My Subscription to Psychology Today Makes Me an Expert

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

If not, meet Violet.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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



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




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

It is a good divine that follows her own instructions

What the hell is up with all the IFLY's and stars and shit lately? Are you people getting soft in your old age? Feeling the holiday spirit? Suffering from Seasonal Affective Disorder?

Damnit, I want some ass spankings around this joint. I want someone to threaten their asshole reviewee with a back alley lobotomy. Give me some blood and guts and giblets, people.

Later this week? Please?

I say this because you're not gonna get any angry banshee-screeching from my neck of the woods today.

Good for your feed reader. Bad for your entertainment, I'm afraid.

Jayne, the Suburban Soliloquist, is funny and neurotic and just a cool lady. And this bitch can write.


* I don't have kids, but this post made me understand what it might be like.

* She gets sociological and feminist about book reviews on Amazon

* This is exactly how I feel about Twitter.

* This is exactly how I feel about poetry. In fact, Shiner gave me the choice between this blog and a poetry one . . .

* I love this post. It's funny, but is still poetic in its own way.

However . . .

(I feel like a fucking hypocrite for getting on her case about this, because it's MY major blogging flaw.)

Jayne, your posts could do with some major editing. Reorganization, paring down, splitting up posts, etc.

For example, I think this post would flow better if you started with the Halloween costume story, and then worked into the tailor hemming the skirt. The punchline to the story, the kicker if you will, is in the first paragraph ($15). Why would I continue reading the post? Hold onto the "best" part of the story until the end-ish. Make your reader want to find out what happened.

There's also a difference between writing in a casual, conversational manner, and writing out your ADHD train of thought. I tend to be a rambling storyteller in real life, and that inadvertently carries over into rambling story-writing, which does not translate well and bores my readers. I didn't even realize I was doing it until I was reviewed myself.

For instance, the first paragraph of this post, could be completely deleted. It's the rambling storyteller coming out right there.

In that same post, it seems like you're telling two different stories at the same time even though it's ONE outing you're writing about. Different parts of the post evoked different feelings in me and my emotions felt torn all over the place. I understand what you were trying to do, but I think I would have preferred it if it was JUST about you and your son walking around town and your conversation with him about homeless people OR if it was a "you can't go home again" type post.

And I say that, because you are able to write both types of posts. You go back and forth between writing funny little slice of life stories, and writing evocative pieces that allow your reader to imagine what it's like to experience something. That's a good thing. Personally, I wish I could write the latter, but I'm afraid everything I write like that sounds contrived and maudlin.

I'm awarding you:




For being a cool chick and for having serious potential.

Once There Was This Discarded Note I Found...

Once, as a wee bairn of maybe 11 or 12 years of age, while walking along an unfamiliar street with my gang of hoodlums, we spied a discarded scrap of paper along the way. Nine hundred and ninety nine times out of a thousand, I leave the scrap where it lies. But for some reason, on this day, something inside me says "pick it up and read it." Having learned the hard way what happens when I ignore the voices in my head, I picked that scrap up and read it.

It wasn't addressed to anyone specific and no individuals were mentioned by name, but this little scrap of paper told a dramatic story of lust, betrayal, greed and larceny. I was transfixed. I clearly knew none of these people, but the anger and hostility leaped off the page in a way that it didn't matter whether I knew them or not. I wanted to know more, what happened next, whether the one "bitch ho" was going to get her due comeuppance for stealing the other "bitch ho"'s boyfriend or not.

Alas, I never did find out, as the note was incomplete.

As I read through Nuts 4 Fruits, I felt some of those same stirrings of having read a lovely story about whom I knew nothing, really. Even after reading hundreds of posts, I still do not really know all that much about our intrepid author. I can infer many things, but these inferences may very well be wrong. I know that the author is female, lives in Toronto, wants to be a hermit, and has had a long-distance relationship for seven years. I suspect that she once lived in Africa, at times lives with or near her mother (referred to in these pages merely as "The Survivor"), and takes vacations with her significant other (referred to in these pages as "The Phantom"). I assume she is in her (early?) thirties. And I believe that she works in statistics or data processing or something.

Oh, and she seems to really like shopping at Ikea. And she's a non-militant vegetarian type. That is, until very recently.

She speaks vaguely of dark times in the past, but aside from mentioning that they were there, and implying somehow that the Survivor is called the Survivor somehow because of the survival of these dark times, she does not speak of them at all. Like 'The One Who Must Not Be Named,' she speaks OF the dark times, but not ABOUT the dark times. (And today I am finding it difficult to locate specific references to these times. Dammit, I should have written this down.)

