Comments Shmoments

And now, for shits, let's travel back to zingy comments and pick out the good ones.




From Things that go slurp in the night:

Blues said...

Oh, LB, you've still got in in you.

Love Bites said...

Really? I thought I took it out this morning. It was starting to smell.

From This is not your review...

Love Bites said...

The comments here have always been a splooge-covered nard-rending free-for-all.

Zen Mama said...

Why can't we edit when we experience premature commentation?

From Naked Eye

Love Bites said...

Seriously. Potential and a donkey dick will get you $3 in Mexico.

Shinerpunch said...

I will kickstart your taint so hard Harleys across the country will grumble to life.

Mongolian Girl said...

I'm so sorry I make your head hurt. I give you my most sincere apologies and am hopeful you will accept in good faith that I was indeed aiming for your taint.

From One Lump or Two?

Rassles said...

Like Point/Counterpoint?

"Shiner, you magnificently ignorant slut. The fact that you are willing to give even a teensy biddy little star to this pile of crack needles gives evidence to what I have suspected all along: your head is full of dogshit and cracker crumbs, and you bathe by licking your own anus. No offense to Johnny."

"Scorpio, you shady sharpee-headed virgin, I'm appalled that the words you chose to express your misogynistic regard for this woman's blog came from the same mouth you eat your mother with."

Feel free to add your own submissions.

Also, if anyone out there who has already been reviewed would like to write a review, email me. Regular reviewers are getting scarce. People have busy lives, and they take this seriously. Kind of.

Where Everybody Doesn't Know Your Name

At my local watering hole, there are two old man barflies whom we avoid at all costs. They are nice, sweet old coots, but are of the type to babble endlessly about random shit. The times we have felt friendly toward them, they've ended up sitting at our table with us for hours, but don't even recognize us the next time we come in.

"Pops" is an 80-year-old veteran, who drives a taxi and collects old coins, keeping several on his person. He has shown them to me and talked about each for at least 20 minutes, in a semi-incoherent manner. I am unsure if it was because he is old and senile, or because he's probably been drinking non-stop for over 60 years. Before he left the bar for the night (whether he was driving his taxi for personal or business reasons is unknown to me), the bar staff knew to bring him a shot of half and half, his "immediate-sober-up" cure.

The other is someone whom we've dubbed "Old Hippie Man", because of his permanent smile and obvious overuse of acid back in the day. I can't remember anything about our unintelligible conversation. He does, however, continually and randomly say, "Carry On!" while making an "Airplane Taking Off" motion with his hand. Even when he gets caught in the middle of bar fights.

Talking to these two, is what it was like for me to read this blog. If the old man barflies were emo Indian girls, that is.

Sheetal rambles on about her feelings and all the wisdom she's gained in all her 23 years. It reads like a journal she's keeping as personal therapy, but it would be better for her to just buy an actual journal, than to expose us all to this shit by submitting here.

You want to know how incoherent and boring this blog is? I have read (maybe skimmed) every single post of every other blog I've reviewed, but I couldn't even get through one of Sheetal's posts. This is why I can't even give links for examples.

She talks about people who haven't been introduced in the blog, as if I'm supposed to figure it out on my own and give a shit about them. Hell, I have no clue about who Sheetal is at all, because there is no "About Me", and I cannot glean anything about her from her posts for the life of me. I mean, I'm assuming Sheetal is female, simply because "she" writes about meeting boys. That may just be coming from my heterocentric view though.

The blog is filled with run-on sentences, misspellings, and huge slabs of meandering, uninteresting paragraphs, which is frightening because apparently, she's a journalist. I fervently pray to Ganesha that her profession doesn't include writing in English, because she has a mediocre grasp of it.

She doesn't post regularly and only has 66 posts for the past 4 years, which I don't even mind, because that means less pollution of the internet.

My advice to Sheetal: Start a new blog, and write stories from your life. Funny memories, sad memories, angry memories, all of it. Readers want to read the blog of someone who puts themselves out there, which means writing about things that make you uncomfortable, not writing down every little emo thought in your little emo head.

Until then, I'm giving you:







For making it feel like I was listening to drunken, brain-fried, old men yammering on about shit no one cares about. Without the luxury of having a beer in my hand.

Those Who Wish to Sing Always Find a Song

As with many things in my life, my grandparents are/were a lesson in ironic polarity. On one side, immortal professional athletes that shriveled and aged into diabetic and demented fighters; they championed passionate, critical lives and tired everyone out til the end. When their minds started melting away, it gave me an excuse to ignore them. I'm a lot like them, which I'm sure pisses them off real good, because we never got along. The other pair of grandparents were a pair of sofa intellectuals, all puzzles, trivia, nightly bourbons and hilarious stories about exotic places with names full of vowels, like Ohio and Iowa. They were smart and happy, and at 96 or something my grandpa is still healthy, aware, and self-sufficient. I love that man.

Basically, because I'm lucky and mean, I've never had to care for an elderly relative.

