Friday, August 27, 2010

The Real Housewives of Mumbai

I was utterly tempted to insert into my review some Bollywood Greatest hits on autoplay, however, after a long week spent lashing the masses, I am just too tired to hurt the ones I love. Today Miss Missives is charged with being your interpreter of maladies and a quick look at The Mad Momma tells me that boring has gone global, tedium has been outsourced. My dear readers, would it be better if I didn't absolutely insist on giving the ending away right out the chute? My apologies.

It would seem that Indian mommybloggers have much in common with Western mommybloggers. Of course there are the exceptions to the stereotypical, often vilified mommyblogger, but Mad Momma is not one of them. She hits all of the important milestones for mediocre mommyblogging.

Mediocre Mommy blog checklist:

Uses one of the following words in the blog title:
crazy
insane
wacky
mad
rants
musings

Check.

Take out of focus pictures of food or children or furniture. Make sure photos have zero emphasis on composition.

Check.

Refers to self frequently and fervently as a mommyblogger.

Check.

Have a generous space devoted to badges and awards.

Check.

Fill your space with boring, meandering content.

Check.



Mad Momma, your header image is fuzzy and boring. I cannot read the header text unless I highlight it. Your header

“...is missing her home of five years. BADLY”
is grammatically incorrect. I could say that you use grammar badly. Your About Me doesn't actually tell me about you beyond some basic demographics. You have an entire tab devoted to Our Cesarean Stories. The graphics on your "Badges" page show up in neither Mozilla Firefox nor Internet Explorer. Your sidebar is, okay. Your template is about as visually exciting as a pile of dirt which would fail to matter if the writing compensated. The writing does not compensate for the template.

That's the big problem for me because as we have noted before, when someone writes well, the minutiae of "proper" blogging matters far less. Your writing isn't terrible but it isn't a bit compelling. Your posts are far too long and they meander all over the place rather than have a central idea from which the subsequent branch offs flow. You write about salient topics like feminism and politics but you lack the ability to express your opinion authoritatively or pull in personal experience to draw the reader in. Of course I bring to this review my own cultural bias but truly good writing is universal.

A journalist, I am never short of words or ideas!!

Perhaps the medium you write for is a tome allowing for lengthy verbosity, but I can hardly imagine the editor is your friend. You use words like my five year old uses toilet paper, with no regard for economy. Your pieces, even the more serious among them, devolve into written diarrhea, the prattled chatter inside your head. This is sweet but it goes on so long that the sentiment becomes watered down and tired. This is nearly 2500 words. It goes on forever to make a point which could have been much more concise and interesting at 500 or fewer. Madmomma, organize your thoughts, make a goddamn outline if you have to, edit your words, cull them down to what's necessary.

Until then, I really just cannot be bothered. Yawn.


18 comments:

  1. 44 comments. 83 comments. 132 comments. And to think I spent all that time learning to focus my camera.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Franklin, some people blog because they have no friends in real life. Their friends are all on the internet, I mean, this is how they socialize.

    I never really cared about comments. If I did, I would link people constantly, whore out blog awards, participate in memes. That sort of thing. Getting comments is easy, all you have to do is be nice to a lot of people. You don't even need to read their writing, you just leave nondescript comments everywhere.

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  3. You need to franchise AAYSR and sell your first to some blogger in New Delhi. Seriously. Aren't you guys getting tired of these bloggers yet? Maybe you could have a self-imposed ban for a month or two? Just suggesting ...

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  4. You do realise you have reviewed this blog here before yes? Same blogger, different url?

    http://iwillfuckingtearyouapart.blogspot.com/2008/05/some-mommies-need-punch-in-their-uterus.html

    Just asking!

    ReplyDelete
  5. I don't really mind getting submissions from India. I mean, it's fucking INDIA. You know how badly I want to go there? That's on the other side of the world from me, it's awesome.

    I just feel like people are like, stickin' it to us when they submit blogs that aren't in English, and it pisses me off.

    In regards to this Mad Momma? I don't mind her. I don't really love her or hate her. It's just, you know. Meh. I'm with Miss Missives.

    ReplyDelete
  6. Yeah, people re-submit all the time to see if they've improved.

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  7. Well at least both reviewers said pretty much the same thing.

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  8. Rass--
    I can't honestly say that I don't care about comments because most of the ones I get are fairly amusing, from writers I admire. But I am proud to say that I haven't looked at stats in forever. It's a start.

    ReplyDelete
  9. I never really thought you did. I feel like that comment was aimed at the geese a couple posts down.

    ReplyDelete
  10. I used to check my stats obsessively to see if the guy I liked was reading my blog.

    He wasn't. Prick.

    ReplyDelete
  11. I don´t like the feeling of fishing for comments. It´s false and I´m uncomfortable with it.

    I love getting comments, especially if I know they are from the heart and not an act of reciprocation.

    ReplyDelete
  12. I check my comments and stats pretty often .. mainly to see how people are getting to my blog. For the longest time, some porno site was sending me traffic, but I think that is because I linked to your blog (url) in a posting.

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  13. Comments are awesome when the person is actually saying something.

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  14. wow. i dont understand her posts entirely... it could be something's wrong with me, since a lot of people are responding to her writing.

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  15. I got a note from Mad Momma and it would appear she did not submit her blog for review.

    "Actually I did not ask submit my blog for review, so why the attention, not once, but twice? Couple of errors - I am not a housewife and neither am I from Bombay. Perhaps you could get that right the next time you review someone who doesn't ask."

    We can't check them all folks, if they appear to be a legitimate submission, we plow forward. Also Madmomma, the title was a play on a popular American reality show where all the women are not in fact housewives, just yakky, chatty dolts. I chose Mumbai as a reference point because yo, I loved Slumdog Millionaire, which gets an IFLY, unlike your blog.

    ReplyDelete
  16. Hello.

    Somebody has submitted my blog to your site for review, doubtless for cheap laughs. Just to stress, it wasn't me and I really don't want my blog to be reviewed, so I would sooner you didn't.

    Please ignore this request, as it didn't come from me.

    That's all really, thanks.

    ReplyDelete

Grow a pair.