Just an Anomaly

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

...

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

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

usually just daft cliches anyway.

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

This might be good.

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

So, I stop squinting and scroll down.

This is the website I'm going to review.

I have what might be a pang of remorse.

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

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

Where will I find the time?

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

Fuck yeah!

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

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

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

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

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

I switch over to AAYSR.

Surely, they will give me direction.

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

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

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

Just an anomaly.

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

What the fuck?

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

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








*at the time of writing

Not George. Not Dave. Not even Elmer or glue.

Another guest review from Ellie over at the Daily Smoke.

I like to think I’m funny. Not like a comedian funny, but generally jocular in my day-to-day dealings. (Trevor: Please note, instead of ‘day-to-day’ I might have used ‘quotidian’ or ‘diurnal’ or even ‘circadian’, if my thesaurus is to be believed. Sometimes, though, the simplest way of saying something is best.)

I’m living with a dog and working from home these days. Before I chose this life for myself, my Mondays consisted of back-to-back management meetings that frequently overran. I often blurted out a quip or bon mot or wisecrack to lighten up the very important and serious matters that occupied us during our important and serious, overrunning Monday meetings. My sallies were always well received. My colleagues would chuckle or slap their knees; any tension that had resulted from our serious and important discussions would have dissipated. From time to time I would bite my tongue rather than share the wit, because there is a time and a place for everything; and sometimes it’s just not professional to joke in the midst of important and serious dealings. I am, above all, professional.

Maybe in my current isolation, I am losing my sense of humour because I did not find Trevor to be rip-roaring, laugh-out-loud funny.

I make a quick mental inventory of my sense of humour. My assessment reveals that whilst I might not be making as many jokes these days (the dog has no sense of humour), I still enjoy a good gut-busting guffaw or even a mild tee-hee titter. And, I don’t discriminate: whether funny is of a sophomoric caliber or of a more refined palate, I like it. I suppose at this point I should provide examples as proof.

Low brow examples: I love South Park (Has anyone seen the Medicinal Chicken episode?!!!) and American Pie and The Hangover. Oh! And the season of America’s Next Top Model, the one with Jade. She was a hoot!

High brow examples: I get a kick out of Catch-22, and Sheridan’s Mrs. Malaprop from The Rivals and George Bush. That guy is a brilliant comedian.

There we have it: even if I am not myself funny, I do have a sense of humour.

Despite my self-acknowledged sense of humour, I had never visited a self-proclaimed humour blog until I was chosen to review Write in the Kisser. Blogging humourists get a bad rap around these parts. I mulled this over as I mentally limbered up to write this snippet. I asked myself, “Are the folks at AAYSR being fair or are they suffering from having a foreign something up their own asses?”

I negotiated a 2-week deadline and dove into funny with enthusiasm, prepared to prove the naysayers wrong.

Almost immediately after diving in, I scrambled out of the cold, brackish, not-so-funny blog. Over the course of the next ten days, I tried to re-immerse myself. I’d stick my big toe in or my pinky finger, but I couldn’t last in the un-funny. There was always something more fun calling: laundry, filling out expenses, walking the humourless dog, and shaving my legs, to name a few. Reviewing this blog was very much like doing taxes: the dread of the chore hangs over your head for weeks, you tackle the chore in fits and starts, you have to ask for an extension, finally you muster up the energy it will require to do the bare minimum just to get it done and out the door. Trevor drove me to do the bare minimum.

Why didn’t I find Trevor’s blog funny? (BTW Trevor: it’s not a weg, nor will it ever be a weg. Are your repeated references to ‘weg’ your attempt to be funny or have you been misinformed?)

Quick internal aside:

Jesus fucking God when am I going to be done with this review?

Let’s just get this over with already: click on ‘Ranked’ in AAYSR's header and scroll down to ‘anti-humour’ you will find a lot has already been written, which sums up my feelings about Trevor’s blog.

For example,

1. “If you tell me you’re funny, you already suck.”

Trevor: it’s a bit audacious to describe yourself as the love child of George Carlin and Dave Barry; and when you fail to deliver, you just come off as pretentious.

2. “Fucking tries too hard and fails miserably”

Trevor: you have a varied vocabulary. Good for you. The way you use it though makes you sound contrived. Here’s a teensy example of how your choice of words pain me.

"Hmmm," you muse.
...

"Yes," I aver, tiring of the conceit.

Sometimes, authenticity in writing requires you put your dog-eared copy of Roget's back on the shelf. Maybe you should try it.

3. Trevor “with your fantastical nonsense, I sense you are sitting there, buttocks clenched, waiting to be told how wonderful you are. So here goes: You're not really. You could be, but we’ll come back to that.”

Trevor, I don’t think you don’t have a sense of humour. I simply think it’s limited to recognising funny, rather than being funny. You find some outlandish, funny-in-its-wackiness stuff out there. If your blog were just a compendium of links to the stuff you find funny, I might like it more.

