Tales of a Bionic Testicled Shoe Shiner

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

But by all means, keep doing this.

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

Am I evil?

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

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

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

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

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

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

I'm still not kissing your ring though.

I was bound to love someone sooner or later

The work week flies by and I’m hardly awake. I have the feeling that my life is being lived; passive tense. By Sunday night I already know exactly where I’ll be at any given moment for the next six days. In fact, not a single decision needs to be made because it’s already all figured out and has very little to do with what I really feel like doing.

My life is a high-speed blender of quasi-obligations of my own creation because I'm trying to resemble the person I used to be convinced that I was going to be someday. You know, the one that actually does shit instead of sitting around moaning about how the years are going by and what the fuck am I doing with my life and since when do I have fat there? This leaves a couple of hours per day to unwind and I’m having to decide if I’d rather sit for a couple more hours per day in front of the pterygium-inducing computer blogging or spend them with the school janitor who is now exclusively working from home and needs human interaction when I get home, even if in the form of a brutal love-beating.

Blogging has sort of lost the battle for me. I’ll be honest. It hasn’t only been about finding time. Many of my most inspiring blogging friends have dwindled away from their spaces and finding new bloggers who are just as good is exhausting. I’m hanging in here on the blogosphere by a tattered string and it’s been a long damn time since I’ve found a good new blog that makes me want to spend time in this cyber world, want to somehow fit it into my day, want to dust off the old blogroll which has become an antique collection and add a new link. Finding good blogs regularly had a recursive effect on my own desire to write. I wanted to write for the writers that I thought were amazing. I wanted to see if someone that good thought I was any good. I wanted to share a part of myself with those who were so generously sharing the really naked parts of themselves with me.

This brings us to today and this review that I didn’t want to do; this review that got pushed to the end of the queue in favor of work and yoga classes and exercise videos and stupid fucking French lessons and preparing meals that don't suck.

I had hoped this would take me an hour or less to pump out with a MEH or a GO FUCK YOURSELF. And then I read this and realized it was going to take a lot longer because I was going to need to read it all and in reading I began to remember why I was drawn to blogging to begin with. I remembered the feeling of discovering that there were real people out there living their lives, people I would never otherwise cross paths with: they were nurses and bikini waxers and stay-at-home dads and cancer survivors and ex-addicts and expats that had some kind of communicative gift that made me want to know everything about them, that made me hope that in some way I could be like them too. The ones I was drawn to the most were simultaneously funny yet serious, introspective but only by looking at others, wanting yet altogether grateful, and especially the ones that were prone to sometimes hysterical reflections on their own inherent contradictions.

Michelle is a self-proclaimed work in progress and she puts that work in progress forth for the world to read, totally and utterly unselfishly. Sure, she tends to get a little rambly, and maybe sometimes I want to beat her within an inch of her ability to modify her font sizes and colors. Maybe she has no About Me page for some dumb reason and maybe 90% of what makes up her template confuses me. Maybe she gets all Wordless Wednesday-ie and Friday Fragmenty and maybe sometimes I want to shake her into giving me a real title to a synthesized post. Maybe she's raging against a bunch of machines I'm just not raging against (one of them apparently being the fascism that is punctuation) but for the most part she's able to richly convey her rage and it's all her and so be it.

These easily-fixed annoyances aside, what I love the most about Michelle is that she's whole grain bread, man. She hasn't been processed into just giving us the sweet fluffy palatable side of her. She's heavily textured and is grainy going down and she's replete with all the integral parts that complete a real live person and not a persona: brains, toenails, warts, kidneys, heart, soul, sadness, joy, fears, and frustrations. The great majority of her posts are pieces to the great big yummy pie that I'm always harping on people around here for not fucking giving up and so I'm not holding back now for a few punctuation and font problems. Are you kidding? I have been wanting to do this dirty little deed for a long damn time so here you go, Michelle, here is my IFLY virginity.






An artist is only good to the extent that they are generous with what's inside them; they don't save what they have for another post, another drawing, another project, another day. They give 100 % of what makes them who they are each and every time they start the creative process. And this, My Dear Askers, is what it has taken to drag this old rusty blogger back to the blogosphere, to shake me and take hold of me and say nope your not done here yet.

And now, inspired, with my IFLY cherry popped, I'm off to dust off my poor forgotten blog and see if I can't pump some life into that fucker and visit some of my favorite bloggers who are still writing their hearts out who I have missed so.

Grass Stains

We are not amused. It’s August now and the sky is sulking like a petulant little bitch, her windy runt of a lapdog cocking its quivering leg and pissing down on poor Fanny and I as we are forced to abort yet another ruddy picnic and stagger back home through the mud and the filth to seek shelter by the three-bar fire and comfort in cocoa and gin. I swear on Fanny’s deep fat fryer that if I ever make it to heaven I will seek out St Swithin and punch him in the face.

When I was a whelp we had proper summers, endless ice-cream days of adventure. Fish bobbed and birds sang, bluebirds fastened our braces and lemonade tasted of lemons. And oh, the girls, the summer girls! All salt and skinned knees and little sunburnt snouts. That’s what I need, you know, to cure me of this malaise. I need a summer girl with feathers in her hair and frogs in her pockets to come and hold my parasol and put the Tabasco back in my Pimms.

And lo! What have we here? It’s Geo, who might be familiar to you from her comments on this very site. Not that her commenting here will make a difference to my review, you understand – if anything I will have to be particularly harsh to avoid accusations of favouritism. I do not believe in favourites. Just ask my Fanny.