I am left with merely the impression of a person. A shadow of a human life. And I desperately want to know more. I want to know why she chose to be a vegetarian, or if it was even a choice. I want to know why she lives in Toronto when she clearly despises the cold. I want to know why it makes sense for The Phantom to be living in Texas while she lives in Toronto. I want to know more about the sort of relationship that starts with enough trust that the Phantom allows her to spy on him all the time via a webcam and yet seems to shy away from the label "relationship."

I don't get these answers.

Instead, I get the mundane, day-to-day life of a young woman rendered somewhat sublime through the written word. Many posts, maybe half of them, read like a stream of consciousness William Carlos Williams poem. Accessible, yet perfectly capturing the feelings and essences of a moment. I can almost feel the breezes, smell the scents, taste the foods.

The other half of the posts? Meh. "What I bought at Ikea." Or, "here's the code I used in R to make this graph."

In my last review, I talked about what I look for in the writing that I read. What I said:

Do you expand my mind? Do I find myself longing to read just one more post? Do you turn a phrase in a new and fresh way that causes me to look anew upon the mundane and everyday?

Guess what. This nutty fruit (or should I say fruity nut?) does just that. About half of the time. I started way back at the very beginning, and each post was a short sweet little breath or glimpse of what that particular moment in time felt like and seemed like. She captured the essence artfully. Avoiding cliches. And I just kept reading, more and more, like a good book I just couldn't put down. Until I was done and looking at the most recent post.

And I loved her for it. About half of the time.

This is not to say that she is all that and a bag of crackers. Henry David Thorough once famously stated something about the majority of people living a life of quiet desperation, and it seems at times as though our intrepid hermit is doing just that. And as much as it goes against my grain to suggest that my review of a blog should be taken as a review of someone's life, reading posts about wistful regrets over choices made (mind you, choices that I can't say for sure I ever really understood, as she never lays out what options were really there), brought to mind a line from The Shawshank Redemption: "Get busy living or get busy dying."

I would love for her to get busy living.

And, as much as I love the way she captures a moment, some semblance of a framework to hang those moments on would be useful and helpful as well. I mean, crap, she's even blocked the viewing of her Blogger profile. I just spent the last 5 years with her, and I still don't know what to call her, what race she is, or why she loves to visually chart data.

So quit being so damn coy.

Okay. That's it.

Now here's the real shocker. The rating. Three stars.



Give me some framework and start chasing those dreams, and leave what you bought at Ikea to your Facebook profile, and you'll shoot right up to four stars or even maybe an "I Fucking Love You." Because, I do. In fits and starts. But not consistently enough to earn that as an overall rating.

One Lump or Two?

Time and time again, I am presented with a fresh victim. And rather than relish the delightful treat I am about to excoriate, I ask myself “Why would this seemingly normal human being request a review from us?”

"For validation," seems to be a frequent response, and all I can do is wonder whether these poor creatures know how to read. Or if they have an inkling what “I Will Fucking Tear You Apart” means. They clearly have picked the wrong review site. They certainly have happened upon the wrong reviewer. Unlike some reviewers here who can be seduced by a certain quaint charm, I cannot. If you wish to curry my favor, it comes down to a simple rubric. Do you expand my mind? Do I find myself longing to read just one more post? Do you turn a phrase in a new and fresh way that causes me to look anew upon the mundane and everyday? Or are you trite? Do you overwhelm with clichés and small-talk?

I hate trite, clichés and small-talk. Okay, hate’s an awfully strong word. I understand these things have their place, but I would probably rather remove my own spleen with a rusty fishhook than sit through too much small-talk. I bet that sounds like I’m using hyperbole to make a point, but to tell the truth, the fact that I would get such an amazing story out of removing my own spleen with a rusty fishhook has me contemplating just how many hours of small-talk would push me to that extreme. And it is not as high a number as you might think.

People frequently write for very different reasons than they have for reading, and often what makes for a compelling story that you want to share makes for a chore for a thinking human to read. Especially when the presumed purpose of your writing is merely to make social connections. To share awards. To spread memes. This sort of writing is the literary equivalent of a coffee-clatch, a place where weary mothers can get together to chit-chat about their days, their children or grandkids, and, I dunno, scrapbook or something. And I bet that there are a lot of people who get something out of this. There are likely hundreds of thousands of people (maybe even more) for whom this sort of interaction, whether in person or in the virtual world of Blogger or Wordpress, fills some urgent inner need.

