Ask And Ye Shall Receive

Fwd: fwd: fwd: fwd: cut that out, already

2009-12-02T00:07:00.009-05:00

Hey kids! Ginny of Praying to Darwin here. Madame Bellicose asked me to fill in, do a review, post SOMETHING for the love of god. She sends her regrets, and will be back as soon as she can. I'm not at liberty to give any details; suffice it to say that when you are picking a "safe" word for the evening, maybe avoid citrus fruits, because in the heat of the moment, it's hard to remember whether it was "tangerine" or "clementine" that meant stop. And by the time you remember which was which, or even which one has seeds, enough time has elapsed for some really freaky shit to go down.

But I digress.

If you were to hack into my email, right now (don't though, please, because I am far too busy/lazy to change my passwords), you'd find a metric butt load of forwards. Forwards from well-meaning folks. Folks who think that by forwarding mildly racist jokes and kookily captioned pictures, they are making my day. And maybe making me think that they, by association, are funny. But they don't make me laugh. They make me sad. Sad that I wasted my time. Sad that although these (mostly semi-elderly) people have figured out the gull-durned interwebs, they're only using it to spam me with this crap.

I read blogs to get away from that.

And then I get to review Venom, Secrets, & Lies.

Uh oh.

Because Venom doesn't just let these high-LARIOUS forwards sit in her inbox. Nope. She turns 'em into posts. A lot. Of posts.

And when she's not posting tired email forwards, she's flogging the living shit out of something called HumorBloggers.com. To the point where I wonder what these people have on her. (In a post where she contemplates shutting the blog down, she second guesses herself based solely on the idea that changing her blog will get her punted by these people. That scares me.)

So it would be easy to dismiss her.

But I can't.

Because when she just lets loose and tells you what's going on in her life, tells you a bit about herself, or sets up her very own, original joke, she's easy to like. When she just talks to you, and stops trying so hard, she's all potential. Her writing style makes me feel like we're having a conversation at her kitchen table, over coffee laced with not-cream. And I like it.

So Venom, here's my two cents (and since we're both Canadian, there's no pesky exchange rate to get in the way): break free. This whole HumorBloggers thing you've gotten yourself into is hemming you in, restricting you, and not in a fun, S&M kind of way. I think there's someone in there, worth reading. When you get her out, on a regular basis, I'll want to read regularly.

The email forward/HumorBlogger stuff gets you a flaming finger.

But damned if I can't stop myself from giving you a star,

because I want to come to Manitoba and talk to you and not hear jokes my grandpa already forwarded me.

P.S.: Please don't think I'm hating on HumorBloggers.com. I understand the idea of community building as a reason to blog. I really do. I just don't like what it's doing to this particular blogger. So there.

Lord, I Was Born a Ramblin' Woman

2009-11-19T20:05:00.001-05:00

I'm new here, so I don't really have the right to complain about having to read yet another boring, Indian blog. But I'm going to gripe about it anyway. I wanted to like it, I really did. But Lost on the Street is gobsmackingly tedious. I guess the point of the blog is to entice her readers to visit the numerous beautiful locales of India. I wish she would just quit with the writing and take up photography because I think her photos are fabulous. Those pictures are what made me want to get off my ass and visit those places. But her words made me want to curl up on the couch for a nap.

She does take the time to write about non-travel related topics and upon reading some of those posts my ennui turned to anger. She actually contends in this one that housewives are using feminism as an excuse to be lazy. What a loathsome thing to contend. Her opinion that housewives, specificially educated housewives, have no right to claim to be feminists is downright disgusting. If she's going to make offensive statements on her blog she should at least back it up with a good argument. Another post that pissed me off is this one about tipping. What is the big fucking deal about leaving a 20% tip? She mentions in another one of her blogs that she has a maid. If she can afford to pay a maid she can afford a god damn tip.

Still, I'm not entirely unsympathetic to this blogger. She has a bitterness about her that I can relate to. And I can certainly identify with her complacency. She can form a coherent sentence and at least attempts to be grammatically correct. I'm assuming (perhaps wrongly) that English is a second language for her. If I'm right, then that's pretty impressive. I know a few native speakers of this fine language that can't do that. But being a good blogger entails a lot more than good grammar and sentence structure.

I suggest that she hone her story telling skills. As Love Bites recently told another reviewee, the topic of the story isn't as important as how you tell it. Lost desperately needs to edit. She seems to think that every last detail and thought is worth including each post. And the rambling has reached a critical level. She has trouble focusing and subsequently veers off in some confusing directions. What's annoying is that I'm not telling her something that she doesn't already know. It's apparent that she recognizes it as a problem because she mentions it in her posts. She wrote at the end of one post:

And thus ends one more pointless post. Promise this will be the last..pointless post that is.

But she broke that promise, over and over again.

Her template is dull but I don't really mind that. I'd much rather a dull template than a hideous one. She has tabs on the top but she doesn't really utilize them well. Lower down on the page is where all the trouble starts. In addition to her archives, she has way too much shit going on - tags, categories, favorites, just written, recent comments, and one of those creepy and annoying "Live Traffic Feeds". My suggestion is to eliminate all that crap and just use the tabs.

I do have one good thing to say about this blogger and her blog - Her niece is precious and those pictures of her pierced through the hardened layers of my bitter heart. That's not easy to do. Usually the only kids I find adorable are the ones I made myself.

In any case, this blogger gets a

She has potentional if she can learn to put a filter between her mind and the keyboard.

The Salty Professor

2009-11-17T14:20:00.006-05:00

A guest review by Rassles:

The Ask Overlords wanted this review days ago. It’s like fucking homework.

No, I lie. It’s more like when you’re itching to play baseball, because at one point in your life you made an outstanding third baseperson, and then ten years go by and your friends are all, “play on our team” and you’re excited and first, and then you’re all, “okay but I’m superbusy and distracted right now because there are pressing episodes of Legend of the Seeker to watch on Hulu” and they’re all “what’s that” and you’re all “nevermind I mean It’s Always Sunny” and then the roguish Rajah of Reference in the group starts singing ‘Dayman’ and everyone laughs heartily, secretly thankful for Netflix, and you remember when YOU were the roguish Rajah of Reference back when you drank for sundayfundays instead of watching WGN all afternoon in your Double Dare sweatpants.

And that preceding paragraph is my formal apology for both (a) lately turning in my very long review and (b) neglecting to write a more suitable introduction. Then again, I could just take what I know about this blogger and my sweet intro and whip it into THE ULTIMATE MASH UP.

Speaking of which, when did “mash up” join the Common Tongue? I don’t know if I like it. Speaking of liking things, this blogger doesn’t like anything. Or anyone. At least, that’s what he wants us to believe, fucking hoser. Probably. It’s a theme he sticks to early in his blog (he’s only been writing this one since April) and lately he’s straying. It’s fine.

I Probably Don’t Like You is basically a collection of satirical essays on whatever pops into The Professor’s brain. That is not his official name but it’s the one I’m giving him. Yeah, he teaches at a college in Canada. Toronto? Probably. And even though he probably don’t like me, I really like him, despite the salty essay-ness of his posts.

I’m officially taking a stance against using an essay format in basically any form of writing, because it makes me feel like I’m reading a goddamn essay and essays are wicked dumb. But with his writing – okay, it’s like during each introduction he’s taking a slow, deliberate, annoying-ass cruuuuuuunch from a fresh apple right behind my fucking ear, and my neck trembles and locks in aggravation and I want to swing around and drive the whole royal gala up his nose with the heel of my palm, but then he offers me a bite and I accept, lingering through the crunch myself, and I can’t help nodding in savvy satisfaction, because it’s a pretty damn good apple.

For someone with the dry, acute skills of The Professor, the expository essay is acceptable. I don’t drift towards it naturally, because I like to be thrown right into the fuck of things from the get-go, but it’s a personal style issue and I’ll overlook it. He’s adept and deadpan in an affable, jaded kind of way.

I do not like the read more links. I DO NOT LIKE THE READ MORE LINKS. Professor, I understand you want them there because you’ve got some long ass posts, but I hate them. Drives me bonkers. It is a damn good thing you’re funny. You have solid pacing and generally well-placed asides.

Most posts are ironic anecdotes wrapped up with a buh-dum ching epigram that’s full of cheese. And cheese is delicious. This is not a day-in-the-life blog, but it is a unique opinion blog, which makes it personal, but I’ve said this before, and I am an Expert In Everything: put a little more self in there, because it’ll smooth personal credibility into the tartness of your words, helping readers distinguish your intelligent business from everyday snark blogs. Things will feel more genuine like they do in this post, which I am linking three times because I love it.

Like with many other bloggers, readers must endure the two most frustrating banes of blogging following blatant douchebaggery and the daily rehash: his shit is long (we can smell our own, sir) and he’s a humor blogger.

Cool points: The Professor efficiently name-drops the fuck out of things I support, like Robert Heinlein and Gilligan’s Island and Firefly and Proust. Okay, maybe not Proust. Okay, sometimes Proust. I’m a big fan of the name-drop, but more importantly I’m a big fan of not necessarily linking said drop, which he doesn’t. He assumes his readers are in-the-know, and I fucking like things that way. Good golly, he’s on his way to being a Rajah of Reference, but not quite…more like the Knave of Reference. With tart. Buh-dum CHING.

