One Word: No!

I flirted with reviewing you a while back, and now is your shining moment, which isn’t actually going to be very bloody shiny. I am going to start off where I left off. It goes something like this: ‘No, no, no, no, no, no, NO!’

Did you hear that Lil Miss Out of My Comfort Zone? NO. If I had a rolled up newspaper I would smack you like the puppy who has just peed on the carpet.

Again for clarification– NO!

You sure are out of your comfort zone, if the zone of comfort was something to write about that people actually gave a shit about. And on another note, do you know why else you suck? You haven’t posted since September the 7th. I am guessing you picked up on the fact that you were going to be reviewed in the near future when good ‘ol Shiny Pants asked you to unprivate your blog. But no, you obviously didn’t pick up that a steaming pile was headed your way.

How old are you anyway? It is clear that you are very young, using ‘n’ for the word ‘and’... and you know what? I have no idea what sex you are. I assumed female and then there you are, crapping on about Cricket. Not that girls don’t like Cricket. But I liked to make assumptions, my little discomfited girly-boy.

I am not going to link to anything on your blog here. Why? Because I don’t wanna; you pissed me off. Why the hell do you need to regale us with R. Kelly lyrics, which will now have many unfortunate Ass-kers believing they can fly and can touch the sky? Why do you crap on about Religion, Napping, Michael Corleone, Cricket and Being an Introvert like you are an expert on any of those things? (Okay, I will pay you the napping) Just because someone said you write okay, it doesn’t mean you have to torture the rest of us and start grandstanding. Start small. Tell a story, a little one. I knew a guy who could reduce you to tears just from writing about how he woke up and took a piss. He was that good.

But you, kid? You need to go away, grow up, get some experiences. Just small ones. And not ones that include how much your sucker parents love you and buy you a new phone every time you bloody lose one. To quote Shiner, that is just obnoxious.

Now, I do realise I am tarring you with a very broad brush. I am sure if I had a blog at your age it would be a little sick making and a lot of ‘Why am I so Heartbroken, Misunderstood blah blah blah.’ Shit, I do that now - but bugger me, I was always a good writer. I was totally precocious man; my first grade story on Brontosaurus’ made the cover of the class book, dude – prehistoric butterfly in the illustrations and all. You? Well, you are doing well for someone who probably isn’t a native English speaker, but even so, watch your spelling; they like you to done spell good in ‘collage’ you know. And lay off the ellipses. And CAPS. And font fuckery. And learn the correct your/you’re. And the right their/there/they’re while ‘your’ (ha – see what I did their? And again! On fire today, Redpen, on FIRE) And, lastly, no more ‘ur’. Gah.

I want to say something nice, but at the moment all I see is a train-wreck that I am desperate to look away from; an off-key, ‘but my mum says I have a lovely voice’ screecher, that has people on the other side of the world watching you with through their fingers.

So what can I leave you with that won’t crush your young, tender soul? You seem happy and upbeat, but that could be because of all of the exclamation marks you use.

I am going to leave it up to our dear readers and your 6 followers; please, someone, find something in this young person’s blog that will give them the will and the hope to keep on. And just to punctuate that thought, my delightful dog, who is sleeping in the hallway, has just spiced the air with the delightful fragrance of meaty chunks, via his colon.

Comfort Zone, while you are at collage, study, study your arse off in physics or whatever else those crazy whipper snappers are jiving to these days. Cos a writer you will not be.

Oy Gevalt!

The Real Stuff Cats Like is blindingly, astoundingly stupid. Lighting-a-smoke-in-a-pool-of-gasoline stupid; stopping-to-ask-a-hooker-for-directions-with-a-police-cruiser-sitting-across-the-street stupid. It takes an IQ measured in popsicle-sticks to look at this blog and not immediately decide they’ve got better things to do, which is why I considered just posting a naked link with the title, 'Why Bother?' (and, perhaps, why it‘s taken me so long to finish this review), but, despite not being on the payroll here at Ask for a while, I am a professional. Of course, all that affords me is the arduous task of whittling through brainless drivel like I was settling an argument between two stringy-haired, slap-fighting harpies down at the laundromat, but whittle I did…

A horror-slash-political-slash-cat-face blog, Stuff Cats Like appears to have been designed by a triage of blind squirrels with but a cursory understanding of photoshop and makes dogshit ground into the bottom of a shoe look like an aesthetic fucking marvel. I’ve seen better designs in the light-patterns exploding behind my eyes after being punched in the face, and more impressed, too, because at least that guy, unlike ol’ Teddy here, put some effort into it.

