down in the grocery store parking lot, it's going to get a flaming finger. If I need to put the double tap into effect, it needs to fuck off and die already, because it's already 78% dead. It's pretty scientific, when you think about it.

So...I would never sit down for cheap margaritas in some chain restaurant in the wilds of New Jersey with Scary Mommy. I do not read her blog and think, "I'd like to meet this fascinating woman." Instead, I think: "She has no soul. She is a zombie who might eat my brains for an appetizer instead of the Mexican eggrolls. Where the hell is my sawed off shotgun?"

There are good mommy blogs out there written by women with heart, courage, humor, passion, and zeal.

Scary Mommy isn't one of 'em.

What rating do I give this fake/dead blog? I felt the need to create something new:










And for making me waste my time...

18 comments:

  1. I've missed you LB. I think your methodology would stand up to any scientific scrutiny.

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  2. That has got to be the best review that ever hit this sight. You had me gasping, shocked, and so happy that you said it all straight up. Impressive.

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  3. I agree with you, but if she's so fake and plastic and horrible, why the hundreds of comments per post? The appearances on major mainstream media? What's she doing to achieve that that others aren't?

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  4. Sure, but then you could say the same about dooce.com. Just another wildly popular blog I tried to stay subscribed to for longer than three weeks, but after a few posts of meaningless photos of dogs and kids and yoo-hoo-I'm-appearing-in-yucktown-oregon this week, I had to drop it.
    Or should I give dooce another chance?

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  5. Ian: That was the shocking part to me. Reading some of the posts and then seeing "129 comments." But I'm not comfortable being a shill for products and I've shunned all advertising (not that people are exactly lining up, but still...) because I'm hoping people will read for the content. And the content here just isn't something that keeps my interest.

    But like you said, she's got readers so she has to be doing something right. Right?

    Not to mention I'm next on the chopping block with another parenting blog and now there's blood in the water...

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  6. But like you said, she's got readers so she has to be doing something right. Right?


    I don't think that these two things mean the same thing. Glen Beck has a highly rated television show. He's still a braind-dead moron who couldn't reason his way out of a paper bag with a butter knife.

    You're equating popularity with quality, and we already know there is no such correlation.

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  7. Frankly, I prefer dooce. At least she's the original.

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  8. She has a tab for "appearances"?!?!

    I have a specific revulsion for narcissistic useless bags of protoplasm. I actually don't care if she is the best damn blogger in the world (which, it seems, she is not) -- this shameless self-promoting, completely-devoid-of-humility asshat has earned my disrespect.

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  9. Comments shmomments. Remember when this site had 666 of 'em?

    Eat it, mommies.

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  10. Scary Mommy doesn't belong in the same blogosphere as Gwen.

    On another note, I am also available for appearances. I just forgot to create a tab for them on my home page.

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  11. I agree so much with Here in Franklin. I just read that post from Gwen before I came over here and then you quoted it. That's so fucking real and this blog just isn't.

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  12. Missed your reviews LB. This one is dead on, no soul at all. She's really just catering to what people want to read; I didn't find anything that drew me in at all. Yet she's got 129 comments go figure.

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  13. There's no figuring about it. The evidence suggests that the majority of people right now are braindead morons who want pap spoon fed to them in intellectually manageable portions.

    We're just the exceptions here.

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  14. I like pap spoon fed to me in intellectually manageable portions, but it has to at least be warm.

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  15. And sweet. I prefer brown sugar with cinnamon, but no goddamn raisins.

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  16. Raisins are just dried up pieces of crap; they have no place anywhere least of all in anything that's good to eat. They belong with that Christmas fruit cake.

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  17. Having margaritas in a chain restaurant with you, LB, was the highlight of my year. I'm not good at accepting praise but I will forgo the self-deprecating comment and just say thank you.

    This review is amazing, by the way.

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  18. Gwen, you are the awesome.

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Grow a pair.