Get it? You know, because of the Knave of hearts, and he stole some tarts? Get it? GET IT?

Oh, even my weak jokes crack my shit up.

Also, he has an unhealthy obsession with posting pictures of Avril Lavigne,. It’s freaky. She fucking looks just like my sister and I keep on wondering who dared her to get Glamour Shots.

So this mash up is a failure. Whatever. In the end Professor, I’m giving you three stars. I dig this.

The Subtle Art of Blogging

2009-11-13T08:54:00.014-05:00

Dear sweet lady from the UK or Australia,

Why on earth did you submit your blog to us? You have to know that we are not fond of mommy-blogs, as a genre, and we're very, very bitchy and demanding. We are not your target audience, and you are definitely not going to be happy with anything I have to say to you today.

You write:

I started this blog in January 2008 with the following aims:

1. To improve my photography
2. To learn a new skill (the subtle art of blogging)
3. To have a pictorial record to look back on at the end of the year.
4. To prove to myself that once I’ve started something I can jolly well finish it!!

You've accomplished your goals, at least to your own satisfaction, so you really don't need us. And, I have a feeling that honest criticism is going to cut you like a knife. So, here's a backpat for keeping a chronicle of your kids' growing up years, and taking plenty of pictures, and it appears, being a very good mommy.

If you can't handle sharp feedback, STOP READING NOW. This warning is for your own good.

Okay, here comes the rending.

Goal 1 - Pictures: Your photos are poorly focused and have zero emphasis on composition. You need to do your homework. There is more to photography than point and shoot. Do some research, read up on how to properly frame a subject, and really WORK at it. These times will pass quite quickly and at this point, all you have to show for your efforts are some blurry, smeary, not very interesting shots.

Here's a good place to start.

Goal 2 - The Subtle Art of Blogging: You've put words on a page, on a regular basis, that much is true, but you haven't learned to blog. Blogging, at its essence, is telling stories. It isn't keeping a journal. It's writing, FOR AN AUDIENCE. Even if that audience is only family members (only), they do not deserve to want a bullet in their head after reading something like this.

Barbara, congrats. You've turned the miracle of birth into a scientific manual slash middle school girl's diary. Holy fuck. No one wants to read this. It's painfully dull.

A story is not "I went here." "I did this." "I saw this."

Go here. This is blogging. It takes more time than just regurgitating, "and then we bounced on trampolines" onto a page, but it's also clearly BETTER. It's something that people actually WANT to read, even though it involves sucking a bird's guts into a vacuum cleaner (and the word protein is misspelled). That's the SUBTLE ART part. And, that's what your blog is lacking at present. A good blogger can make getting blood drawn interesting. A bad blogger can make childbirth dull.

It's good to write, but it's better to be a writer, and actually THINK about the words you are writing.

Your blog at present:

This isn’t a great picture (I still haven’t got around to reading the manual on photography in low light) but the girl saw it and immediately said “I look great in a smile and a pink plait, don’t I”.

(note grammatical errors and boring introductory sentence)

What your blog COULD BE, if you worked at it:

I didn’t see it at first. I was talking to husband about his day and was walking from the living room to the kitchen.

There it was. A pile of feathers on the carpet–all that was left of the cat’s lunch.

Crap.

“Your cat did that,” he said. I just sighed and went to find the vacuum cleaner.

Do you see the difference, how the first few sentences suck you in, and make you WANT to read the story? How it's clear that this IS a story? Even this example could use more editing, but the beginning is GREAT. It takes work, that. But you COULD do it, if you tried.

Here's an example of how the pink plait could be reframed:

When she saw the photograph, the girl said “I look great in a smile and a pink plait, don’t I?”

I agree, she does.

Do you see the difference? You could then go on and talk about how the photo could be improved, how use of the manual might allow you to properly focus the lens, how you wish you were improving faster. But the focus is on the PHOTOGRAPH and the girl, not you.

Obviously, your voice is going to be different than Franklin's or mine. But, primarily, the subtle art of blogging consists of GETTING OUT OF THE WAY of your story and telling it in a way that is visual, stimulating, and engaging.

Also, you selfish cow. Why, oh why, would you tell us about making a Christmas cake (nut-free, no less), and not provide a recipe? That's just evil and wrong. You did the same damn thing with your mincemeat post, which means you are not only selfish, but you have selfish tendencies. You should share. That's all I'm saying.

So, move. Get out of the way. Tell the story. Focus on the subjects of the story. Make it come to life. Use interesting words. Think about whose eyes are seeing the story happen, and how THEY would tell the story. Use their perspective, not just yours.

That's blogging.

And you, my dear, are not yet a blogger.

But you could be.

I give you

London is drowning and I live by the river

2009-11-12T14:07:00.006-05:00

I'm here. Hi. How've you been? Oh, I've been fine. Good, good really. Just... not blogging. Busy, you know? Working and being and all that. But not blogging. Not here and not at my site. Not anywhere.

I don't know what to tell you, really. I'm not sure what changed, or how it changed, or for how long it will continue to be changed. I'm just not blogging. And as such, because I'm not really participating in the circle jerk that is blogging (how many fucking times can I say that word in one review?), I haven't felt like I'd have much to contribute here, really. Who cares what a nonblogging blogger thinks of other bloggers who are actually blogging?

But dammit, I'm here. And last week, by christ, I managed to wrench three whole blog posts from my wriggling and fetid entrails, so lucky y'all who know my real fake identity. Read 'em and weep. No, really: Have your hanky ready because the staggering downfall of my online writing career is a tear-jerker.

And again, I'm here. And I'm raging, raging against the dying of the light. And I'm going to give you a review today if it kills me.

It's kind of a shame, really, that I didn't get a shitbag of a blog to review. In my current bout of ennui, it'd be nice to dabble in some truly vicious asskickery. And then maybe I could have pulled off that superior bit, you know? Oh, I'm a limp dick of a writer right now, but I'm still better than this turdlet. But no. I've got The Daily Smoke.

It's a quiet, unprepossessing kind of blog. Black and white with a little red, the template is fine. Basic, uncluttered, fairly well organized. I'd go for some tabs, of course, but what do I know?

Her posts are almost always bundled and wrapped up in pretty packaging and well-paced. There's nothing slipshod about it. There's nuance and detail involved, and, yes, quite a bit of navel gazing. But her vision, I'm pleased to say, is just the tiniest bit skewed, which makes that gaze rather charming.

As an ex-pat blog, it's interesting to read about her experiences in London, and she's very self-aware and writes with confidence and grace. She does these quick little observations, a brief vignette of who and what she sees through the smoke, and it's delightful, really. A kernel of time and thought with nice grammar and a clever ending.

Lately, there's been some depth added to the blog. Some darkness and reality that makes her already interesting voice that much more captivating. But even that edge is tempered with her dry wit and a self-deprecating awareness.

Also, Clive fucking Owen.

So, I really liked this blog. I felt like I could come close and get to know Ellie. But not right away. There'd be some idle chit-chat at first. Then she'd casually reveal something not-so-casual that would make me think, "Huh. Interesting chick, here. Not quite what I expected." And then, still later, after fun times and insightful conversation and maybe a drunken bitchfest or two and a shared appreciation for hot men, all of a sudden I'd realize, you know what? I fucking love her.

Give me some soul, leave out the crocodiles

2009-11-09T14:37:00.006-05:00

When I was 21 and travelling across Ireland, I made my way to the town of Doolin on the West coast where I checked in to a hostel and there I met an Aussie girl. She had been travelling solo for two years, trading gourmet dinners for cans of sardines and Saltines; a wardrobe full of designer jeans for two changes of plain, comfortable travel garb; and prestige for bar jobs and summer teaching gigs. But she got to go down to the shore at sunset and stare at the green Cliffs of Moher and toss stones into the sea. She got to read Down and Out in London and Paris in, well, London and Paris, her hangovers came from too much whisky at Sol discotheque in Madrid and were well worth their trouble, and she wiped the sweat from her brow at the Acropolis in summer.

We sat on that old wooden picnic table and smoked and talked. The hours passed and a cup of tea turned to a bottle of wine and turned to two, and I ate up every story she told. She made me wish I had the balls to give up a conventional life filled with stupid stuff that gets old for a life filled with memories that never need to be mended, never accumulate dust.

I wish I had kept in touch with her just to know if she had a blog today so that I could read it, even if she had gone on to live an ordinary life. Because there are some people who just know how to tell a story, and there are others who just don't, despite having a life less ordinary.

Travel With A Couple is a decently written blog by an Indian couple who are travelling across their country, which sounds promising enough.

But my first problem with today's blogger is that s(he) uses the first person plural, "we" when s(he) writes, refering to both self and spouse. I feel like I'm reading the blog of incestuous Siamese twins. If you wipe your own ass (and I suspect you do or at least you do the water jug and left hand deal thingy that I've heard about) you should be posting in first person singular so your readers can get a feel for your individual personalities. Otherwise you're just this blob of a conglomerated human.