Sue, the holistic saint over at Backdoor Logic, has devoted her love, sweat and blog to caring for her mother who suffers from Lewy Bodies Dementia. She is trying, trying, trying as hard as she can to prevent sending the little old lady to a nursing home. Her caregiving is punctuated by testing the correlations between her mother's fluctuating health and natural folk remedies, nutritional balance, meditation and exercise.

I really have very little knowledge about honest naturopathy. Sue is experienced with Reiki and straight-up hypnosis, she believes in the power of positive affirmations and she seeks out signs of cosmic plate-o'-shrimp synchronicity.

Early on in her blog, her writing is staccato and synthetic, like she's jotting down lines in a journal for the purpose of triggering her memory rather than telling a story. Eventually her writing improves and evolves, integrating stories of her mother with studies she reads and healing practices she uses and a whole bunch of recipes, but this otherwise compelling saga reads like a well-disguised fenugreek advertisement, or a conceited self-help book.

I fucking loathe self-help books. Useless propaganda and bullshit.

Sue is in the process of writing one.

She deals with everything so self-rationally, and with so much care and deliberation that I know she is an amazing person. She's hopeful and grateful and genuinely loves and wants the best for her family. But then shit gets repetitive, as if she's trying to convince us she's right by saying the same thing in as many ways possible. Perhaps she's trying to convince herself. Either way, if I have to read one more warning entry about gluten and blood pressure and hallucinations I am going to delete the internet with a bag of hammers. The whole fucking internet.

I prefer stories. See this? I love that this detail: her dad teaches her how to see auras, damn near explains how she got into all this alternative health business. She grew up with it. One line, one sentence unintentionally gives me so much background, and I love that. And Sue, she has these fun little writing tics. My tiny Italian grandmother, she speaka like this as well.

Like many people of extreme faith, Sue is a holistic health zealot, constantly reminding people to think for themselves and question authority. But when Sue gives examples of how her way is the best way, and everyone else needs to open their eyes because then they'll discover how right she is...when she trudges into that territory, it diminishes her credibility. Does this have something to do with why certain family members refuse to speak to her?

Then there are little things that make me question her process. For example, tomatoes and potatoes are not belladonnas/deadly nightshades. Their family taxonomy is not "belladonna." Belladonna and tomato are two species under different genera in the same biological family. That's like saying humans are orangutans. By exaggerating selective facts and implying things that I know are false, it makes me distrust Sue's judgment on other unfamiliar topics. She ridicules pharmacies for using a tactic that she uses on her readers.

I really love lots of things about Sue. She's individualistic and honest, she's got voice, she's sacrificing her sanity for that of her mother, she's got fucking guts. For that:








But her blog is a different story. I just can't deal with the preachy or boring updates or repetitive entries. I understand that your blog is about you helping yourself help others, I get that. If you didn't have your mother to focus on it would be someone else. How about instead of writing a new entry about the same thing, you just don't post that day? You're tapping out an entry a day and most of them are the same fucking thing. They're well-written and informative, but bland. Think before you publish. Oh, and get a template that doesn't look like it's been faded after being in the sun too long (stupid lighthouse).

One Lump or Two?

Time and time again, I am presented with a fresh victim. And rather than relish the delightful treat I am about to excoriate, I ask myself “Why would this seemingly normal human being request a review from us?”

"For validation," seems to be a frequent response, and all I can do is wonder whether these poor creatures know how to read. Or if they have an inkling what “I Will Fucking Tear You Apart” means. They clearly have picked the wrong review site. They certainly have happened upon the wrong reviewer. Unlike some reviewers here who can be seduced by a certain quaint charm, I cannot. If you wish to curry my favor, it comes down to a simple rubric. Do you expand my mind? Do I find myself longing to read just one more post? Do you turn a phrase in a new and fresh way that causes me to look anew upon the mundane and everyday? Or are you trite? Do you overwhelm with clichés and small-talk?

I hate trite, clichés and small-talk. Okay, hate’s an awfully strong word. I understand these things have their place, but I would probably rather remove my own spleen with a rusty fishhook than sit through too much small-talk. I bet that sounds like I’m using hyperbole to make a point, but to tell the truth, the fact that I would get such an amazing story out of removing my own spleen with a rusty fishhook has me contemplating just how many hours of small-talk would push me to that extreme. And it is not as high a number as you might think.

People frequently write for very different reasons than they have for reading, and often what makes for a compelling story that you want to share makes for a chore for a thinking human to read. Especially when the presumed purpose of your writing is merely to make social connections. To share awards. To spread memes. This sort of writing is the literary equivalent of a coffee-clatch, a place where weary mothers can get together to chit-chat about their days, their children or grandkids, and, I dunno, scrapbook or something. And I bet that there are a lot of people who get something out of this. There are likely hundreds of thousands of people (maybe even more) for whom this sort of interaction, whether in person or in the virtual world of Blogger or Wordpress, fills some urgent inner need.

But this is a need I do not have. And so, I cannot relate. I must come to you today to report that Nancy, a mid-thirties mother of two, originally from India, but now living in Dubai, UAE with her husband of 11 years, spends way too much time with online chit-chat for my liking.