Before we go any further, I must warn you that there is poetry ahead. Of course, whenever one attempts to inject a little poetry into proceedings one runs the risk of being called pretentious. Poetry can be dreadfully embarrassing. It is the kind of thing one keeps under one’s bed, along with the evidence and the books one reads with the hand. But we have known each other long enough not to have to rehash old material. You know my feelings on this. Poetry is bread and salt to me, the fodder and the savour, and I read it because it makes me better.

Geo is a poet, and by that I do not just mean that she writes poems – I mean she takes the world and boils it down to stock, serves it back up as a clean and elegant soup seasoned with her own special ingredients. She is delicious, and she nourishes me. Besides the poems she serves up delicate little parings of prose, juicy toothfuls that capture the fleeting moments of poetry and passion and the glory of the mundane. She has a trousseaux of treasured things, images, words and ideas that she takes out from time to time and holds up to the light and she, like Moomintroll, understands that sometimes gold looks better when seen through dirty water.

Of course, things are never perfect. I have a few minor quibbles that I feel I should raise. Some are of the ‘it’s not you, it’s me’ variety – Geo is a little boy-crazy at times, but I suppose that goes along with the territory. I would probably be boy-crazy too, if I was young and beautiful and the sun was shining and Fanny was looking the other way. I would also like to never again have to read a recounted dream. ‘Tell a dream, lose a reader’, as someone who might have been Henry James once said. I skip over anything that begins ‘Last night I dreamt...’ unless it’s Daphne du Maurier. If you must recount a dream, just do it without telling me it was a dream.

There is a sense throughout Geo’s blog that she is sometimes doodling, that this is a sketchbook in which she records ideas for development later on. I would recommend that she keeps them in her pocket for a little bit longer and fingers them to a brighter sheen. Speaking of doodles, Geo has another blog where she keeps her artwork. Her pictures pleased me terribly and I would hang some of them on my walls. This would look lovely in the oubliette. I wish Geo did not separate her art and her words. I think her drawings would go very well accompanied by poems, vignettes, strange little stories. They each feed the other.

However, none of this really matters (well, some of it does), because what Geo does well, what she does far, far better than any other blogger I have reviewed here is hold up her world to me in the palms of her hands so I can have a right old sniff at every last bit. There may well be dissention in the ranks on this, but I think that when she is good, she is very bloody good.

I had a good hard think about the rating I would award Geo. Of course, there were things I would like to change, but is it fair to expect perfection where it is not intended? In the end, one has to follow one’s heart on these things (if one can find it), and I am a bit in love with Geo. If I were several decades younger I wouldn’t leave her alone. She makes me want to get more fresh air.

I fucking love you.

Most of us have jobs that are too small for our spirits.*

Oh, I’m going to get shit for this one, readers. I can feel it. Your frustration is inevitably palpable. So before we go crazily into details on today's reviewee, I am going to give you a blurb about the kinds of blogs that keep me engaged.

As far as individual entries go, I prefer blog posts with high tension and distinct personal energy. Sometimes they're sonnets, entries that flow around like a Midgard serpent, sometimes they're brief and ironic. But each of them have one very, very distinguishing characteristic that carries on throughout their whole blog: these people tell fucking stories with that incorporeal business that the collective They refers to as Voice.

Voice is hard to come by. It takes fuckloads of character to swing properly without resorting to cheap gimmicky tricks that you play for the clicks (that means memes, you a-holes). When someone has Voice, you don't need bullets for family members or fucking TMI days or favorite things to masturbate to on a Saturday, because you can glean the personality the writers want to portray distinctly based upon their writing. Voice does not require a colossal vocabulary, it does not require a battalion of metaphor. It's fueled by spirit. Or spirits. Whatever.

Sure, sometimes the blog itself is a gimmick. Perhaps it's one that may spiral into something more personal someday. But for now, Confessions of a Cashier is exactly what it says on the tin, and I love it.

Our Cashier has a voice that is effortlessly plain and snarky and completely effective at painting a life working at a gas station convenience store. This woman is...how do I put this? It's like she's an alert but lazy Scottish Terrier who aspires to be a hardcore Doberman, and ends up doing the job of a dumbass bulldog. And she knows it, and plays up to it on a level she established herself, without "Awesome Sauce" and "I'm just sayin" and all those other fucking ridiculous idioms. She doesn't say "I'm crazy, but you love me!" or "I'm a bitch, deal with it!" or make any unjustified claims. In fact, there are limited claims and exclamations throughout the entire blog. Thank you, from depths of my guts thank you, I loveyousomuch.

She goes on power trips and exacts meager revenge on annoying-ass customers. She's passive aggressive and resigned to the inevitable, she plays mind games with idiots and invents words that I am totally going to start using in everyday life. I am obsessed with her.

Sure, there are, very few, extraneous commas, and perhaps, a poor word choice, sometimes. But fuck if I don’t give a shit. There's that generic feminine template with those girly swirls that look like tramp stamps. I'd like to see something that's a bit more laminate and drab, with like, a popping header. Maybe I'll try to dig something up. Oohhh, but maybe the tramp stamp look is perfect...okay, same template, but stick with just black and white.

She's been blogging since the beginning of the year, and at first things were a little bit clunky and formal, but since then she's loosened and softened. I found myself copying the links to entries and typing little notes like, "relay that conversation or tell those stories you mention and throw away like pizza crust - bitch, pizza ain't pizza without effing crust" and then, like I fucking incepted the idea in her brain or something, because I totally did, there it is: she has the conversation instead of saying she had a conversation, and I had to grab my totem to make sure I wasn't dreaming, because I love it when people listen to me without me telling them to do so.