Secondly, I hate the fact that the full posts do not appear in my reader, which means I have to take my mouse and click on the fucking blog on the off chance that I might want to continue reading. Waiting for a page load equals work. So basically I don't even know you and you're already asking me to help you move and pick you up from the airport. For bloggers to get away with this demanding behavior, they better be prepared to blow their readers' minds with some attention-grabbing introduction, like maybe a paragraph about having a threesome on the back of the bus on the way to Bangalore or something, not this PBS-on-codeine shit:

"The Great Indian Bustard didn’t reveal itself to us. But our birding experience at Nannaj Bird Sanctuary wasn’t disappointing. We spotted many other birds (don’t ask for names, though we went there armed with A Field Guide to the Birds of India) and as a bonus, saw two wolves chasing blackbucks. Nannaj Bird Sanctuary, officially called [...]"

Fasten your fucking seatbelts because we're going to a bird sanctuary with a bird book. Jesus Christ, could your intros possibly turn me off anymore? Even if I were into birds, I would already want to brass knuckle your collective nuptial bindi to beat the ho-hum out of you.

Now, don't get me wrong, this blog is probably a wet dream for anyone who happens to be travelling around India, especially if they get turned on by tiresome geographical data and abstracts on the local fauna. If, however, you are not, get ready to not give a shit.

The Couple, my advice to you is to move beyond the travel book writing forte and start thinking about readers like me that are just living our sell-out lives at 9 to 5 jobs with errands to run and dinner to make, that need more than you're giving. Don't you see that the experiences you get to draw from provide limitless possibilities and your pigeonholing yourself into factual reports?

I want to know what you saw from the train that reminded you of your childhood playmate. I want to know about the fragrance in the restaurant that made you think of your mother today. I want to know about the guy with the flaring nostrils that stared at you on the train whose poverty made you uncomfortable. I want to be in the room with you while you two have a fight under a leaky air conditioner.

I want to know this: what does your soul say when you travel?

Until you start answering that, you get a

Drugmonkey on My Back

2009-10-28T00:16:00.012-04:00

You know when you finally get around to visiting your grandmother and you have to sit for what feels like a millenia on a plastic covered couch sucking on the 10 year old piece of candy she squeezed into your hand when you came in the door, in a room that's about as hot as the inside of a volcano and all she does is drone on and on and on and on about her arthritic knee and her high blood pressure and her faulty pacemaker? Very valid complaints, those. And you know that you're supposed to deeply care about all of it, that it matters, and that she has every right to bitch and moan because getting old and decrepit is just total suck. But fuck it all, you can't wait for it to be over because it's just so incessant and upsetting and why the fuck is it so god damn hot in here? Well today's blogger is your grandma, except instead of complaining about goiters and osteoporosis he rails against those that are supposed to help treat those things, namely "Big Pharma" and those who are fundamentally (and, in his opinion, stupidly) opposed to a government run health care system. There's a lot of negativity to take in, but just like that visit to your grandma, in the end it's kind of worth it.

Drugmonkey is a pharmacist and he has acquired a lot of knowledge about the important topics he bitches about in his 20 year career. He comes off as somewhat condescending and is highly dismissive of those who hold opposing opinions. I'm not saying that he's wrong. In fact, I agree with his stance on a lot of these issues. I'm one of the few relatively young people I know that has needed to use my health insurance quite a bit. And it saddens me to think that there are millions of people who don't have the same option to get their healthcare needs met easily and affordably. But that doesn't mean I want to spend my time reading post after post espousing government run healthcare and exposing the deceptive tactics of pharmaceutical companies.

Luckily, Drugmonkey can write well and his angry tirades are infused with a healthy dose of humor (Oh sweet Jesus, that was an unintentional pun. I fucking hate puns but I hate rewriting sentences even more sometimes. I'm so lazy). His "Pill Counting" posts are particularly funny. For some reason those "day in the life" of your sometimes friendly, neighborhood pharmacist stories were more compelling and interesting to me than the more heavy "sick teenage girl denied a liver transplant" fare. Honestly, I thought this was hilarious. There really are so many morons roving about. Drugmonkey and I have this in common: we are both simultaneously disgusted and fascinated by stupid people.

I'm not usually one to care so much about the way a blog looks as long as the content is interesting and the writing is kick ass. But this blog template is so unbelievably boring that it bears mentioning. The white text on black background makes me feel like I'm being schooled. The only thing that's missing is a green alphabet header image. In fact, it currently has no header image, so anything would be an improvement.

This blog's subject matter is very important. It makes me ashamed of my own blog's content, which is so petty in comparison. Drugmonkey's anger about the health care crisis is fueled by his compassion and his desire to help people. He cares enough about health care reform to devote a lot of effort to educating people about it and also to incite others to action. So for his quality writing and admirable cause I dispense

Newsflash: If you tell me you're funny, you already suck

2009-10-21T15:36:00.006-04:00

Imagine a friend sets you up with some dude. When you ask what he looks like, your friend can't even remember, probably because there is absolutely nothing about his colorless appearance that distinguishes him in any way from the 6 billion other people walking around. He's blander than cardboard dipped in liquefied brown rice.

But you can get beyond looks and so you agree to a phone conversation that could potentially turn into a date if he dazzles you with his personality.

The dude calls you up and for a few seconds seems normal, even coherent, besides the fact that he speaks about himself in third person and goes on and on about his childhood for the first 20 seconds of your conversation, and has a terrible habit of repeating stupid shit he's already said. You decide to let it slide assuming maybe he's a poor planner and didn't know what the fuck to say.

Before you have even had a full minute to decide how this person comes across, he informs you that he is funny, and lets on that he has Humor Bloggers Disease, the bloggers' STD of self-flattery usually based on the number of morons they can get to click on a banner in their ugly-ass sidebar. In mere seconds, his lexical frying pan just killjoyed your disappointed face.

Now that he has prematurely publicized his funniness, thereby insulting you by assuming you lack the wherewithal to decide what funny consists of, every single thing that now comes out of his unmemorable pie hole is examined with unmitigated scrutiny. This then renders whatever would have been even remotely funny no longer fucking funny at all.

Three fat jokes, one Muslim joke, one Mexican joke, and one retard joke later and you tell him:

You know what?

And you hang up the phone.

I Kissed a Girl and I Liked It

2009-10-16T13:16:00.011-04:00

When I saw the title of today's blog, Lessons from the Kissing Booth, I was filled with anticipation. I mean kissing usually leads to sex, and who doesn't want to read about sex? Alas, the title was a big tease as there was little kissing to be found and I was left scratching my head wondering how the blog title was at all relevant to the content of the blog. Considering Samantha was an English major maybe it's a reference to some great work of literature or something completely symbolic that's gone right over my simple little head.

There were 6 years worth of posts to peruse so I could only read a sampling of them. At first I found the blog to be a bit tedious, but after a while I began to appreciate that Samantha is a skilled writer. I found myself melting into her blog, hypnotized by her pretty, pretty words and lulled by the musical quality of her work. Though quite beautiful, her writing has an aloof quality that has the tendency to distance the reader. I get the sense that, at times, she is more interested in flexing her verbal muscles than in sharing a part of herself with us. There are moments when I feel she is being purposely vague about something important, while still managing to artfully capture minor details of an experience. I find it frustrating. Sometimes people are too poetic for their own good. I did find a few posts that elaborated on some rather personal and painful history, so there may be a reason why she tends to skirt around some significant details of her experiences. Not everything can be faced head on.

Samantha is a well-rounded, well-read, well-educated and well-traveled single woman. From what I can tell she has dealt with a lot of tragedy in her 26 years. Despite all that she has endured, she still seems to be enamored with life and all it’s small miracles, beauties and possibilities. It’s an outlook I admire. I wish I could see the world through her lens, in such sharp and illuminated detail. I kind of love her, actually. How could you not?

So. Hello there. I'm samantha. I like dirty jokes and cursing like a sailor, red shoes and argyle, potato chips, puppies, beer, and the word "pulchritudinous." I like to spend weekday evenings in bars or at home with my tambourie and the Northwest's finest indie pop. I do not like people who cheat, telephones, doing the dishes, lettuce, or the look I get when the bartender doesn't think I'm old enough to be in there. My doctor has confirmed that I am finally 5'1" tall. I weigh less than three numbers but no you cannot lift me up to see.

I like daisies, most of all. Daisies and hugs that last just a little too long.

I suggest that Samantha use the preceding paragraph as her "About Me" because it is far superior to what is currently there. In fact, when I read the About Me, saw the butterfly header image and the dismal grey background, I wasn't too excited about reading the blog. Which is a shame because it really should be read. The one complaint I do have is that her archived posts are not titled. She does, however, apply titles to her posts in the “Sometimes Worth Remembering” and “Traveling” sections. The lack of titles in her archives made it impossible for me to link to some of them here.

I don’t think “Lessons from the Kissing Booth” is a blog for everyone. If you want funny, down to earth posts then this blog is not for you. But if you want artfully crafted introspection, give Samantha a read. I have bestowed upon her:

Land of wonder, spices, mystery, and incredibly dull bloggers

2009-10-12T13:46:00.014-04:00

India has attacked us again. I blame Crowley, who I'm certain is somehow responsible for the fact that all of the blogs up for review in the queue right now are from India.

Fuck me sideways with a pickle. One of these pieces of refuse is clearly dead, so I'm discarding it. One has opted out on being reviewed. The other two aren't enough, singularly, to deserve an entire post.

First, Summer Diary. Ugly black & white template, and I have no idea what this person is doing. I like teenagers, I had a house full of them on Saturday, but this blog is like attempting to decipher meaningless gibberish posted on random coconuts and tossed into the ocean to arrive willy nilly on the shores of our brains.