But this is a need I do not have. And so, I cannot relate. I must come to you today to report that Nancy, a mid-thirties mother of two, originally from India, but now living in Dubai, UAE with her husband of 11 years, spends way too much time with online chit-chat for my liking.

I am not completely heartless. Nancy does get a lot of feedback via this chit-chat that really feeds her in ways that she needs, so I would never for the life of me tell her to stop what she’s doing. But I might ask in an extremely pointed manner what in the name of all that is sacred to her was she expecting from a review here? I gather that she is a fairly conservative person, in terms of subject matter that she feels is appropriate. I could be wrong. Still, I was getting the distinct impression that the concept of being FUCKING torn apart would be reprehensible to her. So, again, why? Why here?

As luck would have it, we actually have another quitter on our hands. By my calculations, about a month before requesting a review, Nancy declared that she was going on hiatus for an indeterminate period of time, only breaking away from her self-imposed moratorium to post one more meme. All I can imagine is that she was hoping that she would get some sort of spark from me telling her that, Gosh Awmighty, if she didn’t immediately start writing again, I was going to kill myself. But in fairness to you, to me, and truthfully to her as well, I can’t provide her with that spark.

Because if that spark comes from outside of you, it does not belong to you at all.

All that aside, I do want to say that I learned some very interesting things from Nancy. About life in the United Arab Emirates, and about what it is like to have an arranged marriage. And for that, I am genuinely grateful that I read the last year’s worth of posts.

I always like to leave my victims with some pointers on how to improve, and Nancy is no exception. I have several ideas. She may not be interested in any of them, and she is certainly free to ignore everything about this review.

• Please stop spelling in shorthand. It hurts my cerebral cortex. “Coz” is wrong. It is spelled “because,” or “’cause” if pressed for time. And “of course” is two words, not one.
• Edit. A lot. Get to the point quicker. Brevity is a virtue. Even your better posts were a chore to read simply owing to unnecessary length and meandering off the point.
• Stop blogging about blogging about blogging. Or blog buddies. Or blog awards. Or memes (or as you call them “tags”).
• The kinds of things that we, the people who don’t know you but who might happen upon your blog, want to know are buried deep. Who you are. Why you blog. What you’re all about. And even then, out of a year’s worth of posts, maybe three were really personal, what’s-Nancy-really-like stuff. The rest were trivia. Trivia is okay, but not very substantial. Bring that stuff out more. Push it to the front on an About Me page. Or give up on people like me.

Advertising to Your Target Demographic

There's been some discussion on this site lately, regarding reviewers not being in a blog's demographic. This is not the case today.

I am the same age, gender, race, and sexual orientation as Laurenne. Neither of us are married, nor have babies. We are both from small towns and are college educated. It seems Laurenne's hit the jackpot on the "Ol' Blog Reviewers Roulette Wheel of Death". (of Doom? "The List of Doom" seems to be jinxed. Is it the reference to doom?)

To be honest, I have waited until the last minute to write this review, simply because I know I will be biased. It's easy for me to put myself in her shoes and to be excited there are other women out there who are self-deprecating and neurotic, have a twisted sense of humor, and unashamedly make bad decisions. It's nice to find a blog that's not about husbands/babies, nor about going shopping and drunkenly hooking up with douchebag frat boys. It's nice to find someone who's the shit, but has bad luck with men as well.

She even writes about the death of her father in a candid, poignant, and hilarious way. Some people might think she's being insensitive, but I GET IT. I still tell the story about how I showed up to see my grandmother before she died and witnessed my grandfather and uncle playing poker, taking shots of Black Velvet, and watching "Big Trouble in Little China" on TV. Right fucking next to the bed my grandmother was dying in, completely ignoring her. Sometimes you have to see the humor in things to keep from going crazy.

Oh, and I'm insanely jealous that Laurenne quit her (obviously) high paying advertising job and backpacked (alone) to 12 different countries over the course of 9 months. And her posts while on the road are entertaining and educational, and filled with hilarious and breathtaking images. They may be a bit journally and longwinded, but I can partially forgive that since she's trying to commemorate her journey and I'm sure internet access was hard to come by.

Now, I genuinely like Laurenne and I like her blog. I identify with her. However, I have a few issues . . .

1) I really hate the "You might also like" LinkWithin crap (links to other posts at the end of each post). I understand you're trying to make it easier for people to find similar posts, but it was distracting for me. And I think it's gaudy.