So get out your vexation with me now, haters. I love me a solid, lucid blog, one that's not trying to be someone else. She gets it done.








* title courtesy of Studs Terkel.

In Which a Continent is Redeemed

I've been reading a couple of blogs written by Americans who had moved to Australia. It's been strange for me to see them write about their hosts as if they were normal people, considering my personal experience with the Down Unders. I've never told them about my Australian problem, because I'm a lover, not a fighter. But here it is now. My Australian story.

Fifteen years ago, I had been living in London, playing in a band that was going to rule the world. But just for a short time. We knew that very soon, all of us were going to have our names etched in rock encyclopedias. Then we were going to disappear. Some of us were going to live past the ancient age of 30, but even then, we'd live off royalties in secluded farm houses in Wales, because society sucked and nothing made sense and to be happy in a world gone bad meant to be blissfully unaware.

Many of the blissfully ignorant fools who were in London to have FUN had a particular name and accent. Their London wasn't about Keith Moon and David Bowie and Nick Drake and Waterloo Sunsets and blood sweat and despair. Their London was a good place to get drunk and bang Czech au pairs.

So reading Veronica Foale's blog, called... Let's see... Oh, Veronica Foale... it's great to realize I've been wrong about the country all these years. There ARE real people in Australia. There are people who feel pain and write about their internal conflicts. There are people who question their priorities as they take note of what's important in their lives, never giving out the simple, acceptable answers. There are people who are not afraid of their shadows. There are self-aware people who try to find their places in the world and online.

And if there's one Australian woman with a burning desire to find (and lead us toward) THE TRUTH by bravely digging into her own personal truth, then the whole country is redeemed. Congratulations, Australia! You're off my shit list (even if your Australian savior is from Tasmania and not from the main land. You get a pass. Now get out of my face before I change my mind).

Now, I didn't read all the way to the beginning of the blog. I only read the latest five pages, which frankly were enough for me to realize that despite that teeth-crunchingly annoying Nuffnang ad on the top right, I fucking love Veronica.

(Now, I've had issues other than that redundant ad. Veronica writes another blog, which is her main one. My guess is that she felt constrained in her other blog and decided to start this one to break free and be able to return to the basics of honest writing. Fair enough. But maybe Veronica should make up her mind exactly what this blog is, because right now, writing three times a month, it is still not clear if this blog is anything more than an experiment in honest writing, and whether she is committed to the blog as much as she's committed to her other one, the real one. Or maybe this one is the real one? In any case, I've been torn between four stars and an IFLY button, because how can I give her an IFLY if she's not committed? But maybe this review will help her commit to the blog, and maybe the IFLY will make her doubts go away. And really, this blog was written so well, that only an IFLY made any sense.)

The Voices In My Head Can Be Wrong

Our first review after the departure of Love Bites comes not from me, but from one Jessica Gottlieb, who blogs over at, well, um, Jessica Gottlieb. Based on what I've gleaned from her blog, she's a regular fucking force paradox. Quite the feat, don't you think?

When Love Bites asked me to review The Real Suburban Housewives I said yes, but inside my head a voice was screaming no more housewives.

Thank gawd I don't listen to the voices inside my head.

The Real Suburban Housewives are real. From sandpaper pedicures, to kissing sweaty strangers for a discount in Cabo, these ladies are the neighbors you wish you had.

The housewive are awesome, and they're smart too. The blog is nice enough looking, posts are readable and every so often they give you some video too. How can you not love women who train their dogs?



To be fair, I'm not crazy about the music selection. There you go, The Real Suburban Housewives don't choose good music for their dogs to jack off to, they are imperfect. But not really.

The Housewives are an interesting bunch, but at the same time they're just like you and me. They aren't clear on why you pierce an infant's ears and they include recipes that make mornings easier.

If the internet wasn't made for the Real Suburban Housewives I just don't know what it's for.

I have one complaint/suggetion: when I click on each of the housewive's about me pages I'd love to then be sent directly to their posts.

When push comes to shove, I'm just delighted to waste an afternoon poking around the site, and if the navigation never works, I still fucking love you.

Roped in like a fashion model on an Ex-Lax farm

There are some things that I, your darling Fontaine, do not wish to read. Here's a list of just a few:

-The 'deep' thoughts and reflections of those in their 20's
-Those in their 20's talking about 'navigating' their 20's
-Those in their 20's stating they are searching for peace, happiness and love
-Pretty much anything written by those in their 20's

With this in mind, imagine my reaction when Madame Bellicose emailed to tell me I would be reviewing a blog called The View From Here this week. It is not one, but five, 20-something women blogging together. That's right, I said five 20-something women blogging together. It was as if someone suggested I allow myself to be stripped down naked, strapped to a dirty bed in an abandoned psych ward somewhere in the woods of New Hampshire, and willingly subject myself to the latest treatment of being spoon fed rusty barb wire by the innovative and caring Dr. Finger Fuck.

Now that I think about it, Dr. Finger Fuck and his 'treatment' seemed highly attractive compared to the notion of having to read a blog written by five 20-something women.

I wanted to crawl through my computer and turn Madame's trusty and snappy riding crop upon her face. Alas, I'm willing to do pretty much anything for 'Ask', and opened the link anyway.

And then I found myself watching a Jay Z video without having the reaction of wanting to wander off and get my laundry started due to being bored out of my wits. Why? There was nothing else to the post other than some little comment about having a pre-concert 'drank'.

