What a Wonderful World it Would Be

Sam Cooke left one out. There should have been a line in there about “Don’t know much about philosophy…” but there wasn't. So here I am trying to spin a metaphor that quite frankly just isn't going to work.

Well, fuck and piss and vinegar!

To tell you the truth, I am having a lot of trouble with this review. Normally it is very easy for me to absorb, process, synthesize, and find fault with a collection of someone else’s personal idea of what makes for compelling writing. But this blog, Love of All Wisdom, penned by Professor of Philosophy Amod Lele, is somewhat more challenging to me. And here’s why: I don’t know if I can tell for sure whether he is doing a good job or not. Depends on what you mean by “good” or “job.” He comes across as intelligent. Deep. Consistent. True to his stated goal.

But it reads like a text book. And uses a lot of terms that are not familiar to the lay reader, which may be fine, as the lay reader may not be who this feller wants to talk to. I know for a fact that he does not intend for this to be a personal blog about who he’s dating, or how he feels about things, or any of the kinds of things that most people are polluting the Internet with. (You’ll notice, I deliberately left the “s” off the end of that term, as I have come to the conclusion that using the term “Internets” is an affectation. You may disagree. Discuss among yourselves. Just, if you are going to do so, do it over there where I can’t reach you with my taser.)

As an armchair philosopher who has grappled with concepts of morality, ‘God’/gods, ethics, etc., I found this to be a very compelling and very dense read. I want to read more. Then again, I want to read all the shit on my bookshelf that I bought because that’s what I thought educated, intelligent people should do – books like War and Peace, The Age of Reason, Ulysses… That doesn't mean that I have a hope in hell of ever doing so.

My biggest complaint is that in order to do a fair review, in order to fully process everything that he has written, about 20% of the content requires me to do ancillary research at Wikipedia or by buying and reading books I don’t intend to read because it assumes a prior knowledge that I just don’t possess. And I just don’t have enough hours in a day. As an example, here is a brief excerpt:

“This question of technique came up at least three times at the SACP. Peimin Ni – next year’s SACP president – argued that Mencius’s metaphysical theory of human nature is there not to justify his ethics, but to help provide practical guidance in shaping human conduct.”

This assumes that I know who Mencius is and what his/her metaphysical theory of human nature is. And that I know (clearly) what metaphysics is. And what is meant, philosophically, by the term “ethics.” Even the use of the word “technique” was a bit context-less for me until later on, when a context sort of grew up around the rest of the concepts being discussed.

My slightly smaller complaint is the template. Little white text on a black background. After reading for about an hour one day, I stepped away from the screen and my entire world had light and dark horizontal stripes running across it until my rods and cones in my eyes re-acclimated. This was a severe annoyance to me. My world should not be a zebra, even if just temporarily.

My smallest complaint is not really a complaint at all rather than an observation. In many cases, I just flat disagreed with him. And the beauty part is – in a philosophical discussion, we can disagree 100% and both be 100% right. For example:

“What a dream is, is an interior state. Of course physical changes occur in the brain when we dream; but a dream is necessarily more than that.” (emphasis mine)

(Really? Necessarily!? Not the way I understand the physiology of the brain, and memory, and consciousness.)

“To say a dream is nothing but those physical changes is to say not merely that the things we dream about do not exist, but even that the fact that we dreamt about them did not exist.” (emphasis his)

(The things we dream about MAY exist, but being in a dream doesn't make them so. I can dream of a rainbow colored unicorn, which may be simply automatic firing of certain memory and creative centers of my brain, but that doesn't make such a unicorn exist in the world of protoplasm. And I do not follow the logic that is employed to determine that this somehow makes the fact of the dream not exist. You've lost your firm footing here.)

He makes certain statements that I feel are unfounded. But, shit, he’s got a PhD in Philosophy (from Harvard! Oooooh!) – I took an Intro to Philosophy course in the 1980’s from a textbook that had been out of print for twenty years (yet had been written by the professor teaching the course, so of course, we had to use his text). And I feel more than a little bit intimidated by his assured tone and his credentials.

Still, one does not need an alphabet soup after one’s name to be able to apply logic. And I think that may be one of my biggest beefs with him – it seems he values intuition too much over logic (a deeper and more protracted read may prove this to be false), and I distrust intuition. I think that intuition can, and does, lie to you. It stands to reason that this may be one of the biggest separators of Eastern and Western philosophical approaches, and that I may simply not be “eastern” enough.

I don’t know.

What I do know is that this blog is an acquired taste. And won’t be to everyone’s liking. I also know that his template looks cool as shit until you have to start reading things. If you want to read him regularly, use a reader. His categorization is helpful, but only if you understand his classification system. Which I don’t know that I do. His writing is factual and unemotional, and will generally only appeal to philosophy dorks like me, but it is clear and well-edited.

Overall, I think that he is doing what he set out to do. I don't know why he submitted for a review here, but he did. So I have to give him a meaningful rating. Since he accomplishes that which he seems to set out to do, I'm giving him two stars.



But because he's unapproachable as hell and is flat out wrong in my opinion on occasion, I am also giving him a single flaming finger.



And finally, because his template made me see zebra stripes repeatedly, I am giving him two more flaming fingers.

In Which a Continent is Redeemed

I've been reading a couple of blogs written by Americans who had moved to Australia. It's been strange for me to see them write about their hosts as if they were normal people, considering my personal experience with the Down Unders. I've never told them about my Australian problem, because I'm a lover, not a fighter. But here it is now. My Australian story.

Fifteen years ago, I had been living in London, playing in a band that was going to rule the world. But just for a short time. We knew that very soon, all of us were going to have our names etched in rock encyclopedias. Then we were going to disappear. Some of us were going to live past the ancient age of 30, but even then, we'd live off royalties in secluded farm houses in Wales, because society sucked and nothing made sense and to be happy in a world gone bad meant to be blissfully unaware.

Many of the blissfully ignorant fools who were in London to have FUN had a particular name and accent. Their London wasn't about Keith Moon and David Bowie and Nick Drake and Waterloo Sunsets and blood sweat and despair. Their London was a good place to get drunk and bang Czech au pairs.

So reading Veronica Foale's blog, called... Let's see... Oh, Veronica Foale... it's great to realize I've been wrong about the country all these years. There ARE real people in Australia. There are people who feel pain and write about their internal conflicts. There are people who question their priorities as they take note of what's important in their lives, never giving out the simple, acceptable answers. There are people who are not afraid of their shadows. There are self-aware people who try to find their places in the world and online.