I am not completely heartless. Nancy does get a lot of feedback via this chit-chat that really feeds her in ways that she needs, so I would never for the life of me tell her to stop what she’s doing. But I might ask in an extremely pointed manner what in the name of all that is sacred to her was she expecting from a review here? I gather that she is a fairly conservative person, in terms of subject matter that she feels is appropriate. I could be wrong. Still, I was getting the distinct impression that the concept of being FUCKING torn apart would be reprehensible to her. So, again, why? Why here?

As luck would have it, we actually have another quitter on our hands. By my calculations, about a month before requesting a review, Nancy declared that she was going on hiatus for an indeterminate period of time, only breaking away from her self-imposed moratorium to post one more meme. All I can imagine is that she was hoping that she would get some sort of spark from me telling her that, Gosh Awmighty, if she didn’t immediately start writing again, I was going to kill myself. But in fairness to you, to me, and truthfully to her as well, I can’t provide her with that spark.

Because if that spark comes from outside of you, it does not belong to you at all.

All that aside, I do want to say that I learned some very interesting things from Nancy. About life in the United Arab Emirates, and about what it is like to have an arranged marriage. And for that, I am genuinely grateful that I read the last year’s worth of posts.

I always like to leave my victims with some pointers on how to improve, and Nancy is no exception. I have several ideas. She may not be interested in any of them, and she is certainly free to ignore everything about this review.

• Please stop spelling in shorthand. It hurts my cerebral cortex. “Coz” is wrong. It is spelled “because,” or “’cause” if pressed for time. And “of course” is two words, not one.
• Edit. A lot. Get to the point quicker. Brevity is a virtue. Even your better posts were a chore to read simply owing to unnecessary length and meandering off the point.
• Stop blogging about blogging about blogging. Or blog buddies. Or blog awards. Or memes (or as you call them “tags”).
• The kinds of things that we, the people who don’t know you but who might happen upon your blog, want to know are buried deep. Who you are. Why you blog. What you’re all about. And even then, out of a year’s worth of posts, maybe three were really personal, what’s-Nancy-really-like stuff. The rest were trivia. Trivia is okay, but not very substantial. Bring that stuff out more. Push it to the front on an About Me page. Or give up on people like me.

It Must Be the Customers Seeking Warmth in a Hot Cup of Something

Yeah. This is not a review.

I know. I am a lazy, hungover bum.

Deal. You're getting a review on Saturday.

"Saturday!" you say, appalled at my gall. "Why the hell would we read blog reviews on a Saturday?"

"Well," I answer haughtily, analyzing my fingernails, "It's because I am in charge and you will do what I say."

Again, sorry. I have busy important work things to do.

To pass the day, here is my favorite short film. Ever.

Ambrosia and its Opposites

When I was a mere dot and home from the School for hols, Nanny used to try and force me to eat rice pudding. Now there are not many things I will not eat. I am a gastronaut of the highest order – William Buckland can’t hold a candle to me (although I will own to never having nibbled the mummified heart of a king, I have eaten a kebab in Cleckheaton). However, I know what I like and I simply cannot bear rice pudding. It’s something to do with the skin. Nanny would cajole and threaten and great Scenes would be caused, but as soon as I saw rice pudding at the table I would clap shut my mouth and fold my arms and that, much to Nanny’s disgust, was that.

When I saw that I had to review a blog entitled ‘Single Mom Says’, written by the fragrant Mindy, my first though was rice pudding. My second thought was ‘Good lord, I had no idea that there were actually real people called Mindy’. My heart sank further when I read her header. It reads ‘A single mom’s thoughts and observations on life as a single parent, dating, relationships, kids & women’s issues’. I can tell you know, Mindy, that they way you mean the term ‘women’s issues’ in no way reflects the lives of any of the women I have ever known. My Fanny’s issues revolve largely around the unclogging of the traps and Mother, when I saw her, was preoccupied with the bejewelling of her vast cast of land crabs.

None of this endeared me to Mindy, and to top it all off, her ridiculous stalker widget thinks I come from Derby! Derby! I haven’t been back to that godforsaken place since the Unpleasantness and do not intend to do so ever again. However, now I am an old clown I must be brave and eat up my rice pudding. As Nanny used to say, if you just try it, you might like it. Poor Nanny. She had to leave us in the end, when all my teeth came in. Anyway, I held my nose and opened my mouth and dug in to our Mindy’s ‘about’ bit, thinking it best to get the skin off first. In this section Mindy provides us with a helpful list of dramatis personae and links to what she considers the pertinent posts. They make for grim reading, my tiny friends. Mindy has fair been through t’mill, as they say around here. Her best friend stole her husband and they are stirring up all kinds of trouble. She is raising four daughters on her own. Neither of the fathers sounds like much cop. She is desperate to find a good man but internet dating is proving unsatisfactory. All in all, poor Mindy has been having a miserable time of it.

I do hate it when reviewees have Sad Stories. It makes me feel as though I should make allowances and then I have to do all kinds of wrestling with myself and I get all flustered and Fanny has to mop up and then she sulks. Besides, sad stories are fun to read for a while, but then the schadenfreude wears thin and it’s just depressing. The problem I have with personal blogs is that they are often far too personal, just a relentless grind of self-obsession. But we must look beyond all this, though, to the real proof of the pudding, the writing. I suppose.

