Tuesday, August 31, 2010

It Must Be Karma


You’ll never guess what, my darling little scallops! Today we are going to review the blog of an earnest young Indian woman! An utterly new experience for us all! I can’t tell you how excited I am. I have even had Fanny loosen my truss. This site does attract a great deal of variations on a theme, and we must get almost as many earnest young Indian women as we do self-proclaimed ‘mad’ mommies and sexually-unheimlich humourists.

It was hard to review this blog. I would sit down to read it and five minutes later find that I had wandered without realising into the pantry and had consumed a pound of cheese. Or I would discover that I had been staring for untold hours at the dead wasp on the windowsill, or was consumed with the need to cut my toenails right now. Once when I thought I was making headway I woke up three days later in a burger bar in Penge dressed as Penelope Keith with three new and unsettling tattoos.

The first problem is that Live on Impulse is not overly keen on the paragraph break but does enjoy the exclamation mark, leaving me feeling as though I had been buttonholed by a particularly enthusiastic head girl. I’m sure she makes some good points here, for example, but such a relentless slab of text is as insurmountable to me as a pile of Fanny’s notoriously dense flapjacks. It gives me a headache all over.

This blog was so uncomfortable to read that I found myself not caring a jot about the content. However, because I am a brave soldier I forced myself to concentrate, and after several pots of tea, trips to the W.C. and a twenty-four-hour rum-and-Sanatogen bender, I managed to read some posts. I wasn’t much impressed. Fair play to Live on Impulse, she is a socially-aware young woman who wants the world to be a better place, but we all care about injustice, even me (well, I care about whether I get away with it or not). I’m sure she’s a charming young women with a winning outlook on life, I just found her rather exhausting.

Live on Impulse claims that she is compelled to write, but she doesn’t seem to put much effort into it. Look at this. This is just a series of mentions, it gives me nothing. There’s no thought in it, no detail, it feels rushed and unloved. She worries that she doesn’t produce enough meaningful stuff, but I think she could if she just shut up and thought about it for a while. I looked in vain to find a post actually describing her wedding. And those blasted smiley faces make her look childish and far less intelligent than she actually is.

Liveonimpulse, here are some words of advice. Get out your English grammar book and refresh your memory. Read your posts back carefully. Put spaces after full stops. Using two exclamation marks after every sentence makes you look like an idiot. Paragraphs and punctuation make your work easier to read and less likely to induce a fit of the vapours in rickety old reviewers. Most importantly, remember the old chestnut and show, don’t tell.

I do try to find the good in things, I really do, but sometimes one is faced with something that one just outright doesn’t enjoy and this is one of those times. To be honest, I found Live on Impulse boring and a little tedious. I did not enjoy reading it and I did not enjoy reviewing it, and to top it all off there’s a lot of really buttock-clenchingly awful poetry.

Live on Impulse gets a Meh, and I am going to wrap myself up in a blanket and sit in the airing cupboard.

29 comments:

  1. Meat, every time you give us a new nickname, I tingle.

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  2. Thank you, my little sprig of rue.

    I am very upset that I missed all the scrapping. I have had to take it all out on my Fanny.

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  3. Plus, I feel like this:

    "She worries that she doesn’t produce enough meaningful stuff, but I think she could if she just shut up and thought about it for a while."

    is excellent advice.

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  4. I tell ya, there is something with the !!!!!!! and the Indian kiddies.

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  5. I support a ban on Indian blogs for at least 6 months. Or, are they the only bloggers signing up these days?

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  6. That, or block anonymous posting.

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  7. Oh Force, damn you for making me Google Penelope Keith but I love you for always expanding my cultural references. We should meet in Altinkum, you Fanny and I. I'll give you a good corn scraping and make us all a round of panty droppers.

    I couldn't be bothered to read the blog because I abhor a lack of paragraph breaks but I rather like her header if you lose the near invisible lettering.

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  8. Johnny, every time I see you, I am reminded that boot season is soon upon us.

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  9. Ok, I like her header except for the protected images. If you can't photoshop that shit out, don't post it.

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  10. You would think I'd be offended, but I reserve no pity for those dimwitted crawlers and amphibians.

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  11. "From homemaker to alpha female" as in, from good to bad.

    Am I supposed to barf or laugh?

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  12. Tsk tsk Miss Missives, fancy not knowing Penelope Keith. I was tortured with many an epsiode of 'To the Manor Born' as a young grumpling. She is highly amusing.

    Laughed at JR suggesting getting rid of anonymous comments but I think dear Anon might have a point. It is getting a bit much. Is it wrong to say that?

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  13. I find the notion rather absurd. While the Indian blogs have been nothing short of a suckfest, we see plenty of shitty blogs from 'Murrica too. I think review requests from here are as many, if not more than the dot-on-the-forehead ones in the queue. Do you suggest we drop blogs from the west too since they're #2 on the list and the large majority will make the readers retch? Suckage is universal, and we're digging through the pile of "equine manure" to find something worth our time.

    I only do the reviews, but I believe in minimal moderation, and no interference with the submissions. Keeps things transparent. I don't want to play the "if you don't like it, fuck off" card, but it's a bit rich leaving anonymous comments and telling us what to do with our system.

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  14. In any case, let Shiner do her thing - it's worked pretty well so far.

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  15. I find the suggestion that we ban Indian bloggers utterly vile.

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  16. I completely agree.

    Although I must say, very few Indian bloggers defy the stereotypical Indian blogs we've come across on this site - poetry, overtly self-absorbed.

    But the most fucking ridiculous thing about the stereotype is the fact that it's only observable, from my eyes as a foreigner, in the blogosphere and nowhere else. It's not like we delved into these blogs assuming they were going to be emo and exclamation pointy, that's just a conclusion we've drawn from all the exposure this site has to Indian blogs.

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  17. And all I can think is: why don't any of my Indian friends exemplify this in person? All both of them?

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  18. And why do we get so few British bloggers?

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  19. Shiner - call me, I'll spout emo poetry all night long.

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  20. Forcemeat, wouldn't that mean hearing from more Indians?

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  21. From a linguistic/anthropological standpoint:

    http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/29/magazine/29language-t.html?_r=1

    Perhaps the necessary basics of cultural language fit differently somehow, causing tones to differ.

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  22. And now I shall exit, for shit got too serious.

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  23. 99% of the Indian blogs that submit here suck, which make them exactly proportional to the other suckage that has submitted here. If you want my vote, I say keep the Indians in queue.

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  24. Miss Missives, forgive me for not responding to your earlier comment. I have packed my bags, Fanny is cranking up the biplane and we will be with you by morning.

    Thanatos - It is now my heart's desire to review the blog of a Scunthorpe O.A.P.

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  25. My vocabulary expands exponentially when I read your reviews, Forcemeat.

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Grow a pair.