I feel dumber for having spent 20 minutes on the site.

Fuck you for submitting to us, you stupid twat.

Secondly, this one. God save us from the unrelenting angst of teenagers. Were we all this inwardtwisted awkwardness? But some of it holds drops of promise. To that promise, I say...use good grammar. Choose your words more carefully. If you write dialogue, make it cleaner and more clearly identify who is speaking. Keep writing. Clean up your sidebar, and find a better place for the quote under your header bar. Don't try so hard to be unique, but instead focus on distilling your words until they are really and truly yours.

I give you a single star, work upwards to the rest.

These are my missives to India, sent in a digital bottle.

p.s. More importantly, if you were going to be an ironic, made-up superhero, who would you be?

Catcher in the Why, God, Why?

2009-10-07T18:10:00.013-04:00

Indian bloggers tend to fare poorly on review around these parts. So when I received my assignment and saw that it was, in fact, a young Indian blogger I'd be reviewing, I was understandably apprehensive. But I'm an open-minded gal so I delved right in, determined to form an unbiased opinion. One thing became perfectly clear to me right from the start: The author of Slow Tumbling Life is afflicted with that naval-gazing disease which renders him overly fascinated with every little thought in his head. I empathize; I too have suffered from this same affliction. But he has an exaggerated case of this particular illness. This guy is so fascinated by his own mind that he expressed a desire to buy some techno device that would enable him to have a conversation with himself.

It's difficult for me to describe what exactly this blog is about. There are posts about time travel, boring, overly detailed descriptions of mundane events, and fictional conversations with his dog, Cookie (which are, in essence, conversations with himself). This blogger can write very well, actually, but the problem is that you have to dig through a lot of boring shit to find the good stuff. His blog about being sent to boarding school at the age of 6 was one such treasure. But then he gives us this, which is quite frankly the most boring combination of words I have ever had the misfortune to lay my eyes upon.

He likens himself to Holden Caulfield, which is really annoying to me. Instead of an actual profile we get a quote from Catcher in the Rye. Great. I liked the book as much as anyone, but I feel as if Holden is such a typical hero for angsty teenagers and young adults. They need to get a new fucking hero already. The blogger is of the opinion that "you are branded super intelligent almost as soon as you feel, or rather you convince others that you feel, alienated and that angst runs through your arteries." And this couldn't be further from the truth as far as I'm concerned.

He has an aggravating way of jumping around to different topics on the same post. Sometimes the beginning part of a post will be excellent and funny and then the end will suck. Such as on this post which starts off about his confusion at bathrooms that are gender identified by elephants' asses and ends up about some boring movie or something. I don't know.

Some of the descriptions of events in this blog are downright baffling to me. Take this for instance (as he describes how he is crazy like Holden Caulfield):
I really do some of the same crazy things, though. Honest to God. Like I remember a few months ago our family (my parents, my brother and sister in law, and me) got into this terrific war. It must have lasted for about 6 hours. Me against all of them. All of us fell sick after the fight I remember, it was so ferocious! But I remember at one point I left everybody to go to the loo; and inside I stood in front of the giant mirror and smiled and made crazy faces for quite a while. I wasn't upset at all. Then I went back and rejoined the ruckus. I was laughing silently and all in the loo. This and other such insanities are an integral part of my daily existence...

What the fuck is that about? Am I the only person who finds this family interaction slightly creepy?

The template is pretty standard and non-offensive. The site is easily navigated. I actually like the header image and it seems appropriate considering that this blog is basically a virtual explosion of its author's brain. The blogger readily acknowledges that fact. Personally, I prefer more heart in my blogs. The bloodier, the better. And this blog is desperately lacking in heart. I wish this blogger would take his own advice:

I think one should write if they have something interesting to say; not try and say anything in an interesting manner.

And stop thinking things like this: "things might change around me but slowtumblinglife’s life will forever be inherently tragic." You went to a fancy boarding school, have a good job, come from a nice family, employ a cook, a maid and someone to iron your damn clothes for you. I'm having a hard time seeing the tragedy.

Maybe this blog is great and I'm just not intellectual enough to grasp its utter brilliance. Maybe I can't enjoy it completely because of the cultural differences that exist between this blogger and me. As I said above, this blogger can write well and I found some parts that I really enjoyed reading. They were just too few and far between.

So, it's a .

Paint me some water colors

2009-10-07T13:13:00.006-04:00

I haven't always been a rod wielding, pain inflicting pedagogue, you know.

Not so many years ago (okay, it was 1995, shut up), I had the rod pointed in my own face, was accused of having no direction, no attention span, no motivation, and no ability to sit still and shut the fuck up long enough to allow some knowledge to seep into the bored-looking thing that sat between my shoulders with all the stupid piercings hanging off of it. I was a budding 18 year old whose sole outlet for creativity and brain power was to find a way to convince a certain bass player to take my virginity or to bribe anyone of age into buying me some Boones at 7-11. I spent my time in smoke shops wishing I could afford another cool glass blown pipe and more meaningless bumper stickers for my beat up Chrysler. I loitered around coffee shops pretending I was studying and not scoping out anything that looked like it might have had a penis attached to it. Happiness, for me, was a Jimmy Eat World show, a new Jerky Boys tape, ditching Chemistry class, and scheming a way to sneak to California for the weekend to take acid.

I didn't write, I didn't sing, I didn't play music, I didn't dance, I didn't paint. I sure as shit didn't study.

My only motivation for going to college was to locomote after my beloved bass player like a pathetic caboose and it was no surprise that he soon realized I had nothing whatsoever to contribute to any conversation or creative process and duly told me to go play in traffic.

If I were to look back on journals written during that time, I would likely find the flying brain chunks that were the residuals of a self-conscious, immature pre-adult obsessed with any boy that would make eye contact with her for longer than five seconds. The entries would have no point to them, no overarching theme and they would likely have the literary value of the wall in the toilet stall of the girls' restroom near the freshman lockers.

When I started reading Tiffany's blog, this is precisely what I expected to find. How on earth was I going to relate to this teen that whines about her braces and how her senior year is coming to an end and how she will have to say goodbye to the drama club?

But Tiffany, unlike my 18 year old counterpart, is a writer, and she knows it.

To be fair, and to bludgeon all of my pupils with the same instructional force independent of age, Tiffany does have some work to do when it comes to her blog, that is not entirely centered around aging ten years. I won't lie-- as far as my interest goes, that does have something to do with my willingness to become an avid reader, and I think it's only fair to tell the readers of ASK what they can expect. Let's face it – the repertoire from which Tiffany draws experiences to post about is limited. She herself admits that the lowest point in her life has been having chicken pox. But I don't believe she can't be a wonderful writer just because she hasn't experienced enough.

The problem with Tiffany is that she sometimes loses sight that her blog should NOT be an online journal. If she's truly in this for the writing, her blog should be a place where a greater proportion of the posts are as well thought out as all of her scholarship application essays and her short stories. On an online journal, it is acceptable to have posts dedicated to updating your readership a la letters to Grandma, and it is also acceptable to write 'LOL' excessively (I guess). On the blog of a writer, it is not acceptable. The blog is the writing outlet, my dear, not the outlet for the writer to post updates about the ho-hum details of her life, whose true writing is located elsewhere. Tiff usually gets this, but I want her to remind herself of this each time she posts.

In general, her entries stick to the point and are decently written (with the exception of a few I/me problems). She's funny, and thoughtful, and willing to accept and talk about her weaknesses which I find thoroughly inspiring. She's naive, but not despicably so. Tiff has some kind of fiery electricity exuding from her personality that I totally dig on which she has managed to transmit through her writing and that has desperately made me wish I could go back to being 18 so that I could be best friends with her and learn from her ability to focus on what will be a source of happiness in her life-- her centered creativity and the development of her voice.

Tiff, it's time to fine tune things. You know how to paint a picture with broad strokes with a synthetic paintbrush in earth tones, and you do it well, essentially telling the reader what happened to you. Now it's time to start going back over your posts before you publish them with tiny, colorful brush strokes and paint in the split ends, the moles on the back of your characters' necks, the rust stains, the subtleties that will make your readers live the moment with you, as opposed to hearing you relay it. It is rarely the actual events described in a piece that strike a reader; it is the writer's capacity to take the reader on a ride somewhere they have never been and see the world through someone else's eyes that really counts.

As to the design, it's alright, although I hate headers on principle that have the word 'blog' in them and I don't get the water bottle thing. Maybe she explained it back when she was doing the font colors and center aligned text thing but since that was making me want to head butt my computer screen in an epileptic fit, I couldn't dig much further in to look for explanations. I'm glad she grew out of that phase, by the way. She desperately needs to create tabs across the top underneath the header to contain all the madness that is currently polluting her sidebar, and to include a complete about me page (the paragraph she has proclaiming herself as a novelist is not enough – which, by the way, I hope she's aware of the kind of literary expectations this creates). I also recommend that she collect some of her best stuff, the material she is the most proud of and create a tab for it, to reel in some potential readers.

For now you get two stars. I was tempted to give you an additional star based on pure cuteness and potential alone, but I want you to earn a better score. I'm adding you to my reader. Because I really think I can fucking love you someday.

P.S. Tiff - I love that you put 'willing to learn' with a smiley face on a job application where it asked for relevant experience. That kicks ass and if I were the one hiring you would get the job.

