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.

The Chewbacca Defense Uber Itinerary

As much fun as it is creating a world of animosity and disgust (fucking haters) we gots to keep it real, yo.

I mean, to use the classic defense created by a pair of writers much cleverer than I:


I have one final thing I want you to consider. Ladies and gentlemen, this is Chewbacca. Chewbacca is a Wookie from the planet Kashyyyk. But Chewbacca lives on the planet Endor. Now think about it: that does not make sense. But more important, you have to ask yourself: what does this have to do with fighting over a blog review? Nothing. I am not making any sense, none of this makes sense. So when you go back to your safe little blog and bitch and moan because the Big Bad Review Site that means nothing to you got you all hot and bothered because everyone who reads it is a stupid comment-deleter* and a superdupermeaniehead, think about Chewbacca, because this does not make sense. If Chewbacca lives on Endor, you must shut the hell up and take the punch like a fucking champ. The defense rests.


Up this week:

Live on Impulse

Coming Out of the Trees

My Life and Thoughts

Jidhu's Reflection


* I still think they just deleted their own fucking comments. FYI to all readers: If I get an email about an argumentative comment that doesn't show up on a post, I will just re-post it myself. I will not have this site censored from opinion, unless that opinion is anonymous Korean spam about penis enhancers and chatting with real horny ladies in your area.

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.

Yellow Submarine

I've been terribly late (that's what she said? oh shut it) with this review, and I apologize. In fact, I still don't quite have the mental bandwidth for a big ass review, so read this post thrice if you feel it's too short.

I've mentioned before that we retreated to underground bunkers when life top-side got a tad predictable. Boy bands sealed the deal, we'd rather take lava pits than listen to Ronan Keating's soporific voice. No guitar solos? What the fuck were you humans getting into? Anyway, curiosity gets the better of us and we check on you cultured apes now and then. A great way to jump from shore to shore is reading, and blogs are a great way to get around. If they're written right. If they're not gaudy enough to make my retinas bleed. If the author doesn't peddle shit in lieu of writing. If no opportunity to tell a story is squandered. If opinions are brutally honest. Right.

Today we visit the exotic shores of India, where a billion people are apparently on the road trying to get somewhere (have you seen the blasted traffic there?). Jil Jil Ramamani is a blog maintained by a lady whose name is not Jil Jil Ramamani. I'm not sure what language the about me is in, and I sense a wall of culture I'm about to run into. There's something about why the blog is called what it is, it could probably be modified and used for your "prophyle". The design reeks of local pop-culture, and if that's your thing, sure. All that colour was a tad overwhelming, but I have a memo here that says no one gives a shit anymore. Navigation is piss-poor, I couldn't figure out how to get to the previous pages without using the archives. You do want your readers to linger, don't you?

The latest post is emo - so whoop-de-doo, "NEVER FORGET" (old inside joke Sindhu, never mind). You aspire to be a biker chick and I like that. Just wear some goddamn deo, ok? I get the feeling you're a college kid, and I guess life is exciting even when it's a fuckin' 120 degrees all year long. English isn't your first language (nor a Raptor's) so I won't nitpick about grammar and the like. I'm averse to blogging with lists, especially long ones, but yours' give me an insight into life on the other side of the globe, even if it isn't intentional. There's coming-of-age writing, some musing and other random shit I won't bother linking.

Thing is Sindhu, while I find your blog readable, your writing isn't always tolerable. Writing and talking are two separate things, and blogging like you're yammering about some female teenage shit I can't be arsed about makes me want to drink a gallon of bleach. I'm sure you like the loudmouth, constantly chattering you, but I can't be the only one who hates it. Knock that shit off, respect the medium you're on. I'm going backwards on your blog and since I'm hating it more and more by every post, you've probably gotten better over the years.


Since you like lists, here's one for you:

1) Edit, proof read and edit some more.
2) Use colloquialisms more sparingly, and with better context if you want international readership.
3) Don't write like you're cooing over the phone.
4) Write more often. And I'm not talking about "whee I'm back" posts.
5) Enough of the damned gtalk conversations.
6) More stories, more opinions.
7) Stop selling shit on your blog. If you must, use a separate website and link it up on your sidebar - it's shiny as it is.


Meh, back to my single malt.

That's why her hair is so big: it's full of secrets.

As any regular readers can tell, I don't shy away from swearing. Identifying myself as a person who clutters her speech with extravagant curses is like working for the Department of Redundancy Department. You people can deduce my fondness for profanity on your own because you aren't fucking goldfish.

Of course, some bloggers, like One Crazy Brunette Chick, find it necessary to shock and tug us in specified direction by grabbing our ears and thrusting obscenities down our throats. No regard for foreplay or discipline, it's just, "I SAY FUCK A LOT!!! FUCKINDEALWITHIT!! LIFE SUCKS, CUNTS!!!" as if we'll recoil at the impiety or something.

CB, lady, that shit is tired. Everyone says fuck a lot. It's not shocking, it's not revolutionary, it's the way a million bajillion people speak all the time, and the fact that a grown woman is shilling it as some sort of slutty rebellion is a bit fatigued. We get it. You're so bad. You wear stilettos and swear. The dichotomy is mind-blowing. Fuckin' hooray.

Honestly, I find the whole thing quite boring.

Cursing and exclamation points and a faux sociopathic surface don't make bloggers more interesting, just more widespread and demanding. You wanna fucking prove you're a fucking bad ass by fucking having a verbal fucking fuckathon? BRING IT.

See, I can throw sporadic fucks around too, but that doesn't make my writing any better. Too much vulgarity is one-dimensional and boring, unless it compliments the story. I feel like you're blogging just to remind everyone you know how to run your fucking mouth. Apparently your life is full of internet drama that I don't understand, since I run in a different pack of bloggers - you know, the ones that write because they have to write, not because they want to shit-talk. Which is odd to think about, since I write here.