And I got all riled up at Marion Barry all over again. Why? I've thought of him as a stupid, stank and rank Jenny since the 1980's. How did these reflecting and navigating 20-somethings rope me into this?

I even found myself watching an entire video clip of an Alexander McQueen fashion show and dreaming of, just once, strutting my stuff down the runway of anorexiaville while not giving two shits (unless, of course, I've been supplementing my eating disorder with Ex-Lax) that I look like a human toothpick that could be blown in half by a 2mph wind gust.

At the video's end I found myself slack jawed, wide-eyed and wondering, "Did that just happen to me? Did I just admire a fashion show? And actually dream of being in one? Sweet tap dancin' Jesus, how high am I?"

Indeed, five 20-somethings had roped me in and roped me in big. I lost all navigation of my own; not following my usual review protocol of rigid adherence to methodically picking through post after post, scouring the 'About' section, making notes, and then winding it all together for my review.

I simply started reading. I simply wanted more.

Rum Punch
Amaretto
mint julep
5 and a possible
courvoisier
Bellini

Who?Are?You?
I want to know what you did over the weekend. What concert you're going to next. What pains you about attempting to simultaneously respect the rules and live your own truth.

How did you get this quick and witty? You made me laugh out loud. A rarity in the world of blogging.

How did you know the best way to get an old broad like me to actually consider doing a little 40-something navigation of my own was to first entice me into dreaming of ripping the pants off of 'BSteve'? I actually found myself wondering what would have happened if I would R.S.V.P.'d in the affirmative to that invitation to Germany so many years ago, and even reconsidered putting off my trip to the Festival in the Desert another year. And no, none of you are welcome to call me an old broad, lest you want to be shamed into admitting you got bitch slapped by a 40-something whose rudder was off kilter.

Here's a word to you wise, witty, thoughtful and navigating ladies:

1. It's time to edit the shit out of your posts. Though you did rope me in, there were times when your brilliance was dulled by having to slog through lazy misspellings, improper grammar and syntax, and even lazier punctuation. I am using a post by Bellini as an example, but you are all guilty. Create a system of review of your own to help one another work out the kinks before you publish a post. (Yes, I know it's amazing that I'm actually suggesting the kink be taken OUT of a situation.)

2. Knock it off with anything blah. By that I mean I never, ever, ever want to read a post about "this happened and then this happened..." out of any one of you ever again. Did I say never? I mean it. I am more than disappointed that one of you posted this on the very day I am writing this review. This 'turn that frown upside down' crap about a lost i-pod, a snow storm and things being strange at work simply will not do. Ever. Never. Stop it. All of you.

3. Tighten up the information about yourselves and your blog. I do not recommend blowing your anonymity, but do think your blog could benefit from more concise descriptions of each one of you, and an overall 'About' page that describes just how brilliant you are, the reasons you are blogging, and what to expect. The blurb on the front page about blogging about 'everything and nothing' and the 'insane and mundane' is beneath you and your blog.

4. Keep going. I may forever prefer being spoon fed barb wire by Dr. Finger Fuck to reading the ramblings of a passel of 20-something women, but would be more than happy to keep this blog as one of my regular reads if you're willing to follow my instructions in 1, 2 and 3.

London is drowning and I live by the river

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.

But we unleashed a lion

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.

When the going gets weird, the weird turn pro.

So, um, hi? Miss me? Yeah, look, sorry about that. I kind of took an unintentional hiatus there. It's just, damn, there's this whole summer winding down thing and my rampant ennui and there was, like, stuff to do where I had to meet deadlines. And then I got this rager of a headache that totally incapacitated me and all. But, you know, sorry. Not your fault, guys. It's all me. Me and my excuses.

But I'm getting back into it, you know? Psyching myself up, getting pumped, giving myself a stern talking to about responsibilities and commitments and follow through and keeping my eye on the ball and strike first, strike hard, no mercy SIR!

And look! It's working. 'Cause here's my review.

Batspit. Bat spit? Bat's pit? Bats pit? I haven't a clue. I don't know what it means. I don't know why. Or how. The about page is short and sweet and doesn't tell me, so I'm left to my own devices, which means I think it's bat spit. But do bats even spit? If they do, is it venomous? Or is it rich in nutrients like their shit? Thoughts to think, stuff to ponder.

Whatever the hell it means, her site has a very minimalist design, and it's image-friendly, which is good because she posts a lot of her own photos. And they're pretty, with an interesting perspective.

The writing is much the same. Lea writes these poetic and nuanced and powerful posts about small things and big things. There are posts I can relate to, and her writing is spare and lovely. She's an anthropology student, which doesn't surprise me as her attention to detail is reverential and her interest in others palpable. Lea is a word nerd, and I have to love anyone who uses the word "skirr." I mean, honestly. Say it. Skirr. You want to roll the R, don't you? Lord knows I do.

I admit, I haven't read the whole thing yet. Yet, mind you. I fully intend to and I'm adding her to my reader. I started at the beginning and have worked my way up toward last November. I'm disappointed that she hasn't posted since August 13, but then who am I to talk, Miss Ennui Notbloggington herself? But Lea has captured the blogging crisis for academia, and for us. And she's so very, oh, what do I want to say... earthy and organic. There's nature and life and joy and detail, such pristine detail in her writing. It's like she's cupped the world in her hands and is examining it piece by piece as it comes along, taking its picture and putting it up close, close, close to her eye so she can see it and write about it and savor it just so.

So, what can I suggest for Lea? Just keep writing. I'll keep reading.