When Mindy started her blog, she wrote long, self-help style essays. They were breezy, relatively well put together pieces that have that ‘Sassy Mom’ tone we have encountered in so many other pink-hued places. Very chummy and reassuring and most helpful, I would imagine, to similar women in similar situations, although they are a touch shiny-eyed, as though she is just enthusiastically regurgitating the last book she read. It’s very much not for me (it’s those around me who need help, not I) but I can see that it has some merits, despite the crashing generalisations and the sneaking suggestion that all men will inevitably turn out to be massive cunts.

However, the recent posts suggest - and I hope this is true – that our Minds has found something better to do than blogging, because they are scanty at best. At times she resorts to the unspeakable crime of just listing things she did, like a child’s back-to-school essay. I did this and then I did this and then and then and then. Look at this, for example;

My weekend was a busy one, marked with a few highs and a few lows. Here’s a peek at some of what’s been going on lately:

I caught a cold. Maybe strep throat. Ow. Throat pain SUCKS.

Got in a minor car accident. No one was hurt but can’t say the same for the cars. Or my insurance premium.

Came to the conclusion that Karma is a slow-ass bitch. Or she’s drinking on the job. Whatever the case, she is obviously VERY confused.

Had date #2 with the single dad from the bowling alley. He needs a name for the blog because he may be mentioned here again. (and it can’t be Bowling Alley Dude or Dad because that would be BAD).

What, pray, is the point of this tripe? Sweet Felicity Kendal, why did you bother? It’s all very well and good if you just want to give your chums a quick update on what you’re up to, but when you submit to this site, you must know we are going to want something more. Your stories aren’t stories, they are merely hints. I know you can do it, you just need to be more consistent in the quality of your output. You could make lovely little pieces out of your dating adventures with a few judicious descriptions, a bit more dialogue and some actual effort, but you seem to have stopped bothering and if you can’t be bothered, Mindy, neither can I.

So, having gagged my way through as much rice pudding as I can handle, all I can say is that I hope Mindy manages to find a way to live, and thereby write, outside her problems. I hope she finds a man (although she would be wise to remember that Buttons is often a better bet than Prince Charming). I also hope that she finds her missing knickers, although I do wonder about the coincidental nature of her fancy frillies going missing just before her daughter goes out to celebrate her sixteenth birthday with her boyfriend. And I hope that she either gives up blogging or decides to do it properly.

Mindy, you get a Meh.

Naked Eye

Heads-up : Today's website is NOT WORK SAFE. Don't sue me if you little perverts get into trouble.

Humans are characterized by an unending quest for betterment, a passion for innovation, hunger for progress - all to get their porn faster. Sure Edison was the "Wizard" of Menlo Park, but he was also keen on delivering the nasties in moving form. Dial-up, broadband, fiber optic - the internet has come a long way to deliver kinks no one knew existed. Hell, rule 34 has porn for my kind covered, too.

So when I visited today's reviewee, I was presented with gallery upon gallery of female primates exposing their privates. Still pictures of not-at-all attractive ladies? What is this, the 90s? I truly am appalled, and that's not just because the blog is called "Hate and Anger". We get all kinds of blogs to review, but this is new. Since when were we in the business of critiquing pornography? It doesn't even look like the blogger takes these pictures, so it's not like I'm expected to appreciate "art" in pictures of annoying TV hosts.

Skipping right past the fugly template, and the annoying sidebar, I followed up on the tabs. Peter Parkour is a 39 year old trucker(!) who idolizes a certain red suited wall crawler. Although a tad on the verbose side, his profile page was the most complete I've seen in a reviewee, and it gave me some hope for my assignment. A Me 101 tab (guess your profile wasn't enough?) carries more info. than I care about, but got me interested in a series about his niece who was shot. Following up on the story, I found myself listening to Peter, an adult with stories, a trucker with intelligent thoughts.

Digging deeper, if you can stay on his blog long enough to skip past the silly thumbnails you'll find a an ex-con with a plan B, a 39 year old who's back in college. Just that one post told me more about you than other tab or silly list did, Peter. Sure you're sharing space with teenagers, love geek shows and Olivia Munn, but why behave like a horny undergrad? The best part about youth is that it's a one time affair. Your blog is "Hate and Anger". What hate and where's the anger? Just this one tiny piece?

You depend very heavily on the "I am" meme you've picked up from somewhere. I don't like the length of the posts, and hate the idea of formulaic writing, but you come across as guy I'd drink a beer or 27 with. It's not like you're short of things to say. You turned vegan 6 months ago, and as much as that thought repulses me, you clearly have material to work with. Cut out the graphs and blunt facts, talk about how your life is different. Get creative with words and sentences. I'd much rather have you say "I wake up ready to assfuck 14 virgins" than "I don’t wake up feeling swollen and sluggish".