You claim to have a number of enhancing characteristics:

...it takes a considerable amount of FABulous to be a crazy ass, eccentric, dramatic, charming, and classy lady like myself.

but you've got the charm of a condom, and let's be honest here: condoms are the least sexy thing about doin' it. No one fantasizes about dirty, sultry prophylactic-time (well now they do, Rule 34). We want it passionate and urgently momentous in its raw, honest, unprotected glory.

And what do we get? Fucking latex, a protective sheath. You're better than that, and I know it. Your tattoos say more about you than your blog. You're mixing a shot of impulsiveness and youth, beauty, love and regret, then choking it down, smashing the glass and dancing in its shards, with a flippant "I'm a dumb bitch" dismissal and a change of subject.

I want to hear about Ryan and Justin. I want to hear about the hasty girl of your past that morphed into this eyebrowless, very hot mother of two who chainsmokes and clouds herself in blasphemy and kitten rage. Prove you're eccentric by giving me ideas and perspectives I've never heard before. As of right now, after rummaging through all the "skanks" and "cunts," it's crystal to me: you're afraid of having no personality, and you cover it up by littering your posts with insults and curses.

Stop cocking around. Every once in awhile you show us a smidge of wisdom, a speck of uniqueness, but this bawdy, brash brat routine is old. As a society we've been watching ignorant, self-obsessed TV mutants get drunk and swear and slap each other over shitty lovers. Please don't add another lamewad to the mix. I get it though, because you're in it for the clicks. The internet is obviously a popularity contest for you and nothing else.

Those rare times you seem intelligent and hilariously creative, I smile in satisfaction. See, details are good, like calling your daughter 'Ladybug' in a line of dialogue instead of braying, "I call my daughter 'Ladybug!' I fucking rock!" You show that you have quirkish stories to tell. But then? Then you purposely cover it up with a spree of exclamations and pointless asides, which turns your writing into just about the most boringest thing ever.

As far as the template is concerned, I definitely like this header better than the mudflaps girl you sported a month ago, but I think you should minimize it and destroy the "click here to share" links. They're a trashy, whorish distraction, they take lightyears to load, and I have important cartoons to watch. And I can't deal with that crawling, epileptic banner circus, could you please do something about that?

Don't center the text of your posts. They're far easier to read earlier on in your blog when it's all flush left. Remember, some people are old. Of course I'm not, I'm an angry twenty-something who loves deadpan satire, loathes Nickelback (CB, you have the shittiest music taste ever - luvyabetch!) and slacks off at work to review blogs that want it from me and want it bad, but your sidebar hurts behind my eyes, like the entire eyeball and all the stringy nerves behind it are throbbing because there is so much fucking widgetty bannery stuff.

I gotta say though, I love how the 'Click Your Heels' button sends you home. Brilliant. Hopefully someday the other links will lead to relevant entries and maybe a personal profile instead of noxious self-promotion.

The Holy Shit Trinity of HoHum

The Yogi Zone is really not one blog, but three. And yet it is still one. It’s a paradox.

What I mean by this is that thematically, and subject matter wise, Yogesh Patwari has had phases.

The first phase, and by far the least interesting of them all, to me at least, was what appears to be some sort of note taking exercise, a recording for posterity of the events surrounding his completion of undergraduate education and interviewing for varying institutes of further higher learning. These entries are written in a sloppy shorthand, in which no acronym is spelled out or explained and in which it is apparently okay to abbreviate capriciously. Holding me at an even longer arm’s length away, it appears that he’s applying to an MBA program, so much of the subject matter of the interviews he relates is all about topics that I am sure would be fascinating to an MBA candidate.

But not to me.

Oh, and when he relays something that was spoken by someone else, he writes it in transliterated Hindi. I don’t read Hindi. Even getting Google Translate to translate it for me is a chore since I first have to convert it from its transliterated form and then translate it. And quite frankly, I could not be bothered.

YogiZone Phase #1 gets an emphatic Proud Rider of the Short Bus.



The second phase is all about Yogesh's life in the Indian Institute of Management Bangalore (IIMB), where our intrepid scholar finds himself surrounded by geeked out engineering students, harder work and lower grades than he had anticipated, misanthropic birthday rituals, and fewer dating options than he had hoped for.

In this phase, he occasionally gets political, particularly about the caste-based reservation system in higher education (for you westerners, think Equal Opportunity or Quotas) as opposed to his ideal meritocracy.

This phase is much more interesting then the last, as he spends much of his time detailing what life at IIMB is like, posting pictures, etc. It reads a bit like a Bangalore version of Tom Brown’s School Days. And it seems to reach its finale with him on the job hunt as he approaches the end of his schooling. And then he finishes at IIMB, filled with mixed emotions.

And then he goes silent for two years.

YogiZone Phase #2 – I don’t know how to rate you. You amuse occasionally, and you annoy occasionally. You drive me crazy with non-sequiturs and murky writing. You force me to do a shit load of homework to even find out what the hell it is that you’re talking about. And yet, I was interested. In the same way I find watching foreign films interesting. I know nothing about the context, and yet life in other parts of the world is fascinating. So there’s that. My inner anthropologist gave you a single star for this section, but my inner editor took it away.

(This is the space where a star would have been if the editor had not redacted it.)

The third phase of the Yogi Zone forces us to believe that within two years Yogesh has gone from a sad sack loser who couldn’t buy a date to a married working man, detailing what life is like in Mumbai and odd people he encounters commuting to work or in the process of finding a place to live. Just out of the blue, he mentions a wife and starts offering marital advice.

