Throw another shrimp on The Farbequeue

It was darkly golden, the thing that was thrust into my hands with little ceremony. Harsh tendrils of semi-molten metal twisted about and obscured the core of indeterminable gems. It was weighty and sluggish as it sat slowly squirming in my palms. It felt… magical; it felt… meaningless. It was named The Far Queue , I was told, though that name seemed to lay fitfully on this strange object rather than being a true part of it. The thing was beautiful, at the very least. It would take further inspection to determine whether the beauty was superficial or born of unfathomable artistic function.

I won’t subject you to any more on that nonsense, but the above is what artsy blogs do to me when I read them for too long. Somewhat fortunately for TFQ, this review actually caught me in the middle of a melodramatic and misanthropic mood which TFQ managed to reflect; unfortunately for me (and you), it reflected well enough that it put me in that mood for a couple of days. Had it caught me in one of my more manic episodes I am unsure how I would have reacted, but I can guarantee it wouldn’t have had me writing soggy mush like that paragraph above, and I doubt I would have had the patience to push past my typical reaction to poetry blogs. (“Yeah, I get it, you’re angsty and everything sucks. Put down that rhyming dictionary. Aurgh.”)

Go look at it right now. I want to compare some notes with you. Go on, it’ll take but a moment. Gather your first impressions. Got ‘em? Good.

If your mind works anything like mine (you poor, poor fool), your experience was probably something like this: the first thing you notice is that the blog is beautiful. It has a dark, simple je ne sais quoi that only comes from actually planning a website and rarely appears in blog form. Of the aesthetics of the blog, I have nothing but good things to say, and so will say no more.

The second impression you got was something akin to, “What is all this bullshit?”
Over the days I was reviewing TFQ, there were five posts on the home page, each prominently featuring an image – mostly works of art, presumably not of the author’s making. Spread over these posts was two short poems and two uncontextualized, unrelated paragraphs that appeared to be excerpts from a larger story. Under each of these posts were rating boxes labeled subterranean, grounded and transcendent. (Did you giggle at those? Because I did.) The only explanatory or introductory text is found above the navigation menu: “ANTI-PROFIT/NON-PROPHET” which I can totally get behind, although at this point I’m really not sure how it has anything to do with anything.

The message being conveyed is “I am a deep, dark writer-type who likes to use words in surprising ways and I take myself very, very seriously. Also I am a huge asshat and I probably wear a fedora.” (To paraphrase my English teacher, “deep” and “dark” are reserved for oceans and pussies; I have no patience for the mystery wrapped in an enigma routine.)

I ended up staring blankly at the pleasantly dark background and then played with the hover effect on the navigation menu for a bit. The realization that the navigation menu is both more interesting and more comprehensible than the content of the blog is, I suspect, a tipping point for most visitors. This time I would not have the luxury of totally dismissing TFQ, so I forced myself to read on.

Bolstered by beer, I first visited the biography. It appears that our author uses a lesser-known definition of “biography,” as I was instead greeted with two thousand words on the history of South Africa before anything personal and relevant appeared. We eventually learn that "Pisces" is a creative atheist who likes music and apparently wrote a book. Super. I rather wish he'd just left it at a simple “I'm just zis guy, you know?” because it's infinitely more brief and just as accurate.

I then realized TFQ is very large. It spans across several domains like a web of dark gossamer silk (sorry) and its archives reach into the dim shadows of 2006. All the inter-linking between posts and indexes creates a novel website structure - more visually pleasing than the use of tags, at least - but the whole thing is terribly awkward to navigate. It's organized less like a website and more like a virtual hedge maze with short fiction at the center.

Oh yes, I finally found what the main strength of this blog is: short fiction posted in paragraphs at a time. (It is mixed in with copious poetry, a form of which I am neither a fan nor a critic, so I will let those alone) There is very little of anything bloggy on this blog – in my reading I didn't get any real sense of Pisces at all, aside from a few flashes of “this guy is a prat” while reading the comment sections of some older posts. Yet, you can clearly witness the development of Pisces over the years, from a sort of generic romantic-misanthropist to someone who actually has some fun without overthinking and forcing "deeper" meaning .

And I suppose that's the main gist of it, eh? It is a feat to walk that line between visionary and self-important twat. A sense of inflated artistic ego and the stench of overwrought depth hovers just above most of the posts on TFQ, occasionally descending to infest the writing itself. To be absolutely fair to TFQ, the cringe factor of the past couple of years is decidedly less than that of most similar blogs. To be absolutely honest, the cringe factor is still there.