You, however, feel compelled to add your own narration. You are not a bad writer. You seem to follow grammatical conventions. You use commas and apostrophes and italicised print in all the right places. It's your tone that doesn't sit well with me. My ears hear immaturity trying real hard to be all grown up. Your use of sarcasm is bland and flat. If you're going to be sarcastic, make it wither shit on the vine. Sarcasm needs to be biting as hell, otherwise, it's just a sign of the sad aloofness of someone trying too hard to be cool.

I suspect that if you shed the whole 'humour' blog persona, you would write more freely, perhaps gain some confidence, and maybe even have something interesting to say.

A couple of quick fixes could be made: put something about you in your About page. As it is now it tells us shit all that we can't figure out from a two minute scan of your blog. And as Rassles wrote to another un-funny "I’m like motherfuckin’ Encyclopedia Brown. Give us an “About Me” page ..."

Finally, consider changing the graphic in your banner. Write in the Kisser is a clever(ish)title, but the way the graphic presents it, it reads Write Kisser In The.

I'm giving you the short bus. I wish it hadn't taken me so long.








* Sincere thanks to Madame Bellicose, Love Bites, Father Gene, and Rassles for paving the un-funny road before me.

Wishing You Could, But You Didn't.

Today, we are lucky to have Ellie from The Daily Smoke lending out her subtle, hushed expertise in the form of a review.


This morning I arrived for a business meeting with 40 minutes to spare. I hadn’t thought to bring a book or buy a paper. Fortunately, the sun was shining, and there was a bench. I resigned myself to sitting. In the sun. Luxuriating. A couple of minutes after sitting down and telling myself not to check my watch, I was startled by a flash of black fur and a rustling in the bushes near my bench. A young cat emerged and sauntered over to what I would have thought was a pile of stones, but turned out to be a pile of cat food that some nice person must have dumped for the gastronomic delight of the feral cats living in the bushes of this metropolitan business park. I sat and watched a total of 5 mature kittens come and go, munch on kibbles, sniff each others’ butts, and silently prey on insects (or something else) I couldn’t see. Before I knew it, my 40 spare minutes had passed. I went inside to get my visitor’s pass.

At some point as I sat on that bench, I thought about this review. I wondered where I would start. Whilst watching a couple of cats sniff each others’ asses, I worried about the reception I would receive. I thought I would start by saying, “Be gentle. This is my first time.” Then I told myself not to be ridiculous: it might be my first time, but it’s up to me to decide to be gentle or not. Now, I reassess: it’s really not up to me. It’s all down to Nate. It’s his bed; he made it; he’ll lie in it.

Nate’s blog isn’t great, but it’s not awful either. “Uninspiring” springs to mind, which, considering the topic, is possibly the most damning of adjectives. Nate intends to change the world. I’m afraid his blog is a little bit like Obama’s presidential election campaign: no matter how many times Nate chants, ‘Yes we can! Hope. Change. Hope. Change.’ he’s not going to make a dent on the American psyche. At least not this American’s psyche.

Presentation:

Itstartswith.us is more than blog. It’s a “project” and as such has a series of navigation options. There is an ‘about Nate’ page, an ‘about this site’ page, and a separate, general ‘about’ link. There are links to twitter and Facebook, a ‘Change the World’ link and one for ‘Partners’. It’s all a little overwhelming. I didn’t know exactly where to start.

The template for the blog section is different from the project template, which is cleaner and more professional. Nate has filled the blog’s margins with a lot of crap. Clean it up, Nate. You’re technically savvy so try to better integrate the blog template with the overarching project template.

There are a few links that require you download PDFs and another to download the ‘ebook’. You’ve got to be kidding me. You want me to download something? Forget about it. I’m here to read a blog not clutter up my hard drive.

Writing:

Nate deserves kudos for his writing. He writes well. He gets his message across. Neatly and concisely, even if he overuses ‘cool’ and ‘awesome’

Content:

Nate’s ‘About Me’ page made me smile. I like that he likes cheesecake and milk and wears hats. After that, I grew weary of the platitudes. It’s the same old thing over and over again. Nate makes references to feel good stories without making me feel anything about them. I like the idea of doing nice things like feeding stray cats or providing critical medical attention to women in Afghanistan. Nate's aggregation of 'inspiring' examples and 'words to live by' falls flat mainly because he fails to get specific. He talks about big ideas and passion. Nate: stop talking about other people's stories and tell their stories.

I’m not a likely convert; I’m a bit cynical. Even so, I like your sentiment. I believe you can make a difference in the lives of those around you. Just not with this blog. I'd rather be watching cats.

For where your heart's at, I give you a pat on the back and a hug. For your writing I give you a couple stars and maybe some confetti.

But for the fit of narcolepsy I suffered as I really tried to give you the fair shake you deserve, I give you a 'Meh'. Sorry.