I found this segue fascinating and disconcerting at the same time. Almost as if two years after the original Yogesh abandoned his blog, Bizarro Yogesh found the log in information and in essence hacked the account. Working against this theory is that he still insists on writing whole conversations in Hindi. Which I am not going to translate.

Since this phase seems to be the living breathing part of this blog, this is where I am going to focus my advice.

But then I read this little snippet, written in June, right around the time that this review was requested, and it gives me pause:

“I have listed my blog on all these blog directories on the net (in the hope of getting the most coveted of all prizes for bloggers around the globe - traffic!).”

It makes me wonder, what advice I, an ugly westerner, can offer you to improve. Or do you think that your shit doesn’t stink as is?

Well, guess what, sir. You are wrong, sir. I have smelled your shit, sir, and it doth smell of shit.

• Know your audience. You submitted to a western, English speaking audience for a review of your blog, which is liberally peppered with Hindi. I don’t expect you to write only in English or only in Hindi, but how the hell am I supposed to rate you when I don’t know what you’re saying 10% of the time? How would you have liked it if I had written this review in Romanian or Korean? I get it – people in other countries speak other languages. But why did you submit for a review HERE? Oh yeah, the traffic.
• This one’s a bit less concrete, but you have some amusing things to say, but often the amusing stuff is packed in with a bunch of dreck. Several of your posts ran out of steam long before you ran out of words. Others forced me through too many mental calisthenics before getting to the payoff. Edit thyself. Not every word is sacred.
• Find something real to write about. Almost every post here is a diary entry. There is no soul. Perhaps that’s on purpose. Perhaps you fear revealing yourself to the world. But Yogi, if you want my affection, you must give of yourself. And, aside from conveying frequent feelings of anxiety and inadequacy, you don’t give us anything of yourself.

Overall, I found the final phase of this blog disappointing, shallow, and pointless. Unless you’re an MBA living in Mumbai, looking for same, for sharing amusing-ish anecdotes. Which I am not.

After long and careful deliberation, I have no choice but to award you the Abercrombie poseur rating. Blogging does not make you cool, in and of itself. Sorry.

I Touch No One and No One Touches Me

Hey kids! It's Ginny, from Praying to Darwin. I get all hopped up on goofballs one night, and before I know it, I'm sending out the bat signal, asking Shinerpunch if she's got anything laying around that needs reviewing. In retrospect, I think that's the part where she tented her fingers, murmuring “Excellent...” in her best Monty Burns impression. She knew what she was foisting on me. That diabolical bitch.

Upon opening Archive Fire, I was intrigued. Unlike the vast majority of folks who read blogs (definitely the majority of reviewers on here) I like a good white text on black background site. I have very few problems with the layout in general. Clean.

And then I start reading.

I find what passes for an “About” section. When it starts with the word “warning”, it's a little foreboding. Turns out our homeboy Michael is writing a book. He's an anthropologist, and an activist, and he doesn't give a crap whether you like this blog or not. He doesn't want to engage you. He wants to talk at you, not with you. (If discussion should occasionally break out, he'll go there, but it's not exactly encouraged.) The whole blog's a bit masturbatory – “I have all this knowledge, and if it backs up, well, it won't be pretty, so I'm going to release it here. Go ahead and watch, if you want.”

But...

I kind of liked it. He writes about wildly varying stuff, from aboriginal issues to kindness to capitalism. I like it when he calls bullshit on the opinion driven naysayers in this post.

It's just too bad he has to do it in a way that makes this blog so niche, aimed solely at fellow academics. I can appreciate a niche blog: the good ones stick to a theme, and you know what you're getting when you go there (be it recipes or pictures of cats or sex toy reviews). But in this case, the subject material is fairly diverse – it's the audience that is narrow. (When you're including disclaimers like this: [* please note that all content is provisional and part of a recursive process inextricably woven into a more extensive and multi-tactical expressive project] ? You're not talking to most people. Or even very many people.)

I'm completely flummoxed as to why he submitted to us. I can't imagine he'd ever change anything based on a review. I can only assume it was for traffic. Because anthropology books don't sell themselves. And did I mention he's writing one? Hmmm.

Instead I'm going with this:

The Island. He's alone. And he likes it that way.

I'll keep your resume on file should something more fitting become available

Dear Ms. Adarkcomedycalledlife,

Thank you for your interest in the position available for New Blogger In My Reader. I am pleased to inform you that we have finally had the chance to consider your application and I do apologize for the delay, but we have been absolutely inundated with applications for this post. Furthermore, as you may know, school funds have been recently cut and, with the teacher layoffs and the cutbacks and all, well, I've fallen a little behind despite all the overtime I'm pulling, knee deep in copyright infringement, xeroxing workbooks 'til the wee hours.

You may be aware that the New Blogger In My Reader position is highly sought after, considering that I am one busy ass motherfucker that doesn't have time to read things that put me to sleep and there are literally millions of applicants to consider. To be quite frank, while you possess many positive skills and traits, I just don't think you're a suitable fit for the position. But in all fairness, I'm willing to keep your resume in the applicant pool for other positions if I can get some clarification on the lingering doubts I have regarding your, uh, material:

Why? Why? Why? Why? Why?

Come on now, focus. Why the fuck?

Let me pose another question for you to percolate over: Do you find that when you are reading those books you are always tiresomely blogging about that the authors give page after page of mind-numbing lists where the reader is required to piece together the tattered scraps of an almost-narrative because the author is too lazy to do it for them? Do you think you would want to read a book like that? I didn't think so.

Regarding your blog title, how severe do you think my funny bone blue balls were upon realization that your blog does not actually contain one smidgeon of dark humor? You showed up for the interview at least looking like you'd showered, a neat enough sidebar without overwidgetification, and you weren't wearing a pink polka dot suit or anything. I had such hopes that this would go well, but then why did you have to go and open your suck hole?

