Hide and Seek in Flatland

So, I’m clinically a psychopath, a friend impassively informed me over instant messenger. I got tested and stuff.

“Oh yeah?” I replied, equally coolly. “Congrats?”

Mhmm. You might wanna watch out. Apparently being close to a psychopath can ‘negatively impact your life.’

“I’m not too concerned. I can’t see you torturing and eating my pets any time soon, and I can handle anything else.”

I don’t need to torture animals for amusement; there’s an infinite amount of entertainment on the Internet. Plus they wouldn’t be very tasty. He paused for a moment in what seemed to be a thoughtful way. (Though, it’s hard to tell when your conversation partner exists solely as a screen name.) The best thing about this is that my parents have stopped asking if I feel guilty for making bad decisions that impact their lives.

I almost want to offload this review on him. I’m not sure I have the heart to stick to the Ask attitude for this blog, and he – being officially diagnosed with a chronic lack of empathy – could maintain that attitude well.

“Reality Hide and Seek” is written by Sheri: a woman with bipolar disorder in her early 50’s, who posts a mix of medical information, journal entries, baking, inspiration and the kind of comics that distant relatives leave in my inbox. She’s got a link to Cute Overload in her sidebar and spends her weekends on a hobby farm with her boyfriend, fer godssake. It’s as if my own grandmother asked me to beat her with a shoe every time her homemade soup turns out a little bland. I appreciate that people want honest feedback, but I’m more accustomed to judging spoiled twenty-somethings, not making a business of swearing at grandmothers who are battling mental health issues.

Fuck you for making me feel bad, Sheri.

At one point in the conversation with aforementioned friend I said, “Well it could be worse. At least you’re not bipolar or schizo. Those people come off as actually crazy, while you’ll just come off as kind of a dick.” Sheri doesn’t come off crazy, so much as frustrated and depressed. This is, in many ways, probably better for her personally, though it doesn’t make for very good reading material.

Sheri can write: she has a clear, crisp voice that makes her posts accessible, if somewhat distant. I guess the thing that’s missing is any sort of passion. A woman who has lived for over fifty years should have some experiences and stories to share. She should have some unique insights to offer the reader as a well-developed personality who has had a rich, long life. But, I certainly can’t blame Sheri for not having thrilling tales of adventure when it’s an accomplishment to shower every day. Instead we get what is essentially a public journal about how it sucks to have mental health issues.

There are occasional hints at something larger: an insight, a passionate description, a silly memory, an inspirational tale. I was surprised to find a single piece of fiction buried deep in the archives, and every now and then is a flash of poetry or some drawings. But, such things are sprinkled lightly throughout rather than being the majority. There is a fair bit of good, and very little bad, but the two are overwhelmed with a cascade of blank, distant writing that coaxes no emotion from my breast.



I know you can write, Sheri. You are smart, you have the creative talent, and you have a voice. Use them more often and you can build something that will touch the lives of others.

Addendum:
If I were to forcefully maul any one thing on this blog, it would be the template. The base of it is inoffensive enough, (where “inoffensive” means “modest and boring”) but the 20+ badges on the sidebar do that thing where they stretch the page to a ridiculous length. Your sidebar is literally over 7 feet long. I measured. So you could either trim some of that stuff away (your tag cloud could use a bit of spring cleaning), or arrange it in the footer or something so that your blog isn’t two feet taller than I am.

Jidhu What Jighotta Do

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

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

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

This is what he had to say for himself:

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

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



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

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

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

Well, shit.

I don’t know.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Good luck.

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

Here you go:

The Holy Shit Trinity of HoHum

The Yogi Zone is really not one blog, but three. And yet it is still one. It’s a paradox.

What I mean by this is that thematically, and subject matter wise, Yogesh Patwari has had phases.

The first phase, and by far the least interesting of them all, to me at least, was what appears to be some sort of note taking exercise, a recording for posterity of the events surrounding his completion of undergraduate education and interviewing for varying institutes of further higher learning. These entries are written in a sloppy shorthand, in which no acronym is spelled out or explained and in which it is apparently okay to abbreviate capriciously. Holding me at an even longer arm’s length away, it appears that he’s applying to an MBA program, so much of the subject matter of the interviews he relates is all about topics that I am sure would be fascinating to an MBA candidate.

But not to me.

Oh, and when he relays something that was spoken by someone else, he writes it in transliterated Hindi. I don’t read Hindi. Even getting Google Translate to translate it for me is a chore since I first have to convert it from its transliterated form and then translate it. And quite frankly, I could not be bothered.

YogiZone Phase #1 gets an emphatic Proud Rider of the Short Bus.