Thing is Peter, you may not have a double masters from Cornell, but you have been on the road. You've been breathing for 39 years. You have thoughts and moments. Some good, some silly. You repeat yourself, but yours is a tale I'd read. You've been very active with your posts, but I found only a handful of writing in the 25 pages I looked at.

I started with the review annoyed at what I saw, and I'm wrapping up pissed off at what I read. Space trucker, here's the deal

1) STOP POSTING PORN. END IT. DELETE IT ALL. STOP.

2) Just stop it.

3) Start over. Get a fresh blog.

4) Use a clean template, no sidebars, no cock sucking assholes.

5) WRITE man, WRITE.
6) Stop using the "I am" meme as a crutch. Use all the material you have for free flowing verse.
7) Work on the length of your posts and your story telling style. Save some for the next post or two.

I would have given this review a one line "FUCK OFF AND DIE" and 10 flaming claws of doom, but I'll restrict myself to just 2.

If I've been a bit harsh, it's only so that you do something better with your hate and anger. For having something to show for years of "blogging", and showing potential, 1 star.




PS : Look, my people!

This is not your review. This is me blogging about blogging about blogging when I'd rather be blogging about blogging about something

Imagine a friend wants to meet you for coffee because she wants to have a serious talk with you. Your curiosity is piqued and you await your friend eagerly at a coffee shop, wondering what on earth is going on in her life that she wants to tell you about. She walks in, sits down and proceeds to tell you what is on her mind:

"I wanted to meet with you today for coffee to have a talk. So I am going to sip my coffee now and then now I'm setting it down. Now, what I'm doing right now is I'm opening my mouth and closing it in an organized way that I learned by watching others when I was a child and there is this sound that comes out of varying acoustical properties. My mouth opens and closes and what I'm doing is I'm vocalizing, see. It's really quite something. By moving my mouth and folding and clicking my tongue, I'm essentially creating all these sounds and my teeth are involved somehow. Those sounds that you hear are these speech things I'm making which you then comprehend and these are words and with said words I make sentences that have meaning and it's all very syntactical. My goal at this point is to say ten more words. Do you think I can manage? Do you want to bet that I can say ten more words after this? Did you notice how I raised the intonation at the end of the last sentence? So you see, this was the important thing I wanted to talk to you about and so that's why I decided to ask you to meet me for a coffee."

How can you possibly respond to this person?

You see, this is exactly what it's like to read someone's blog when they constantly blog about blogging: what they thought about posting, how they feel about what they decided to post, what they are doing to generate traffic, the contests they are thinking of doing, how many followers they have, how many followers they hope to have by the end of the year, what they read about in their book about blogging, when their two month blogging anniversary is, conversations they've had with others about blogging, reflections on how certain followers have found their blog, ideas about blogging that they got by twittering and on facebook, etc., etc., etc.

I can't do it. It gives me a splitting headache and it confuses me because it makes me feel like space itself has curled inward and all I am is a person staring into a mirror of redundancy and I no longer know if I am really standing here at all or if I'm just one more of the reflective images and it's all infinity forever and ever collapsing around on itself and suddenly I live in a world where painters paint paintings of themselves painting paintings of themselves painting paintings and people are only allowed to talk about talking and books only contain essays on how to write books and shows are always about shows(*) and everything is a double helical shaped hermeneutical circle that devours itself in nothingness and the universe is all just reflections of reflections and copies of copies and I begin to feel immensely uncomfortable and begin to doubt that there's any point to any of it EVER. This philosophically FUCKS with me, because I'm not a nihilist. Or maybe I am. I don't know, but dammit, I don't want to be one.

Carmen, you're a well read film buff with a great sense of humor and I know you have a million real stories to tell that are funny and heart warming and heartbreaking and inspirational and thought provoking and that could pull readers to you like a magnet if you wanted. But you aren't telling those stories because you have not stopped talking about talking long enough to actually say anything at all. I could not to weed through the blogging about blogging to find the stuff that comes from the heart that was not wrapped in bloggerwocky. And I really desperately want to see that heart that I know you have. I want to know what it was about the baby and the dog that you sat near in church that made you happy. I do not care what it is like, as a 40 something diagnosed schizophrenic named Carmen, to experience facebook, twitter, and blogging and I really don't think anyone does. I am, however, dying to know what it is like, as a 40 something diagnosed schizophrenic named Carmen to experience life, in the world where painters paint paintings of flowers and windmills and dogs, and people write books about pirates and aliens and secret societies, and people talk about sex and food and rollercoasters. YOU HAVE SOMETHING TO SAY, CARMEN, THAT IS WHY YOU WERE DRAWN TO BLOGGING IN THE FIRST PLACE.

My advice is: stop blogging about blogging. COMPLETELY. I realize that eliminating all of the blog talk would leave you with the problem of having to figure out what to fill the gap with (Welcome to my world of posting less frequently than I want to. Of course, to embrace this, you have to fully give up on obsessing about followers, how many comments you get, traffic, etc. and just blog when you have something interesting to write about). While you're eliminating, go ahead and shave off the part that is completely uninteresting to anyone, including people who know you personally (advice which you've already read about in blogging books, i.e. not to blog on what you had for lunch). Then eliminate information that could be interesting ONLY to people that know you personally (unless you only want to blog for those people, in which case, have at it. But since you submitted here, I assume you want a take on what the random blogger would be looking for). You are now left with what could be a pile of shiny gold, or it could be a pile of bland white rice and people will either connect with it or they won't, but whatever it is, it will be authentic and it will be all you and will hold intrinsic value just because of that. The truth is, I cannot even speculate on what that kind of content would be like or is, because I never found it on your blog. If it's there and I missed it, it's because I gave up before I found it, which I can only believe would be what a typical random reader would do.