But we unleashed a lion

2009-10-05T12:22:00.009-04:00

Imagine if Erik Harris and Dylan Klebold had each kept online diaries chronicling the pain and humiliation ticking like a time bomb inside their lives. What if they'd kept an online record of the million persistent snubs, put-downs, and insults that built up and unleashed an atrocity? What would it be like to walk the echoing and messy chambers of their minds, to revisit those scenes of teenage angst that led up to the fateful explosion of rage?

George Sodini did, a chilling and daily cataloguing of the reasons and plans he had for annihilation.

Self Help Center gives you an advanced tasting, possibly fiction, totally true, of terror.

If you've ever pondered questions like:

What is a rapist thinking when he selects a victim?

How did the Craigslist Killer create the ad that snared his victim?

What is the last thing a man writes before spraying his co-workers with hot lead out of the mouth of an AR-15?

Or, in short, what was happening inside the brains of Dylan/Erik/George before they killed?

Then, you should go and read.

But, if you can't stomach envisioning how a sort of sickness creeps into a man's soul and taunts him to do the unthinkable, you should stay away and read a pleasant mommy blog.

As far as those of you--the core Ask readers--who remember, with some degree of enthusiasm, when we directed a really crappy Indian blogger to kill his roommate to spice things up, this blog will totally be your cuppa.

What's really disturbing, and what makes for compelling reading, is that you're never really sure if Romius T is writing fiction or prose. This is truth spilled in black and white on a computer monitor, truth that plays itself out in America day in and day out.

Whether you can handle this much truth is another story, entirely.

Now, this is where I'd generally tell Romius to spruce up his rather ugly online habitat, clean up his sidebar, and choose a less generic template. But, by doing so, he might undermine the "realness" of the blog.

So, don't change. Keep writing, stay creepy, and let us know when you've finished the next American Psycho.

I am at home with the me, I am rooted in the me who is on this adventure.

2009-10-01T09:53:00.004-04:00

I knew a girl in college who wore long, flowing skirts and no makeup. Her hair looked how it looked with no product or styling or coercing. If she felt like dancing she danced, if she thought something was funny she laughed loud and long (I remember that laugh still: "ha, ha, HAH!" with her head thrust back), and if she wanted to touch you she would. She'd lean in close when she talked, in your space, looking you directly in the eye. Rebecca liked people, liked getting to know them, finding out what made them tick, figuring out how their minds worked, why they did what they did. She hated shoes and clothes and artifice. She liked boys and girls in equal measure, and typically they liked her, too. They couldn't help it. She was light and direct and earthy. And she was the most present and carefree person I think I've ever know.

Rebecca made me uncomfortable while she was making me interested. She just didn't hide. She'd loop her arm through mine and snug her chin on my shoulder, smelling like patchouli and sunshine. She confronted and questioned and she just was so very much her own person. You could take her or leave her and she wouldn't mind either way.

In some ways, Hope's blog Hopenminded reminds me of Rebecca. She has that same carefree directness, that same hippy-dippy, woo-woo peace and love mentality, where they just delve and ask and explore and analyze.

Hope has, by her own admission, a darker experience. There's an edge to her lightness. Her hopefulness is hard-gained and bruised. She is honest (if maybe a little defensive?) about who she is and where she's been. She really is open and hopeful, and based on the glimpses she's given of the life she's lived, it's really a wonderful thing to see. She's chosen -- and probably has to make that choice over and over -- to live simply, peacefully, and joyfully. And for someone like me, who tends to piss and moan about every little inconvenience in her my-god-I've-had-it-damned-easy life, this mentality is really rather instructive.

Now that I've admired the hell out of Hope and appreciated her for drawing out the memory of someone admirable and slightly complicated from my past, let's move on to the nuts and bolts of blogging, shall we? Good. Because Hope needs some help.

Getting the design stuff out of the way, there are three empty tabs. Hey how about taking them down until they're actually useful? You have way too much shit in the sidebars, and you don't need two of them. Get rid of the random posts and recent comments and either stick with the tag cloud OR the categories (categories, please), not both. And your blogroll? It's not really a blogroll. Take it down until it has something in it, or better yet move it to a tab. The design is fine, but consider bumping up the size of your font -- it's way too small.

Now, the writing, which is what Hope and I (and you) care most about. She faces some marked challenges in her writing, with (apparently) little training or education. It shows. But that's ok. You hear me, Hope? That's ok. You keep at it, dammit. You love it, and there's no reason you can't do this if you work hard enough.

But yes, to be honest because that's what we do here and that's what you expect and you can take it, your writing needs some work. You don't need me to tell you there are considerable spelling and grammar and construction mistakes, but I'll do it anyway: there are. You show your rookie roots with rambling, unedited, uncrafted writing. You write because you love it, because it's cathartic for you, because you have to. That impetus is fantastic and can't be taught. What you need -- and what can be taught -- is polish. You need to keep reading good writing that speaks to you, you need to sign up for a local writing group where you can learn from more experienced writers, you need to challenge yourself with writing exercises, and you need to edit the hell out of yourself.

This post here, where you're watching people and recording? That was good (and so was this). Keep observing. Keep figuring out what makes people tick. Write often and always go back and clean up your writing, find the good bits, prune the unnecessary bits, and get to the heart, the poetry, the art of your writing. Your passion is there -- now practice.

P.S. You have a category called "I'm Fingering it all out." I kind of hope that's on purpose. You finger the hell out of life.

In lieu of a review...a game

2009-09-30T15:44:00.003-04:00

Current movies, re-imagined as zombie porn.

Fear and Loathing in Upstate Washington

2009-09-28T14:12:00.014-04:00

Mommybloggers love us. Is it wrong that I can't reciprocate their affection?

Let me just say it up front: I don't get it.

Today was my daughter's 16th birthday. I surrepticiously snuck off last night and planted a half dozen signs touting her birthday all along the road leading to her high school. She was embarrassed/thrilled.

Today, my son took a nosedive in the school cafeteria, beating the crap out of his face and permalocked his bike to a bike rack at school. I have to run to my boyfriend's house after work to borrow a bolt-cutter so I can rescue the bike tonight when I get home from my job, in between cooking dinner for four teens and celebrating a birthday.

This is basically a standard-issue day for Love Bites, Single Mom Extraordinaire.

But I don't blog about my kids very much. My blog is MY space. Most of my life is filled with kid activities (I do not exaggerate here, not even a little bit), but my blog is for me. That's not true of The Gonzo Mama, whose blog is primarily about her identity as a mother, interspersed with a few politically conservative posts.

Like I said, I don't get it. I love my kids, but I don't particularly want to read/write about them. So, when other moms spend all a significant percentage of their lives focusing on their mommyness, I find it...not annoying, not frustrating, but just fucking boring.

Also, there is something indefinable (for me, at least) about this blogger that just bugs me. I'm trying not to hold that against her, but still, the skin on the back of my neck spent the entire time I was reading Gonzo's blog trying to crawl its way up and over my head.

And, that's coming from the blog's resident conservamommy former Southern Baptist Sunday School teacher*. I snickered whilst imagining how some of you pinko commie heathens are going to recoil in horror, like vampires confronted by a garlic farm, from her defense of Glen Beck, complete with smarmy fat facial photo.

Gonzo Mama fancies herself a writer, and she's not bad. She's just not my thing. I don't believe there is anything she could do differently to make me care about her blog. We just move in different circles, and have different interests. VERY DIFFERENT.

The blog design is, frankly, hideous. The header color is pepto bismal pink and reminds me of my last horrid hangover. The background image looks like what I puked into the toilet during said alcoholic debacle. I can't help but think that perhaps that wasn't what Gonzo Mommy was shooting for, design wise, but since she named herself after Hunter Thompson, who the hell knows. At the least, she's confused.

I also find it difficult to muster the required enthusiasm for her politics, but I don't hate her. I just don't care. It's great that she's adopted all these children, but the fact that she then spends time online bitching about their mother's failure to pay for their back to school shopping, and that SHE TELLS THEM WHEN MOM FUCKS UP takes the shine off of her halo, for me at least.

My prescription to Gonzo Mommy is this: Girl, you need to watch a little Chris Rock. I want you to watch this entire episode. Taking care of children DOES NOT MAKE YOU SPECIAL. It makes you average.

You have this idea that you're St. Gonzo of the Rural Northwest, surrounded by evildoers, but you're AVERAGE. I am weary of self-righteous bible-thumping mommies parading themselves around rural and middle America these days, tea-bagging it up and patting themselves on the back as if they are the last residue of salt & light in this heathen world.

Goddamn. What WOULD Jesus do?

Would Jesus tell a kid that his/her mom didn't deliver on the back-to-school shopping money? Or would he just handle it?

Would Jesus listen to Glen Beck? Or would he change the channel post-haste on that slimey asshole?

Sometimes, I wish Jesus would hurry his sweet ass up and get back here so he could slap the shit out of some people. To be blunt, I'm not sure you know him like you think you do.

There are ten million snarky Jesus-and Glen-Beck worshipping mamas just like you polluting up the 'sphere right now, and most of us just don't care. In fact, I'd prefer it if y'all started up your own hen parties with warning signs so the rest of us could dodge them, and just clucked at each other incessantly.

Preferably, not online.