So, the big question: is TFQ just another poetry blog? Well, in many aspects it is – a fair number of the posts I read were artistic fluff – inspirational quotes and non-original artwork. A large number was short poetry of the kind that is always in danger of having the multiple multi-syllabic words obscure the meaning. But every writer has their gold, and Pisces produces some intriguing short and micro fiction. Given that I didn't hate it, and that some parts were too good to bore me, I'm awarding two stars:

   

Use them well.

More Like A Quarter Pound of Splenda

First of all, I am fucking pissed off that this review got deleted and now I have to write another, and I've forgotten most of my jokes and links, which are now probably hovering nervously over one of the gimpier, glibbier internet sectors that probably has pictures of cats speaking like twits, and my words are all, "O Shiner, why have you forsaken me" and I'm all "if you love something set it free" blah blah "come back here."  Everyone gets that quote wrong anyway.

Everyone including Tinker Belle (in a post I linked before but totally don't feel like finding), our young author of Confessions of a Twenty-Something Drama Queen, the most redundant blog title ever, who rightly admits in her blog-blurb-beneath-the-title-thinger that her blog is about "Nothing, really. Just a walk through the world I exist in and observations of the people around. All with a little pinch of salt." I'm not sure if the salt was a late addition to the description, but it's definitely a late addition to the blog.

It's as if she wrote for two years with saccharine, chemically-sweet sentiments, actually read her own damp writing, realized she sounded like a fucking fifteen-year-old Twihard, started to try hard, and just salted the shit out of everything, instantly making things a little more delicious.

The best thing about this blog, by far, is watching Tinker Belle grow up. In the beginning, she's just another girl who uses too many exclamation points, wants a boyfriend, like, really bad, and everything is I'm-so-different-and-special, fanfic-styled stories, I'm-so-deep-because-you're-so-shallow, posts with nothing but soft-focus romancey pictures and horrible song lyrics, bad poetry, and emo heavily detailed updates about cleaning supplies. 

But Tinker Belle's growth as a writer and a person becomes obvious as she slowly evolves from a boring, whiny, insecure, hopeless romantic to a layered, confident, honest, hopeless romantic.  She turns her feelings into a story.  Sometimes it can come across as cheeseball drama, but it works.  She's trying new things with her writing, some good and some bad, but interesting. 

Although I really fucking hate the posts that are just bad music videos and lyrics, one eye-rolling line about Tinker feeling sorry for herself, and her ONE HUNDRED AND FORTY EIGHT LABELS.  I would lose those lame posts because they're awful and stupid, but I know she likes them, and if I were her I would tell me to fuck off. 

Seriously, though.  How many labels does one need?  I can understand having a great deal of labels if you're like, using them ironically instead of tagging posts with a new celebrity whenever you drop a name, which is the blog equivalent of a Tiger Beat locker collage.  Don't put them on your blog at all.  Get fucking rid of them.  I'm not a big fan of the orange-on-rainy-window template - but just using a color other than orange would fix that.  Try to let readers view more than one post at a time.  Create an "About" page.  And please, please, please change the title.  Maybe "The Confessional" or "Emotional Salt" or something. Because yes, she does confess things.  Yes, she's in her twenties.  But she ain't no drama queen. 


   

That's What She Said

I'm usually pretty perceptive. At least I am when I'm tuned in and paying attention. I can walk into a room and sense the vibe going on pretty accurately most of the time. And I can open a blog and pick up pretty much from the get go what sort of experience I'm in for.

Are there lots of crappy little doo-dads scattered around the perimeter? Hundreds of blog awards? Pukey pink background? Massive header screaming out for attention? Maybe a few links here and there to crappy writing that's been "published" in an ezine or via some vanity press? Yeah, guess what - that fucker's gonna be a chore.

So imagine what I thought when I first arrived at the home of one Laura Jane Williams, with her pink background, her name in 106 point type across the top, a shameless declaration that her high self-esteem was my problem, and links down the side to her magazine. Yeah. That's what I was thinking. Attention whore. The type of person who prefers volume to subtlety.

And I was sorely afraid.