Focus now on real content, real you from the heart, then resubmit your blog in a few months so that we can at least review what is really you. For now I can't do this review, that's why I haven't even linked to anything. And I can't give you a rating either, because none of them are appropriate.

But i will show you a little inspirational poster I like to look at whenever I'm tempted to blog about blogging.
















(*) Seinfeld managed to pull this off. But you know, it was Seinfeld.

Things that go slurp in the night

I just returned to my habitation on the redneck riviera after watching a sum total of 11 hours of NASCAR racing in Atlanta this weekend. If you think that Ask is a cultural panoply of bloggers from around the world, you should try out some NASCAR. That's a cultural display that will make you sumbitches sit up and take notice. The intrinsic humor of NASCAR and its fans never ends.

Today's blog is also a cultural experience, it's written by Essie from South Africa. It is a cultural panoply of a few of my favorite things: online dating, zombies, prom, and that's just on the first page.

I suppose that one might classify this as a humor blog, and be somewhat accurate. The humor is hit/miss, but more hit than miss. Sometimes, though, there is hit/miss within the same post. Zombies are awesome, they don't need an intro. The dating walkers part is just extraneous, and should be excised like dead flesh.

I like Essie, I like her blog. Probably not enough to read it daily, because I don't read ANY blogs daily these days. However, I don't want to set Essie on fire, so that's a good sign.

So, here are a few brief pointers that would improve my Loch Ess Monster experience.

1. Clean your sidebar. Gadgets are unnecessary, get rid of them.

2. Who is Essie? Your reader wants and deserves more than you've given us. Some background, even if you want to keep us at a slight distance, is required. Who are you, where do you live, what are you doing here, and why?

3. If you plan to have a cast of characters, they need an introduction so we can keep them straight in our heads. Otherwise, the stories fall flat and are just a muddle. So, who, for instance, is DW, and why do I care that she took a priest to prom?

4. You live in South Africa, that has to be interesting, so you might want to spend a sentence or a paragraph on how you got there, and why. After all, you can't always post about online dating and zombies.

5. Exercise some discretion. Your longer posts would be more punchy if they were also more concise. Set some outer boundaries on how much you will include. This has potential, but is too much. Be more scrupulous about what you post. If it's a near miss, don't post it. Let it age in your drafts like the rotting flesh in your refrigerator for a few weeks while you consider if you really want to expose it to the world.

Just remember, with humor: less is more. The quality posts are there, but they can easily get lost in the dreck.

I give you 1 star, and no flaming zombie fingers, with the possibility for more if the blog improves.

Instead of a blog review I got a wicked bad sunburn.

There was this plan, you see, to write a blog review for today. And then I started watching Band of Brothers again and then there was Labor Day and I went out on a boat and got drunk and burned, so now I am very pink and very tired and salty and in no shape to pretend I'm interested in reading anyone's blogs.

So, with all the recent hilarity, COMMENT OF THE WEEK(ish):

I peed myself laughing. And that is not hyperbole, I actually peed myself.
- Miss Missives on The Chewbacca Defense


That is a picture of you, right? It's not some wrestler or Aryan Brotherhood member or something whose picture you lifted so as to make yourself look bad ass?
- Lil on Jidhu What Jighotta Do


Dude, if gay marriage is ok then I am totally marrying my cat.
- Formerly Fun on What would people think when they hear that I'm a Jesus Freak?


You know his cat-penis is spiny and hurtful, right? Fucking cat-penises and their cat-penissy-catness.
- Rassles, who is one sick fuck, on What would people think when they hear that I'm a Jesus Freak?


I hope people have good vacations even when they've just, moments before, caused me to have a spontaneous and severe headache by discussing cat dick. Does that mean I'm gay?
- Mongolian Girl on What would people think when they hear that I'm a Jesus Freak?


I'm putting part of one of my own comments up for the Quote of the Week thingy.
Praise! "You should probably know I will retract my praise if it's really true that you do not approve of dicks in butt holes." Self-promotion! Praise!
- Mongolian Girl on What would people think when they hear that I'm a Jesus Freak?


When my husband slaps me on my right bum cheek, I do in fact, offer him the other.
- Formerly Fun on What would people think when they hear that I'm a Jesus Freak?


Aaaaaaaah! You commenters are so cute with your matching shirts and learning disabilities.
- Scorpio Woperchild on That's why her hair is so big: it's full of secrets

Any more suggestions?