It’s not just that I’ve heard tighter narrative focus from a trepanned creationist who speaks only in Avril Lavigne lyrics, or that seagulls alighting on land-mines hold together better than this blog’s at-best limited premise (which consists mostly of moronic script-treatments/faux-celebrity reportage featuring Nick Cannon, and is far more interesting in description than it is in practice), or that Insane Clown Posse rocks a slicker shtick despite being legally retarded, no… what really sets this fuckwitted nonsense apart is that, all of a sudden, for no discernable reason, this shitstain of a blogger just decided to start throwing around offensive epithets like they were his mom’s apparently-defective morning-after pills. To wit:

She can handle a whip like Indiana Jones and unless you’re a fag her sexy gams will make your dick as hard as a diamond.

Notice that I didn’t call the guy a Jewboy either, I said J-boy.

Shocking? Hardly - I’ve been more appalled by a fourth-grade production of Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer, and having spent a fair amount of time with the British I’m pretty desensitized to the word 'cunt'. No, the most offensive aspect of this blog isn’t the ham-fisted name-calling or the flailing use of pre-adolescent vernacular but that it’s fucking boring: tepid, insipid, limp and unimaginative, Stuff That Cats Like is an unreadable reminder both that a complete and utter lack of creativity is no impediment to starting a blog, and that the platform of Blogger is evidently idiot-proof. I’ve never seen a more pathetic cry for attention, and I’ve read Madonna’s Sex book.

Some, like Mr. Teddy Puertodipshit, would doubtlessly brag about receiving flaming fingers from us, so I award him this


because I’m confident he hasn’t the cognitive capacity to fill in the blanks, and he was obnoxious enough to submit this dripping sack of horseshit three times. Well, here you are, fuckball, your review’s all done; now you can delete your blog and go back to scratching clever notes into the stall-wall of your favourite public washroom. Oh, and don’t forget that a drawing of a penis needs a huge amount of pubic-hair, because that’s fucking hilarious.

It is a good divine that follows her own instructions

What the hell is up with all the IFLY's and stars and shit lately? Are you people getting soft in your old age? Feeling the holiday spirit? Suffering from Seasonal Affective Disorder?

Damnit, I want some ass spankings around this joint. I want someone to threaten their asshole reviewee with a back alley lobotomy. Give me some blood and guts and giblets, people.

Later this week? Please?

I say this because you're not gonna get any angry banshee-screeching from my neck of the woods today.

Good for your feed reader. Bad for your entertainment, I'm afraid.

Jayne, the Suburban Soliloquist, is funny and neurotic and just a cool lady. And this bitch can write.


* I don't have kids, but this post made me understand what it might be like.

* She gets sociological and feminist about book reviews on Amazon

* This is exactly how I feel about Twitter.

* This is exactly how I feel about poetry. In fact, Shiner gave me the choice between this blog and a poetry one . . .

* I love this post. It's funny, but is still poetic in its own way.

However . . .

(I feel like a fucking hypocrite for getting on her case about this, because it's MY major blogging flaw.)

Jayne, your posts could do with some major editing. Reorganization, paring down, splitting up posts, etc.

For example, I think this post would flow better if you started with the Halloween costume story, and then worked into the tailor hemming the skirt. The punchline to the story, the kicker if you will, is in the first paragraph ($15). Why would I continue reading the post? Hold onto the "best" part of the story until the end-ish. Make your reader want to find out what happened.

There's also a difference between writing in a casual, conversational manner, and writing out your ADHD train of thought. I tend to be a rambling storyteller in real life, and that inadvertently carries over into rambling story-writing, which does not translate well and bores my readers. I didn't even realize I was doing it until I was reviewed myself.

For instance, the first paragraph of this post, could be completely deleted. It's the rambling storyteller coming out right there.

In that same post, it seems like you're telling two different stories at the same time even though it's ONE outing you're writing about. Different parts of the post evoked different feelings in me and my emotions felt torn all over the place. I understand what you were trying to do, but I think I would have preferred it if it was JUST about you and your son walking around town and your conversation with him about homeless people OR if it was a "you can't go home again" type post.