For the purpose of brevity and to not overwhelm you with too many questions to reflect on, I have one remaining issue that needs clarifying: What in the hell is the point of continuously blogging about blogging? If blogging is really all you think about, why not consider focusing on the actual writing and storytelling aspect so that your blog will grow its own wings and not need you whimpering in the background about the tedium of the activity of blogging itself which no doubt dizzies your readers in a circular cycle of redundant redundancy? Hint: endless meme-type posts where you tag a bunch of people is not storytelling, it's lazy ass blogging. And well, given the workload, I just don't think I can add a lazy blogger to my team at this time.

While you're thinking these things through, I will give you an initial score so you can know how you fared for this particular position and more or less where you stand with our firm. But I hope you do not get discouraged and are willing to consider other positions that may become available in the near future such as Rambling Lady On My Street Corner or Forgettable Person At The Bus Stop.








Otherwise, best of luck with your continued search for a position in people's readers.


Yours sincerely,

MadameB
Director of the Hiring Committee for My Fucking Reader

All the News That's Fit to Ignore

See, I enjoyed Bitterly Books' writing way more than his blog. There is a difference, you know. What's funny, other than Bitterly's wit and deadpan detail, is this blurb he wrote about his blog: Bitterly Books takes caustic, uncomplimentary tours through ill-advised and poorly executed nonfiction. Hey, Bitterly? Put that shit in your "About" section. Feel me? Holla.


Dear The Editor,

Your blog, "Complaints on a Plate," is either the bare minimum of lashing something together for Adsense banner ads, or you need to seriously re-examine some of the life choices you've made. I've got no idea what you're trying to do here.

The "about" page promises "Interviews, reviews, views and musings on people, places, events, times and things." This may be the first in series of cultural misunderstandings between us, but here on the good side of the Atlantic, you don't talk about "musings" unless you're a pre-teen girl on myspace—or possibly a married man pretending to be a pre-teen girl so he can troll for cybersex.

I'm getting a sense that you're taking the "ironic news for laughs" angle, probably because your March 8 post uses the word "ironic" four times in two sentences. Looking elsewhere, I see a telling quote in your July 1 post. "The problem is that the UK churns out media graduates at the rate of thirty thousand a year into a job market that is quite frankly in its death throes". You wouldn't happen to be one of those media graduates, would you? I'm just asking because setting up a site posting fake news articles seems like an unusual choice for, say, a doctor or a car salesman.

So you've set up your own funny blog on your own terms because the news outlets won't pay you and the Onion won't publish you as is. A lone wolf pointing out the foibles and absurdity of news media, free from censorship. Well, are you familiar with that quote about fighting monsters? When you mock the tedious, you run the risk of becoming monstrously tedious yourself.¹ Your entry about George Smedge is so believable that it's boring; I'm not sure what joke you were trying to make. Similarly, I assume that the entry "inspired by Alan Shearer" was mocking sloppy journalism and opinion pieces devoid of fact, but it comes across as sloppy and meandering itself. Both of them take a joke and stretch it too far.

Let's look at the fake excerpt from Targets. You're using more than 1100 words to make three jokes:

• Pick Up Artists (PUAs) have a disturbingly predatory attitude towards women.


• PUAs are supposed to dominate women and control the situation, but the book's author dominates and controls would-be PUAs


• PUAs are pro-abortion²

Look at that. Just as (un)funny, but only 35 words—96% shorter! You're welcome.

Brevity, wit. Coming up with enough short jokes to make something of a decent length is a pain in the ass, but try editing, The Editor. (I had a longer "physician, heal thyself" joke here, BUT I EDITED IT OUT. See how that works?) The Framley Examiner is a great example for making more out of less.

In your Penge O'Clock piece, look at how your jokes ("everyone in this neighborhood studies 'new media'," "reporter gets excited and uses exclamation points when talking about money!" and "all the sources need to mention that they feel safe") get lost in the huge crush of words. Try inserting paragraph breaks to make them stand out more:

I met up with some of the new hip locals to see what exactly it is that makes Penge so amazing.

Annanana Karickiszi is heiress to a Russian oil fortune and studies Media and Godknowswhat at Lewisham College, she is a fan of Sartre and hopes to one day become a poet or fashion editor. She is wealthy! “I love the area.” She says while gazing out the window of her £700 a month bedsit. “There is always somewhere new to go, something new to do. It is cool but not pretentious. There is a community. People are friendly. I feel safe”

Calvin works in New Media, he emigrated from America two years ago. He is financially sound! “There is a lot of history here and it’s quirky, very British.” He owns a small studio above an Icelands. “It’s a friendly area. People say hello. I feel safe.”

James works in New Media and rents a flat in a converted pub. He is solvent! “It’s fun and exciting. There’s lot’s of night life and culture. There are supermarkets but also small independent stores. I love it. People talk to each other. I feel safe”

I also caught up with Gregg, a Railway Station Toilet Professional who has lived in Penge all his life. “Things are definitely changing.” He tells me. “It’s all gastro this and Starbucks that. Just give me a good old cuppa tea” he quips. The old Petrol Station opposite Gregg’s house is now the smoking area for a late night gay club called Fatigué, I ask him what he makes of the many provocatively dressed gentlemen that now reside in the area. “Well, at least they are driving out the nignogs” he quips.

That gives the reader a fighting chance to find it funny. And this time around, I noticed the dig at media graduates! BURN! So, keep your pieces short and break up your paragraphs more. Now let's talk about your screen name, The Editor.