And if there's one Australian woman with a burning desire to find (and lead us toward) THE TRUTH by bravely digging into her own personal truth, then the whole country is redeemed. Congratulations, Australia! You're off my shit list (even if your Australian savior is from Tasmania and not from the main land. You get a pass. Now get out of my face before I change my mind).

Now, I didn't read all the way to the beginning of the blog. I only read the latest five pages, which frankly were enough for me to realize that despite that teeth-crunchingly annoying Nuffnang ad on the top right, I fucking love Veronica.

(Now, I've had issues other than that redundant ad. Veronica writes another blog, which is her main one. My guess is that she felt constrained in her other blog and decided to start this one to break free and be able to return to the basics of honest writing. Fair enough. But maybe Veronica should make up her mind exactly what this blog is, because right now, writing three times a month, it is still not clear if this blog is anything more than an experiment in honest writing, and whether she is committed to the blog as much as she's committed to her other one, the real one. Or maybe this one is the real one? In any case, I've been torn between four stars and an IFLY button, because how can I give her an IFLY if she's not committed? But maybe this review will help her commit to the blog, and maybe the IFLY will make her doubts go away. And really, this blog was written so well, that only an IFLY made any sense.)

Could you hold this for a sec? Yeah, it's just my emotional depth.

Hi, my name is Rohini. I am a vibrant nineteen years old, and I've got it all figured out.

I discover truths every day that you never contemplate, because I am different.

I am lost and wandering and idealistic and I write mediocre poetry to prove how whimsical and romantic I can be, and I totally understand the plight of the underprivileged because I took a course on it after prep school. Don't judge me because I'm from Suburban Jerkwater, India. I'm not like them. I am different. I get it. See? Here is one college essay that proves my profundity, which is a word I learned in my thesaurus.

You know what? I'm pretty sure I wrote college papers on a whole slew of topics that are a bigger deal than your slew of topics, so I will just go ahead and give you a couple of those.

As you can tell, I am very insightful. Here, catch. Another poem. It's about soldiers because I understand them in my soul. This is because I am sage.

But don't let the heft of my soul intimidate you! I am a regular teenager and I goof off with my friends! Yes, that is a very long one, but I was so excited about telling you I had fun that I couldn't bother with paragraphs and splitting up the entries by day, because we did so much! :)

Wait, what? Oh. Um, okay. You want to hear something...you want me to show you what it was like. I heard that once. Show don't tell. But I'm trying to show...I am trying too hard? How can you try too...oh, like I'm trying to be impressive instead of just being me.

Well, okay, I wrote this once, but I don't know, I mean, it's kind of ramblesome but it's how I really feel. I don't know. I just really miss them. Yeah. I mean, and I started this internship, and now I kind of...you know. Lately I've been thinking that there is so much I have to learn.

A Mess of Pottage

The weather has finally changed, comrades. It is sticky, the heat like a man on your back. Today my Fanny and I ventured out onto the battlements with a picnic and a pitcher of Benylin on ice. I managed to insinuate myself into a deckchair, a knotted kerchief atop my head, my pyjama bottoms rolled to the knee. Fanny got the paddling pool out and sprawled in the tepid water, columnar limbs akimbo, fanning herself with a copy of The Radio Times. A ratking of extension leads connected us to the ether and, as the sun flogged down and the sweat seasoned my Scotch egg, we poked our shiny snouts into the life of the fragrant Jennifer.

Jennifer is a thirty-something mother-of-three who lives in Kansas in the U. S. of A. She likes photography and god and organising things. I am a ravaged old clown who should never be permitted to breed. I like overindulgence and toads and other people’s prescriptions. This was never going to be my flagon of eggnog. However, I believe in giving people chances (if it weren’t for me, my Fanny would still be languishing in that Indonesian gaol) and so I bravely soldiered on.

I looked at photos of her children. I looked at photos of other people’s weddings. I looked at more photographs of wheat in one afternoon than I have ever seen in my life. I looked at photos of her kitchen being renovated. I read posts about her hair, posts about her bosom, more posts about her dislike of clutter, posts about things she likes that begin with the letter ‘C’, posts where she accidentally goes out wearing mismatched shoes, posts where she uses the word ‘vury’ instead of ‘very’. And then I reached calmly into the picnic basket, pulled out my emergency pistol and inserted it into my eager mouth. It was only the piteous mewling of my Fanny that prevented me from finding sweet relief. I stayed my hand, thinking she was distraught at the idea of losing her beloved Master. Turned out she had inadvertently swallowed a bee.

It was this post that broke me. “I have SO MANY THINGS TO BLOG ABOUT”, darling Jennifer begins, and then proceeds to discuss, in soul-rending detail, her purchase of some new bed linen. This blog is the most gratingly banal thing I have ever read. Everyone has the right to keep an interweb log if they so desire, and it’s probably quite nice for Jen’s chums to be kept up to date. I am just annoyed that I had to spend a goodly portion of my afternoon wading through this pablum.

I do like to try and temper my scorn with some positive comments. It would be churlish of me not to highlight the fact that sometimes our Jennifer tells mildly diverting anecdotes about her children, or says something a bit poignant. She writes reasonably well when she’s on a roll but overall, this is not writing, it is wittering. To write well you need to marry a unique, readable style with interesting, original content, or at the very least permit them to live together in sin. If you don’t care about writing well, if your blog is just for the personal amusement of you and your cronies, then for the love of Christmas, do not submit it for review.

Oh where are they, the bloggers who can satiate my soul? Where are the people who can turn bread and water into Trimalchio’s feast? Why must I soil myself with this prattle? Jennifer, my darling, I am sorry to have to vent my spleen on you. You seem like a decent woman. You work hard and keep clean and say your prayers (not that I have any truck with religion - I decided a long time ago that I was the only god it was worth my while to worship). I just don’t care about anything you have to say. I don’t care what your hair looks like or what colour your bedclothes are or whether or not you like scrapbooking. In the grand chronicling of the internet, your blog is mere bagatelle.

The clouds have come now, wandering in like grubby sheep, and no doubt it will soon rain. The hottest day of the year so far and I have spent it paddling in this mess of pottage. I suppose I should offer advice of some kind, but the only advice that springs to mind is ‘shut up and leave me alone’. I feel so weary and my head is so full of fripperies that I am going to have to spend the evening doing diabolical things to my Fanny just to cheer myself up.

Jennifer, take this flaming finger and tidy it away.

Autoplaying tunes? Fuck you. Just...Fuck you.

While you primates were off exploring the world with your opposable thumbs, us lizards decided to take the party underground. Betwixt champagne, caviar and interspecific orgies we surface now and then to host talk shows on Fox news. It's a good life, I tell ya'.