And I say that, because you are able to write both types of posts. You go back and forth between writing funny little slice of life stories, and writing evocative pieces that allow your reader to imagine what it's like to experience something. That's a good thing. Personally, I wish I could write the latter, but I'm afraid everything I write like that sounds contrived and maudlin.

I'm awarding you:




For being a cool chick and for having serious potential.

Inventories Suck

For my next trick, I will provide you with a list of blogs set to be reviewed this week, followed by a brief bloggerific description in the authors' own words...

VOILA!



Suburban Soliloquy:  Ok -I know- "Suburban Soliloquy" - you want to gag. But there it is, and it's been my identification for some time now, so I can't very well up and change it; however, I'm still feeling brave (sort of), so... I am not a young, hip blogger that uses words lifted from Urban Dictionary (well, you may find a few, but I didn't pull them out of THAT dictionary). I've been blogging since the beginning of the summer - not long but I meet your criteria for entry numbers, and I aim to entertain, throwing in a bit of sentiment, satire, humor, and hopefully, provocation into the mix.


It's All About Balance:  just another single mom blog


The Real Stuff Cats Like: A blog dedicated to the interests of cats and horror movies.

Tales of a Bionic Testicled Shoe Shiner

BLOG: AmmoHammerBite!Bite
AUTHOR: Ryan Lawson -- Presumably from Hamilton, Ontario, but I could very well be mis-surmising.

And, to be honest, I do not know how to begin.

So, let me start from the beginning. From what I would consider a rather inauspicious and mundane initial foray into the world of syntactical drivel, Ryan Lawson brings to us a blog of, primarily, stories. Some seem to be fantastical retellings of real interactions that he has had. Some appear to be attempts at self-reflection and at times I would wager self parody. And some just appear to be the output of a tremendously offkilter mind.

There's not a lot of that personal touchy-feely stuff you get in other blogs. Even his telling about the birth of his child doesn't really carry any implicit understanding that this actually happened or even what being a dad means to him. Only by reading the introduction did I even know that such an event had actually occurred.

His design invokes the feel of a comic book or an e-zine, and the content lives up to that invocation.

He is clever. At times, he is possibly too clever. In general, I applaud his creative vocabulary, but at times, he seems to be interested in showing off how well he knows how to work a thesaurus rather than trying to tell a story.

Look at me, picking such nits. Face it. When Ryan is on, he is really on. And if he misses once or twice, I actually am willing to grant that in this case, the fault may be my ability to process the concepts rather than his execution.

In other words, at his best, Ryan writes really fucking well. Laugh out loud well. Dare I suggest David Lynch/Charlie Kaufman well? Could he sustain it for a whole novel? If so, I would buy it. I would buy it for all my friends. And I would tell them "I reviewed his blog."

When you go to this blog, do yourselves a favor and check out the Storyhole and More pages. There are definitely some keepers in there. (Switcheroo, for example.)

Nobody's perfect. So, what could Ryan do better? The template is fine. No changes there. In the writing... I dunno, there were just some times when the density of the words created a short-circuit in my visual processing cortex, which is a good part of the reason why this review was late. Strive for more clarity. Sometimes less is more. Listen to your inner editor.

But by all means, keep doing this.

I am on the fence as far as the rating goes. I abhor hyperbole, and as such am really loathe to award IFLYs, and I admit that the one or two misses made me question whether I could hand out an IFLY in this case, but in the end, I have decided to just let it go and stop agonizing.

It's Out There Now, Lurking Like a Big Hairy Rapist at a Coach Station.

I've never been political.  Sure, I feel strongly about certain issues, vote with my fists and fight people when they disagree with me, but that's just who I am by nature.  Really has nothing to do with politics.  Okay, well, so by strict definition you could say my life is only politics, just outside the realm of Big-G-Government.  Modern political discourse gives me fucking indigestion.  Some dumbfuck mentions Glenn Beck or Michael Moore and I need wintergreen Pepto-Bismol with a burning, clenched Pavlovian fervor - seriously, right now anyone who glances my way probably thinks I haven't shat in a week. 

Still, I'm reviewing the blog of a twenty-year old, bright, impassioned British boy who plays for the conservatives.  Being a self-absorbed American with no party affiliation and a limited exposure to British politics that includes getting hammered and watching a shit-ton of C-Span 3 archived House of Commons videos in 2001 and salivating over Malcolm Tucker insults from In the Loop, I figured I'm about as qualified to review Richard's blog as anyone else.