If any competent editor saw Complaints on a Plate, they'd seize your title and leave your broken husk in a dumpster dripping with red ink. Putting aside your callous disregard for comma placement, other missing punctuation, and my assorted style quibbles, there are some major fuck-ups on your watch:

• Writing "cliental" (having to do with a client) for "clientele" (the people who patronize an establishment)


• Writing "physic" (a medicine, or the practice of medicine) for "physique" (the physical structure of a person)


• Writing "manger" (think of baby Jesus) for "manager" (the person in charge)


• Writing "anti-percipient" (percipient means either the ability to perceive or one who perceives) for "antiperspirant" (dumbass)


• Writing "you no nothing about" for "you know nothing about" (ironic, no?)


• Writing "cacogenic" (causing defects in offspring) for "carcinogenic" (cancer-causing)


• Writing "cloistral" (secluded, sheltered, like a cloister) for "cholesterol" (the lipoprotein associated with cardiovascular disease)


• Writing "wacaday" (a television show) for "workaday" (mundane or commonplace)


• And many more!³

These might be intentional problems that you introduced for laughs, in which case congratulations are in order. You have annoyed the only person who will ever give a fuck.

You also need to work on your packaging. Could you have done a worse job with your title graphic? I guess you want to use the cake-holding housewife image as a brand logo or something (it's also on your blogger profile page and your facebook page), but a title graphic should do better than the mangled results of Norman Rockwell's fight with a taffy pulling machine. Even plain text on a colored background would be better.

The best I can say about your layout is that it's simple and uncluttered. But for what you're trying to do here, it may be too simple. You aren't putting your entries in any sort of context, and the jumble of fake news, reviews, and opinion pieces leaves me baffled as to your ultimate purpose.

I give people the benefit of a doubt when it looks like they're trying to be a smartass as long as there's some style to it, but this whole blog feels unfinished. I'd give work like this a solid "meh," but it tries so hard to wrap it all up in a "fake news for comedy" package—and fails so spectactularly at it—that I'm giving "Complaints on a Plate" the short bus.








_{1) This entry being exhibit A.
2)Actually, one of the main justifications of PUA behavior is that your evolutionary imperative drives you to get out there and distribute your seed, so routine hook-ups are just practice. Unwanted pregnancies are proof that you can successfully distribute your genes, and not your problem.
3) Other problems:
"Perpetually transmogrify villages," in that context, should be "perpetually transmogrifying villages"
"Bright young thing" should be plural "things"
For "sciencesque-like" I recognize that you're reaching to make a joke about your study's validity, but either "sciencesque" or "science-like" get the point across without overkill.
"Scientists long-held theory" should have an apostrophe.
"Vote's green," if used to mean "voting for the green party" shouldn't have an apostrophe.
"Everyday" (adjective meaning "mundane") should be "every day" (occurring each day)
"You maybe wondering" should be "you may be wondering"}

Don't Know If You've Noticed -

- but Grumpy has been doing some lovely things with her blog, except for getting rid of that horrible yellow. Eh. I can forgive the color because of all the soul.

Grumpy, did you need a nudge or something?

Advertising to Your Target Demographic

There's been some discussion on this site lately, regarding reviewers not being in a blog's demographic. This is not the case today.

I am the same age, gender, race, and sexual orientation as Laurenne. Neither of us are married, nor have babies. We are both from small towns and are college educated. It seems Laurenne's hit the jackpot on the "Ol' Blog Reviewers Roulette Wheel of Death". (of Doom? "The List of Doom" seems to be jinxed. Is it the reference to doom?)

To be honest, I have waited until the last minute to write this review, simply because I know I will be biased. It's easy for me to put myself in her shoes and to be excited there are other women out there who are self-deprecating and neurotic, have a twisted sense of humor, and unashamedly make bad decisions. It's nice to find a blog that's not about husbands/babies, nor about going shopping and drunkenly hooking up with douchebag frat boys. It's nice to find someone who's the shit, but has bad luck with men as well.

She even writes about the death of her father in a candid, poignant, and hilarious way. Some people might think she's being insensitive, but I GET IT. I still tell the story about how I showed up to see my grandmother before she died and witnessed my grandfather and uncle playing poker, taking shots of Black Velvet, and watching "Big Trouble in Little China" on TV. Right fucking next to the bed my grandmother was dying in, completely ignoring her. Sometimes you have to see the humor in things to keep from going crazy.

Oh, and I'm insanely jealous that Laurenne quit her (obviously) high paying advertising job and backpacked (alone) to 12 different countries over the course of 9 months. And her posts while on the road are entertaining and educational, and filled with hilarious and breathtaking images. They may be a bit journally and longwinded, but I can partially forgive that since she's trying to commemorate her journey and I'm sure internet access was hard to come by.

Now, I genuinely like Laurenne and I like her blog. I identify with her. However, I have a few issues . . .

1) I really hate the "You might also like" LinkWithin crap (links to other posts at the end of each post). I understand you're trying to make it easier for people to find similar posts, but it was distracting for me. And I think it's gaudy.

2) The ginormous label cloud on the sidebar HAS GOT TO GO. If someone wants to see other posts with that label, they'll just click the label at the end of your post. And again, gaudy.

3) I know it sucks not having many people read your blog. Believe me, I do. But don't resort to participating in the fake award-giving and being on Twitter only to get readers. I think you're above that. Really.

4) Try to flesh out thoughts like this into more substantial posts. I'm sure you have more to say about your opinions.

5) I want to hear some crazy stories from your life. I know you're trying to live in the moment and not focus on the past or the future, but your past is what's made you who you are today. Let's have it, lady.

My major complaint: This post. You are bitching about not having money, after spending $20,000 on a trip all over the world. This offended me in particular because I happened to be unemployed (not by choice) during the same time period you were traveling. While you were snorkling in the Great Barrier Reef, I was eating ramen noodles while watching whatever TV stations I could get over the antenna. You chose to leave your job and spend that money. I'm jealous that you had the means to do it. But bitching about not having money afterward is offensive. It made me knock a star off.






