Most of us have jobs that are too small for our spirits.*

Oh, I’m going to get shit for this one, readers. I can feel it. Your frustration is inevitably palpable. So before we go crazily into details on today's reviewee, I am going to give you a blurb about the kinds of blogs that keep me engaged.

As far as individual entries go, I prefer blog posts with high tension and distinct personal energy. Sometimes they're sonnets, entries that flow around like a Midgard serpent, sometimes they're brief and ironic. But each of them have one very, very distinguishing characteristic that carries on throughout their whole blog: these people tell fucking stories with that incorporeal business that the collective They refers to as Voice.

Voice is hard to come by. It takes fuckloads of character to swing properly without resorting to cheap gimmicky tricks that you play for the clicks (that means memes, you a-holes). When someone has Voice, you don't need bullets for family members or fucking TMI days or favorite things to masturbate to on a Saturday, because you can glean the personality the writers want to portray distinctly based upon their writing. Voice does not require a colossal vocabulary, it does not require a battalion of metaphor. It's fueled by spirit. Or spirits. Whatever.

Sure, sometimes the blog itself is a gimmick. Perhaps it's one that may spiral into something more personal someday. But for now, Confessions of a Cashier is exactly what it says on the tin, and I love it.

Our Cashier has a voice that is effortlessly plain and snarky and completely effective at painting a life working at a gas station convenience store. This woman is...how do I put this? It's like she's an alert but lazy Scottish Terrier who aspires to be a hardcore Doberman, and ends up doing the job of a dumbass bulldog. And she knows it, and plays up to it on a level she established herself, without "Awesome Sauce" and "I'm just sayin" and all those other fucking ridiculous idioms. She doesn't say "I'm crazy, but you love me!" or "I'm a bitch, deal with it!" or make any unjustified claims. In fact, there are limited claims and exclamations throughout the entire blog. Thank you, from depths of my guts thank you, I loveyousomuch.

She goes on power trips and exacts meager revenge on annoying-ass customers. She's passive aggressive and resigned to the inevitable, she plays mind games with idiots and invents words that I am totally going to start using in everyday life. I am obsessed with her.

Sure, there are, very few, extraneous commas, and perhaps, a poor word choice, sometimes. But fuck if I don’t give a shit. There's that generic feminine template with those girly swirls that look like tramp stamps. I'd like to see something that's a bit more laminate and drab, with like, a popping header. Maybe I'll try to dig something up. Oohhh, but maybe the tramp stamp look is perfect...okay, same template, but stick with just black and white.

She's been blogging since the beginning of the year, and at first things were a little bit clunky and formal, but since then she's loosened and softened. I found myself copying the links to entries and typing little notes like, "relay that conversation or tell those stories you mention and throw away like pizza crust - bitch, pizza ain't pizza without effing crust" and then, like I fucking incepted the idea in her brain or something, because I totally did, there it is: she has the conversation instead of saying she had a conversation, and I had to grab my totem to make sure I wasn't dreaming, because I love it when people listen to me without me telling them to do so.

So get out your vexation with me now, haters. I love me a solid, lucid blog, one that's not trying to be someone else. She gets it done.








* title courtesy of Studs Terkel.