No One Cares What You Think

I'm surprised that a grown woman doesn't know this already, but it's true. No one cares what you think. They might feel what you feel, if you give them a reason to, or they might hear your opinion, if it has value, but as it exists at present, the intrawebs will not be lessened, by one single degree, by your absence. In fact, it might be enriched.

Dirty Cowgirl, you write:

I hate being lied to. If someone lies to me they are gone from my life.
And I am always honest, to the point of causing offense at times. But if your arse is big, or you wanna know if you should leave your crap bitch of a girlfriend expect the truth.

I'm not going to lie to you, in fact, I'm going to give you truth with both barrels blasting, cowgirl style. You're not as literate, as witty, or as interesting as you think you are. Your blog is a horror.

I like opinion blogs. I read a few almost every day. One's a dating blog, another is a political blog. In both cases, the bloggers can be brutally blunt, and dismember someone in a sentence for getting it wrong. But, in both cases, the opinions that they are offering are informed by something. The dating blog is written by a career dating coach who draws on her own experiences, and the experiences of clients, to provide information and feedback to readers. The political blogger has literally years of crunching political policy and wonking it to the masses.

So, what are you serving up with your opinions? From what I can tell, you're a self-professed loud-mouthed middle-aged cunt with no particular skills.

You write:

I like swearing. A lot. My favourite word is Cunt.
In fact I am a cunt - and proud of it.
There is a post explaining why.

I tried really hard to read your blog, but it does not appeal. At all. Profanity doesn't bother me, but it needs to have a purpose. I don't care about your flatulence. I don't want to know about your pussy (the thought offends on some primal level). I don't care that you yowl like a cat on a hot tin roof.

Your blog template is ugly, the font too big, the background distracting, and the content abysmal.

This is doing blogging right.

I care about the opinions of these linked bloggers because their blogs are like a gift-wrapped serving of soul. These people are WRITERS. They are't the crazy person on the side of the road with a sign. You, on the other hand? Roadside crazy with a sign, thinking that the shriller and more profane you are, the more you will be liked.

As a woman in her mid-40s, I simply want to tell you: Grow the fuck up. The world is full-up on middle aged drama queens. Your blog is what's wrong with blogging these days, now that everyone and their mother is doing it. Not everyone with a loud voice is capable of saying things worth listening to.

Are you lonely? Go back to school. Take some writing classes. Read some classic literature. If you want to write, start journaling, and do it every day until you have something on paper that is worth broadcasting to the world.

What you are doing right now is an embarrassment. And, that's the unvarnished truth, as I see it.

You get a flaming finger. Maybe you can use it to spice up your sex life and/or cauterize your weeping vagina. Either way, I don't see that you've given me much reason to care.

Take Half the Clothes and Twice the Money

The other evening, over Thai food, the man looked at me across the table and said, "I wish I were trekking in Nepal right now."

I can't speak for Nepal, but a wave of wanderlust washed over me, and I rebutted with, "Well, I'd like to be hiking in Denali right now." And I would, and did, and still do. The wild open desolation without human in sight, where the land is so big your eyes feel too small to see it all, where cell phones stop working and you can only get where you're going on your own two feet--that place, it sings in my chest.

Plus, truthfully, I'd like to see another bear up close and personal, just for the sheer braggadocio of the thing.

Isn't that why we travel, really? The first why--to open our eyes and souls wide so we can absorb the entirety of new. The second why--for the stories we tell the people we've left behind, and the stories we retell with the companions on our journey. We take pictures along the way, of course, so we can remember what we've seen, tasted, heard, and felt; and so we can share our adventure.

Of course, the more interesting the destination, the grander the tale. So, what if you wrote a travel blog, but you only rarely traveled, and only told a tiny fraction of the tales, and never took any good pictures?

Such a blogger would be like a bloodless Edwardian era virgin who fondles your cock, strokes 10 or 12 times out of spiteful naughtiness, and then turns her attention to embroidery. There are no bears in your pictures, Heels, and no grand tales in your blog.

When I read a travel blog, I want to be swept away to a place of spices and mystery. I want to inhale cumin and cardamom and the clean biting smell of the forest. I want my eyes burnished with the dust from a red road clogged with an infinite variety of humans. I want the flavors of a Michelin 3 star restaurant to engorge my tongue. I want my calves to burn from the western slope of Denali, and my heart to pound from a close encounter with a bear.

Camping in Heels, YOU FUCKING TEASE.