The second phase is all about Yogesh's life in the Indian Institute of Management Bangalore (IIMB), where our intrepid scholar finds himself surrounded by geeked out engineering students, harder work and lower grades than he had anticipated, misanthropic birthday rituals, and fewer dating options than he had hoped for.

In this phase, he occasionally gets political, particularly about the caste-based reservation system in higher education (for you westerners, think Equal Opportunity or Quotas) as opposed to his ideal meritocracy.

This phase is much more interesting then the last, as he spends much of his time detailing what life at IIMB is like, posting pictures, etc. It reads a bit like a Bangalore version of Tom Brown’s School Days. And it seems to reach its finale with him on the job hunt as he approaches the end of his schooling. And then he finishes at IIMB, filled with mixed emotions.

And then he goes silent for two years.

YogiZone Phase #2 – I don’t know how to rate you. You amuse occasionally, and you annoy occasionally. You drive me crazy with non-sequiturs and murky writing. You force me to do a shit load of homework to even find out what the hell it is that you’re talking about. And yet, I was interested. In the same way I find watching foreign films interesting. I know nothing about the context, and yet life in other parts of the world is fascinating. So there’s that. My inner anthropologist gave you a single star for this section, but my inner editor took it away.

(This is the space where a star would have been if the editor had not redacted it.)

The third phase of the Yogi Zone forces us to believe that within two years Yogesh has gone from a sad sack loser who couldn’t buy a date to a married working man, detailing what life is like in Mumbai and odd people he encounters commuting to work or in the process of finding a place to live. Just out of the blue, he mentions a wife and starts offering marital advice.

I found this segue fascinating and disconcerting at the same time. Almost as if two years after the original Yogesh abandoned his blog, Bizarro Yogesh found the log in information and in essence hacked the account. Working against this theory is that he still insists on writing whole conversations in Hindi. Which I am not going to translate.

Since this phase seems to be the living breathing part of this blog, this is where I am going to focus my advice.

But then I read this little snippet, written in June, right around the time that this review was requested, and it gives me pause:

“I have listed my blog on all these blog directories on the net (in the hope of getting the most coveted of all prizes for bloggers around the globe - traffic!).”

It makes me wonder, what advice I, an ugly westerner, can offer you to improve. Or do you think that your shit doesn’t stink as is?

Well, guess what, sir. You are wrong, sir. I have smelled your shit, sir, and it doth smell of shit.

• Know your audience. You submitted to a western, English speaking audience for a review of your blog, which is liberally peppered with Hindi. I don’t expect you to write only in English or only in Hindi, but how the hell am I supposed to rate you when I don’t know what you’re saying 10% of the time? How would you have liked it if I had written this review in Romanian or Korean? I get it – people in other countries speak other languages. But why did you submit for a review HERE? Oh yeah, the traffic.
• This one’s a bit less concrete, but you have some amusing things to say, but often the amusing stuff is packed in with a bunch of dreck. Several of your posts ran out of steam long before you ran out of words. Others forced me through too many mental calisthenics before getting to the payoff. Edit thyself. Not every word is sacred.
• Find something real to write about. Almost every post here is a diary entry. There is no soul. Perhaps that’s on purpose. Perhaps you fear revealing yourself to the world. But Yogi, if you want my affection, you must give of yourself. And, aside from conveying frequent feelings of anxiety and inadequacy, you don’t give us anything of yourself.

Overall, I found the final phase of this blog disappointing, shallow, and pointless. Unless you’re an MBA living in Mumbai, looking for same, for sharing amusing-ish anecdotes. Which I am not.

After long and careful deliberation, I have no choice but to award you the Abercrombie poseur rating. Blogging does not make you cool, in and of itself. Sorry.

I'll keep your resume on file should something more fitting become available

Dear Ms. Adarkcomedycalledlife,

Thank you for your interest in the position available for New Blogger In My Reader. I am pleased to inform you that we have finally had the chance to consider your application and I do apologize for the delay, but we have been absolutely inundated with applications for this post. Furthermore, as you may know, school funds have been recently cut and, with the teacher layoffs and the cutbacks and all, well, I've fallen a little behind despite all the overtime I'm pulling, knee deep in copyright infringement, xeroxing workbooks 'til the wee hours.

You may be aware that the New Blogger In My Reader position is highly sought after, considering that I am one busy ass motherfucker that doesn't have time to read things that put me to sleep and there are literally millions of applicants to consider. To be quite frank, while you possess many positive skills and traits, I just don't think you're a suitable fit for the position. But in all fairness, I'm willing to keep your resume in the applicant pool for other positions if I can get some clarification on the lingering doubts I have regarding your, uh, material:

Why? Why? Why? Why? Why?

Come on now, focus. Why the fuck?