Like I said, Richard is bright. At the wee age of twenty, he easily understands more about politics than the last American President, littered with the proper astringentositinessery of defensive youth (I make up words).  He recently chose to forego university, a decision I fully support (I hate that college is becoming a requirement instead of a compliment) but he seems to be bitter as fuck about it.

In fact, that's really the only thing I like about him:  it's hilariously frustrating watching him temper with rationality while he's obviously whipping his personal rage into submission and trying to squeeze it out into logic, but that fury seeps into the cracks and we know, we can tell, this Type A boy is fucking struggling to be a sensible, model citizen. 

Richard, you fucking puritan:  chill out.  Take a deep breath.  Go get yourself into some good, clean mischief, because boy, you are wound tight.  Are you this serious about everything you do? You're even serious about Doctor Who and World of Warcraft.  Take a lesson from Tenant's incarnation:  life, like time, is like a big ball of wibbly-wobbly-timey-wimey-stuff.  Nothing is certain, progress is never linear, and retaining your humanity does not mean rein in, repress, and repeat, it means allowing yourself to feel all the colors on the spectrum with zeal and triumphing out of the sheer love of existence and a fascination with and mad respect for the world that allows you to exist in the first place.

You are an intelligent, passionate boy and your blog is informative and formal and I feel like you're choking the life out of your writing when you should be choking the life out of your dick.  I think this blog is important to you and you want to keep it professional.  That's fine.  But you're fucking twenty years old and this is boring as shit.  You're a "good writer."  But all that means is you're grammatically accurate and have average-to-above average word choice.  You aren't afraid to tell us your opinion, but you're afraid to put yourself into it.  Maybe you're going for textbook, informative opinion pieces and that's fine.  If that's what you're going for.  It's...you know.  Fine. It's not for me.

But here's what I want you to do. 

1.  Start anonymous blog.
2.  Go to video store that has porn.
3.  Rent some porn.
4.  Overcome your shame of facing the clerk.  
5.  Pay for porn in all small coins. 
6.  Go home.
7.  Watch porn.
8.  Jack off.
9.  Review porn on new blog.

Am I evil?

History was made recently. There was so much awesome in one place that the universe imploded and folded upon itself. What you're experiencing now is merely a vivid dream by a medieval teen called Percy. Unfortunately, Percy lacks imagination, and so this universe does not feature Raptors with jetpacks carrying laser cannons.

Since we must persist with the mundane, let's ask ourselves a few questions and try to be honest. What do we do on this site? Provide gratification? Traffic? Donations? Is it difficult to understand that a review biased only by lack of acquaintance is the best service anyone can provide? Better still for free?And why do humans lack edible flesh? Even Texans barely qualify as a mid-morning snack.

I ask these questions because more than a few times a month we get submissions from self-proclaimed celebrities who're convinced of their greatness and expect us to kiss their ring of mediocrity. and so when shiner sent me over to "Quotidian Vicissitudes", I was tempted to roll my eyes. Ah great, a blog URL called "David Rochester"? What a ponce, I told myself. Ponce poncy poncity ponce ponce, there goes the evening.

And this would be the section where I would link and prove how silly a realtor-copyeditor's (!) thoughts are. How vain and incomplete his posts are. But I can't. And won't. Because after sifting through mountains of horse shit in the pursuit of something worthy on a slot in my reader, I may be on to something here.

David's writing is clean, dry and funny. It's like Sedaris without the annoying voice. I've read QV all this week, and even put off the review by an extra day (thanks for the idea Mrs. Raptor), just to find something to hate. Well, his about me is impossible to find I guess. He tends to overdo the "talk to people who got here by searching for weird shit". And why do people like lazy furballs cats? I can't really complain, though, after reading this, this, and this. David, we may not get along in person. We might meet at a cocktail party and I might excuse myself in the pursuit of dimwitted prey. But I'll read your blog.

The heartless bastards here like variety. I recommend they pour themeselves something dry, put their feet up and read. YMMV. So, still in a state of disbelief, I give you

I'm still not kissing your ring though.

Window Lickers All of Them

That's it, enough is enough. I am getting good and tired of the bad karma following me around like Jacob Marley's chain. We have tried to review earnestly, we have tried to provide unflinchingly honest feedback from and to people who really want to write. I am tapped out on being the bad cop dammit, I am going to be the fucking Tooth Fairy from now on, goddamn Glinda the good goddamn witch. So I propose we dismantle Ask, take a respite from the ripping and turn over a kinder, gentler leaf.