Lastly, when a woman who can't even bring herself to use the word "fuck" submits her blog here of all places, I have to assume that she was either dropped on her head at birth and is suffering from a TBI or is terminally stupid. Here's your rating:

*Nobody can deliver a jesus-smackdown like a recovering Southern Baptist.

Introduction to Arithmetic

2009-09-24T16:43:00.025-04:00

Okay kids. Instead of sitting at your desks with me at the front of the class and you looking at me with blank, depressing stares waiting for me to enlighten you, let's do something different. Let's move our desks out of the way and all sit around in a circle, mkay?

As you can see, I am an open minded educator and I like to think outside the box and apply unorthodox learning models in an effort to steer my pupils away from douchebagification. I'm an envelope pushing maverick. And, based on some inspiration from our latest reviewee, Maggie, I've decided to do things a bit differently today.

My source of inspiration was the following sentence she wrote here:

"Whatever--everyone knows bloggers are so busy furiously expressing themselves that they can't be bothered with editing or proofing."

When I saw this sentence, I hadn't even had the chance to finish lacing up my asshole-annihilating boots and was caught off guard. Remembering my non-traditional approach to instruction, I decided to take a deep breath, count to ten and come up with an alternative to telling Maggie to go get fingerbanged without further ado. So I decided to give her an a priori grade on fucking principle, dammit, for explicitly condoning everything that is wrong about the blogging world.

So here you go, Maggie; you're initial score:

At that point, I made a deal in my mind with our Maggie for the prolongation of my reading -- which may be very short-lived if she sucks as bad as she promises to. The deal is that for every post she gives me that doesn't in some way make me want to shove my TI-84 calculator forcibly into the first puckered brown eye I see, a flaming finger will be subtracted from the score; and we will go from there. It was up to Maggie to solve this word problem and work her shitty rating off before I cried for mercy.

So let's see her progress at contesting her initial suckedness.

First of all, this lifeless, pea green, failure of a template is more overused than the school custodian's right hand when he thinks about me handcuffing him to the monkey bars. Her sidebar is unnecessarily crammed full of crap. As to the content, my findings indicate that there are some main themes visited throughout the blog and they include the following:

1). Posts about not blogging; a metric shit ton of them, infecting her entire blog with the disease of superfluity.

2). Repeated statements on her lack of inspiration, general boredom, and inability to think of anything to say. Her blog is corroded with this shit. She actually titles her posts things like "Tired", "Not feeling it" and "Not feeling it" (Yes, she has two posts titled that way).

3). Mention of her other blog, which according to her, is more interesting than this blog. I cannot see how that's possible since a) it is written by the same person and b) on her other blog she ONLY writes about Twitter and Facebook. (I didn't check out the other blog because I only have time for one trainwreck at a time, and frankly, I can only handle so much WTFuckery in one day).

4). More Twitter and Facebook talk as if dedicating an entire other blog to it weren't enough.

5). Posts about other bloggers, mainly in the form of criticism, leaving a nasty taste in my mouth (I may be one to talk, but she did solicit this criticism, and I consider it community service).

6). Posts recapping books she's reading, rendering completely redundant the bookshelf widgetry bullshit in her sidebar irritating my corneas.

7). Other media she consumes in a dead stare from her colorless couch in the pictureless, windowless living room of her uneventful life.

Before completely giving up, and nearly becoming infected by Maggies' outlook on life (namely that there is nothing to say and that life is boring), I read her most recent post. While hardly poetic, it at least turns one of the flaming fingers into a MEH. If I can even give this blogger a clue as to a starting point to reformulate her conceptual notion of what a blog should be, it would begin with this haphazardly written and moth-eaten post.

Maggie has the toolbox to be able to write. There were no major problems with spelling, punctuation or grammar. She even occasionally throws in some funny one liners. But I reckon that she has never once looked back at her content before hitting publish and asked herself if anyone on god's green earth would give a flying thumb fuck about what she's writing. Indeed she has been "so busy furiously expressing" the square root of sweet blubbering nothing to be "bothered with editing or proofing."

Maggie, if you are not as bored with life as you portray yourself to be, you should ask yourself why you blog like you are. If you are actually that bored, wake the fuck up, cause you only get one shot at life, and contrary to what you may believe, life is hilarious and ironic and agonizing and tender and twisted and fascinating and seductive and everywhere you look there is a tale to be told. And if we don't agree at least on that, you will never, ever capture me as a reader.

Alright, class. Can we help Maggie with some arithmetic?

Class dismissed for recess. Just stay away from the monkey bars please; they're going to be, um, occupied all afternoon.

My skeertuig is vol palings*

2009-09-23T10:47:00.006-04:00

The other day a friend and I went to see "Julie & Julia," a sweet little film about a culinary giant and some girl who turned her whiny little blog into a book (and then into a movie). During the film, my friend turns to me and says, "Someday I'll say I knew you when you had a blog." I scoffed, "It doesn't happen like that anymore." And it surely won't happen to me and my sorely neglected little exercise in self-indulgence. But the thing is, as Madame pointed out recently, everyone and their mother and sometimes their cat has a blog now. The field is saturated and glutted and just overrun with folks wanting to be heard above the din.

But what's worse than all those mind-numbing and misspelled and mordant (although I kind of like that bit) forays into blogging, those wastes of space, those narcissistic little microcosms, are the ones who could be so much better but just aren't. Stu strikes me as one such.

He has the ugliest template ever. I wanted to click away immediately. The ads are sucking my will to live. It looks like a spam nest run over by a train wreck with gobbets of banality strewn across the pavement of the blogosphere. I mean, look: He made me use the word "blogosphere." Jesus lord, there are no dates on the posts! Where am I? Also, the whole shebang sometimes gets all wonky with the archives and crap moving under the post.

Just scrap it. It's total crap. It is a hinderance to your writing. It couches your blog in the most off-putting way. Find something simple, roll up your archives, get organized, and for shit's sake put a date on your posts. Stu, you don't need a tab for "blogging." The whole blog should kind of be for that, right? And that header image? That's the header image of a total douchebag.

Stu, your title is so annoying I want to rips its wriggling little guts out. I mean, fuck me sideways, there are ellipses in the title. In the title! I hate it on principle. And merit. And anything else I can hate it on.

But go check out his "About" page, which is really just his Blogger profile (dude -- don't do that). He sounds interesting, right? Ninjas, the word "hogwash," Aston Martins? Well, you never would have guessed from looking at his shit storm of a blog.

Guess what? A "belter" is apparently a hot chick. Just FYI. Learn something new every day. I thought it had to do with people who can really belt out a song, like maybe Babs. But no. Hot chicks. How original. Although I'm pleased to report that the brunettes seem to outstrip (that might have been a poor choice of words -- or a perfect one) the blondes.

Something else I learned? South Africans say "y'all." I can't quite wrap my head around that.

Look, the guy's entertaining enough and he's kind of funny, but do I really need to read another site where a guy drools over hot girls, hot cars, and moderately funny things posted elsewhere on the web? No. No, I don't. And neither does the rest of the world. It's not until about three months into the blog that we get an actual post with more than a paragraph or two from Stu without a picture of a hot car or a bikinied babe or something pilfered from somewhere else. And, you know, aside from some sloppiness and ellipses overkill, it's actually amusing.

Stu, Stu, Stu... cut the crap. You're an amusing guy and your voice is engaging, but you lose me with all the extra nonsense you pepper into your blog. It's useless, overdone, and it completely undermines your genuinely likable writing. You can do better. Strip it down, tune it up, and get real. I stopped reading after about four months because I had to wade through all the flotsam and jetsam of Internet wreckage to get to YOU. And you're lucky I got that far.

You get a flaming finger because you are failing to live up to your potential and your template sucks hind tit. Clean it up, start actually writing, and I might reconsider. You've got something -- you're just hiding it. Stop.

*My hovercraft is full of eels. (Afrikaans)

Who needs reasons when you've got heroin?

2009-09-21T16:06:00.003-04:00

A guest review from Gwynna Hurtja.

I remember the first time I experienced the artificial pleasure of opiates. I was 26, laid out in an uncomfortable hospital bed and catheterized after having kidney surgery. The nurse came in and said, "I'm going to give you something for the pain" and then he gave me a shot of Demerol in my (then) very skinny ass. Within seconds, pleasure I can only describe as uber-orgasmic coursed through my entire body. I sunk back in my pillow and said to the people that were at my bedside, "I've never felt so good in my whole life. It's like little pleasure explosions all over my body." And it was really a very accurate description of the experience. To this day, I will readily admit that I love opiates, for easing pain both physical and emotional. I'm lucky enough to have them prescribed to me and I know how to use the medication responsibly. But I realize that opiates have lead many people down some dangerous roads; Occasional enjoyment morphs into addiction and they're shooting heroin at 8 am just to get out of bed. I knew an addict who told me that she kept her stash in her night stand because she literally could not get out of bed without a fix. Yet, I've also known people that have used heroin occasionally on a recreational basis and never became dependent on the drug.

I wonder why it is that some people can use it here and there while others try the drug once and turn into junkies, willing to sacrifice their integrity and dignity over and over to get high? Is it about moral weakness? A lack of willpower? Is it a genetic predisposition? Parental failure? Mental illness? What is it?