Let me pose another question for you to percolate over: Do you find that when you are reading those books you are always tiresomely blogging about that the authors give page after page of mind-numbing lists where the reader is required to piece together the tattered scraps of an almost-narrative because the author is too lazy to do it for them? Do you think you would want to read a book like that? I didn't think so.

Regarding your blog title, how severe do you think my funny bone blue balls were upon realization that your blog does not actually contain one smidgeon of dark humor? You showed up for the interview at least looking like you'd showered, a neat enough sidebar without overwidgetification, and you weren't wearing a pink polka dot suit or anything. I had such hopes that this would go well, but then why did you have to go and open your suck hole?

For the purpose of brevity and to not overwhelm you with too many questions to reflect on, I have one remaining issue that needs clarifying: What in the hell is the point of continuously blogging about blogging? If blogging is really all you think about, why not consider focusing on the actual writing and storytelling aspect so that your blog will grow its own wings and not need you whimpering in the background about the tedium of the activity of blogging itself which no doubt dizzies your readers in a circular cycle of redundant redundancy? Hint: endless meme-type posts where you tag a bunch of people is not storytelling, it's lazy ass blogging. And well, given the workload, I just don't think I can add a lazy blogger to my team at this time.

While you're thinking these things through, I will give you an initial score so you can know how you fared for this particular position and more or less where you stand with our firm. But I hope you do not get discouraged and are willing to consider other positions that may become available in the near future such as Rambling Lady On My Street Corner or Forgettable Person At The Bus Stop.








Otherwise, best of luck with your continued search for a position in people's readers.


Yours sincerely,

MadameB
Director of the Hiring Committee for My Fucking Reader

I was so much older then, I'm younger than that now

Trillian,

I realize you're only 16. That makes it easier for me to forgive some of your more angsty or boycrazy moments, since we've all been at "that age".

But you presumptuously call yourself a writer and you've submitted your blog to be critiqued here, so I'm going to attempt to treat you like an adult and be bluntly honest because I genuinely like you and think you deserve that.

Have you noticed that as soon as you were diagnosed with bipolar disorder (over a year ago), you have written about little else and your blog has become super emo? I'm not trying to discount your illness, but do you have anything else going on in your life that you could possibly write about?

UN Peace Mission to Bombay but never write about it. You do the same thing with a school trip to Singapore. You actually write about a school trip to Malaysia, but it ends up coming across as a journal entry where you literally talked about cute boys and what you bought when you went shopping at the mall. Where are the hilarious stories involving the people you met? Where are the descriptions of the things you saw on your trips, written so I can imagine being there?

Hell, you even spent some time locked up in an institution of sorts, and all you could do is give us a description of the people who were there with you. You've given me a cast of characters, but no actual play. I feel gypped.

I'm frustrated, because I know you can write. You use correct spelling and grammar, which is amazing when most of the reviewers get stuck with the blogs of grown-ass adults who have no fucking clue. You write about things other people are scared to. You can turn a phrase beautifully and take pride in your writing when you take the time. I want more of this.

But 80% of the time, you only talk about your current mental state or write pretentious pseudo-artist crap. I'm not sure if you've noticed, but we don't have a lot of patience for people who think writing about their angst makes them deep, introspective and unique.

Here's some big-sisterly advice from someone who's dealt with depression herself: if you wallow in shit, your cuts are only gonna get infected.

I'm not telling you to repress what you're feeling, but just to avoid things that trigger your depression and anxiety. Yes, writing about pain sometimes helps one deal with it, but there's a difference between that and relishing the pain to the extent that you end up defining yourself by it. And you really have much more potential than just a fucking definition, chica.

While we're on the subject of immersing yourself in your drama, why aren't your comments set to be moderated? Since you have an ongoing problem with trolls, it makes me think you enjoy the antagonism.

The problem is . . . I actually agree with the trolls half the time. I don't agree with how abusive they are, but I can see where they're coming from. You mention your maids, your tailor, spending a shit ton of money on shopping, and your FIVE expensive cameras. True, you have a mental illness and abusive/emotionally distant parents, but nonchalantly acting like a rich bitch makes it hard for me to feel that much sympathy for you.

Some more big-sister advice: I really think you should do some volunteer work for people less fortunate than yourself. It'll help put things into perspective, give you something to do other than think about your drama and provide blog fodder that will probably be more interesting to your readers.

And PLEASE, PLEASE, PLEASE, take your fucking pills. Who gives a shit if you get fat? Imagine all the mentally ill people who can't afford their medication. You being flippant about your pills is completely offensive and makes you look like a self-indulgent princess.

Anyway . . . because I actually, truly, love it when you quote a relevant song, book, or poem at the end of your posts, these are for you:


You are not a beautiful and unique snowflake. You are the same decaying organic matter as everyone else, and we are all a part of the same compost pile.