2) The ginormous label cloud on the sidebar HAS GOT TO GO. If someone wants to see other posts with that label, they'll just click the label at the end of your post. And again, gaudy.

3) I know it sucks not having many people read your blog. Believe me, I do. But don't resort to participating in the fake award-giving and being on Twitter only to get readers. I think you're above that. Really.

4) Try to flesh out thoughts like this into more substantial posts. I'm sure you have more to say about your opinions.

5) I want to hear some crazy stories from your life. I know you're trying to live in the moment and not focus on the past or the future, but your past is what's made you who you are today. Let's have it, lady.

My major complaint: This post. You are bitching about not having money, after spending $20,000 on a trip all over the world. This offended me in particular because I happened to be unemployed (not by choice) during the same time period you were traveling. While you were snorkling in the Great Barrier Reef, I was eating ramen noodles while watching whatever TV stations I could get over the antenna. You chose to leave your job and spend that money. I'm jealous that you had the means to do it. But bitching about not having money afterward is offensive. It made me knock a star off.






But I almost added it back on, just because you uploaded this home video of yourself as a kid. And it's on your professional site. Fucking hysterical.

Paint me some water colors

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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





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

Chocolatopia and Vanillaville

Wow, I'm totally unmotivated. So is the rest of the crew on Ask, as if you couldn't tell that. This week, as a reward to myself for actually reviewing a blog, I treated myself this one.

You know I'm white, right? If you needed confirmation of that, just check the avatar at left. Whiter than white, y'all.

Today, though, I'm crossing the blogosphere's vast color divide and reviewing fung'ke blak chik.

And, all I can say is: MORE. Please. It's okay if you piss people off. We like it.

She writes:

This afternoon I was talking to my friend Rippa, and I told him that if I really wrote about half of the stuff I think on a daily basis, that I’m guaranteed to get even more hate mail and so-called anonymous emails (remember people nothing is EVER anonymous) than I already do.

Our philosophy here is, if you don't like our opinion, we'll stab you in the eye. I can't help feeling there are commonalities between us. Clearly, either of us would happily throw down and cut a bitch. And, I think that's a beautiful thing. You should do it more often, Fung'ke. Let it all hang out, tell us what you feel, give us front row seats in your brain. I like it when you do that.

Apparently, blogging is on the list of "stuff white people like," because blogs written by people of color are drastically underrepresented on the blogosphere. That may be because black folks aren't as hopelessly narcissistic as white folks, or as interminably emotionally needy. All I know is that the melanin-deficient are online in droves, making the sphere relentlessly monochromatic. Nonetheless, I can't help wishing that blogging would start falling into the realm of "stuff black people like," right next to rims and crunk. (Also, why isn't there a stuffblackpeoplelike.com)? WTF? That could be some funny shit there. I see that stuffeducatedblackpeoplelike.com is also gone, and that's too bad. My co-worker Sam and I used to laugh until tears ran down our faces over that shit.

Beyond that, do you know who else is missing from view in American society? Middle class, white collar, educated black people. These folks are not only missing online, but they are missing in media coverage in general. I mean, Will Smith and Jada Pinkett Smith are on Entertainment Tonight all the time, and you can't watch a news broadcast without seeing more than a helping of coverage of your standard issue crackhead/junkie/gangsta/pimp/thugs, but just plain old regular black folks? M.I.A.

I'm not sure if CNN doesn't know these folks exist, or if they just don't care, but I think there are too few blogs like fung'ke's out there in the sphere.

Having said that, it's not perfect.

Here's what you should work on, babycakes:

Your template is...weird. I don't like that strange freaky thing you do where your more recent post is dragged up into your header. It's confusing. I don't like the second line of text in the header describing your blog (:adj. characterized by originality and modishness; unconventionalism) because black on a dark gray background is a waste. Either bold that shit up and put it in white, or just delete it entirely.

You have entirely too much bling. You know if you saw some girl walking down the street with a grill, and hooker shoes, and way too much cheap gold jewelry, that you'd roll your eyes and be all, "Who she think she is?"