The giggle of eyelashes*

In graduate school I learned to sing the body electric. The program I attended was more about souls and songs and art and heart and expression than it was about lectures and footnotes and appendices and theses. We created and explored. We put font to music. We made books and paper and poetry.

At first, I balked at the artsy fartsyness of it all. I wanted to be a serious student, with serious success, large textbooks, late nights at the library over microfiche, bibliographic complexity. Instead I got professors who encouraged us to open class with an African blessing to the dawn, who wanted artistic presentations on feminist gods, who expected me to dig, dig, dig deep into wells of pain and self and remembrance and hope to create art. It was all so much kumbaya and not enough cross-referencing. At first. But gradually, with eye-rolls and exasperated huffs and hesitant inchings toward release, I succumbed to the power in their poetry, the worth of their wonder. And I'm a better writer for it.

Today's blogger reminds me of that time in graduate school, when I sloughed off some of that rigid academia to embrace the tickle of words. Maya at One Paragraph at a Time is a poet who would have fit in nicely with my crowd of wordmongers.

I hesitate to tell you her blog is almost entirely poetry. But wait! I know. I thought the same thing at first. A whole blog? Over four years of posts? With nothing but poetry? Pass. But stick with me here because Maya can write some damn poetry. I actually like it. Kind of a lot. Her writing is contemplative and introspective and deliberate and lovely and tactile and thoughtful. She writes about nostalgia and sex ("he was all hers, one locked muscle of utter fealty") and lies. Her poetry is honest and mature and revealing. Every word is revered, precisely chosen, and treasured.

I just read an entire blog of poetry. I can't believe it, either, but I did. And I loved it. Oh, the template is boring, and Maya could stand to roll up her archives. But the template doesn't even matter because her artistry is on the screen, in those words I want to roll around on my tongue, those words that delight my eyes. This is not some angsty teenage blithering with rhymed, insipid dreck. This is real, this is art, and this is good.








*My title is stolen from Maya @ One Paragraph at a Time.

I will write in blood on forgotten walls...

If I lose the light of the sun, I will write by candlelight, moonlight, no light. If I lose paper and ink, I will write in blood on forgotten walls. I will write always. I will capture nights all over the world and bring them to you. - Henry Rollins

Kelly is a writer. How do you preach to the converted?

I believe that blogging can transform your life, if you let it...It is through blogging that I learned to understand and accept my own narrative. Blogging is the accumulation of all of our stories, all that passes between us in posts and comments, in private e-mails, Facebook, and Twitter. All that we learn, all that we are.

I want to share this story, my story, so that maybe one person sitting out there in the audience hearing it, or you sitting at home reading it, realize. No matter the past you carry in the deep pockets of your own flesh, you have the right to lay it down. We are all scarred. We are all human. I just want you to know that there is someone out there who will understand. There are people that are listening.

I am one of them.

I don't even know how many times I've told some newby blogger, prickly feathers barely poking through their pink fleshed baby bird skin, that writing is healing. Writing, sharing your hurts, your story, your real heart--can set you free.

It has done so for me, and it can do so for others, who grasp ahold of the pen, the keyboard, and use it to free their souls.

What higher thing needs to be said here, about a blog? She writes. She is a writer.



Kelly: My only advice is this: you have a template with tabs, use them to hide your categories, contact info, photo credits, recent posts and other untidiness on the sidebar. Move your archives up, above the ads, so people can find them. Make it clear that you, not secret agent mommy, are the author of this blog (I find it confusing, photo credit should probably go lower in the blog sidebar or at the bottom).

The Finger In The Prince Albert Tin

The tenth year of my life was a dark and tortuous year for my tender, still fledgling soul. Leading up to that year, at the age of nine I had to confront my abusive father and declare that I would no longer be visiting him and taking the beatings he dished out. Then I turned ten.

Ten found my family moving to a new house, in a new town. A town where there was seemingly a church on every corner and all the kids seemed dirty and strange. We moved the summer before my fifth grade year and it was a long, painful, hot summer. Somewhere in that time my mother pulled away from the family, from herself and landed squarely in a mental hospital having tried to off herself in the middle of one desperate night. Being the oldest, I felt I had the weight of my heavy, upside down world sitting on my shoulders.

I turned inside myself and curled up in a ball. I spent hours reading. Being precocious in nature, I read books much too mature for my years. One book in particular will forever be seared into my soft ten year old insides. As the summer grew cool, I picked up The Other by Thomas Tryon. With book in hand, I spent days reading and absorbing the horror, the terror. I was too young to fully understand what I was reading but, I was terrified. I was utterly horrified and scared out of my little mind.

Suddenly? The world was a big, bad, mean place and I now understood that. The mind is a strange thing that can fail you at anytime, releasing the darkness from within. Darkness that you can produce but not even fully understand.

Reading today's blog gave me that same terrible chill that The Other did so many years ago when I was fragile and frightened. The blogger's 'About Me' only offers up this:

Sack Posset: I am a green glass bottle full of filth and bees.

And indeed she is. There is no sense in even going on about the template of this blog. Simply put, I doubt she cares.

Without much to go on, I started with reading a few of the current posts and was oddly intrigued. Wanting to know just exactly what, I was reading I went back to the beginning and it was there that I started the chilling voyage of Sack Posset.

Yesterday I saw the cat with the human face again. It watched me as I passed and it was still staring when I looked back over my shoulder. It insinuated itself into my dreams, where it tried to make me touch it in an inappropriate way and then disappeared under the bed.

It seems that the author is truly that, an author. An author who is deep in the mind of a serial killer, perhaps too deep. Skillfully crafted, the words flow into each other painting a picture of a mind so black and dirty, you feel intimately violated by the stark, fear inducing nothingness of her soul.