- Shiner

Jidhu What Jighotta Do

PREFACE: Part of me loves posting on Fridays because it's a great way to wrap up a week, but part of me wonders if Friday is a bad day of the week for getting the community involved. I mean, my last review only got 8 comments, and we all know that the only way to determine the value of a blog entry is the number of comments that are on it, right? I just wonder if I am getting an accurate reading on my worth and value as a person?

Thank you for sitting through that with me. Now on to today's review.

Before offering up a review of today’s blog, I wanted to make sure I was clear on what it was that the author thought he was doing, so I asked Shiner to forward to me the content of the review request.

This is what he had to say for himself:

Name of Your Blog: Jidhu's Reflecton
Your Blog's URL: http://www.jidhu.blogspot.com/
A Brief Description of My Blog: Its my reflection

Well, if this is true, than Jidhu must look something like this when he ganders at his own appearance in the mirror each day:



Because I swear, this guy has never met a blog gadget he didn’t like.

I can usually overlook something like that, as long as I can find the links to the archives, but today, I can’t. All those gadgets take forever to load, and they really get in the way. That's one really big demerit right there, son.

Bypassing the template issues for now, then, how well is Jidhu doing with making his blog “his reflection?”

Well, shit.

I don’t know.

I’m just going to come right out and say it. The writing needs a lot of work. Ignoring the mechanics of his English (which needs the most work, but I'm allowing for cultural differences here – “Just expecting something and nothing do for the expectations is a wastage for us.”), the written content is almost completely and totally uninspiring. Which is really sad, because I think he’s shooting for profound and insightful. He seems to be doing a ton of copying and pasting from other sources, or posting things other people have written. But the end product comes across as trite and clumsy.

Let me give you a f’rinstance. He has this topic series in which he shows pictures of Life Lessons on post-it notes. One in particular was “Stop and smell the roses.” After which he provides a full paragraph on what it means to “stop” and another on what it means to “smell the roses.”

Maybe it’s just me, but I didn’t need that explained to me. I've been stopping and smelling the roses for a long time.

Okay – here’s another f’rinstance: He published a post laying out ten things he wishes to learn in the future. As I read it, I couldn’t help but wonder why he set his sights so low. I mean, he had “ironing” and “to wear a tie” on this list. If I made a list like this, I don’t know what I’d put on it, but I am pretty sure that I wouldn’t include things I could learn tomorrow from a “how-to” video or a Tech book.

And what the hell am I supposed to make of this little gem? I mean, I can't even get worked up about Jidhu being all emo and shit, because he never gets to that level of navel gazing.

In fact, the only time that Jidhu’s writing stops coming across as very self conscious and pseudo-profound and fake is when he’s talking about the subject he seems to have the most passion for – computers and technology. Sure the subject matter is not always my cuppa, but out of the blue, the writing sounds and feels free and original and possibly, dare I say it, even a more accurate reflection of the author.

Of all the posts I read, the one about how to revert to a Windows XP installation after upgrading to Windows 7 was my favorite. Really. And I happen to LIKE Windows 7. (When I went to get you a link to it here, I didn’t think I was going to be able to find it again. All of those gadgets and not a single fucking way to do a simple text search?)

Now that I think about it, I can't be 100% sure that Jidhu didn't just crib this from another source.

The non written content – the photos – range from thought provoking and intriguing to “why-the-hell-did-you-post-this?”

Fine. I don’t like it. I won't be coming back. I don't think I know anyone who would like it. I can’t recommend it to anyone. I wonder what the point of it is. So, given that, what can Jidhu do to improve?

• Identify something that you care passionately about. Politics, food, the color orange – I don’t care – and write 500 words on why it is so important to you. Not, why it should be important to someone else. Why it is important to you.
• Find your own voice. Stop trying to be someone else.
• Find clarity of thought first. Then write.
• If you have nothing to say, then say nothing. Don’t write just to boost output.
• For the love of all that is sacred to you in this world, get rid of all of those blog gadgets and get real, son!

Good luck.

Oh, wait. You wanted a rating. Didn't you? I'm finding it hard to invest in you emotionally long enough to do this, but what the hell.

Here you go:

What would people think, when they hear that I'm a Jesus Freak?*

I'm pretty sure Shiner saved this one special, just for me. To hope for an unbiased, issue-free review is a futile effort.

I grew up going to church every Sunday. I was heavily involved in my youth group in junior high and high school. The first two years of my adulthood were spent at a small, private Christian college. Yes, shockingly enough, I was one of those kids.

However, I never quite fit in. Even at the age of 13, I felt like an outsider. And I was viewed as a bad Christian, simply because I rebelled against Christian culture*. I refused to live in the bubble*, and they didn't like it.

But Halee is someone they would like. She's so steeped in Christian culture, Tyndale House* could publish books from her used Kleenex. She's set up shop so far in her bubble, I really believe she thought this was a Christian blog review site because our name quotes John 16:24*. Obviously, she didn't read the URL.

Nevertheless, this is my assignment, and I've never been one for shirking my duties.

Halee's blog template is cute, her title is cliched and banal ("My Life and Thoughts"), and she has too much distracting and meaningless crap in her sidebar.