So here is what is still available:


www.trophiesforeveryone.blogspot.com
This is my personal favorite. Everyone is a winner, no one is better than anyone else, so says the trophy.

www.yoreawesomenomatterwhat.blogspot.com
A nod to the homophonic and a good place of rest for those not grammatically astute.

www.youshoulddefinatelywriteabook.blogspot.com
Because everyone thinks they have one in them.

www.youaregreatandtheywereallwrong.blogspot.com For those who have already been unfavorably reviewed.


I give you all stars!!!





FIVE, because you are all AWESOME!!!

Exploring the Rabbit's Hole

Oh, I tell you, it was going to be beautiful; an ass-ripping like has never been seen. There would be pumpkin muffins, crow-bars, ‘praise’ and sharts flying hither and thither in the comments. You would have been proud to be part of the Ask and Ye Shall Receive Mutual Admiration and Procuring of New Bum-hole Society. 

I even had my first line worked out. It went ‘No, no, no, no, no, no, no!’ in the vein the Fairy Godmother in Shrek 2 when she is flipping through her fairytale library trying to find a story in which the Ogre has a happily-ever-after with a Princess.

However, alas, alack, and woe is you, the imminent reviewee got cold feet and made her blog private. And then in the words of our fearless leader and word maker-upperer, Shiner, she ‘unprivateded it’. Well fuck me if I can be bothered by that shit. In the meantime I was given a different blog to review.

Unfortunately I didn’t hate this blog nearly as much. It was neat and clean in, what my uncultured eye would peg as, an art deco style. It had a classy selection of badges and thingamebobs in the side-bar and....

Okay. This is where you find out I am real person rather than a gory cartoon avatar; my internet at home pooped itself, only coming back on line the day before the review was due. I will now regale you with my quickly put together notes on a thoroughly read blog. Keep up if you can:

From the shadows of the comments, to the limelight of the reviewee’s position, I introduce to you, Miss Ash.

• She is rather thorough here, we like that round these parts.
• Dear Lord, you have to be shitting me! Perhaps it will get better. She has been doing this for a while and we all need to find our feet in the early stages. 
• Interesting, lacking in context. Is it supposed to be metaphorical? I want more sauce.
• Still dry.
• Ooh, getting juicier. (I was going to say wetter, but well, we all know where you lot will take that)
• There seems to be a LOT of caps lock going on to EMPHASIZE certain POINTS.
• This is cute, though still elusive. I am not really getting enough of a picture of her yet.
• Who is Amber to Miss Ash, if anything? I was confused at Miss Ash’s role in this drama and who was speaking. (Ah, further on – a glimmer, a glimpse!)
• This is indulgent, only in that it is interesting but could have been fleshed out more, and she left us high and dry.
• Why so much ‘she’, ‘they’, ‘you’? I feel like she is holding me at bay. Give people some names; own them, their actions and emotions, even if pseudonyms are used.
• Fuck – really? Then this sombitch is in a whole world of hurt, if I could muster up the energy to give a shit.
• I guess I pictured this, like you asked, but the clumsy ending was a spit bubble in the corner of my smile.
• Controversial – I like what you don’t say here.
• Cute – even though cats are evil, evil animals.
• I like the ‘light’ touch of this.
• Wholeheartedly I agree we all need these types of relationships. But show it to me – make me jealous or wistful or happy that I too, have this.
• I can totally get on board with this – are you in my head, Miss Ash?
• Nice imagery.
• Oh, I am all about the air biscuits lady, but you didn’t even raise a smile here. Shame. Love a good fart story. (Did you know, that the sort of thing you find amusing is supposedly indicative of your intelligence level? Shit.)
• Short and not so sweet – evocative.
• Again, you seem to say what I feel at times. I recognise it.
• This is lovely, but in a WHOLE four year blog, I have only had flashes of her situation, so when it comes down to it, I think ‘Aw, how sweet!’ when really I should be wiping away a tear, shouldn’t I? I don’t know, you tell me Miss Ash - the kid could be the next Damien.
• Hilarious first paragraph here.

Now, dear reader and armchair reviewer, I would like you to get off your metaphorical date-hole and do some work for once. (Geez, I am making free with the holes this review)

1) Go to Miss Ash’s archives.

2) Select the month of your birthday, in any year available.

3) Find a post closest to your birth date.

4) Give it a read.