But I almost added it back on, just because you uploaded this home video of yourself as a kid. And it's on your professional site. Fucking hysterical.

Just an Anomaly

Good afternoon, Askers, and I apologize for all the bojanglement regarding reviews. Today we have a guest reviewer. She likes dogs. You've met her before. I would write reviews myself, but I have this other thing going on right now, one that I get paid to do. Shit's goin' down and I'm throwin' punches. So languid, leisurely Ellie is helping me out, because I love her.

...

Oh, look, one of these slick, new templates with a background image over which the words will roll onto a translucent scroll! And when you page-down, it's like watching a freaky, hallucinogenic 1970s flick. Cool. (Maybe?)

That's my first impression. I think maybe this translucent template feature is cool. Then I'm drawn to the tagline, which is unusual because generally I overlook taglines . . .

usually just daft cliches anyway.

But the opening gambit on this one catches me. "Gus: What's your dental plan?"

This might be good.

But the background image turns a lighter shade of pale grey just where the tagline, with its light-coloured font, would continue. It's impossible to read more without squinting, and I'm too old for this shit. Squinting unnecessarily when you're my age is just asking for trouble.

So, I stop squinting and scroll down.

This is the website I'm going to review.

I have what might be a pang of remorse.

Did I accept this invitation to review too impulsively? It takes so much time to properly review someone's internet baby.

I wonder if I even know what doing it "properly" means. I felt so unseasoned my first go-arounds. I don't think I used my natural voice or developed a new, more interesting one. I just modelled myself off previous reviews. This time I decide to be me, without tricks or sexual innuendo or some seemingly non-related start that ends up somehow being related. I don't know if I know how to do it properly. I do know, though, that it takes time.

Where will I find the time?

I realise I have been scrolling over the first post* which is nothing but a collection of a few pretty photos of leaves. I continue scrolling downwards. The next post is a photo of some gun-selling super mall in the United States of America.

Fuck yeah!

The third post is a grainy photo of of one of "Calcutta's compensations," a lake or wide river in the early morning or early evening. .

The fourth post starts off in the same vein: a photo of a couple of pretty, young girls caught in a charming, candid moment. I get excited by the prospect that I won't have to read any posts.

There aren't any words on this blog! This is a picture blog!

My exuberance is only tempered by a niggle about The Rules.

Are they going to expect me to write something about her blog not having any words? Will I have to make that clear? And if so, is that a bad thing? Will I be expected to do a proper review even though this isn't a proper blog? It's a picture blog! It's like the The Very Hungry Caterpillar of blogs! You can't say anything bad about The Very Hungry Caterpillar!

I switch over to AAYSR.

Surely, they will give me direction.

Even having thought it, I don't quite to expect it: to find a rulebook. But I do find one. I read the rules, all 7 of them. I'm a bit disappointed: the rules are directed at the reviewees. Where's my guidance?

God damn it, this isn't going to help me.

I flip back to the blog in question. I scroll through 3 pages of predominantly pictures. I ignore an experimental poem.

Just an anomaly.

Just as I lose myself in relief that I won't have to read to review this blog (February, 2010) Anandi pulls the rug out from under my feet by posting a word-packed review of Pygmalian.

What the fuck?

Right then and there, in February 2010, I decide what I'm going to give her.

Anandi, go fuck yourself. For breaking 5 of the 7 rules. For boring me shitless with your review of Pygmalian. For making me read a sampling of very bland posts after you promised so much in just pretty pictures.








*at the time of writing

Grass Stains

We are not amused. It’s August now and the sky is sulking like a petulant little bitch, her windy runt of a lapdog cocking its quivering leg and pissing down on poor Fanny and I as we are forced to abort yet another ruddy picnic and stagger back home through the mud and the filth to seek shelter by the three-bar fire and comfort in cocoa and gin. I swear on Fanny’s deep fat fryer that if I ever make it to heaven I will seek out St Swithin and punch him in the face.

When I was a whelp we had proper summers, endless ice-cream days of adventure. Fish bobbed and birds sang, bluebirds fastened our braces and lemonade tasted of lemons. And oh, the girls, the summer girls! All salt and skinned knees and little sunburnt snouts. That’s what I need, you know, to cure me of this malaise. I need a summer girl with feathers in her hair and frogs in her pockets to come and hold my parasol and put the Tabasco back in my Pimms.

And lo! What have we here? It’s Geo, who might be familiar to you from her comments on this very site. Not that her commenting here will make a difference to my review, you understand – if anything I will have to be particularly harsh to avoid accusations of favouritism. I do not believe in favourites. Just ask my Fanny.

Before we go any further, I must warn you that there is poetry ahead. Of course, whenever one attempts to inject a little poetry into proceedings one runs the risk of being called pretentious. Poetry can be dreadfully embarrassing. It is the kind of thing one keeps under one’s bed, along with the evidence and the books one reads with the hand. But we have known each other long enough not to have to rehash old material. You know my feelings on this. Poetry is bread and salt to me, the fodder and the savour, and I read it because it makes me better.

Geo is a poet, and by that I do not just mean that she writes poems – I mean she takes the world and boils it down to stock, serves it back up as a clean and elegant soup seasoned with her own special ingredients. She is delicious, and she nourishes me. Besides the poems she serves up delicate little parings of prose, juicy toothfuls that capture the fleeting moments of poetry and passion and the glory of the mundane. She has a trousseaux of treasured things, images, words and ideas that she takes out from time to time and holds up to the light and she, like Moomintroll, understands that sometimes gold looks better when seen through dirty water.