But, apparently, you don't think a thing about tarting up your blog until it's ghetto fabulous. Stop it. It's fine to mention you're on facebook, but you don't need an advertisement that's 4 inches long cluttering up your sidebar. I'd investigate coding in a drop-down list for your archives. And, you should highlight your BEST posts in your sidebar, not necessarily the ones that have the most comments. Pick them yourself instead of having some gadget pick them for you. You know what you've written that you're most proud of, highlight 6-8 of those posts so people can easily find them. Get rid of the stupid thingfo, and the stupid live feed, and the stupid ads. Every single gadget that you put on your blog is going to slow down your page loading times and make it less likely that someone will take the time to read your words. Beyond that, it just looks trashy.

The posts are interesting, ranging from an exposition of CNN's Black in America series to a truly horrifying period.

The posts can run a little long, and are truly expository writing, each blog is on a particular subject and usually ends up as a full-blown essay. The posts need editing (for grammar and punctuation issues), and could benefit from a thorough purging at times to make them cleaner and less wordy. But they are an interesting read.

I like her. Also, she has great tits. And for some of you, that will be enough.

I give her two stars:

Get Wood

I didn't know what to expect from a blog whose address is "in public interest." Politics, I suppose. Then, unsettlingly, it was titled "Woodchuck Chuck."

I definitely didn't expect the blog to be written by a 20-something Indian girl. Do they even HAVE woodchucks in India?

But surprisingly, for me at least, she did not disappoint. I can count on two fingers the number of Indian bloggers that haven't disappointed, out of dozens.

A few things:

1. The header image is overly large, for my taste.

2. It would be helpful to American (and other readers outside of India) if you put translations of some phrases in parentheses when you speak in your native tongue. That would help us, also, to follow the stories. You're writing to the world, here.

3. Too much crap in the sidebar distracts from your (very good) posts. Clean up the messy graphics to help us focus in on your writing.

4. An "About Me" page/post would be helpful to introduce us to you, your backstory, your boyfriend, your ambitions, etc. Do it.

Ask readers, start here, here and here.

I like her cute wry voice, and I like the chance to live life through her eyes. I like that I can visualize the people in her life as she writes.

The blog design is pretty hideous, but girlfriend can write. She just needs to keep banging those words onto the page.

I give it

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.

Different Strokes

We weren't nominated for Most Obnoxious Blogger for nothing. We are foul-mouthed, opinionated, snarky, biting, and usually pretty disgusting. In the best possible way. Our comment streams tend to trail on for hours, each of us out-grossing or one-upping or lobbing insults and pop-culture references and basically enjoying the hell out of ourselves for being completely uncouth and rowdy and irreverent and honestly pretty darn smart and hilarious. And full of ourselves.

When bloggers ask for us to review them/rip them a new one, they have to know what they're getting into. I mean, look over there at the Submit section. We lay it on the line, right? We're clear about our intentions. We are not nice (well, except for me -- the following review notwithstanding). We are not going to stroke your ego. We are not going to take it easy on you. We will fucking tear you apart.

So I'm amazed when people like this submit their blogs for reivew. She has to know, doesn't she? That she's not exactly swimming in safe waters with us? Here be dragons. And sharks. And a few piranhas. And really bitchy people with axes to grind.

But she did submit, and she did read the FAQ. And so I'm left to assume that she asked for it, that she's ready for it, that she can take it.

Because I ain't gonna lie: I don't like this blog. Pretty much at all.

The design is cluttered and trips from one font size to another, from one font color to another. There are ads, ads, ads, fucking ads and there's entirely too much stuff in the incredibly redundant two side columns. What is it with some bloggers that they think more crap is better (ok, I admit it -- I used to, too)? Here's a hint: it's not. Get rid of it. Put your links on a separate page, roll up your archives, lose the ads, switch to one column. You'll thank me for it.

Jenera has been blogging consistently for a while, but I can't bring myself to read the entire blog as I normally would. I'm limiting myself to 2008-2009. For my sanity. And yours. Holy mother of God, there are 91 posts in January 2008.

As you can see, Jenera writes a lot. A lot a lot. Like, a lot. Which is really very admirable. But so much of it is memes and quizzes and ridiculous shit you'd put on MySpace and crap about her kids and just really boring, pointless, here's what I'm thinking about posts. And honestly I just don't care. I'm not moved to care.

And the writing is so very much like what belongs in a diary, not on a blog. How many times do we have to make this distinction? Is it so very complex an idea? Am I completely wrong in thinking that blogs should be polished, edited, crafted, entertaining, insightful, informative, or at the very least really goddamn funny or tragically twisted? Instead of just here's what I'm doing, and here's what I think about it, and here are a few misspellings and pics of the rug rats and five paragraph essays on what I think about the world. Perhaps I'm biased (I know I am), but in my world, blogs should be written by writers or storytellers or personalities. The rest should just stick to Live Journal.