However, just like The Other did for me all those years ago, while I was petrified, I also felt wrapped in a web of comfort. I could see the spider closing in to sink it's teeth into my fly flesh, but I was paralyzed and couldn't do anything about it. And, you know what? I just didn't want to.

Step into this world and sometimes you will wonder if the "we's" are actually other people or just the characters inside her head. You'll see glimpses and flashes of the real person that is there, but then you will be tugged right back down into the murk. Snarling, angry words are cleverly twisted around the mundane like watching Britain's Got Talent .

It seemed to me that at some point the author put aside the writings of the killer she has created, and at that point the tone changed ever so slightly. It became lighter and different, but still that blackness is there.

You find yourself imagining that there might just be someone chained to the water heater in the basement, crying for help, as this person clicks away on their computer in a filthy bedroom all day.








Just stay the fuck away from me.

Please.

"When you can take the pebble from my hand, it will be time for you to leave"

I didn't know how to start this review. For the first paragraph or so of my reviews, I generally like to pull out some piece of the personality or experience of the blogger I'm reviewing to relate to or make fun of. I think of how their lives relate or don't relate to mine, I tell a charming or embarrassing story from my past, I make fun of myself and them, I tell you who I am and who they are: pretty much I find some way to make it about me, too. Because I'm just that self-centered. Also it makes for good story telling. Don't tell me it doesn't because I won't believe you (Remember? Self-centered.).

I feel like over the past year or so of reviewing blogs I've started to know what I'm doing. I've been feeling rather old-hat, really: like I've seen it all now, the good blogs and the terrible blogs and the blogs that are getting by but need some work. There haven't been all that many surprises for me lately, and the reviews come quick and dirty and easily. More often than not, frankly, I feel better than the unwashed blogging masses, which sounds really puffed up and full of myself, and, guess what, I am sometimes. (Both better than the unwashed masses and full of myself, at the same time and independent of the other. I'm also over-explainy and unduly fond of parentheticals.)

But this week I struggled.

First impressions: Nice design, organized, good about page, love the tabs and the FAQs, hate the ads, but in today's economy I'm becoming more lax on that (shill!). The archives are all tidy, but I don't like how they automatically roll back up -- sometimes static wins.

Digging in: The dating chronicles are amusing, although she reveals a slight tendency toward superficiality, which is probably forgivable under the auspices of online dating. Also, she realizes she has issues, and I like people who own their foibles. She wears Black Phoenix Alchemy Lab perfume, which is my absolute fave (I wear their O). But I can't figure out why she sometimes writes "noh" instead of "no."

I want to read the entire thing from the beginning, which is a good sign, although there is a marked gap between 2004 and 2008. Anna, I'd like a bit of a re-introduction when you start blogging again in 2008 -- what happened in the meantime? Now all the sudden there's a kid and a husband.

There are posts about things and products and such, which is fine by me. I'm a material girl and I like a review once in a while. And, true to her tag line, there are pop cultural references (I've never watched a single episode of John & Kate, but I don't have to -- the internet tells me all I need to know.) and thoughts about being a mother that in no way step over the line into dreaded cutesy mommy blogger territory.

Here's where my struggle comes in: I feel like I can't really critique her. Anna has got this shit down. She posts often, she writes so very well, she's insightful and charming and she's got a blog design that works and matches her personality. I like her. A lot. If I didn't have all this pesky work to do, I'd have pulled up close and clicked through her entire oeuvre. I no doubt will at some point. She strikes a balance between revealing herself in bits and pieces and just downright entertaining us. She's a smartypants and she knows it but isn't all sneery about it, and I love that. But she's also totally neurotic and acerbic and funny and honest, which I love even more. I find myself in the unenviable position of wishing she'd review my blog instead of the other way around. I figure she can teach me a thing or two.

Kicking Cripples Ain't So Funny

Guest review today by Mongolian Girl.

When Hellbilly and I were first dating, we hung out at my house a lot. In the beginning I kept many things hidden from him. Mostly the things in my kitchen, pantry and my fridge. No, I don't keep my Black & Decker Power Pecker collection in the kitchen; that is kept in a colorful Easter basket in the bedroom closet. I didn't want Hellbilly to see the way my kitchen items were organized. Spices all faced forward and were in alphabetical order, refrigerated items all faced forward and were kept in like categories, and having more than two kitchen towels in use at the same time was highly disturbing to me.

One night I finally decided to reveal the truth of my kitchen to him, "I want you to see the stuff in my kitchen pantry and the fridge," I said, then led him to the kitchen, opened the doors to the fridge and pantry, and stood back and watched him 'oooh' and 'ahhhh' over the tidily organized, facing forward, alphabetized items.

When he finally pulled his head out of the pantry he turned toward me with a strange look on his face and said...

Don't worry Askers, I'll get to that later.

The first thing I want you to know is that Jay is fucking hilarious. I mean, I've read some funny shit on the internet, but rarely do I come across a writer who is consistently so funny that I wish they had been a life-long friend. I am not kidding when I tell you I wish I met Jay in first grade or something and had been entertained by him ever since.

His humor is not forced or contrived. It seems completely natural when he writes of a giant spider as something "You would beat to death with your mother if that's what it took," or watching Carmen Diaz in the movie 'In Her Shoes' and then writing, "Her portrayal of a functionally illiterate alcoholic whore was shockingly dead on, almost as if she had been preparing for it her whole life."