Of course, things are never perfect. I have a few minor quibbles that I feel I should raise. Some are of the ‘it’s not you, it’s me’ variety – Geo is a little boy-crazy at times, but I suppose that goes along with the territory. I would probably be boy-crazy too, if I was young and beautiful and the sun was shining and Fanny was looking the other way. I would also like to never again have to read a recounted dream. ‘Tell a dream, lose a reader’, as someone who might have been Henry James once said. I skip over anything that begins ‘Last night I dreamt...’ unless it’s Daphne du Maurier. If you must recount a dream, just do it without telling me it was a dream.

There is a sense throughout Geo’s blog that she is sometimes doodling, that this is a sketchbook in which she records ideas for development later on. I would recommend that she keeps them in her pocket for a little bit longer and fingers them to a brighter sheen. Speaking of doodles, Geo has another blog where she keeps her artwork. Her pictures pleased me terribly and I would hang some of them on my walls. This would look lovely in the oubliette. I wish Geo did not separate her art and her words. I think her drawings would go very well accompanied by poems, vignettes, strange little stories. They each feed the other.

However, none of this really matters (well, some of it does), because what Geo does well, what she does far, far better than any other blogger I have reviewed here is hold up her world to me in the palms of her hands so I can have a right old sniff at every last bit. There may well be dissention in the ranks on this, but I think that when she is good, she is very bloody good.

I had a good hard think about the rating I would award Geo. Of course, there were things I would like to change, but is it fair to expect perfection where it is not intended? In the end, one has to follow one’s heart on these things (if one can find it), and I am a bit in love with Geo. If I were several decades younger I wouldn’t leave her alone. She makes me want to get more fresh air.

I fucking love you.

We Gonna Show You How We Do It For '85 Kickin' It Live

Because I got a funny feelin' you're all sick of all these crap rappers
bitin' their rhymes because they're back steppers



Belong to the World

From Where I'm Standing

Jil Jil Ramamani

Humans Are Funny

Patsy Cline is Waiting to Kick Your Ass in Three Acts

Act I:

Folks, I do believe that it is time to bust out the razor studded cluebat, as today’s lucky contestant is in desperate need of some (ahem) correction.

For starters, Jacki Trew’s delightful little blog is titled "Insanity Now Has a Website" and the URL is JackiIsCrazy.blogspot.com. When you are 15 years old, calling yourself CRAZY or INSANE feels like a logical choice. You feel like you don’t fit in. You feel weird all the time. Maybe you’re moody. Maybe you’re filled with rage. Maybe you are really unpredictable. And yeah, that feels pretty crazy at the time.

But then months pass and soon you realize that this is normal – everyone feels this way – and you are no more crazy than the next very average student treading the halls of your school. And by the time you’re 16 or so, you no longer think it’s cool to call yourself Crazy or Insane.

Insanity Now Has a Website? I don't fucking think so.

You see, Insanity already has had tons of websites: the APA, CharlieManson.com, theflatearthsociety.org, scientology.org, peta.org, etc. What you bring to the table is not insanity. It is impulsiveness. It is occasionally inappropriateness. It is a disregard for some of society's norms. It is an obsession with reality television. But it is not insanity or craziness.

And by the time you are 21, you should know better.

Real crazy and real insane is actually scary and dangerous. Not fun. Real crazy is hanging off the edge of the Golden Gate Bridge or hearing voices that aren’t there telling you to kill John Lennon. And calling yourself crazy when you actually aren't isn't actually cute.

Act II:

Allow me to read aloud from the Hard and Fast Rules section of the Book of AAYSR:

"5. NO AUTOPLAY MUSIC. NEVER, EVER, EVER. UGH."

Jacki – did you read the FAQ before you submitted? Did it occur to you at all that THIS:

just might have been what the fuck we were talking about? I mean, autoplay music is never good, but Kylie Minogue? Really? What fucking decade is this anyway?

So right now, based on what I have seen, you are getting one big fat assed You’re Doing It Wrong from me.

As soon as you have finished reading this sentence, go to your blog and remove the autoplay music. Did you do it? If I go and check right now, will I see autoplay music in your sidebar? I am not above hopping a flight to Sydney and tracking you down and kicking the teeth right out of your head if I have to. Sure, it’ll cost me a fortune and I’ll probably be arrested for assault, but I will have done humanity a favor.

As for the crazy thing – child, please. Be your own person. Stop writing in this extended Facebook status update and start fresh and new in a new blog that doesn’t have crazy or insane in the title or URL. Or in the content, unless you actually go on anti-depressants or something. Mmmkay?

Act III:

Alrighty then. Now that my pet peeves have been dispatched, let’s roll up our sleeves on what we actually do have here.

Jacki has been doing this a long time. And, as I alluded to above, she started this in 2004, when I assume that she was 14 or 15 years old. So, it is reasonable to assume that there would be a lot of shit in the beginning and in the middle that’s all: “So and so is a big poopyhead” and “I hate my school” and all of that teen angst bullshit. And you would be right. Don’t bother with that. Especially since early on, she was doing the whole experimenting with multiple colored text thing. And for a while settled on gray text, which probably would have worked well, if her background color weren’t black. But it is, and so it doesn’t.

At some point along the way she found a voice. Sure, that voice talks way too much about things I don’t give a rat’s ass about – reality TV, actors over whom she is swooning, being a semi-responsible adult, etc. – but it is still an amusing voice at times. A slightly skewed perspective on her life, which is pretty normal and ordinary, and that skewed perspective takes the boring and mundane and makes it somewhat worth reading about.

If only she would drop the immature adolescent references to “crazy”. So, for the autoplay music and the near constant references to crazy and insane:



But because I am not a complete dick, I give you this for making me smile on occasion:

Princess Di You Are Not

There are websites I don't fancy but regard with a degree of politesse because while they fail to be my cup of Earl Grey, may be someone else's Red Zinger or Constant Comfort. Then there are blogs so heinous, so woefully lacking in even the smallest shred of redemption that I cannot refrain from peeling off the well worn suckling pigskin gloves and sharpening my fingernails for a soul satisfying pick through their viscera. If The Power of Only One is a fenestella into the soul of Lisa(who by the way is one of two followers of her own blog), then all I can see is piled high plates of moral superiority, a pretentious lack of awareness and false academic snobitude, all worthy of little more than steaming handfuls of schadenfreude.

