If Blogging Had An Infield Fly Rule You Would Have Fared Better, Assuming You Played Second Base.

Transitioning into running this blog is becoming very time-consuming. I've got to recruit reviewers with fucking spirit and gall and most importantly, the elusive "free time," which obviously counters the nature of a person with spirit and gall because they use their free time by "doing things" like "going outside" and "making babies" not by "finding really cliche ways to use superfluous quotation marks."

Speaking of transitions, I am awesome at them.

Barely Knit Together is kind of an excellent title for a blog, don't you think? It works, because this is kind of an excellent blog. Kind of. Usually. It's the story of one J. Monroe, mother and writer. Yes. Writer.

Monroe recently fled to Wordpress because it is very hip to do so, much like all of those people switching from plastic Nalgene water bottles to anything titanium because it's "better for the environment" when actually, it's better to use what you already have. But logic is fickle and dependent on marketing, so what do I know?

Things are soft and inoffensive over at Wordpress, and let's face it: her new template is kind of an aesthetic masterpiece, although the font needs enlarging and I don't know how I feel about the navigation at the bottom. It's a big improvement over the coffee-with-Steve-Jobs-at-Pottery-Barn thing she had going on in the old blog. Personally, I'm insulted by intentionally haphazard decorating. I find it rude.

But along with switching templates, she switched her title to J. Love Monroe, and I don't know how I feel about that either. It seems distantly ironic instead of a yearning heart unraveled. Much like Wordpress, it is very hip. I feel like the new title matches the old template, and vice versa.

At times, her words reek of forced happiness, like she's hiding on purpose, but it's understandable. Monroe is full of scattered emotions and passing depressions. I mean sometimes, she is so emo my tender sinuses riot, but she's just so poetic about her relentless ennui that I can't loathe her for it. Monroe is artful with her humor and she appeals to my empathy which is fucking hard to do. Then she writes these glorious little snippets or lengthy blends of fiction and non that completely allow me to forgive her for annoying, link-laden advertising posts like this or guess-what-I-did updates. There are many of these. I refuse to link them.

Still, who is perfect? Sometimes I just want to tell people I have a baseball instead of throwing it as far as I can. Although that is probably not a comparable analogy, because I'm incapable of holding a baseball without throwing the damn thing or breaking something.

And then there's this fucking Twitter Drama concerning stupid bitches I've never met nor uncovered in all my hours on the internet, and curiosity double-dog-dared me to click on some link to a site specializing in shit-talking one D-List media darling. But here's the thing: I don't give fuck, and you have to contend with my fatigue-bordering-on-disdain regarding celebrity/media personality gossip. It irked me, and it had the misfortune of being on the front page.

I feel almost guilty doing this, because she is so much more heavenly than previous IFLY's, but I just don't have that love for her, despite honest prose and charming uncertainty and I'm adding her to my reader with high hopes. Everything she writes is well-written, much better than any blog I've found in a long-ass time. She has serious narrative feel and linguistic skill, but I have yet to really care about her as a person. That sounds awful, but this is the internet, people. You can't love everyone. If you can tip the ball with your glove, you can catch the fucking thing.