He made up a 'pink taco' rating system for chick flicks he forced himself to watch during the entire month of May, and takes a boring old 'My best friend barfed in a bar' experience and turns it into something I wish I had been there to witness.

He even gets away with posting about Craigslist (something that normally makes me want to shove a very sharp pencil into the ear canals of bloggers who try it) by recounting a story of having communicated with a photographer about taking pictures of the events of the fictional 'Furry Fandom & Fantasy' club. Read it for yourself. Yes it's long, but Jay carries it off so well that I even found myself wishing he had responded to our ad on Craigslist for free horse manure with some kind of contrived story about needing a trailer full for some kind of feces fetish club meeting.

(No, no you don't have to start going on and on about the fact that Hellbilly and I actually would take a trailer full of horse shit to some fetish club meeting and watch them slather it all over their nekkid bodies.)

Let's get back to that story about my fucked up facing-forward-alphabetized kitchen, shall we?

When Hellbilly finally pulled his head out of the pantry he turned to me and said,
"Um, that's just straight up fuckin' scary."

And he was right.

Yeah, finding a kitchen full of alphabetized, facing forward items is fascinating and even funny at first. But it's also scary because it was one of the strange ways I had been compensating for the fact that my life had been completely out of control in the years before I met Hellbilly. I had been in a horrible marriage, moved three times in two years, and had been dealing with a bizarre and vicious legal battle with some of my own family members. Being obsessively organized was a busy, albeit ineffective, way to control something in the middle of a bunch of shit that was out of control.

I kept feeling like something like that was going on with Jay's blog. Yes, I kept admiring his writing, his humor and his made up Craigslist character and pink taco rating system. But I also kept having a gnawing feeling that something was going on. Something was 'off' or 'underneath' or....

...and then I found this, and this, and this.

These posts all contain Jay's great writing and sense of humor, but something was causing him to to use those natural abilities to degrade others. It was a classic case of going for the low hanging fruit. There is a tinge of making fun of victims of domestic violence. Instead of being curious and fascinated by a crazy old story teller on a bus, he turns him into a worthless and smelly waste of space. And *gasp* he makes fun of those of us from the south, which, of course, makes me want to go all southern on his ass by lathering his backside up with an extra special personal lubricant we like to call 'Ass Jack', and then letting a few of our neighbors assist him by helping him become stump broke.

But you know all of this, don't you Jay? You actually state you have a policy of 'non-transparency' on your blog, but then get clear about this.

Throughout your blog you also slide in little one liners about dealing with 'mama drama', alcoholism, having financial stress, something like 42 different jobs, a wife and three children. At first I thought you might be one of those bloggers who doesn't get into things you consider too personal or too 'past', but then I realized you link to your wife's blog, and she says it all.

You have this about wanting to achieve balance, but it is something that makes me think of that thing people say when someone isn't fully in touch with their heart or guts:

"You are living from the neck up."

You even titled your blogroll 'mental crushes' and decided this (www.geniuspending.com/2008/10/your-turn.html) was the only information you really wanted to know about your fellow bloggers.

One of the challenges given to me when my blog was reviewed (by Miss Missives, whose leg I am still planning to dry hump) was to, once a month, choose a topic I was afraid to write about and do it anyway.

Yeah, some of the crap that has come out of that challenge has been painful, but getting rid of it has also lightened the load and, if I do say so myself, made my writing and sense of humor even better.

Maybe that would help, because I would hate to see you keep your policy of 'non-transparency' and keep dipping into that crappy territory of using your talents to, even slightly, degrade another person or class of people. You just don't seem like that kind of guy.

Yes, I read your post about how you think part of the reason people blog is to gain readers. That may be true, but is that really why you are blogging? I don't think so. I think you know you have talent and humor falling out of your ass and it's time to get busy with whatever it is that is getting in the way of it from time to time. Bottom line, I think you will end up more disappointed if you use your natural talent to degrade others than you will if you never end up with a huge amount of readers.

Having an 'About Me' page would also help. Actually, it's a must. Otherwise you don't give us a place to start. I also think your sidebar is crap. So you Tumblelog, Twitter, Facebook, have a reader and a Picasa Album. Whoop-tee. Whatever. It's just too much, especially when it's slapped into the middle of your polls, tags, followers, recent comments, 'seen elsewhere' thingy, and popular post. Jesus Harold Christ on a rubber crutch, Jay? What the hell is going on over there? Get rid of some of that shit or, at the very least, just make a whole page for most of it to get it off of the front of your blog.

Some assignments:
1. Figure out how to make a decent (i.e.. less than 10 fucking minutes and contstantly interesting) vlog here.

2. Examine using a brilliant sense of humor without degrading others here.

Take a lesson in dumping the rough stuff here.

I really do.

But this and this is what I'm going to haunt your comments section with for the rest of my wicked life if you don't get to whatever the hell it is that has that lame ass degrading bullshit seeping out of your system from time to time.

She Doesn't Need To Shut Up, She Actually Puts Up

In this world that we were born into, in this life we've been given, we come to recognize that it is made up of a strange and frightening combination of fragile, strong, evil, love, light and dark.

We come forth and are thrust into this jumble of madness and told to make sense of it all. To experience, but not this or that. To love, but them not those. To take it, but not too much. To give, but to those who deserve.

It's not a clear picture, and there are roads that lead to destinations that are dark and life rattling. Where you become your environment, and it has a hold of you entirely. It all but makes you life's bitch.

If you're lucky something else happens. Something wonderful and just as troubling. Something even harder than sinking to that dark place that you struggled to get to in the beginning.

You recover.