Jenara and I have absolutely nothing in common, except perhaps a certain heftiness. Otherwise, nothing. Nada. Zilch. In fact, I'm pretty sure I disagree with her about almost everything, except this. As an unmarried woman of 34 with no kids, a list of sexual partners I don't care to enumerate in this arena, and a decidedly leftward-leaning political bent who is pro-choice, pro-gay marriage, pro-gun control, and pretty much some patchuli and an antipathy toward grooming away from being a dirty hippy, not to mention a tendency toward agnosticism if not paganism, I cannot relate. I am not her audience.

But. I did read. And I did discover that though I vehemently oppose pretty much all of her views, from race relations to politics to current events, she at least asks questions. She at least tries to get both sides. She at least stands by her principles, even if those principles are anathema to me. She very obviously loves her family. She very obviously tries her best. She very obviously isn't going to gain me as a reader. Or probably anyone here. But she might very well keep her sanity, keep her shit together, keep her ideas and dreams and successes and failures and delights all in one place to log and retrieve and remember. And, as much as I disliked this blog -- as much as I didn't enjoy the writing or the voice or the structure -- there's something to be said for that. She writes consistently, she's committed to it, she seems to enjoy it, and I doubt very much my opinion will change that. Of which I heartily approve.







Edited: Better already, Janera. The single sidebar and getting rid of the extraneous stuff helped. Much easier on the eyes.

I'm pretty sure I couldn't make it there

I lie to myself and everyone else and say I once lived in NYC. I didn't, though. Not really. I stayed there for a month for what I later realized was an ill-advised career program. I lived in a hostel up on Amsterdam and took classes and didn't do a whole lot other than drink and walk so slowly people scowled at me.

But I always thought I should live there, at some point, because I dreamed of being in the publishing industry. And then life happened and graduate school happened and the publishing industry existed in DC, too, and it just seemed like I got too old for it to be worthwhile to up and move to the hard, fast world of NYC. So I didn't. But sometimes, just occasionally, I wish I did.

Tina did. She took a fairly ritzy-sounding job in New York and moved from Seattle and logs her experiences as a newbie New Yorker. Fascinating, right? Well, it should be.

Let's just get the design out of the way. It's your standard white Blogger template with no personality. The header is a bit large, although I do like the picture. The subscribe section just under the header is overkill -- it should be off to the side. Hello, off-putting. It screams "LOVE ME!" Just take me to the content. And move the stuff in the sidebar to tabs. Roll up your archives. Give us an About page.

I should love this blog. Cute Seattle girl moves to NYC and works in the news and drinks a fair amount and tries to find her way around. But, especially at first, the writing is very much "letters to home." There's a serious lack of editing and most of the posts are ungodly long. And, Christ, the ellipses overkill. These are such a crutch. Get rid of them entirely. They should only -- and, dammit, I mean ONLY -- be used when you're trailing off an idea or when there is missing information from quoted material. And if you trail off every single idea you have and so tack on the ellipses then I don't want to read you. Be concise. Have a thought and finish it.

Though quite a few of the "girl in NYC" stories are interesting, they're robbed of life by the writer's slap it on the screen style. There's an inelegance that interrupts these could-be-interesting vignettes, especially when she writes about things like roaches. Who cares? Do you care, Tina? In five years are you going to want to know about that roach? Maybe you will, but I pretty much don't, not unless you can make that roach enthralling, hilarious, or terrifying, none of which you've done.

I think I'm being extra harsh because the potential is here for a really interesting blog. But it's just not delivering. Though the author is candid about her identity, we don't learn anything real about her other than her various encounters with the denizens of New York and her love for Lyle Lovett. There's not a lot of depth provided, and maybe that's precisely because she's written her name on the blog.

Tina, I did some snooping (it wasn't difficult) and discovered your title is or was "writer." Why aren't you writing here? You're just jotting down snippets of your life, without care, without editing, without polishing, without pulling in your reader. In scrolling through, I notice there are very few comments from readers. And maybe that's the point. This blog is for you, for posterity, not for us.

If you want it to be otherwise (and I hope you do, considering you submitted for a review), clean up the sidebar clutter, give us some organization, and write like you care that we're reading. If you don't, just keep this stuff in a ruled notebook by your bed, carry it in your huge ass purse and jot things down on the subway when the crazies come out. Because if you don't care about us, why should we care about you?