I'm going to get right to the point here and skip any red herrings or needless hand wringing, Lisa is going to get a few Flaming Fingers on this one. I will, however, do her a solid and not review her other blog in tandem. Lucky girl you are Lisa, because I don't think you have room for all the fingers I'd be offering.

In the Power of Only One, Lisa sets out to "empower" readers with the "knowledge" and "means" to change "key global issues." I couldn't find any credentials or experience that make Lisa just the person to help us understand the problems of our larger world but hey, everyone can aspire to Angelina Jolie no? Lisa's profile on the reviewed website offers little more then platitudes but one can glean a bit of info off the profile of her personal blog. The Power of Only One itself is a mess with a header stuffed full of tiny, empty words, a dull layout and messy, overcrowded sidebar. Lisa posts beginning January 1 and manages until April. So it would seem this blog was an ill-conceived New Year's Resolution that got boring just about the time Lisa got herself a boyfriend perhaps. Looks like Lisa's commitment to the global community lasted a bit longer than one of Miss Missives overpriced whipping sessions. Professionally pinked-cheeks don't come cheap these days, thanks be to Jezebel that some thing are just recession proof.

This is what it was like reading The Power of Only One:

Now sit down y'all readers of the internet, nope don't put your dirty feet on my purty carpet just listen while I elucidate you on the state of the glo-bal community. Can y'all say trafficking, yes that's it, tra-fick-ing, good, good. Now I am going to define for you prejudice. Look I am linking to a definition of prejudice. I hope you understand now. Look at the sad little pictures of African children. See I am doing my part to be a good citizen of the world by showing you what clearly you must not know since you are totally unawares of things like Da'fur and the Sedan, well and even the search capabilities of the internet for that matter.

Okay, that is not a direct quote from Lisa and yes, I will cop to it's mocking tone but this is what it felt like to read her words.

Here are a few of Lisa's actual words(not my poor, animosity-laced, ambiguously-accented renderings) just so you can really soak it in:

dedicated to helping the ordinary one person become an extraordinary impetus of change. This site will address key global issues such as poverty, hunger, AIDS, human trafficking, and domestic violence. The main goal is to empower individuals with the knowledge of the issues & the means to make change--one person, one step at a time. The united efforts of the many “ones” will create a mighty change. "A waterfall starts but with one drop, and look what becomes of that". (somehow Lisa got confused and thinks it's her job to give us knowledge, which of course, in Lisa's mind means linking to real repositories of knowledge)

I am not a company or a non-profit organization. I am just one. One person. One mom. One teacher. One American. One Texan. One daughter. One sister. One friend. One member of the human race who has challenged herself to save the one...one day, one word, one post at at time with the POWER OF ONLY ONE. (Uh, until April that is)

I would wager that most among you are pondering why I would even link the two together, Kipling and racism. Perhaps you did not know that Kipling penned the White Man's Burden, a poem that extolled the racial superiority of the "White Man(this is what happens when someone audits one literary criticism class and then fancies themself an expert)

I have spent all day trying to come up with a new global issue to address here. (Really. All day huh?)Several different ideas came to mind, but none of them "got the blogging juices going." (Nothing like human despair to get the ole juices flowing.) So I did what I always do. I "googled". Googling Top Ten Global Issues solved the dilemma. There in the search results, I found the answer. Racism. Instantly, I knew which direction to go.(I bet that's exactly how the Dalai Lama comes up with ideas too, lord knows he twitters.

I will spend the next month delving into and exploring the issues of race and racism. We will discover the many ways racism rears its ugly head in cultures across the globe, as well analyzing as the legacy of racism in these various cultures.

To start this journey, I would like share a video produced by The American Anthropological Association (AAA). Use the this video to start thinking about race and racism. (Ok, now Miss is starting to feel like a six year old sitting on the "reading carpet" at the back of this bitches class, does she really address adults this way? )

One of the things I found most distasteful about The Power of Only One, was this undercurrent of unacknowledged white privilege and colonial view of social problems. Lisa also reposts some Langston Hughes poems, oblivious to the irony. Every time I read her I just kept seeing this well-meaning perhaps but completely unaware Scarletty O'hare type, uppity school marm, and Miss Missives knows uppity. I am not saying or even intimating that Lisa is a racist, I don't think she is. I do, however, think that she likes to bath in the juices of her own superiority and is lacking in some badly needed perspective. Let's just recall for a moment that she undertook a do-gooderish blog that lasted about as long as a Britney Spears marriage, and then minutes into it, submitted it to Ask for some kind of hearty back slap or humanitarian award.

This blog feels false, like all the unseemly greening of consumerism that has become so rampant. Companies implore us to save the planet by buying something and Lisa aims to save the world by uninterestingly compiling some random words of others together in an effort to display her vast knowledge of global issues via her rare direct access to Google. The writing is wrought with one part emotional hand wringing and seven parts look at me doing something important and worldly. Never mind Lisa does little more than link to other, more credible sources of global enlightenment. The space is little more than links to sites with original content, some reposted videos and lifted quotes on prejudice, lots of liberal unattributed quote lifting--they say teachers don't cheat. The only thing that could have been more cliche was the Indigo girls set to auto play.

And now for the good news because you know Miss Missives likes to hand out a little candy with her spankings. The good news is, just four months in, Lisa threw up her hands and said to the disenfranchised of the world, this is just too hard.

There are some people who empower others and then there's Lisa.