Whiteboy Style. I have been asked, nay tasked, to assess whether I share my premium single malt or have Monty rend your insides with his sharp talons. Given that your species is waking up to the joys of tolerance, I figured this was a blog for the well groomed young Caucasian male.

And by golly was I wrong. Your header image features you (or someone else) in garb reminiscent of a failed reality TV star. Your tagline is "Keeping Midgets As Pets Since 1998". Oh good, midget humor is so edgy and original, how long did it take to come up with that one?

It's been so long since you last wrote, my neighbor Henry has molted twice since. Then again, that was when you picked a fight with a Twilight fan. I lost patience a few seconds into the post, I'd much rather headbutt a concrete wall. Navigating your blog is an impossible task. On my list of priorities, wading through a daily archive is somewhere in between tongue splitting and stuffing mustard up my cloacae.

Putting the jar of French's aside, I delved deeper. Another Twilight post. Senseless updates. More embedded videos. I'll watch Tosh.0 for recycled garbage from the internet, there's no point in posting drivel if you don't have the motivation to write. Every second post seems to be about you restarting your blog. Make up your mind chief, I have a mass extinction to attend at 4.

Look "whiteboy", you show promise. When not regurgitating opinions or fucking up your website with lolcats, you seem to have a voice. It's nothing I haven't seen or read (I am a dinosaur after all), but it shows you're trying. You can even be funny. Why would you take the easy way out and quarrel with hate mail? Think of writing as exercise. It can be brutal and unrewarding at first, but it gets better. Only if you want to, and only when you try.

Your website is clean and minimal, and my monochrome vision appreciates that. You have a few links on the sidebars, which I saved for the last. After having seen my share of genitalia on chat roulette, I steered clear of the webcam link. "Wall scratchings" must be some sort of comment form, I wouldn't know - there's more spam there than in my emergency rations.

In the dark ages of the internet, there was Myspace. It was an elaborate prank teenagers used to get strangers to listen to shit masquerading as music. Autoplaying tunes to me is what a bucket of water is to middle-eastern men in Gitmo. It is a well known fact that dinosaurs are fans of late-80s speed metal, so listening to the drivel on your "Demo CD" page made my ears bleed. I'm not your demographic, but I assume your diehard fans would be capable of simple tasks like clicking a play button. Kill that autoplay option already. Fix your archive, good site design shows you care about your readers - new and old.

When I first saw this blog last week, I found a dead link to "The Crew". It's gone now, and the questions remain. Who are you? What are you up to? You're clearly alive, your homepage changed in the last one week. Where are you now? Why waste my time on a review if you can't be arsed to update your own blog?

For showing promise in 1.5 posts and making me ask for more you get




For submitting a dead blog, filled with junk and autoplaying tunes you get three flaming fingers. James, fetch my slippers, it's time for supper.

If only I didn't have more in common with the crackheads you write about

Well it has finally happened. This vile little undertaking of which I'm proud to be a part has finally crossed paths with the most wholesome, the most virginal of the internets -- the Bloggernacle.

What we have today is a Mormon blogger, Jill, who I fear may have been misled by our header into thinking she was applying for a temple recommend, rather than applying for a corn-hole hazing of the most unhygienic variety.

Just as I have a strict policy against discrimination with regard to which religions I will blaspheme, so too do I spare not the rod on the virtuous of the blogosphere when I hand out teeth-gnashing butt drubbings.

But call it homesickness for the Jell-O Belt, replete with its happy looking folk in desperate want of tanned skin sharing morally pure fun and scripture around a pitcher of unspiked Purplesaurus Rex Kool-Aid; call it nostalgia for the culinary delights of my youth my Mormon grandmother whipped up from canned goods, thus rotating her year supply of food. Maybe I'm just in a good mood today because someone has brought me back to my youth and home. Whatever the cause, Jill need not get her panties in a bunch (or her temple garments, as it were). I am not here to question her beliefs, however eyebrow-raisingly non-mainstream they may be. And I, of all people, have no need to be cagey. Having been born into an extended Mormon family myself, I pretty much have a get-out-of-hell free card, should the occasion require it. You see, despite my religious rejection of religion, somewhere inside my dark and withered soul, I cling to the hope that I will be baptized Mormon posthumously by proxy with the cooperation of one of my bazillion cousins' offspring and thus ensure my place in at least one of the kingdoms of heaven. Uh, kinda.

While Mormonism may be central to Jill's life, it is actually not a central theme of her blog. She's not constantly talking about it except in passing and there are no conversion efforts that I could see, or any judgment placed on those who have differing beliefs. For me the Mormonism is an aspect of Jill that shines blindingly through the lines, scorching my depraved retina with the sterile glory of the Heavenly Father. I recognize that glaring beam from my childhood and actually, while I probably have more in common morally with the crackheads she encounters or the crazy people on the subway than I do with her according to her church's doctrine, I feel at home culturally when I read her blog and inside her safe, shrink wrapped, prophylactic sense of humor, where even the 'd-word' is off limits.

But for the unfamiliar reader, Jill's Mormonism may come across as a minor detail in the grander scheme of who Jill portrays herself to be through her writing. She's also a 29 year old single and celibate half Mexican inner city high school teacher living out of place in Harlem. So her stories are much more than ideas of how to use up the 25 cases of water packed tuna fish in your pantry or tales of proselytization efforts gone awry. She writes on encounters with other cultures in her job, stories from her time in Honduras, incidents on the subway, and how her experience has had an effect on her political outlook.

Jill is above all a genuinely likeable person who has a serious funny bone, albeit an entirely wholesome, good-natured, and light hearted one. Jill likely won't take that in a negative light but I find it slightly disturbs a tormented mind like mine of ever unfolding perversions. Am I the only one to seek out the persona non grata, the mischief-makers, the guilt-ridden, those that don't have it even remotely figured out, those with the million dissenting voices in their head when I navigate the blogosphere and, well, life? Are there really people out there that are that consistent and pure like Jill? If so and if I can get my cynical mind around that, I have no business fouling up their junk, so I'd best keep my distance anyway.

As to the writing, Jill has a lot of potential, and her voice is refreshingly humble and endearing, although many of her posts read like letters home - well written and edited, mind you, but they sound as if they are meant to get a giggle out of Sister Smith from her ward back home more than the people that frequent this joint. FYI: unless I'm on snack duty at Family Home Evening, I don't care about this. Her earlier posts seemed in some cases to lack a rythmic flow to them, but she's improving. As to her writing technique, there could be more in the way of variety of tone. Jill is a mature enough writer to experiment a little in her prose, do some more intensive self-discovery through her writing, unexpected unfolding, narrative flowering. I'd like to see Jill delve more into the emotion or the descriptions behind the events she recounts as opposed to just telling the reader what happened, whatever the effect on how she categorizes herself as a writer (a Mormon humor blogger), and whatever the shock waves it may send to her Mormon audience.