The writer of Subdural Flow, who refers to herself as broken-hearted mom, has spent almost a decade trying to answer that. She is a mother watching her 26 year old son, Andrew, struggle with a debilitating and merciless heroin addiction. His addiction has been a decade long roller coaster of short recoveries followed by long relapses, rehabs, incarcerations, promises never kept, hopes ripped to shreds, OD's. Her situation is really quite depressing and it took me a while to read her blog all the way through. It's not that broken-hearted mom is humorless. (I thought this was pretty funny). It's that her pseudonym is apt - she is dealing with a heartbreaking situation. I can't help but feel after reading this blog, that our country's policy of criminalizing drug addiction has driven a deeply embedded knife even further into her heart. That's not to say that Andrew doesn't deserve to serve time for some of the acts he committed to feed his addiction. And it is obvious that being in the prison system is the only way Andrew seems to be able to stay clean for any length of time.

Broken-hearted mom is a competent writer. She tells her story with a beautiful candor, willing to admit she may have made some wrong turns as a mother, while also acknowledging her son's culpability in the mess he's made of his life. The writing itself isn't particularly imaginative or breath-taking. The strength is in its honesty and in the subject matter. It's written with the spirit of a person who has a lot of shit to get off her chest and probably not a lot of people in her personal life willing to listen to it anymore. Also, she's made it clear, especially in her earlier blogs, that having a junkie for a son is a source of shame for herself and her family. This is so sad to me and one of the many reasons I think our society's attitude towards drug addiction is in need of a serious overhaul. Her willingness to share the brutal details of this deep, dark family secret even under the veil of blog anonymity is very brave and I admire her for it. Despite all the grief Andrew has put her through, this woman loves her son. I find it so touching that she is still able to find reasons to be proud of him . It is those anecdotes about Andrew that really break my heart too, because they give glimpses into the really great person Andrew is beneath his addiction.

That being said, after reading blog after blog of essentially the same subject matter (Andrew, heroin addiction, Al-Anon, etc), I felt weary.

I get the impression that this blogger is content with an audience of just recovering/recovered addicts and/or those who love them.

If that is the case, then her blog is perfect as is. But if she wants to expand her audience, she will need to broaden her material. This shouldn't be difficult for her. Broken-hearted mom has led a fascinating life. The few glimpses I got into the lives of the other characters in this drama intrigued me and I longed to read more details about other aspects of their lives. The blog where she talked about trying to find her biological father felt like a breath of fresh air. Broken-Hearted Mom's "48 Things About Me " are pretty amazing and I would love for her to elaborate on some of those.

I won't be adding Subdural Flow blog to my already overflowing reader, but I will check back from time to time to see how Andrew is doing. And if a blogger can get me to care about a junkie I've never met, then I can't give her any less than

P.S. For any road-tripping junkies out there, this is a must read.

I brush my teeth everyday, therefore I blog

2009-09-17T12:38:00.007-04:00

School is back in session, my little pretties, and believe me, I weep for my holidays too. I'm melancholy today as I stand in the corridor amidst the unbearable squealing chatter of the young with my arms folded, mourning the golden silence of summer that has ended. As I settle into the day to day, I'm beginning to wonder what the point of it all is.

The beginning of the school year always provokes déjà vu. A new batch of students arrive, their white tennis shoes like blinding fluorescent light bulbs, their eyes wide and hopeful. Crooked teeth jut out at me forming genuine smiles, but alas, their teeths' days of crooked originality with their charmingly overlapped incisors are numbered; soon they will be aligned with military orthodontic precision inside a shit-talking, ass-kissing mouth whose only language is cliche. Year after year, children unique in their artful ways are painfully shoved through the meat grinder of sameness, excreted out into the world of banality, mixed with all the other fat and protein, never to stand out as bright as they once had the potential to. A very few leave their mark on the world in some way, but most, even bright ones will end up settling for the shallow waters of life, never bothering to take off their stupid floaties to explore the deep end and see if there is anything below the surface that is worth the effort.

They will marry.

They will eat a buttload of junk food while watching T.V.

They will join a gym and lose all the weight they gained.

They will procreate, wherein the fact that they have made full use of their capacities as placental mammals and the fact that they have struggled with weight loss will completely hijack their entire sense of self, and they will think and talk about precious little else. They will start a mommy/exercise blog, and the only guiding principle for their posts will be that they must be made up, almost entirely, of the following words or phrases:

-vlog
-Wordless Wednesday
-mommy
-hubby
-baby
-potty
-contest
-giveaway
-meme
-blog radio
-twitter, tweet grid, tweets, twitter party, twinkling twitching twat (okay I threw that last one in to liven up this god awful list).

They will implode in their own redundancy and disappear from reality into a black hole of anti-art*

Which, now that I think of it, makes it nearly impossible for me to review this blog, because I cannot philosophically distinguish it from all of the trivial meaninglessness I see all around me. It cannot be separated from all the other gristle and tissue of homogenized mediocrity. It is one with the salmonella floating freely through this non-universe.

This blog is one of the many whose sole existence is justified on the basis of community engagement, encouragement (for getting through You-Name-Your-Crisis), and, I suspect, subconscious solace-seeking so as not to drown in the murky waters of nihilism. But I, for one, am annoyed with community engagement absent artful communication, I am discouraged by your empty encouragement that fails to connect with Me The Reader, and I feel depressed when I see how others find solace in your hackneyed anti-narrative.

I want more.

I want painfully beautiful sentences contained within a story that has a point. I want the writer to toy with words until they slither around my head and I savor their every nuance. I want the laugh sucked out of my throat, filling the space between me and my computer screen with audible delight. I want to jealously kick myself wishing it had been me who had thought to string those words together so eloquently. I want my mouth to gape open at talent, or at the bare minimum, effort. But mostly, I want utter generosity of self. I want the unhearthed innards of one's psyche, the best and worst of what is inside their mind. I'm greedy as fuck like that. I don't want the tedium of life regurgitated into my face with ready-made phrases while in the meantime having the shit hypnotized out of me by sidebars of blazing doom which attempt to distract me from the total and absolute lack of meaningful content.

Bookieboo -- I can honestly say that if I met you in real life and heard your amazing weight loss story, I would tell you that you look awesome and high five you for your hard work and congratulate you on your beautiful family. But here, on this turf, I'm going to dare you to take some of the travail that allowed you to give birth, make it through a difficult loss, and wake up everyday and get your ass to gym and put just an ounce of that sweat into crafting your blog posts into stories. I mean, what the shit is this? Tell some of those embarrassing tales from junior high school; don't just blog about how you talked about it on the blog radio. Don't talk to me about sex like I'm your next door neighbor's eight year old daughter; for christsake give me some substance. Knock it the hell off with the skin-deep twitter, radio and video bullshit, roll up your sleeves and get your write on and give me some art or get the fuck out of my face.

And would you please put your sidebar on a cabbage diet? At the moment it is gavaged with junk that stabs my eyeballs like pixelated syringes of poison and makes me hate humanity while simultaneously being thankful for being distracted from your annoying anti-posts.

No, Bookieboo, you don't get an B- on your report card for being a sweet mommy who lost a ton of weight. You made me question the metaphysical existence of your blog, and thus my computer, and thus the apple on my desk, and thus myself, and whether or not any of it has any meaning and I don't need that shit on a weekday in an environment where heavy binge drinking is frowned upon.

Run along to the mall now, I believe there is a sale at Abercrombie.

P.S. Your cartoon header sucks ballz, yo.

*I mean this literally and am not referencing the anti-art art movement, which actually has something to say.

Reluctant Reviewer Desperately Seeking... Anything

2009-09-15T12:13:00.008-04:00

I have been remiss in my blog reviewing duties and for that I apologize, but I'm not going to lie. The conflict and drama involved in this process gets to me. Although the URL clearly shows that this is not a tea party hosted in your grandmother's lovely garden, folks still get all up in arms when a spanking is deservedly served. This is perplexing. Are you confused? Do you not know where it is that you have submitted your blog to be reviewed?

I think you and I both know that, yes, you do know whose hands you've placed your sweet little blog into. Your hope was that we would think that you are as awesome as YOU wholeheartedly believe you are. This causes you to be unjustifiably upset when you and your writing styles are ripped to pieces.

To further push me away, it seems that one of our lovely readers outed me and my identity to someone that I was to review. I hope that this was done with a purpose that was for good and not evil, because I found it disheartening.

So it is with all of this drama in my thoughts that I stepped away from AAYSR. And, it is here today that I step forward again to review, in hopes that the drama will stay within the level that is appropriate and intended. We love the drama, it's just that you all take it so darned personally. You can only imagine my hesitation when I was assigned today's blog. I think we all remember this.

Sigh.

But it is my promise and intention that I will not pull any punches or act as a puss cookie might while conducting this review. Integrity... I have it. Mostly.

So let's get down to business. I'll start with the "new first impression" that I got as I pushed past transgressions out of my mind, clicked onto The Reluctant Housewife and laid my eyes upon the design. Melanie has obviously put a lot into this design and I love the DIY blog designer. There is really good intention behind the design and she has it well organized. I like the look she was going for but somehow feel like it fell short. The font in the header is not going to be getting a fan club organized by little ol' me anytime soon. And while there is an extreme amount of organization in the navigation, the overall feel is still chaotic and cluttered.

I trust that this will fall into "personal preference" and this is mine. It just falls short of what I think you were trying to achieve, but I love the retro feel.