So I rolled up my sleeves, prepared to brush the foul taste from my mouth soon enough. And I read the first entry. A fairly amusing description of some guttersnipe trying to pick her up in the street and clearly failing miserably. So I read on. And I happened on one after another reasonably amusing anecdote of life as a young woman in Britain after another.

It was a moment of severe cognitive dissonance. A blog that starts out like this is supposed to suck from the git go. And, aside from the header, this kind of doesn't suck.

Although it comes across as pretty Bridget Jonesy on the whole (and I have more in common with Bridget's father than Bridget herself), it is all well enough written, well enough thought out, etc, that I found myself cognitively humming along before too long.

Would I come back on a regular basis? Sure. Would I read it every day? No. I find this sort of thing to be a pleasant enough distraction, but when I read post after post that has the same sort of sour-sweet sassiness that this has, I find myself needing to cleanse the pallete with something a bit more weighty.

Now for the funny part. As I read, I was having the hardest time with some of the entries as she kept referring to her being in school for her undergrad degree. And although I know that there are all sorts of students out there, the photo of herself had me thinking that she was a mid-thirties aged crazy-cat-lady-in-the-making. And I was having the biggest trouble imagining why she was describing the life of a woman in her early twenties. It wasn't till I wandered to her video page that I discovered that Laura Jane Williams is not really who she appears to be at first. She appears to be putting her worst foot forward on purpose. Like a little sort of performance art.

Bravo.

By now you'll have noticed that I am including very few links to anything specific. I think that the biggest reason for that is that, although there really aren't any clunkers in the mix (she does occasionally repeat a thing once or twice too often -- like the "Quote, End Quote" thing, but the ones I read were all reasonably amusing), there exists also a dearth of "holy shit, you must read this now" posts. It's all pretty evenly keeled.

So, to give you all a taste, here are a few random posts you may want to check out...

On being offered money for sex. She thinks.
On being an unintentional racist. And having OCD.
On being ridiculed by her boyfriend and her flatmates. At the same time.
On lacking cake for tea.
On being very self deprecating.
On the love of a dog.
On parental acceptance.

Etc.

I don't have any specific advice on how to improve. This seems to be working for you. Keep it up if you're still fed by it.

Two Stars. Because one is too few and three is too many. And because I said so, that's why.

Jambo

People like to make connections. Diving head first into Blonde’s little list on herself I noticed she used to speak Swahili. My dear old mum speaks Swahili. Blonde has been to Tanzania. And I have been to Tanzania. Snap! So with those little connections Blonde wormed her way into my affections. A little bit.

Her ‘cast’ is long and all edgy 30-something TV show. Really? If I had to cast my mates and exes it would be all ‘Dude Who Didn’t Age Well At All – SUCK IT!’ and ‘Clingy Bitch Who Dumped Me Cos I Didn’t Visit Her in London When She Lived There – HELLO I Was a Student Back Then!’ See? Definitely not as cool as her mates.

I got the distinct feeling I am not as smart as her. Look, I don’t mind coming to my own conclusion that my grey matter is not as well stocked as someone else’s but when I feel I am being gently taunted with it, I get all pissy and insecure and jealous and write reviews that possibly turn into a bitch-fest. Maybe. We’ll see.

Blonde writes well, but she writes like a chic-lit novel. With a blog, more so than in a novel, the reader expects to connect (there’s that ‘c’ word again) with the actual real-life author, as well as get a good story. I felt that sometimes her style of writing, while wry and funny, held me at a distance. She doesn’t have to be the slatternly Bridget Jones type of gal but being so self-contained must be tiring.

Blonde is champagne – she is witty, crisp, urbane and very consistent – she is certainly advocating a good ‘brand’ but after a while she clagged on my tongue and I felt like something a little more down to earth. Like Coca-Cola.

Even so, if I was a single gal about London, I would probably want to be her, first world gripes and all.



Two stars because she writes well, as a PR person should.




The guilt.  She suffers, I suffer.  There are some things a teaching stint in Africa can't assuage.

Be Happy: It's One Way of Being Wise

People don't describe me as sweet, chill, laid-back, someone with a good sense of humor.  More would say a poor sense of humor, someone who is inconsistent and hard to please.  The whole situation is arcane at the least, because for me to genuinely like something, anything, I must be surprised.  Surprised at its beauty, its horror, wit, insanity, humility, romance, hysteria, darkness, splendor - just give me a fucking adjective and shock me into using it to describe you.  Okay?  Please.  Because reviewing blogs is fucking exhausting.  Why do you think we took such a break?