I'd like to see her get her hands dirty a little. Honestly, what the heck did you expect me to say, Jill? This ain't exactly the Relief Society.

So this is what I can muster from the depths of my putrid heart:






Oh yeah, and your template reminds me of a mix of my grandmother's dingy bathroom wallpaper and a shade of denim suggesting high-wasted cinched cameltoe disasters of the early nineties. Oh and make your *cusswords removed* links work, especially the About link, dadgummit.

One Thing's for Surgeon, Your Blog Sucks

I am seriously considering writing all of my reviews drunk as hell, and I'm nearly there, because sometimes it's the only way I can till some of these blogs. Seriously, I can see the future because I have access to the submission list and there are some goddamn wearisome plebes sitting around waiting for life to happen coming up on the roster.

Of course you know that I am not a wearisome plebe. I am brilliance fucking manifest. Plus I got superior typing skills even when rocked on fucking wheat fermentingations or whatever because I memorized where to find the backspace key.

Long as we're listing things I got, I got medical horror stories up the ass (not like literal probes, although I know you guys are serious buttpokers), but this fucking guy collects eyefuls of peculiar shit daily, and believe me when I tell you: he makes crazy medicinal drama about as fucking interesting as ironing pleated pants. I actually prefer ironing pleated pants. I can do that shit drunk.

Techknowdoc writes with holes and impotence. It's very, "This woman had fat legs. And I said, 'gee, your legs are fat.' Man, some bonky things sure do go down in my wacky surgical ward." Except that quote that I just totally paraphrased is infinitely more interesting than everything on this blog just because I utilized "bonky." Use it, Techknowdoc.

By the way, nice nomenportmanteau. And by "nice" I mean "cancer."

As far as presentation...you know, it is what it is. The header is a menacingly stretched scalpel-hand and a splooge of pointless labels clog up the lower half of the template, and it's all Halloweeny colored and basically lame. But regarding content?

Doc, okay. I get it. It's exciting when patients are up to their elbows in fishbones, and that's some zany fucking hijinx, but your version of "lateral thinking" relates to egg-laying roosters and grave-digging planes, and your sprightly professional medical explanation regarding how foreign objects enter the human body is this:

"the fish decided to do one last heroic act before dying and made the bone fly into his elbow!!"

And you just...I don't even know. Accept it. You just accept a fucking telekinetic fish flinging daggerbones at fisherman as the hilarious breakdown of events in the most banal possible manner. You don't tell us the motivation behind the offense or give us an exciting play-by-play, it's just, the fish "made the bone fly into his elbow!!"

It's all unanswered questions, disgusting-ass pictures of surgeries without fixin' the reader with medical explanations or offering ameliorative advice, and fuck you for wasting my time and my PBR on bullshit like this. Assorted condoms exist. A woman blows her nose. I can't tell if your aim is pompous comedy or pompous revolution. Your blog is an unsanitary succession of narrative pap smears, and fuck you, I'm sober now. And I get things. Believe me. I am very smart.

Look Doc, I'm sure you're like, a good surgeon and stuff, but I'm just burning to give you these.






Also, I am very partial to the "rat poisen" tag that the illustrious Nutjobber added to the AAYSR label list. It's my cheap grammar crack.

An Idiot In Your Inbox

What ho, kiddiwinks! I must own to being in a superlative mood this afternoon. The weather is still absolutely filthy (there has been snow up in the Lakes and Fanny has taken to sporting an old beaver muff she found in the south attic), but I feel in such fine fettle that the sleet just don’t signify. You must forgive my repeated weather reports.

I know it does get tiresome, but I am an Englishman, and I can no more avoid it than I can deny my penchant for Spotted Dick and spanking. I don’t know if it’s down to last night’s productive session on the commode, the fact that Fanny says the traps are filling up or just the reassuring scent of my own inexorable death, but I am fit to burst with friskiness. I woke up in such excellent humour that I was moved to play a little prank on poor Fanny. It involved a rather elaborate system of pulleys and a clandestine trip to the Eel Ponds, but it was worth it to see the look on her funny old face. Most unusual-looking thing, my Fanny. Manages to look like an egg chicken at the same time.

I am all for japery – back at the School I was crowned Shenanigan King three terms running – and I wholeheartedly believe that a little mischief is good for the soul. I have a soft spot for bizarre and pointless naughtiness and I must confess that my sense of humour can err towards the juvenile. Which brings us to the subject of this week’s review – Ned Wingfield: taxidermist, amateur D.J. and ‘master negotiator’.

The conceit here is that our Nedders trawls the classifieds and responds to the advertisements of innocent people who want nothing more than to sell their iron, rent a room or hire a babysitter. Ned then embroils them in a series of increasingly bizarre emails, ostensibly to practice his ‘negotiation skills’, but really just for shits and giggles.

Now, I have seen this kind of thing done before. If Mr Wingfield doesn’t have a copy of The Timewaster Letters by Robert Popper writing as Robin Cooper, I suggest he invest post haste. Perhaps I was predisposed to find Ned amusing because I enjoyed this book (although Ned never reaches the giddy heights of Robin Cooper). Perhaps I am predisposed to find anything that includes jokes about taxidermy amusing. Perhaps it’s just my chipper mood, but I laughed out loud on several occasions whilst reading this blog.

He informs the woman looking for a babysitter that he has trained himself to lactate and once “raised a clutch of baby otters and then harvested their fur and meat”. He tries to interest one poor man in his new business venture; wolves’ teeth dentures for the elderly. When he responds to the advert of the young man looking for a room to rent, he writes “Do you have any experience with brick laying or tarring? Familiarity with deboning primates would also be a plus. Otherwise you’ll have to learn that the hard way”. However, it is sometimes his victims that get the best lines, as said wannabe-lodger proves when he writes, “Yeah but see the thing is it’s precisely the fact that you claim to have a stuffed koala and a ‘weapons cache’ that makes me not want to live with you."

Of course, we all know that humour is subjective, that one man’s meat is another man’s Linda McCartney vegetarian sausage, as I have no doubt proved with that cheap quip. Ned’s shtick will not suit everybody. There were times when I found his jokes a touch basic, the surrealism obvious, his taste questionable, and these moments were only highlighted by the occasional flashes of maleficent brilliance. I like silliness, but I like sophisticated silliness. Overall, however, I found his willful absurdity most chucklesome, and when he ended an email to a man setting up a prayer group with “Ned’s Bible Quote of the Day: 2 Kings 2:24: Then two bears came out of the woods and mauled forty-two of the youths”, I inhaled a goodly portion of my Gin Rickey, although I have no idea why.