So what happens then? What happens when you've been to the bottom and you lift yourself, fighting tooth and nail, hand over hand to the top again.

This happens.

The Melindaville Blog washed over me and held me close. Her words wrapped around me like a soft, warm blanket. What is The Melindaville Blog about? In her own words:

My name is Melinda Roberts Tyler and many people have told me I have had a fascinating life. In my lifetime, I have been a professional actor and musician, worked as an exotic dancer and high priced call girl, as well as started the world's first fantasy phone call service. I was a member of San Francisco's punk rock scene of the 1980's, performing with the band, "Wild Women of Borneo," during which time I became a hard-core heroin addict. I recovered from addiction in the mid-1990's and became an honors college student, a fully funded doctoral student, and an award-winning professor of psychology. I am currently writing a detailed account of my life experiences in a memoir, whose working title is "Lost and Found: A Journey." My purpose is to tell my story to inspire others if they desire change in their own lives and to increase awareness about the need for free and available treatment in our society.

I could sit here and nitpick about little things like using the word 'blog' in the title, or the crowded sidebar with unnecessary items like the calendar. I could harp about how far you have to scroll down to get to the archives. I could slap Melinda on the hand for saying "dye their hair" instead of exclaiming that wild women COLOR their hair as I learned in hair school. But, then I would be the world's largest douche bag.

Melinda takes you on her journey and when she tells the tale, you are right there in the room with her. Right there in the hotel room as a call girl. You are sitting beside her in her lonely little apartment, infested with cockroaches and library books. She takes you on the path of her recovery without seeming whiny or self-obsessed.

I thank Melinda for asking us for a review, but I have to decline. I cannot review you, Melinda, because simply enough:








Instead? What I want to do is sing your praises and share your words with the world. Melinda is the type of person who doesn't just sit around, telling you how to make the world a better place and change lives. She actually changes lives.

Wishing I'd traveled the hippie trail

There are a couple of topics that, if you write about them consistently on your blog, I'm liable to be sucked in. These are: James Bond, sex, being young and horny during the years 1991-1998, the beach, unicorns, pop culture, grammar and usage, ABBA, historical fiction, porn, and traveling.

And of these, traveling might hold a dearer spot in my heart than some the others. At heart I'm a frustrated vagabond. I know that a lot of people get bored looking at other people's vacation slides. Not me. I want to see, and while you're at it give me a running commentary. And if your travels consist of roughing it, or going the long way around, or going somewhere tourists don't tend to go, or going by yourself? So much the better. I'm an escapist, I guess: I want to go with you, even if it's only through reading your stories. Hell, one of my favorite people is Rick Steves.

I wasn't sure about Toukakoukan: In at the Deep End when I first clicked on the site. I thought, "Oh, another Long Way Round." The design is kind of clunky and a bit basic. But it gets the job done, with the intro right there on the front page telling you where to start. The About page is informative, but nowhere does it explain Toukakoukan. Also, Sam, add a map -- it's a good way for us to tag along. A search option wouldn't go amiss, either.

You read it chronologically: The trek starts in May 2008, but there's buildup to the trip beginning in August 2007. You can skip the buildup, though, because it's mostly bike repairs and girlfriend drama and, well, buildup.

Initially Sam takes on a motivational-speakerish tone, but this quickly disappears (for the better). At first he seemed a go-getter, which can come across a little frenetic and disingenuous to me, but I'm more cynical than I realize sometimes. But quite soon it became obvious that this is a smart kid. Really smart. And more independent and inquisitive and, frankly, mature than most I've come across, including myself.

It is, ultimately, a diary. The posts, although smart and interesting, are a bit unpolished. This is both understandable and forgivable: he's writing this from the road, stopping in Internet cafes when he can, recalling tales and experiences and people. And though a little slipshod, his writing holds these great little kernels of character and wry observances and keen insights.

I'll admit the discussions about bikes and gear bored me to tears, but I'm a girl. And Sam is so cheerfully game, irreverent, and strangely wise for one so young. I don't normally excerpt in my reviews, but I really liked these:

"...only yesterday I spent the night in a ditch, which is not as bad as it sounds surprisingly."

"I hastily put down my, by now, sodden map of Corsica to wave at a group of eight German overlanders who were passing by just as I realised I’d spent the last 6 hours going in a circle trying to get to where I already was."

"I arrived in Chur, bent down to take off my motorcross boots as they’re as about as suitable for walking in as a chastity belt is for the reverse cowgirl."

"Bumper cars sit gently rusting, never having heard the playful whoops of children in their midst."

So, it's a little scattershot, the paragraph spacing is nonexistent, he goes a long time between posting (hell, he's living on a bike, I'll give him a break for that), and maybe there's a little rambling philosophizing going on, but do I care? No. Not at all. Because this guy's traveling around on his motorcycle, seeing the world and meeting people and having spills and letting us tag along for the ride. I'm a sucker for stories, and this guy's got one. Not to mention the truly great photos.

Yes, it's been done before and documented. But every journey is different, as is every traveler. And Sam is a talented storyteller with an engaging perspective and a unique voice. Once he took to the road, I couldn't stop reading. And I'm not done yet.

Sam, good job keeping track of this once(or twice?)-in-a-lifetime opportunity. Don't let the experience slip away -- document everything with intention. And when you get settled and are off the road, come back to the blog and spruce things up. I hope you're keeping a written journal, too. Take the stuff you've written there, add it to the great things you've got going here, pile in the photos, and really make this a cohesive and detailed documentation of your journey. It's fascinating, you're a great guide, and I can't wait to read more.







*The Hippie Trail