It began in the Diminuitive Corner of Her Mind, as many other reviews do: with severe annoyance. There's no profile for our blogger, who calls herself $$ (the blogger formerly known as Shalini Surendran) which at first seems contradictory to a template flourished with aged parchment romanticism and a golden ornamental header, but that shit's very hip right now so never mind. Worldly old souls, the polarizing wisdom of antique keys and modern technology and all that.  Honestly, I love that shit. I really do.

Even though she sometimes traps herself into posting a sentence beneath an inspirational photo of a tree in the sunset, DollahDollah can write superbeautifully, with a hazy glow or solid awareness.  Sometimes she shitbombs her prose with alternating text colors, and sometimes she's meandering cheese, and sometimes she uses too many explanation points, but the words work so in the end that's just aesthetics.  I am pleasantly impressed with her. Surprise!

In fact, I really like her, even though she's not a feminist (although I suspect, as I find with many women, that she really cannot define feminism. Feminists are like hipsters: the original social movement has lost all meaning and credibility because motherfuckers don't what the snot they're talking about) I know.  I know.  What the fuck.  Who am I.

Most of her crowded posts could be punched out of their meh-ness.  There's a great deal of purple prose and utter crap, but she's got enough gall to keep me reading.  But what I love, and I do love this about her, is her uncompromising thankful dreaminess, full of hope and love. She is so genuine and infectiously pleased that I have to like her, I don't think I have a choice.  It's rare that I find a blog where someone claims to be happy and I just believe them because their words smell like joy.

So DollahDollah, well done.  Two stars and a very happy puppy.

My Subscription to Psychology Today Makes Me an Expert

Readers, have you ever known someone who has some life-changing, emotionally traumatizing experience happen to them, and they never deal with it and get the help they desperately need? In my experience, these people tend to be frozen at whatever age the experience happened and fail to evolve in mental and/or emotional maturity. Does anyone know what I'm talking about?

If not, meet Violet.

Violet watched her mother die two-ish years ago. Her father is gone as well, I assume, given her blog's title. There may be a post dealing with him, but I can't be arsed to read all her posts. She has other family though, because she wrote about them during the holidays. I'm confused about why they don't know how screwed up in the head she really is.

Violet bides her time being unemployed and crashing on people's couches. To support her lifestyle, placate her daddy issues, and distract herself from dealing with her problems, she signs up for Sugar Daddy websites and meets rich, much older men. Currently, Violet has a regular boyfriend closer to her age (early 20's, I assume), who doesn't know about her desire to be a kept woman or about her meeting potential Sugar Daddies/Johns behind his back.

This girl is a fucking trainwreck and has no shame about broadcasting it for the world to see. That's one thing I'll grant her. I don't have to complain about her not opening up. She writes about her boy troubles, albeit in a very Carrie Bradshaw-wannabe fashion. She writes about dreams she's had with her mother in them, ones where she and her mother are the same age. And she does so in an intriguing and image-provoking fashion. I just wish she would write more about what's going on in her head, rather than what shenanigans her latest John has pulled.

Violet writes somewhat coherently, with somewhat correct grammar and spelling, although she avoids the shift key like she thinks she's on par with ee cummings. Any mishaps can be chalked up to typos and not editing before posting. However, there is an abundance of caps and bold and ellipses and too many youtube videos and pictures for my liking. An indication of her age, I suppose.

The feminist in me, the woman who's witnessed male friends and relatives get put through the ringer by manipulative women, the woman who's been treated like shit herself because dudes think all women are users . . .wants to hate this girl. Desperately.

But I'm here to review a blog, not put on a German accent and have my reviewees lay down on my couch so I can play Armchair Psychiatrist, even if it comes naturally to me.

Which is why I'm generously awarding Violet one star:



For actually being able to write and for laying it all out there. Sometimes.




I'll let the commenters rip into you all they like. Shagnasty Freud has some advice for you though. Your mental health is just as important as your physical health, and way more important than frivolities. Maybe consider forgoing your gym membership and weekly salon appointments and find a therapist.

What Has She Got That I Don't Got?

Boobs for a start. But I digress.