There is, however, an issue of suspension of disbelief. I think this kind of thing works best when the reader cannot quite decide if the person writing the emails is real or not. There are a few lapses in tone, particularly in the introductions and in the fact that Ned has merchandise, which allow a glimpse of the Ned who is writing the Ned who is writing the emails, and I would like to see those disappear. For example, he makes occasional references to himself as a ‘celebrity blogger’ and it might be larks if the ‘Ned Wingfield’ character did consider himself to be a celebrity blogger, but his blog was not the one containing his emails, but another, far more unhinged fiction about his day-to-day life.

Mr Wingfield hasn’t posted anything since January, which is something of a pity – unlike any of the other opuses I have reviewed here, I might consider popping back for more. If old Ned smartened himself up and tightened his conceit, I could see this being published as the kind of book one receives multiple copies of at Christmas, because it was on sale at the counter in the book shop and because one’s aunts have no imagination.

So, despite the baying wind and the hoar frost on the windows, I find my mood is gay. My Fanny has recovered from her eel encounter and I have decided that if Ned gets to have merchandise, I should have merchandise too. So far I’ve managed to confect a little something out of a snorkel and a rubber glove filled with Swarfega, but I haven’t tested it out yet. Fanny is looking worried, and rightly so.

Ned Wingfield, for keeping me amused with your gleeful nonsense I am going to give you three stars, and to encourage you to refine and expand on your particular brand of buffoonery, I refer you to Deuteronomy 23:1.

An Incomplete Education

Hey there fuckers. Long time no see. It was a bit like that movie The Terminal for me. I took a vacation, and when I got back, my country no longer existed and was under a new regime. No matter. I’m an opportunist, so I ingratiated myself with the new Prime Minister, off-ed a few enemies of the state, and, voila, here I am! Back in the spotlight.

So, what do we have here? Today’s entertainment (or should I say edutainment?) comes in the form of one Ms. Friendly, a thirty-something year old public high school teacher from…, I don’t know where, exactly. Somewhere in America. Somewhere near a big city with the problems that go along with overcrowding and poverty. Somewhere that gave her the opportunity to chronicle her experiences teaching in an inner city school with no leadership or resources, and lacking seriously in the student motivation and positive parental involvement department. (And no, she is not running for Governor of California.)

Her entire output consists of 40 posts, dating from 2008 to close to the present, most of which came from that first year. Since then, she has taken a new job at a less resource challenged, less inner city school. But she still has plenty to say.

I read everything, from beginning to end. Didn’t take me too long. The first ten or fifteen items sucked me in. Made me really think about what is going on with the whole public education system. Made me question the value of No Child Left Behind. Made me wonder what sort of system allows such ineffectual school administrators to keep their jobs when they are clearly letting the inmates run the asylum. Had me asking questions like – “What culpability do the unions have in this? Do we need a complete top-to-bottom overhaul of the system? Where are the state education dollars going in these inner city schools?”

If Ms. Friendly had stopped there, this would have been a completely different review. I was provoked. I was challenged. I was outraged. I was about to call my congressperson.

But she didn’t stop there. She kept writing, kept harping on the same issues over and over again. Never offering up any real solutions. Just telling us what she doesn’t like about the situation at hand. And her tendency to refer to the troublemakers in her classes as “garbage pail kids” comes across, not as snarky or even as a form of gallows humor, but as a sort of cruelty. Call someone a turd often enough and they’ll start to believe it. That old self-fulfilling prophecy thing.

And I began to wonder -- who is the intended audience for this blog?

I personally know a lot of educators, in real life. I know college professors. I know secondary school teachers. And I know a whole host of elementary school teachers and administrators. And yeah, most of the educators I know work at private schools, certainly not inner-city environments, but some are at public schools. And when I get together for a cook out or something with them, they pretty much all bitch and moan about the same things that Ms. Friendly bitches and moans about. Interfering parents. Ineffectual administration. Incompetent co-workers. Unmotivated students. They very rarely have anything to say that’s particularly positive about their career choices. (Admittedly, the teachers I know don’t usually fear for their lives with their students. Usually.)

Which makes me wonder – why?

Why did you choose this job when it so clearly makes you miserable? Or, if it doesn't make you miserable, why are you pissing and moaning in a blog about it? Why aren’t you doing something like aspiring to an administration position to, I dunno, make some improvements (unless that’s what your PhD is for)?

If this is just a journal to vent to, why submit it for a review? Here?

Now, all that aside, Ms Friendly, here’s some free advice, should you have gotten this far without deciding that I’m a total fucking dickhead that just don’t get it:

• Edit. Proofread. Spellcheck. You’re an educator. You teach English. You should not be confusing “where” and “were.”
  
  
• Finish what you start. There were, in my opinion, too many times that you said something to the effect of “more on that later” but never gave us the “more.” Sometimes you set up a rant about two or three things, but then only ranted about one. And it seemed you sort of petered out in a few posts without getting to the final denouement.


• Your template. Too many font changes. White text on a black background is hard on my eyes. And look at things like your bullet lists. When there is stuff in there that says "* ", I can assure you, that is not meant to be there. Kill it quick before it multiplies!


• Move on. You’ve covered the topics I listed above ad nauseum. It is time to branch out, tell us more interesting tidbits about education. Or issue a call to action. Something. Lest you be accused of abusing Roy Rogers’ beloved, yet very stuffed, Trigger. Tell us more about the exceptional students. The courageous ones that make the whole experience worthwhile. If this blog is not just for you to use as a dumping ground for negativity, if it is meant for an external audience, let us into the realm of understanding as to why you chose to be an educator.

Or just keep doing what you’re doing. You write well, you have a vivid voice. I would love to see you use that voice as a positive force.

Now for your final grade this semester. I am awarding you one star for making me aware of the issues of teaching in an inner-city environment so vividly, at first.



But I'm also giving you an "Incomplete", because of the rest and because I feel that there's so much more you could be doing.

Not George. Not Dave. Not even Elmer or glue.

Another guest review from Ellie over at the Daily Smoke.

I like to think I’m funny. Not like a comedian funny, but generally jocular in my day-to-day dealings. (Trevor: Please note, instead of ‘day-to-day’ I might have used ‘quotidian’ or ‘diurnal’ or even ‘circadian’, if my thesaurus is to be believed. Sometimes, though, the simplest way of saying something is best.)