Halee's writing comes across as uneducated. It's filled with incorrect spelling, grammar, spacing, and capitalization, and rife with run-on sentences and paragraphs. Also, an abundance of dreaded exclamation points, making the blog come across as one written by a middle school girl, instead of a married, college-educated woman.

Most of the blog is written like a journal, for her friends to catch up on her life. Completely boring for a stranger. She also seems mildly obsessed with weddings and babies, which is par for the course with most Christian girls. It was also one of the reasons why I only spent 2 years at the Christian college, before transferring to a state school. I didn't go to school to get my MRS. degree, thank you very much.

In the rest of her blog, she spews Conservative Christian propaganda, which only appeals to people who have those same beliefs. I get the feeling that Halee is just regurgitating what her parents and her church have told her, without thinking for herself. I also get the feeling she's trying to witness to the world*, from her blog. But again, no one's going to read this blog unless they come from the same background as Halee, so it's pointless.

I was all set to give her a "Meh" and an "Abercrombie", and tell her to start an anonymous blog, where she can write about real things, without feeling like everyone in her bubble is watching. . . until I got to these posts:

1) Here, she talks about how she's annoyed with being asked to give money for Haiti relief, because our government spends our tax money irresponsibly.
2) Here, she talks about how she has a hard time feeling sympathy for the homeless, because the ONE TIME she has seen a homeless person, he was rude to her.

Let's see what Jesus has to say about this, shall we Halee?

Matthew 22:37-39* - The "love your neighbor as yourself" verse.

Luke 6:30-31* - The Golden Rule, AKA the "do unto others" verse.

Matthew 25:31-36* - The Parable of the Sheep and Goats, AKA the "whatever you did for the least of these" verse.

Did you notice how I didn't need to explain what the verses were, other than their nicknames? That's because people with limited knowledge of the Bible have heard of them. And when Christians fail miserably at those basic commandments, it makes them look really bad. That's why people say, "All Christians are hypocrites", Halee.

Also readers, have you noticed how clean my language has been in this post? That's because I've been saving it for this:

How the FUCK have you only seen one homeless person in your life?

I grew up in a small backwater town too, but I spent time with my church family, sorting clothes and serving food at the local homeless shelter WHEN I WAS 10.

In high school, I spent the springtime running fundraisers to earn money to travel to Mexico, the Arizona Navajo reservation, and inner-city LA. You know what I did there? I built houses for the homeless, worked in missions, and delivered food to AIDS shut-ins. I also ran camps for Mexican and Navajo street children, as well as the younger siblings of the Grape Street Crips in Watts.

Jesus didn't go to VBS* or Awanas*, Halee. He spent his time with the poor, the crippled, and the sick. He even hung out with prostitutes. Get off your High Jesus Horse, please.

NOW, I award you:


from the Father





from the Son





from the Holy Ghost.




May God have mercy on my soul.

*links for the unchurched heathens

Rip Rip Woodchip

There are two television shows that I absolutely adore but I am not the target audience for; Spicks and Specks and Top Gear. But that doesn't matter - I find the shows so pants-wettingly amusing that I don’t care if I don’t know much about cars or music.

I like my blogs like I like my shows. I don't have to be the intended audience but I insist that the blog is written in a way that is either, witty, insightful, engaging, informative, thought-provoking or God forbid, all of those combined.

Today’s reviewee writes for therapy. It would seem incongruous for someone in that situation to ask for a blog review from us. But nevertheless we steam ahead. Is it like kicking puppies to say someone who is showing the world their therapy journals and emails to therapist is needy? Admittedly my radar started peeping like a chick when she said she had worked through all the therapists in her home town. I know she didn’t mean to be funny here, but really? She wants to give her therapist the third degree and then pay them $20 a week?

Even so Marie seems affable and honest. She is able to articulate her thoughts well enough but it doesn't really feel like the heart-wrenching, scary process that would usually accompany such a subject. It feels no more sensitive than a woman on a mission to find a man.

As a writer I know that getting your thoughts out on paper is a cathartic, de-cluttering process. However blogging is a different animal. A blog has a real audience. That means you have to write for them, not you. Therefore, let them be in the stories, the flashbacks, the emotions. Keep the journal under your mattress, not open next to your PC.

Let’s face it, as a person with some issues, you probably have more material than most but when you tell rather than show, you lose all of the power of your experiences and words. Could you rewrite the story about the autistic boy in thispost? Your experiences with him sound fascinating. But instead of telling us that he made you cry, make us cry too. You say that you like this guy’s work, so try and take a tab out of his blog. He seems to be doing it right, in the ‘genre’ you blog in as well as enough out of it that I am curious if not enthralled. Things get a bit more raw here but it just seems a little calculated. Hindsight is a wonderful thing I guess.

To put it bluntly Marie, we of the internet do not want to be your confession booth or your therapist's couch. Sure, it is shallow, tawdry and all that is wrong with this world, but we demand that you entertain us. Whether that is with laughter, titillation or tears – we don’t care, as long as we feel what you feel too. Until then, stick to the journal.

Although you asked, you won’t receive a rating. I give you a:













For the review title reference, go here. At least listen until the chorus. You can thank me later.