When I first opened Helena’s blog, as I do any blog, I read the first couple of posts, checked out the layout and had a gander in the comments. First impressions? Neat - a bit girly pink, but in non eye-molesting shade, wannabe Hyperbole and a Half personalised header, widget bar that is a bit wide and full, but perhaps I am just envious because this young lady has decent amount of followers. Unlike myself.

Next I headed to the archives – starting in January 2009. When I got there I wanted to stab myself with the closest stabbing implement. What were all these links? Could I be arsed figuring it all out? No. So I moved on. It was in September 09 that I found a post that I didn’t have to click on to read, nor was it the crap arse badge fest of February 09.  In 09/09 I found the wondrous tale of Larry the Majestic Palm. Holy crap - hold me back. I doggedly continued my trawl and well, what can I say? She is cute, she is inoffensive, rather wholesome and delightfully crafty. Some posts definitely tickled me and she done taught me stuff I never knew.  This was hilarious but unfortunately Helena was only the conduit to the awesomeness. I also liked this idea for the shopaholic in your life.  This post took ‘Life in the Pitts’ to a whole new level. As an aside, I recall a rather famous blogger professing her love for the lack of a shower. Perhaps because it is stinking effing hot in the Antipodes we shower once, even twice a day. To not do so is foreign and horrifying to me. Aside over.

Did Helena hook me in and make me want to read more? In a word - no. I actually thought I had found a blogger who was happy just to blog, show us her wares and prattle on about her husband. But alas - she is also one of ‘us’. If she wants to join the gang, I do wish she would practise a bit more. (I do NOT mean write more; the sheer volume of her blog has cramped up my scrolling finger.)  If a blog is not a place to hone one’s writing skills, where else can one do it? I think Helena already has the idea that she can do it here. It sounds like she has some sad stories that need to be told.

Helena, you provide a space that is fun, friendly and mildy diverting. That in itself is no mean feat. (Other than our initial archival linky link disagreement, I had no beef with you) However, if writing is a lifelong ambition, you need to start getting on with that. It doesn’t mean I want you to get all wankery and introspective and start wearing a tweed jacket with leather elbow patches, but I do want you to experiment with words, rather than just blurt out the funny thing your husband said. Get some imagery and atmosphere going on. Now go!

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,

     

Seasons in the Abyss

There is a part of town I live in that is even more hipster than the rest of elitist central I call my above ground home. This street is home to an Army Surplus, oriental gift stores, coffee shops frequented by the ones of the sapphic persuasion, and bookstores on metaphysics. It comes complete with a bike store, vagrant hippies and lunatic army vets. I once stumbled into a musky bookstore that was only a door on the street, and found that it housed quite the collection on witchcraft, pagan literature and rows upon rows dedicated to the "dark arts". What made things even more weird was that there was not a soul in sight, and the eery silence urged me to exit before some inter-dimensional portal sucked me away.

Not that it has anything to do with the victim of the day - Nikhil Narayanan, author of "Half an autobiography". Nikhil is a copywriter and is into hawking advertising. He says about himself - "The less said the better as familiarity is bound to breed contempt." So much so for an autobiography, and good luck with readers' contempt. The location, blog template screams Indian emo kid, but we'll do what Gandhi did - walk on with the other ass cheek exposed. Or something like that. I personally don't hate the template - it is simple, no bling or widgets. I've always felt that light text on a dark background can be easier on the eyes, as long as the contrast isn't black and white, as it is on Half an. Nikhil would be better served by wider columns and a different text color.

The latest post is somewhat interesting. We love stories here, and we get one right off the bat - about adultery no less. I had half a chuckle at the reveal, but it took far too long to get there - longer than the ride from Frazer town to Langford road. Since there is no formal intro. and I slacked off way too long to spend a long time on the review, you'll have read along as I make shit up.

I guess "autobiography" is one way to describe this blog - he does fuss about things that happened around him - even if it is about a team that hasn't done anything noteworthy in the last decade. There's introspection, isn't that what autobiographies feature? It wouldn't take much to dismiss this as part of the collective depressed lot we get from India, but it's better worded than most of his peers. I really wonder what's eating them, don't they have all our jobs? Still, a point for quoting from The Doors.

There's fiction and interviews, and you can't shake off the feeling that all this is just filler. Nikhil can write, but doesn't seem to be focused on a theme. It's hard to take a blog seriously when there are twopoems about "life" followed by a prank call to a bank. He has loyalties, strong enough to carve on his skin, but shows an unfortunate taste in clubs again (Manchester United? Really??). Nikhil ventures into fiction, and oh bother, it's getting really difficult to tolerate him at this point.