I’m living with a dog and working from home these days. Before I chose this life for myself, my Mondays consisted of back-to-back management meetings that frequently overran. I often blurted out a quip or bon mot or wisecrack to lighten up the very important and serious matters that occupied us during our important and serious, overrunning Monday meetings. My sallies were always well received. My colleagues would chuckle or slap their knees; any tension that had resulted from our serious and important discussions would have dissipated. From time to time I would bite my tongue rather than share the wit, because there is a time and a place for everything; and sometimes it’s just not professional to joke in the midst of important and serious dealings. I am, above all, professional.

Maybe in my current isolation, I am losing my sense of humour because I did not find Trevor to be rip-roaring, laugh-out-loud funny.

I make a quick mental inventory of my sense of humour. My assessment reveals that whilst I might not be making as many jokes these days (the dog has no sense of humour), I still enjoy a good gut-busting guffaw or even a mild tee-hee titter. And, I don’t discriminate: whether funny is of a sophomoric caliber or of a more refined palate, I like it. I suppose at this point I should provide examples as proof.

Low brow examples: I love South Park (Has anyone seen the Medicinal Chicken episode?!!!) and American Pie and The Hangover. Oh! And the season of America’s Next Top Model, the one with Jade. She was a hoot!

High brow examples: I get a kick out of Catch-22, and Sheridan’s Mrs. Malaprop from The Rivals and George Bush. That guy is a brilliant comedian.

There we have it: even if I am not myself funny, I do have a sense of humour.

Despite my self-acknowledged sense of humour, I had never visited a self-proclaimed humour blog until I was chosen to review Write in the Kisser. Blogging humourists get a bad rap around these parts. I mulled this over as I mentally limbered up to write this snippet. I asked myself, “Are the folks at AAYSR being fair or are they suffering from having a foreign something up their own asses?”

I negotiated a 2-week deadline and dove into funny with enthusiasm, prepared to prove the naysayers wrong.

Almost immediately after diving in, I scrambled out of the cold, brackish, not-so-funny blog. Over the course of the next ten days, I tried to re-immerse myself. I’d stick my big toe in or my pinky finger, but I couldn’t last in the un-funny. There was always something more fun calling: laundry, filling out expenses, walking the humourless dog, and shaving my legs, to name a few. Reviewing this blog was very much like doing taxes: the dread of the chore hangs over your head for weeks, you tackle the chore in fits and starts, you have to ask for an extension, finally you muster up the energy it will require to do the bare minimum just to get it done and out the door. Trevor drove me to do the bare minimum.

Why didn’t I find Trevor’s blog funny? (BTW Trevor: it’s not a weg, nor will it ever be a weg. Are your repeated references to ‘weg’ your attempt to be funny or have you been misinformed?)

Quick internal aside:

Jesus fucking God when am I going to be done with this review?

Let’s just get this over with already: click on ‘Ranked’ in AAYSR's header and scroll down to ‘anti-humour’ you will find a lot has already been written, which sums up my feelings about Trevor’s blog.

For example,

1. “If you tell me you’re funny, you already suck.”

Trevor: it’s a bit audacious to describe yourself as the love child of George Carlin and Dave Barry; and when you fail to deliver, you just come off as pretentious.

2. “Fucking tries too hard and fails miserably”

Trevor: you have a varied vocabulary. Good for you. The way you use it though makes you sound contrived. Here’s a teensy example of how your choice of words pain me.

"Hmmm," you muse.
...

"Yes," I aver, tiring of the conceit.

Sometimes, authenticity in writing requires you put your dog-eared copy of Roget's back on the shelf. Maybe you should try it.

3. Trevor “with your fantastical nonsense, I sense you are sitting there, buttocks clenched, waiting to be told how wonderful you are. So here goes: You're not really. You could be, but we’ll come back to that.”

Trevor, I don’t think you don’t have a sense of humour. I simply think it’s limited to recognising funny, rather than being funny. You find some outlandish, funny-in-its-wackiness stuff out there. If your blog were just a compendium of links to the stuff you find funny, I might like it more.

You, however, feel compelled to add your own narration. You are not a bad writer. You seem to follow grammatical conventions. You use commas and apostrophes and italicised print in all the right places. It's your tone that doesn't sit well with me. My ears hear immaturity trying real hard to be all grown up. Your use of sarcasm is bland and flat. If you're going to be sarcastic, make it wither shit on the vine. Sarcasm needs to be biting as hell, otherwise, it's just a sign of the sad aloofness of someone trying too hard to be cool.

I suspect that if you shed the whole 'humour' blog persona, you would write more freely, perhaps gain some confidence, and maybe even have something interesting to say.

A couple of quick fixes could be made: put something about you in your About page. As it is now it tells us shit all that we can't figure out from a two minute scan of your blog. And as Rassles wrote to another un-funny "I’m like motherfuckin’ Encyclopedia Brown. Give us an “About Me” page ..."

Finally, consider changing the graphic in your banner. Write in the Kisser is a clever(ish)title, but the way the graphic presents it, it reads Write Kisser In The.

I'm giving you the short bus. I wish it hadn't taken me so long.








* Sincere thanks to Madame Bellicose, Love Bites, Father Gene, and Rassles for paving the un-funny road before me.

As deep as any ocean, as sweet as any harmony.

I am a big fan of science. Big fan. I was all up in 3-2-1 Contact back in the day, except for when they had all those French people on there. French people aren't sciencey, everyone knows that. (Oh, PBS, you goose! Humor is your strongest asset. I'll bet you just sit around all day and listen to Weird Al; that's why you're such a honk at dinner parties.)

People here in the colonies usually only watch the Public Broadcasting Service because of Rick Steves' travel tips, Ken Burns self-congratulatory documentaries on the awesomeness of our country, and Neil deGrasse Tyson's knack of finding wonder in our universal insignificance. Right now I would like to thank all of my employers who paid me too little: without your efforts to safeguard my poverty, I could have afforded cable, and who picks PBS over HBO?

It's easy to ignore programming like that with so much "comedy" and "satire" shoving its nose in your junk and demanding to be stroked. The earnest and educational get fucked over.

The same is true for blogs. And that is unfortunate, because then you miss out on people like Julie.

Julie is a Scientific Chick who received her PhD in Neuroscience just two weeks ago (work it). Her blog is driven by research and science, mostly consisting of regurgitated studies decoded for greenhorns. It's very impersonal, although she does offer her interpretations at the end of each entry, but overall I found it fascinating.

She's colloquial in tone and well-acquainted with her subject matter, she questions the studies appropriately and asks for the readers questions in return. This blog is thoughtful and thorough. I didn't skip an entry, even though I disagree with some of her assessments. For example, I think this shows that the subjects are swayed by the opinions of others, which affirms what I've always felt: it takes just one opinion to influence your perception before conceiving your own, so ignore other opinions until you've formed one yourself. Hypocrisy owns me.