5) In the comments here, give a seasoned opinion on said piece, perhaps providing a link if you have the technological aptitude, and even a score out of 10 if you feel so inclined.

Here. I will do one for you. (By the way – if I was clever I would be able to make it actually look like a comment box here etc etc but you know the drill. I am a writer daaahling, not a fucking IT specialist)

           

On March 18^th 2008, Miss Ash wrote this post, about decision making, consequences and such. I give it a 4 out of 10 because it was preachy and boring. Instead of saying this: “I could name a thousand different things I learned, and I do feel confident that when I acknowledged a behavior that wasn’t working,” she should have manned up and told me some of the juicy stuff because I wanted to identify with her, rather than get lectured.

Okay, so maybe that was a bit more complicated than the game I want you to play but you pick up what I am putting down, yes?

                                                                                                       

As you can see, my birthday is not terribly far away – enough for a savings plan to be put in place.  Feel free to send presents; Shiner will undoubtedly pass them on after they have been rifled through.

Miss Ash, you write well – you are more than literate but I feel that even though you have this mystic, spiritual thang going on, you hold me at arm’s length, when in order to benefit from your thoughts and wisdom, I need to nestle against your breast.

Let us in, Miss Ash.

I grant you,

     

Physician, Heal Thyself

BLOG: Godyears
AUTHOR: Pythoroshan. Indian. Male. Thirty-ish. Physician. Recently passed his examinations. A bit of a movie and food junkie.

Roshan, I sincerely thought I was going to hate your ass.

I count nineteen reasons why I gasped audibly when I first viewed your blog. That’s how many little useless gadgets and doo-dads are scattered around the perimeter. Although none are particularly intrusive – they don’t prevent the reading of the writing or slow the page loading or anything – their prominent display made me wonder and worry about what sorts of priorities you place on style versus substance.

And now, I am going to peel the curtain back a little on my process for reviewing a blog. I start with a brief scan of the two or three most recent posts. Then I usually look for an About Me page, if it exists, to get a sense of what the bloggers goal in blogging is. (I couldn’t find one here.) Then I survey the volume based on the archives. I then sample a random post or three from various epochs of the archives. And then I decide where to start my review from.

In this case, based on my initial assessment, I couldn’t go more than a year back. Although you’ve been writing for significantly longer than that, I felt that the earliest stuff was not truly indicative of the direction you are currently going in. And that wasn’t fair to you or me. Mostly me.

What I learned along the way:

• You are a bit of an idealist.
• You like to write movie reviews. (I don't agree with them, but that's okay.)
• You hold no truck with caste-based or religious divisions. You see bullshit and call it for the bullshit it is.
• You are worse than a hopeless romantic – you are a hopeful one. Ugh.
• You like to eat. (Little references interspersed throughout -- not a single link to use as an example.)
• You write fiction.

And having read what I did, I have to say, I like you. You’re the kind of guy I’d want to hang out with – fun loving, yet can get down to business when that’s the appropriate response. Funny and self deprecating, and yet not a gloomy gus who brings everyone down.

But, for the most part, I found your writing a tad bit turgid and clumsy. Too many posts were a bit of a chore to get through. I was down with what you were trying to say, but you just took too many words to get there. I suspect that you write the way you speak. A lot of people do. I just think that in a lot of these cases, less may very well be more.

As for the fiction, I liked what you wrote, but didn’t necessarily love it. I could probably provide specific feedback on your Guardian Angel piece, for example, with an eye toward tightening it up, making it better, etc. I’m not sure if that sort of constructive criticism is welcomed, so I will hold off.

What to do to improve: Try to write less densefully. Yeah, that’s not a word. I just made it up. But it captures the essence of what I mean. Sometimes this means simply rewording things. Sometimes it means you need to get out the scissors and excise an extraneous concept or two. And sometimes you can get a tad preachy in a way that I think undermines your intentions. Try to avoid that.

Your rating. One star.



Some artful editing and a bit more care in crafting your fiction will elevate this higher. you've got potential, my son.

Did the vibrating universe tell you this shit ball was coming your way?

I'll admit it, I worry about my karma sometimes. I worry that this nasty little endeavor may somehow putrefy my already gangrenous, skid marked soul with each review I write. I know that sometimes the energy I'm putting forth into the universe is riddled with negativity and I know that this energy will somehow find its way back to me and probably wreck anal havoc on me with a giant spiked dildo when I least expect it.