But every now and again, like Rooney playing once a season, he brings things back. I was reading this thinking "oh boy, another dialogue", when bam, there was raw emotion, real feelings, and effort. Nikhil, you can be funny and eloquent. But dammit man, why so serious? Why do I get the feeling you're just being lazy? Whatever brain cells you haven't killed from alcohol and nicotine seem to be capable of imagination and random humour but why serve stale ideas that you might have thought while on the can?

I had to dig through 2 years of writing to get to something linkable, something that caught my eye. You have things to talk about, causes to support and places to visit. So I must ask again, what's up Nikhil? You've been writing for five years now, how about some consistency and quality control?

Pour a drink, turn on some music and light one up. Get that shit out of your system and cheer the fuck up. You can think, you sure can write. Try harder, edit more and write more often. Stop trying to be clever and funny. Don't force it, and good writing will follow.

For general doom and gloom you get,

And for somewhat engaging writing two stars.

Those Who Wish to Sing Always Find a Song

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

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

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

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

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

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

Sue is in the process of writing one.

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

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

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

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

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








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

And Now For Something Completely Different

The other day, my Fanny and I went out for the annual Inspection of the Grounds. We like to make a day of it – after we have checked the traps and upped the swans, counted the water horses and lobbed a few eggs at the Hermit, we like to take a light luncheon in the Mausoleum before making our way home through the tunnels, happy and satisfied and slung about with whatever critters Fanny has bagged for the pot. That girl is an absolute demon with a slingshot.

We hold the Inspection in August because we are Very British Masochists and we get a twisted kick out of crushed hopes and rain-soaked sandwiches. This year Fanny and I waddled out swaddled in so many layers that the first cloudburst rendered us immobile, two waterlogged zeppelins pinned prostrate by the weight of sopping wool. We were stuck there for several hours but we minded not; we are British, and weather was occurring, and so we had plenty to complain about. Nothing passes the time better than a good old moan.

Eventually, Fanny chewed her way out of her argyle gaol and dragged me home, where we sat clad in towelling togas before the three-bar fire, sipping on dripping-tea and soaking our feet in Epsom salts. I must own that I was nodding off, lulled away to dreamland by the gassy heat and the steam from drying long-johns, when Fanny poked me rather cruelly with the back-scratcher and reminded me that we had to write a review. She booted up the damnable machine and, with the crossness of a nap-denied old clown, I started to read.

Immediately, I suffered an acute attack of weather-envy. The blog at hand is written by a man who lives in Arctic Bay. Arctic Bay is very cold indeed, and I realised with some degree of peeve that I could no longer complain about English summers. Arctic Bay is the kind of place where one doesn’t see the sun for months at a time and England doesn’t have it quite that bad, no matter what those who have holidayed in Skegness may lead you to believe.

So, who is this man who lives so far away in such a stark and beautiful land? He is Clare Kines, a retired Mountie who moved to Arctic Bay, met his lovely second wife Leah, adopted two almost unbearably charming children and made a thoroughly pleasant life for himself. He has been blogging for a very, very long time, totting up well over a thousand posts. Clare’s blog is mostly concerned with the cataloguing of flora and fauna . He photographs and describes a huge number of species, and it is most touching to see his children joining in his passion.

I found it all terribly soothing. There is an inevitable poetry in nature writing, in the Purple Saxifrage and the Arctic Dryads, the Snow Buntings and Horned Larks, the Cackling Geese and the Red-Throated Loons and the wolves and the ravens and the sundogs in the sky. Nature makes the plainest writing bloom, hothouses lines like ‘a bumblebee amongst the wealth of River Beauty’. Clare is no Dave Attenborough -his writing can be a tad workmanlike and sometimes the passion is subsumed beneath a trainspottery recitation of fact – but I could read this stuff for hours. I like learning things, even though I am neither a gentleman nor a scholar.

Elsewhere, Clare writes about the construction of his house, what he gets up to with his family and what life is like in Arctic Bay. There are some posts that could do with a bit more detail and some that could do with a good deal less. He has some good lines (I could sworn this dog had a penis when she was a puppy) and he writes movingly about subjects that mean a lot to him. He can write very well, although he is guilty of the sinful ‘I’m tired’ post, when he just flings up some photos or a few hasty sentences. Nice as his pictures are, they would be nicer if he kept them to one side until he had the strength to write something pretty to go with them.