But the most important thing this tells me is that I want to start a dialogue with her, and that, friends, is happy territory. Some of the entries didn't grab me so much, but that's more of a matter of personal interest, like choosing articles in National Geographic.

A clean, readable template that's easy to navigate is hard to find. Because of the nature of your blog, Julie, think about trimming your labels down to more specific topics rather than references, but definitely keep them in your sidebar.

I feel like such a pushover, seriously, because I really want to fucking tear someone apart, but I just cannot, here. I love her. I don't fucking love her, but I love her just the same.

Butterflies and Bhaona

It is a cold day in England. Fanny has banked up the fire, made me a pint of hot Cheeky Vimto and rubbed Deep Heat into my extremities, but it is as though the grey sky and the needling rain have got inside my very bones. In this part of the world we have a saying, ‘Ne’er cast a clout ‘til May be out’, which, roughly translated, means “Don’t take your vest off ‘til June”. Or your longjohns, balaclava, earmuffs and mittens. When I discovered that today’s blogger comes all the way from India, I did not know whether the contrast in climate would be a torture or a tonic.

Quirky Mon (which I cannot help but think in a Jamaican accent) is a young medical student from Assam, and I am glad of this – when I first saw the title of her blog I didn’t think I would have the strength to continue. It is called “Quirky Alone....and Happy!” and as I have a pathological hatred of exclamation marks and am highly prejudiced against the word ‘quirky’, this was not a good start. I was terrified that it would be the ‘musings’ of a girl who wears jewellery made of vintage buttons, carries a lunchbox instead of a handbag and has a cat called Baudelaire. However, I bravely soldiered on, and this is what I found.

To rub salt in my frostbitten wounds, the first post describes a blissful April morning quite unlike the crabbed and pinching month we’ve just weathered. There are cuckoos and roses, jewelled feet in the dew, even a meaningful butterfly. I was, of course, spitting with envy, thinking of my daffodils poleaxed by the wind. My first instinct was to take some form of revenge on Quirky Mon, but I found that it is rather hard to hate her.

Quirky is a thoroughly decent young woman. She is hard-working and self-deprecating, she prizes education, and enjoys learning for its own sake. She is thoughtful and serious and she wants to make herself a better person. She loves her family and her friends and wants to make them proud of her, and yet she retains a mischievous streak, and displays an interesting capacity for ruthlessness. She worries about her appearance and she pines for a true love. I hope she finds him soon, she deserves him.

Her posts are often far too long for the casual reader, and I would advise that she go back through her archives and, at the very least, put in some paragraph breaks. I am aware that my criticising long posts is all rather pot and kettle, but I did find my eyes rebelling somewhere around the final third of Quirky’s longer theses. There’s also rather a lot of angst floating about, a lot of convoluted self-analysis. This is fine for a secret diary, but it can be rather tedious for other people to read, a bit like when my Fanny insists on recounting her dreams each morning. Quirky writes reasonably well though, with an eye for detail and character, and with harsher editing she could be much better. I do enjoy reading a blog that teaches me something I didn’t know before, and I found these posts about Bhaona and Bhogali Bihu fascinating.

Quirky does not swear or smoke or drink, and she comes from a culture where courting is rather difficult, and so her writing might not appeal to those of you with a more Bacchic bent. In fact, she does not seem like the kind of girl who would be a particularly devoted fan of this site and its overall tone at all. I did have to wonder what such a nice girl was doing in a place like this, but then I am often surprised at the differences between the blogs that are reviewed here and those that are the work of the commentators and contributors. It is hard to review the nice writings of nice people. Quirky is to me rather like that convenient butterfly. She is so lovely that I am afraid I will crush her in my meaty paws. I fear I may already have marred her with my smut, just by reading her words.

So what can I say in summation? Keep writing, Quirky; as catharsis if nothing else. If you really do harbour dreams of becoming a writer as well as a doctor, practise writing pieces that do not contain the word ‘I’. I won’t be returning to your blog – niceness can be quite draining for those of us who go bump in the night – but I passed a warming afternoon in your company and I am going to have Fanny make aloo chops for tea.

I am going to give you a star, and, as you are such a pleasant young woman, I am going to pretend that I didn’t see the poetry.

Awesome Sauce: Now With Less Awesome

Dear LiLu,

I am conflicted about your blog. Granted, I'm molded from fluxing confliction anyway, which is why I am so fucking charming, so this was expected. But still.

I started at the beginning.

At first, I liked you. You were honest and conversational and relateable and perfectly inappropriate, with refreshing self-assurance and offering unique views on common subjects. You displayed personality and good humor which made you, in many ways, uncommon. Stories were long-winded but interesting, everything dripped attitude.

I was semi-entranced. How is this possible that people like you exist outside of sitcoms and romantic comedies? You live in the world of Friends, and I live in MST3K. Seriously, it's all cheesy movies and sardonic robots up here on the Satellite o' Love.

Eventually you began doing TMI Thursdays and Shiz My Boyfriend Says and Stupid Fugly Things and Other Abbreviated Memes I Don't Care About. You and your boyfriend are entertaining and cute, I'll give you that. I skipped the others on principle. Why, internets, must there be a day set aside for telling the fucking truth? Shouldn't we always be boldly oversharing? The answer is yes, yes we should. Then recently, you ended them. I applaud your decision to un-limit yourself. You're best when you're uninhibited.

Oh, but you, like, stopped being cool.

All of a sudden your life wasn't your own and became a collection of catchphrases of FAIL and AWESOME SAUCE! and bold letters and....waaaaaaaaait for it....witty asides! I mean, you like things that are funny and can be funny yourself, in a non-threatening OMG-I-am-so-gross-in-the-cutest-manner-I-can-muster-exclamation-point! AWESOME SAUCE. Clever pawned internet slogan! Spelling words like they sound instead of how they're spelled (ON PURPOSE). Must-see Youtube video! ANOTHER clever internet slogan! Awesome sauce! It's annoying. But it's AAWWWWWESOOOOOOOMMMMME SAAAAAAUCE! Plus, I read "Firefly" and I think Malcolm Reynolds, and you just choke the joy out of my fucking world.

Then I read this regarding finding your "e-voice," and immediately morphed into sore snobbasaurus. Before I was irked. Now I'm pissed off.

You didn't tell them anything substantial, LiLu. No guidance, nothing. I thought you were fucking better than that. To quote you quoting Inigo Montoya: let me sum up.

Essentially your advice was, "I was boring in seventh grade. I know. I KNOW! And then I started talking to people and I took a risk! Now I have an e-voice and you can too!" You are not helping people find their voice, you are telling them how to be heard.