Verbero*

You may not realize it, but I am a mommy-blogger. Oh, I don't blog about my kids that much, unless they say something pretty hilarious, but underneath all of my perceptions about life and other bloggers, I'm a mom.

And, putting my mommy hat squarely on my head, I will tell you up front: today's blogger needs a spanking.

Fortunately, I'm just the person for the job. And, no snickers from you, Calamity.

NeeNee is a blogger who apparently believes that her fuck ups can be fixed by writing about them. I am a great believer in the therapeutic nature of blogging, and I use my other, private blog for that purpose.

But, I will be the first to tell you: blogging is no replacement for real life. Blogging doesn't change the world, and it won't change you. You can't blog your way out of a broken marriage, or unemployment. And while it is non-fattening, it won't help you lose weight. It's one thing to write about what you would like to accomplish. I'm all for visualization as a strategy for change.

But, at some point, you have to actually lift your ass out from in front of the computer, and change whatever it is that you dislike about your life. If you want to lose weight, you have to get off the couch, stop eating so much, and exercise.

If you want a job, you have to get out there and pound the pavement, and at times, you have to be willing to settle for something that will just pay the bills so you don't dig yourself into a financial hole that you will never escape.

So basically, NeeNee, you are a girl who settles for writing about your problems, and thinking about your problems, but not SOLVING your problems. You live in the past, dwelling on an asshole who did you wrong. (not to mince words here) You're fucking an ex-boyfriend from high school who has no intention of having an actual relationship with you.

At what point do you think your life is going to get better if you don't do something about it besides write?

I have a few tips for you that have nothing at all to do with the layout of your blog (meh) or the style of your writing (also meh).

1. Get rid of EVERYTHING from Music Man. EVERY. SINGLE. THING. Every e-mail, every photo, every little residual piece of crap that you are still clinging to that is keeping you from moving forward in your life. It's over. It sucked. The End. I guarantee that he is not wrecking his life, sitting around moaning about you.

I had my own music man, having been around the track more than a few times, and it took me a good year to get over that relationship. I didn't make a lick of progress, though, until I stopped dwelling and mentally let go of the past.

NeeNee...your life is a wreck. You are unemployed, unhappy, overweight, and fucking your ex. You do not have time for this bullshit.

Life is short, and you're missing it.

2. Positive affirmations are great, though I prefer attainable ones.

Let's look at the situation clearly and objectively: you're massively in debt, and every day that you do not work, the hole gets deeper. Just get a damn job. It doesn't have to be THE. PERFECT. JOB. It just has to be a J-O-B that brings in some money so you stop going backwards, financially. Beyond the fact that you need the money, desperately, it is easier to GET a job when you are actually employed. Furthermore, you've already been rejected by one employer for your crappy credit. The only way to fix that shit is to work, earn a paycheck, and start paying down some of your debts. At this point, you are in so deep that I recommend that you work with a credit counseling service to renegotiate what you owe and get you started on a clean sheet. Being unemployed is depressing, and gives you way too much time to think about everything that is wrong. Going to work every day would at least give you something to do with your time, and a reason to get out of bed and get dressed.

3. Start taking care of yourself. You write that your weight is nearing 200 pounds. Wow, yet another thing to feel bad about. Today, not tomorrow or next week, TODAY, take a walk. Walk for at least 15 or 20 minutes. Tomorrow, do the same thing. Work up to 30 minutes a day, then up to an hour a day. Every day, you will feel slightly better. It will cost you nothing, and you will lose weight, guaranteed. I've been there, done that, as well.

You are 20-something years old. Do you think this shit is going to get easier if you wait?

4. Stop fucking your ex-boyfriend. Stop looking to sex with a man who doesn't love you to make you feel better about yourself. It will just leave you feeling worse.

In short, your blog describes your life, and your life looks like Hurricane Ike just swept through it, leaving catastrophe in his wake.

Time to grow up and fix it. You're the only one who can.

How do you fix it? You work on it, a little at a time, until it improves. At this point, you aren't doing that, and blogging about it isn't helping.

I give you

*A latin word, whose meaning you can google, if you're interested

All Apologies

And it isn't just a kick ass song from Nirvana, either. I speculated (wildly and irresponsibly) that anonymous was in fact Laurie Kendrick HERSELF. Turns out that I was mistaken. However, one of Laurie's readers has reviewed us. I'd love to hear what you think of his review. Quite hilariously, we've been linked to the downfall of the west at the hands of the liberal elite. Given my longterm Republican voting history and overall conservative/libertarian political views (YES, I SAID IT!), I find that fucking hilarious. Anyway...