All in all, it would be hard to strip such a fascinating way of life of all interest. After all, as Clare says, this is a place where you can look out of your front door and see Killer Whales and narwhal, where seal hunts are social events and where Gyrfalcons wheel overhead. It is a place where one has one’s shopping delivered once a year. Just for titters, Fanny and I tried to work out what we’d have to order were we to stock the larder just once in a twelvemonth. We should need a fleet of juggernauts for the gin alone.

As you all know, certain diplomatic sore spots have prevented my Fanny and I leaving these shores for many a moon. It wasn’t always that way - in days of yore we would think nothing of chartering a biplane to Bruges for a spot of brekker – and I am sure that one day we will be free to roam again. When that day comes we will head north, to Arctic Bay and beyond, and we will build ourselves a cold palace and sit on whalebone thrones, swathed in fur and sucking blubber in the blue ice-light. Fanny can feed me on gull eggs and blueberry wine and then harnessed to my sled she’ll haul me on into the unsetting sun.

Pardon me, I’m getting carried away. Must have Fanny get a man out to look at this gas fire. So, to come, reluctant as always, to what passes for a point, I would like to thank Clare for adding to my vocabulary and providing me with frigid fantasies enough to see me through the damp drear of an English August. I rather enjoyed dipping a toe into his world. There were no thrills and/or spills, nothing shocking or outrageous, just the gentle pottering of a man who, after sad and hard times, has found a measure of peace.

I give Clare two stars, and am off to dress Fanny as a narwhal.

Hating you would be more satisfying than this

It’s summertime. Do you know what summertime means for an educator like myself? If I'm lucky, it means I get to experience the great outdoors for a few weeks and drink ridiculous amounts of wine and lay in the sun for hours enjoying a world with people who sit up straight, who don't mouth breathe all over me, who do things in a timely manner and who have sex rather than giggle about it. It means I get to watch the complete series of The Wire without any fucking half-assed distractions. Shit is getting intense up in Baltimore and my television NEEDS me today.

If I'm unlucky, I get dragged by my bleeding toenails back to summer session to put up with all the bored flunkees and the annoying overachievers mixed into one giant hell of braces, baggy pants and jolly ranchers. And that brings us to today. Look, there are beers to be drunk, tanning oil to be rubbed on me, pages to be turned with sand filled fingers and blissful naps to be had. I need to know if Avon is gonna find out the shit that Stringer pulled like I need food. I need to show up here, give you some condensed learning, give out a flaming finger or two, or an IFLY for being so goddamn clever and get the hell out of here and get back to my cooler and my janitor twined to a pine tree, you read me?

I am not in the mood for something in between. I don't need to be distracted with brain-sucking ambivalence right now. It's painful.

I’m not in the mood for someone full of potential to time and time again fail to engage me. Lazy, really fucking lazy, well I expected that; but at the same time likeable? I don’t know what to do with that. Not in summer session, I don’t. I don’t want to straddle things I want to read and things that make me so bored I want to start forest fires. I don’t want to read posts that start off good but then lose rhythm or finish with a paintball to the face of MEH. I don’t want to read something almost lovely and then read something that sounds like the tender scribbles of a pretentious tenth grader. I don’t want to read something so utterly satisfying and telling because it intimately acquaints the reader with the writer's person and culture to then read posts with titles like "A rather nice stew" or "What I did last weekend".

Bitch, please.

I don’t want to be teased with developed descriptive abilities to then be rioted and looted by exclamation points. Which, let me tell you all a little something about the exclamation point, in case you didn’t gather it last time: she’s a cheap fucking whore. She’s disgustingly easy and she’ll hump you behind a dumpster, but if you are looking for long lasting emotional depth, she’s out. She’s off giving tail to any other sentence with the same easy, predictable, stupid climax.

Chicu, I like you. I like what you stand for and I love how you see beauty in the darndest places. But please stop making me ask myself why the shit I'm reading your blog instead of playing Adam and Eve and stuffing my face with s'mores right now. Quit writing so your friends and family know what you're up to and start writing for YOU.

For dragging me out of my summer bliss to read something I don't know how I feel about, I give you a blank emotionless stare, twinkling with indifference.

For being genuinely likeable with some actual talent, you get a couple of stars.