A voice, my friend, is not measurable by internet buddies and memes. We measure voices with decibels, which, as everyone knows, are the referential sliding scale points used to quantify the intensity of sound. Duh. Dumbass. Sound, and consequently voice, is a slippery, discordant tramp of a thing made of invisible particles and temperamental waves and shit. There are obstacles to fight through until it becomes clear.

You might think you've found your "e-voice," but stop fucking gimmicking. Write unplugged. Dude, that is a fucking brilliant phrase that I totally just invented, but probably read somewhere and subconsciously suppressed. Seriously LiLu, I cannot support the logic behind correlating your individual voice with how well you successfully woo goddamn internet friends. That's just a desperation to be popular.

Which is your goal, I guess. You're making friends and you got a bajillion fans. I can tell because your sidebar is a jumbly-wumbly anneurysm of advertisements, admiration, and Bootleg Awards (whatever those are). There's a quirky, darkly adorable header image that looks like a Threadless t-shirt and a quirky, darkly adorable About Me that reads like a personal ad, explaining, " I have come to classify myself as a 'South-i-fied Masshole'… all the fun of a Northerner, now with the grace of a Southern belle!"

Please fix your fourteen feet of sidebar tags. Just copy and paste it onto a post and shove it up there on your tabs in between "Roll Call" and "Subscribe." I really don't like that grid of posts beneath your first two entries. Mouse-clicking is a complicated task, and you are forcing me to make a decision between O'Douls and Sharps, when before you were serving up Stella and sometimes La Fin Du Monde.

It's frustrating, because I really, really just don't understand you. Maybe the blog became too much work. You claim to be boring. But the best thing about you early on was your attitude and uncompromising sense of self. Lately, you're still nice, and you're still cute, but you sound just like everyone else.

Regards,

Shinerpunch




For the early years.







For losing it.

She'll Be Wearing Pink Pyjamas When She Comes

I was a latecomer to this whole computer business. I had only a vague notion of the internet as a confusing gallimaufry of misinformation, men pretending to be elves, European anuses and pictures of kittens, all of which I have encountered more than often enough in my long and scurrilous life. I was content with my library and my memories and had no intention of going upline, until my Fanny went on a bender two towns over and came to in something called a cyber cafe. She returned home with a torn petticoat, a skew-whiff wig and the news that people put their diaries on the internet. The very next day I sent her out to obtain this machine, and we set about poking our noses into other people’s lives. It has been something of a tonic. It gets rather lonely in this labyrinthine old house with only my Fanny to entertain me. There are the tableaux in the east wing, of course, but one grows weary of their poses and they are starting to smell.

Sometimes you can form an instant opinion of the people you meet out there. You know immediately if they are friend or foe. Some of them take a bit longer to get the measure of and this, after a long and tedious preamble for which I wholeheartedly do not apologise, brings me to June. I would probably never have encountered anyone in June’s situation had it not been for the internet. She is a young woman who has recently moved from Bombay to Copenhagen to be with her Intended, in a rather sweet little love story that brought a tear to my Fanny’s eye.

It was perhaps a little unfortunate that the first post I read descended into the kind of aren’t-shoes-pretty-wittering that belongs in the drawing room with the ratafia and the pianoforte. I decided to forgive her on the grounds that she has pretty feet (which put Fanny in a sulk, I can tell you. She won’t have feet mentioned any more. I tried to remonstrate but she just pouted and stamped her hoof) and read on. And on, and on.

I couldn’t help myself. I read like I would eat a whole tin of Quality Street; with a numbed, mindless pleasure, drooling into my cravat. I have no idea why. Most of it passed me by in a charming froth of inconsequentiality. After what could have been days, Fanny set about me with a carpet-beater and I came to my senses. When I had restored my equilibrium with a hefty rum-and-Calpol I had another peek at June and I swear I could not fathom what had drawn me in.

That’s not entirely fair. I was curious about this post, on tigers and tribesmen. It is interesting to read about the differences between Bombay and Copenhagen, two places that certain political misunderstandings prevent me from visiting. She’s not afraid to be serious. I was outraged when some despicable rogues tried to steal her beloved dog. All of this, however, is muddled up with far too many posts about socks, lists of things to do in bad weather and photographs of her winter wardrobe for it to be my cup of cocoa.

In her little introduction, June says;

“I am not a professional writer, not even an aspiring one. Grammar and spelling Nazi’s and my dear literary gold diggers, the exit door is at the top to your right. This blog is just so family and friends can stay updated. Okay? O.K.”

Now this might make you wonder why she has chosen to submit her blog for review, particularly to a site notorious for its jackboot-wearing prospectors, but I would imagine she has done what so many of us do; start a blog, get a few encouraging comments, suddenly think we’re Gore Vidal. This is the nature of the ether, and it is forgivable. The above quote also suggested to me that I would not like June’s writing one little bit, and yet I made an absolute pig of myself on it, and have been left feeling confused.

Sometimes, on soggy Sunday afternoons, I drag the tin bath before the fire so I can wallow like a shameless old beast with a pound of coltsfoot rock and a stack of Regency romances. I surface hours later, having read myself into a happy fugue, remembering nothing. As a special treat, Fanny sometimes brings me one of those magazines for bloodthirsty working-class housewives, the ones with the headlines like ‘Is My Vagina Haunted?’, ‘Murdered by my Siamese Twin’ or ‘My Cancer Looks like Jesus’. I like to do the puzzles and cut out the pictures for my scrapbook. These are my guilty pleasures, along with aggravating my Fanny, and it is in this spirit that I approached June.

It would be nice if every blog I read was so beautifully written and so profound that I felt compelled to memorise it, but as this is unlikely, it is sometimes pleasant to spend a couple of hours enveloped in the happy chatter of a young woman who cracks jokes about eating her dog. I wouldn’t recommend her to those of you who are in search of the startling; in fact, I don’t think she would appeal to this audience very much at all. You are a bunch of jaded old Romans who need far rarer delights to tempt your palate.

Did June submit her blog here in search of advice? I have a sneaking suspicion that nobody really wants advice, they just crave affirmation. I could tell June to decide whether she is writing for her friends and family or for a wider audience and, if it’s the latter, to generally buck up when it comes to all the usual stuff (keep your focus, let your story make your point, stop it with the cocking exclamation marks etc), but mainly I would like to advise her to invest in some frilly thermals.

Perhaps it’s just the loneliness. Perhaps it’s that the only vaguely female thing I get to see these days is my Fanny. Perhaps June bewitched me. All I can say is that I found her to be reasonably entertaining, if mainly froth, and that if she ever passes my way, I am sure I could find a place for her in the tableaux.

I award you a puppy.