I know the world doesn't need more assholes. I get that. Really, I do.

But El,there are certain things I can't read, walk away from calmly, and not want to set your minivan on fire, I'm sorry.

Reading your blog is like having someone try to convince me to sign up for a seminar on the power of positive real estate when all I want to do is bury my dead cat that I've been keeping in my freezer. Does that make sense?

Listen, I'm not going to any fucking seminar, so you can forget about it. And I don't want to buy any of the shit you have in the back of your van. You can keep your insight about crystals and your tips on how to connect with hummingbirds.

Oh, what? You're not selling anything? Then why does every one of your posts read like a mix between a condescending infomercial and a scaremongering headline read aloud in baby talk?

Why does reading your blog remind me of all that I hate about our consumerist media culture because the only way you can think to frame your writing is in the context of a cheesy, poorly executed sales pitch? I cannot for the life of me figure out why you want to sell me on your perfectly green spiritually vibrating ohmified life of oneness as if it were an erectile dysfunction medication or a box of cereal.

When you aren't selling me on your perfect life, you're telling me about the problems you have already overcome, your posts being akin to self-contained sitcoms where everything resolves itself before the 30 minutes are up. No cliffhangers, no character development that I can even remotely identify with, no compromised heroes, no layers of emotion. Just a big ass pile of happy perfection wrapped up in a moldy tortilla of tired, greener-than-thou proselytizing.

This is all interspersed with your being salted and pummeled by your own mental shit show, confirming to the reader that you are far from having your shit together like you're constantly reminding your readers with the graceful subtlety of an ice pick to the head.

I wanted to give you a MEH, really I did, just to not filth up the universe and all. But you earned yourself a MEH based on exclamation point abuse alone and so once I added everything else I hated about your blog, I could only give you this:

The Ugly American Speaks

I am unabashedly American. Not in a jingoistic, patriotic sense, but in the stereotypical manner. I am overfed and under-exercised. I have too many TVs, computers and cars. I have too few…hmmmm….don’t think I have too few of anything because if there’s something I want, I go to the mall and buy it. My house is big and so is my ass.

But unlike most Americans, I have traveled quite a bit. Granted, the majority of my international travel has been to Europe, which is easy. However, a trip to Japan last year reminded me of what it really meant to be in a foreign land. In Europe I can fake it—thanks to a few years of Latin topped off by several semesters of French, I can decipher most anything in a romance language. But in Japan, I couldn’t even tell you the name of my hotel. It was daunting.

Aside from a few places in Africa, I can’t imagine a place more foreign than India. What I know of India comes from Kipling, Ghandi and Eat, Pray, Love. It’s not a place that’s high on my wish list of vacation spots. But then neither is North Dakota.

All that brings me to Kavitha Murali and her blog, Namesake. Please, for the love of Ganesha, why do I have the blog of a young Indian woman to review? Kavitha, you seem like a perfectly lovely young woman. You seem to have an energetic mind. So here’s a thought—why not open up the eastern branch of AAYSR? You could be queen of the realm and then all the Indian bloggers could be reviewed by their peers. I think the franchise price is low.

Because, dear Kavitha, as nice as you seem, I just don’t give a flying fuck in a rolling doughnut hole about your blog. Equally, why do you give a flying fuck in a rolling doughnut hole about my opinion about your blog? When you submit here, you roll the dice on which reviewer you get.

I’m sorry, but you got me. A small-town Southerner. About as far away from you as I am from the moon.

Your writing is fine. Like 90% of our submitters, you need to edit. When you write a post, check your word count. Then decrease it by 100. I promise you’ll have a better blog.

White type on a black background should be illegal as far as I’m concerned.

It’s the content that’s the problem. I read blogs from around the world. Good bloggers are storytellers. They grab my attention from the first sentence and keep it until the last. Dear Kavitha, you did neither.

Mundane. Mediocre. Middle of the road.

But, like I said: why do you care? Why do so many of your countrymen submit here? This is not a rhetorical question—I really want to know.

If your blog makes you happy, keep on writing.

In the meantime, I bestow a








I don’t hate you. I don’t love you. I just don’t care.

I can clearly not choose the wine in front of you.

Another week of horror and shame, and boot-quaking anticipation. Sometimes reviews feel so sneaky, like I'm pouring iocane powder in all these bloggers' drinks and wondering who's got the proper immunity.




Namesake

Blooming Where I'm Planted

Godyears