Melanie's writing feels all sorts of proper to me. I felt like I was wearing cardboard panties the entire time I read. Not entirely unpleasant, really, quite functional, but lacking in appeal and zest. However, I don't hate it. She writes well, it's just all very... meh.

You can stop groaning right now. Let me clarify. If Melanie was writing about something, anything that held my interest or that provoked my thoughts, then her style of writing would be fantastic. Her subject matter would do all the "excite me, thrill me" work. However, while I relate to her subject matter, I'm uninterested. Just as her title suggests, she is indeed a housewife and while she hates that title, she has wrapped her blog right around it.

In all honesty how am I supposed to get behind someone who spells out "shit" like this? Or comedic stylings such as this? And, isn't this all sorts of riveting?

What I'm saying here is that we have a perfectly lovely blog. There is nothing exciting, nothing that is going to crinkle up those cardboard panties. And quite honestly, I could have stuck my hand into the big ol' pot that is the internet and pulled out a blog just like this one hundreds, probably thousands of times over.

I guess what I'm saying is that your "meh" is polished is but, good lord, it's still just:

This is all sorts of really, we have to say this again? Because I know that we have told you again and again that you can be a mommy blogger, just be an interesting one, puhlease. Melanie, you've been reading here long enough to know better.

I should throw this in though. If you want to read about other people's kids and every little nuance of their farts and drooling, then Melanie isn't horrible. You know, minus the reviews.

I'm a bitch, I'm a lover, I'm a child, I'm a mother

2009-09-14T17:01:00.005-04:00

My son is sick. He's sitting on the big olive green chair coughing as if to emphasize this fact.

I'm sick. I got sick on Tuesday while working in Orlando this week, and have stayed sick now for a full 7 days. Someone asked me today if it was swine flu. I haven't been tested, but if half of Orlando and another unnamed Florida city come down with h1n1, it may in fact be my fault.

My dog is needy. She's crammed all of her 40 pounds into an 18 inch wide section of couch so she can lay her head against my leg and sleep. I hope we haven't infected her.

My daughter is annoying. She's disappeared right when I needed her to unload the dishwasher and help me fix dinner, so I'm on mom-strike, and writing a blog review.

Today is the worst possible day for me to review a mommy blog, because I'm full up on mommying today. The last thing I want to read about is more mommying. But, here we go.

3 Bedroom Bungalow, written by ex-pat Kat, is an exposition of contemporary military mom life while overseas in England.

Kat, as kindly as possible, you're doing it wrong. Reading your blog was actually painful for me, and I don't think it's because of the cold pills.

Kat has whiny children. Kat, why are you raising whiny children? The world is full up on whiny children, and they are not, in the least, amusing. It's our job, as mothers, to remove the whiny from our kids.

I'm not going to take this job upon myself, and publicly slap your children for misbehaving, but I will say that when people encounter you and your offspring in the grocery store, restaurants, and other public places, their faces assume a look of annoyance and like me, they wish that you would do your damn job as a mom.

Just from reading a couple of blog posts, I certainly wish you would. And you are posting about it, for all the world to read, as if it's cute. It's not cute. It's so not cute.

Kat does a lot of memes. A LOT. In fact, most of Kat's blog consists of meme posts. Kat...you're doing it wrong. That isn't blogging.

This blog is not the foulest piece of excrement ever to pollute the blogosphere. I'm sure some people like it, just like I'm sure that there are lots of people out there who like Kanye West and don't think he's a complete douchebag. I'm sure there are plenty of other moms out there who absolutely adore Kat's blog.

But, in my view, it's poorly (and sloppily written) and improperly punctuated. I have no interest in it. In fact, I have no idea why she submitted to us, or thought we'd like this hot sloppy mess.

I can't even get started on the template and the busy sidebar and all of the unnecessary shit this blog has going on. It's as if Kat submitted here with literally no idea of what we generally think about these kinds of blogs, or any regard, at all, for cleaning up this blog and making it presentable for anyone.

I give her

And this:

Go here. Read. Get better. Stop doing it wrong.

Portrait of a Douchebag

2009-09-11T17:23:00.005-04:00

Wow. Now we're getting whines from punk ass bitches that haven't even been reviewed:

Well, I hope that my blog wasn't one of the ones that got passed over, because it'a a shitload better than this boring ass blog you reviewed. Who gives a shit about a fucking German class? Wow, this blog is becoming soft. Fuck it, it's off my blogroll.

I'll just take the word of the readers that send me e-mails every day telling me what a great job I'm doing.

-Chris Mollo

Dude. Who in the fuck are you, and why do you think we give a shit?

Also, what prison were you in when you had that picture taken?

There's no sex in your violence

2009-09-04T09:40:00.003-04:00

I have rules for myself but lately I've been breaking a lot of them. Normally, I take my blog from the queue in order. I don't skip around, and I don't pick and choose. I review good blogs and bad blogs, whatever is next on the list.

But lately, I've stopped caring so much about rules. I'm tired of reviewing crappy blogs, and I've started deleting some of the crappiest ones from our queue. I figure that if I don't even want to go to the trouble of reaming them a new asshole, because they're THAT bad, you probably don't want to read them. I also am tired of traffic mongering blogwhores who want us to send them hundreds of possible readers without actually doing the goddamn work of having a decent blog.

Fuck them. So, click, click, click. I deleted a half dozen blogs that I wasn't interested in having anyone review, including me, from the list this week.

This wasn't one of them. I briefly debated between this blog and a sex blog, called optimistically, "My OMFG Sex Blog," before deciding I just really wasn't up to reading about middle aged poon.

Instead, I opted for Textual Intercourse. Kevin's plan for this blog was, "I Write. You Read. You Respond. I Read." That hasn't happened exactly as he probably envisioned.

And that's a shame, because this is a really good blog. People should be reading this blog, and responding to it. Kevin needs comments and dialogue so he doesn't give up and stop writing.

I have no critiques of the posts, none at all. Some of them are provocative. Some, oddly enough, make me want to know more about the man who shit himself. Like, what happened the next night? Some leave me feeling wistful and sad, and remind me how easily childhood is broken. Some ask questions that probably should be asked, and aren't, like why men start out with a negative character reference when it comes to child abuse.

Some are meh, and I skipped over them pretty rapidly, but they might appeal to you.

This dude can write. He needs to do it more often. He needs to purge some of the dead wood on this blog. But, he can write. Really, when it's all said and done, that's all I require.

Kevin: Delete all the crap under "Other" in your sidebar. Look over some of your posts and decide if they're really finished. Write more.

Readers: Go do what you do.

I give him 3 stars.

I thawt I thaw a puddy tat

2009-09-02T11:39:00.005-04:00

A guest review by Mister Crowley:

Before I launch into this review, I’d like to say that I don’t like cats. I don’t hate ‘em, but I feel that, in their eyes, I’m somewhat like an unwanted mother-in-law. You know she’s there. You know you should respond to her messages and phone calls and emails and her presence in general. But you close your eyes and ears, and secretly wish she’d go away. To Ouagadougou, perhaps. And in times of deep dudgeon, you secretly plot ways to snuff her out.

The fact that I’ve once almost had my eyes clawed out by a psychotic cat, while I was trying to sleep at a friend’s place, may or may not have influenced my apathy towards the feline race.

Our latest guest on the chopping block is Gap, who’s a fairly regular customer at AAYSR’s comments pages. She writes at ‘Barebacking Sanity’. She also has furballs on her mind. This is problematic, because when eight out of every ten posts are about cats, it’s fairly difficult for the non-cat loving reviewer to dig out non-cat posts to review.

So, does this barebacked blog rock?

It does. Completely. Even if you factor in the cats! Gap’s writing is lucid, yet random at the same time. It’s easy to read. Her posts are never overlong, and rarely suffer from bad grammar or an abuse of the English language. Her writing is amusing in the cool, indifferent manner that I really dig. It’s not whiny, it’s not hyperactively happy. It’s just so, which is exactly the way I like it. I’m not going to sit and dissect posts here, but I will leave links to some neat ones. Oh, and these ones too.

But, like all blogs, this one has its problems.

1. The posts, which I’ve linked to above, constitute the bulk of the non-cat posts on this blog. Gap, man, I love your writing, and I’m sure many of us here on Ask do too. BUT, why not try and write on topics other than cats? No offense, but I’m sure that at some level of consciousness, you do relate to things non-feline, so why not write about all of that? It makes your blog less-tedious for us dog lovers, y’see.

2. While a simple black blog template is always a safe bet, you don’t seem like someone who takes the safe and trusted route all the time, so why not spice up that template?

3. Speaking of your template, I spy, with my little eye, a lack of space for people to comment on your posts. Come on Gap, don’t be shy. A comments page is a great way to meet other cat lovers, if nothing else.

4. Another template snafu. Your archives open up as new tabs. That’s bloody irritating, y’hear? Consider yourself lucky that I read your blog on Chrome, and hence had to suffer new tabs as opposed to little Internet Explorer icons crowding my taskbar.

5. It’s ‘you are’ or ‘your’ or ‘you’re’, and NOT ‘ur’. Please, you seem like a mature, educated person. Ditch the ‘ur’, will you luv?

So, cat scratch fever aside, I give Gap:

3 stars for some interesting writing, of which there wasn’t enough to go around.

AND, for bombarding me with those cat photos:

Eh, tú pedazo de carne con patas! Como te atreves a hacerme esto'!