That I must be their scourge and minister.
I will bestow him, and will answer well
The death I gave him. So again good night.
I must be cruel only to be kind.
Thus bad begins and worse remains behind.

Excerpts from my overwhelming emotion

I was reading this blog. Well, actually I was reading the excerpts from the blog! I know! I know! It’s confusing! I assumed this meant that the real blog was somewhere else and what I was reading was just the crème de la crème! Well, let me tell you, I felt a mix of confusion and excitement and kept on reading! My heart was beating out of my chest! And boy oh boy was I glad I persevered!

You see, Nilu is an Indian lady living in America with a swell family and shitloads of words of wisdom! She's a real funny gal! I’m not gonna tell you why. How about you just take my word for it? Because, you see, that’s kinda how she writes. She just tells us something was funny or great without actually transmitting any of the humor or emotion of the situation at all. But you know what? The exclamations points themselves were enough for me to know just how goddamn exciting everything was! Oh man alive! You wouldn’t believe how much!

I know some of you will think some of her posts are downright idiotic, but I don’t care! Some of you may think that the only funny thing she has ever written was the screamingly inappropriate letter that nearly got her fired from her job two hours before her shift ended on her last day of work! Not true! After an hour of perusing her blog, I know the truth! Besides, who needs good storytelling when we have superlative forms of punctuation!?!?








Thank God I only had to read the excerpts.

Beating the Meat Puppets

Hey. Haven't had enough of me yet? How the hell is that possible? But ... ah, fuck it.

While you're here, I have two questions for you.

• Do you enjoy watching people relentlessly beating the shit out of each other?


• Do you think that Jackass is really funny?

If you answered "yes" to both of these questions, then JohnnyKage.com might be right up your alley. If not, perhaps I could suggest other, more productive ways to spend your time. Like removing your own spleen with a rusty fishhook.

When I first started delving into this mess, it took me a good long time before I even knew what the fuck I was looking at, so to help you ADD afflicted types out, let me provide you with the About page that Johnny Kage never really bothers with. (Although this deeply buried "kinda-sorta" best of page might prove enlightening.)

Johnny Kage is the stage name of a real life Mixed Martial Arts (or, 'MMA' for short -- something I didn't figure out until I had read about a month's worth of material) fighter. A quick Google search will reveal to you his real name, so I feel fine telling you all that it is Frank Colcher, and that he's from Toronto. There are some YouTube videos of him, and from what I can see, I probably wouldn't try to steal his girlfriend or key his car, as he could probably fuck me up pretty good. Yeah, I know. Me. Scorpio Woperchild may have met my better in the physical arena. Go figure.

Depending on which Google search you believe, he's had a reasonably successful career. So, JohnnyKage.com is, apparently, a space where he and a few of his fellow MMA buds can promote themselves and rip on each other. There are around four or five contributors, and some are better than others, but they are all connected via their love for MMA. And belittling each other.

The resulting melange is sometimes entertaining, but usually, for me, it isn't. I don't honestly care to hear grown men and women trying to trade barbs by calling each other gay or by implying that one or another of them has aids. Truthfully, I felt like I was hanging out with a bunch of guys I don't know trade inside jokes for a couple of days.

Then there are the stories -- the fictionalized accounts of Johnny Kage's life which read a bit like The Wonder Years, if it had been Hunter S. Thompson who had created that show. And that sort of diarrhea may appeal to a few of you, but while reading it, my Give-A-Shitter snapped in two. (New parts are on order from Romania. I should have them in about ten days.)

I don't think I get it. I mean, am I the only one who sees irony in this little piece?

The fact is, in over a year, this site which started out with this gem of a prophecy -- "What is the website about? nobody involved is quite sure yet" -- has not really found a clear identity, unless it is just community building in the MMA world.

I might simply not be in the target demographic. So be it.

I am probably selling this thing short, but I get to call it like I see it. And what I see is a template that sucks to read (think first generation MySpace), too much fucking clutter, an archive designed to thwart anyone who might want to delve into it, poor grammar and spelling and punctuation, a lack of a clear-cut cohesive identity, and way too many videos that don't entertain me. This site is way too much trying to be cool, and not anywhere near enough actual cool for me. And putting this review together was a chore, not a pleasure.

As for a rating, AAYSR doesn't have one that genuinely applies. I don't entirely hate on this mess, so the Flaming Finger or Go Fuck Yourself is a bit too strong, and MEH isn't quite strong enough. Best I can do is give you a mash-up between the flaming finger, a turd, and the sentiment behind the MEH...

The result? I bring you, the Flaming Turd of Apathy!