Dear Laurie: My bad. I hear you were quite gracious by e-mail about your review (even though you were a bit of a cry-baby on your blog) so kudos to you, and smacks to me. Never let it be said that I don't take my spankings with a smile. Or,that I can't take it as well as I dish it out. Or, something similarly perverse.

Story Time

So, since I took a shitload of flack for not taking the time to really read a blog, being a below average blog reviewer (whatevs...you all love me and you know it), and was compared to Simon Cowell for the blog reviewing set (tis true, I hate about 95% of the blogs on the web, but I digress), I thought I would go past my initial gut reaction on a blog and force myself to read more than the first 2 posts.

After doing all that, I only have this to say: Fuck you. I'm trusting my gut from now on.

On deck is Standby Mode from Standby Mind in India. This dude seems to write stories. This dude, from what I can tell, writes stories that I can only conclude are possibly personal experiences written in the third person. Catch that? Because I had to read the first 3 posts a couple of times to come to that determination. I don't like reading anything 2 or 3 times. Ever. I'm not sure if it's a lost in translation thing, or that his grammar falls off the map in places, but I just can't get into his writing. Creative writing blogs are not my favorite things to read since quality is usually all over the map and I prefer blogs written by published authors (see this lady's blog for a good example). However, I'm not going to trash his blog just because I don't dig the subject matter. It's just not my brand of smokes, dig?

As for the template, I like it even though there's a bunch of shit (like buttons, flashing gifs, and a lyrics box) in the side bar that could probably be dumped (keep the flickr box, though, I like looking at pictures). It's a nice, soothing color that doesn't give me eye strain. Overall, a nicely laid out blog that doesn't make me want to barf.

I give it for the soothing template and the fact that, even though I didn't dig his writing, I just can't be mean to a University kid for expressing himself.

OMG Generation Y is starting to piss me off...

Lazy slackers all of them, and don't let them tell you otherwise. Apparently, the tweeners (balls and I) are the only ones who seem to give a shit about the commitment we've made to rid the blogosphere of crap whilst entertaining you along the way. Well, fine. WTFE.

I opened my browser this morning and was deluged by pepto bismal pink. Oh goodie, goodie gumdrops. For the record, I would never drink a fucking martini that looked like this. UGH. Martinis for Two, I don't love your template. Pink is totally not my color. Pink is NO ONE's COLOR unless they are 6 years old and headed to Disneyworld. Plus, something has gotten janky with your table widths, because your sidebar is showing up underneath all of your content on IE this morning. Just something to work on.

The sidebar is nice and clean, and minimalistic, and she explains a bit about herself, which helps clue me in to what is going on, but fix those tables. Generally speaking, this happens to me when I've put pictures in that are too wide. You might want to check that.

I kind of like her writing, she's beautiful, her groom is beautiful from what I can tell, and she sucked me in. Not a mommy blog, it's a happily ever after after after story, kind of encouraging for gals like me that have been run over and drug around the block a few times by love.

Diane, I'm going to pick your writing apart a little bit, and it may hurt, but my intentions are pure. I think you have "the stuff." I think that you and your story are sellable, not in the blogwhore way, but in the blogger-turned-published-writer way. But, in order for that to happen, you are going to have to polish your writing. You have a tendency to make sloppy mistakes. For instance...

“Well, congratulations and good morning to you too.” I thought. “I don’t even have the official marriage license yet LET alone a social security card.”

You need to strip it down, clean it up, avoid redundancies and the use of pat/trite phrases (let alone, etc.). You have an interesting past...you have a 3rd time around's a charm love story...you have an interesting future ahead of you. Do some thinking about your writing. Ask yourself, when you read a blog post:

1) Have I chosen the proper words for this context?
2) What words could I remove from each sentence while still keeping the flavor and charm?
3) Give yourself a goal...edit each post, and when you are finished writing, let it sit for an hour or so. Then, revisit it, with the goal of taking out first 10, then later, when you've been doing this style of editing longer, 20 words.
4) Determine how you are going to tell the story, what key aspects of the story stand out, and what could be eliminated. It is okay to write too much, you can always pare away and edit down.

Just...think about it. I'm not trying to rip you to shreds here, I am trying to push you to the next level.

I give you three stars, and a challenge: Find a better gawddamn template. ;)

.

Keep writing, kiddo. :)