Oh, you travel some. I've seen the pictures.

But, you don't tell the tales and you take terrible pictures. You go to Spain and give us boiled dinner in a British pub and a shopping trip to H&M. You eat the Michelin dinner, but don't describe the flavors. You tell us how to save for the journey, but you never take us with you.

Apparently, you think we want to hear about you. My god, you ninny, we want to hear where you've been. We want to go with you. Or rather, perhaps not you, because you strike me as a terribly dull traveling companion who rarely leaves the beaten path.

You go to the most wild and wonderful parts of the U.S. (Grand Canyon, Yosemite, and the Olympus Peninsula--where I'll be hiking later this summer, on the beach), and you show us the Salt Lake City Airport.

Dude, really? Are you a travel blogger, or aren't you? If you are going to write a damn travel blog, then DO IT. Tell us what you saw, tasted, smelt, and felt, with details that let us experience it with you. Don't fill your blog with pictures of you sitting on a couch drinking a glass of beer, fill it with stories. Who did you meet? What did you see? How did it smell? What near-death experience did you have?

You have the ability to write, but you aren't doing it. You've created an idea, but you think it can be milked for money, without providing substance (or for that matter, sustenance).

Matt, actually, says more, with zero words, about how small and big this world is, how much we share with people a thousand miles away, and how beautiful it all is. There is wonder in that video, and mystery, and stories, and danger, and joy.

That's what a travel blog should be. I watch Matt dancing in a gorge with strangers in a land I can't even spell, and I want to grab my suitcase and go. I read your blog, and I want to take a nap.

I give you a meh.

Fix it. You have the capacity, but do you have the will?

The bitch is back

And, she missed you.

It's time for changes, yet again, at Ask.

You may or may not have noticed, but we need regular reviewers. Apply within.

Caveat: We need reviewers who can be counted on to write ONE REVIEW each week. If you can't, please don't waste my time. I really am not around enough to chase people down who don't really want to write on a regular basis.

Things that go slurp in the night

I just returned to my habitation on the redneck riviera after watching a sum total of 11 hours of NASCAR racing in Atlanta this weekend. If you think that Ask is a cultural panoply of bloggers from around the world, you should try out some NASCAR. That's a cultural display that will make you sumbitches sit up and take notice. The intrinsic humor of NASCAR and its fans never ends.

Today's blog is also a cultural experience, it's written by Essie from South Africa. It is a cultural panoply of a few of my favorite things: online dating, zombies, prom, and that's just on the first page.

I suppose that one might classify this as a humor blog, and be somewhat accurate. The humor is hit/miss, but more hit than miss. Sometimes, though, there is hit/miss within the same post. Zombies are awesome, they don't need an intro. The dating walkers part is just extraneous, and should be excised like dead flesh.

I like Essie, I like her blog. Probably not enough to read it daily, because I don't read ANY blogs daily these days. However, I don't want to set Essie on fire, so that's a good sign.

So, here are a few brief pointers that would improve my Loch Ess Monster experience.

1. Clean your sidebar. Gadgets are unnecessary, get rid of them.

2. Who is Essie? Your reader wants and deserves more than you've given us. Some background, even if you want to keep us at a slight distance, is required. Who are you, where do you live, what are you doing here, and why?

3. If you plan to have a cast of characters, they need an introduction so we can keep them straight in our heads. Otherwise, the stories fall flat and are just a muddle. So, who, for instance, is DW, and why do I care that she took a priest to prom?

4. You live in South Africa, that has to be interesting, so you might want to spend a sentence or a paragraph on how you got there, and why. After all, you can't always post about online dating and zombies.

5. Exercise some discretion. Your longer posts would be more punchy if they were also more concise. Set some outer boundaries on how much you will include. This has potential, but is too much. Be more scrupulous about what you post. If it's a near miss, don't post it. Let it age in your drafts like the rotting flesh in your refrigerator for a few weeks while you consider if you really want to expose it to the world.

Just remember, with humor: less is more. The quality posts are there, but they can easily get lost in the dreck.

I give you 1 star, and no flaming zombie fingers, with the possibility for more if the blog improves.

Sociopaths Ain't Sexy

Hey, y'all, I know that you thought that I died the true blog death or something, but I'm still here, watching over you, like the dark fairy blogmother. Isn't Shiner doing an awesome job running things? I knew she would. And, I am never wrong, y'all.

Except about sociopathic men. In that realm, I've dated my fair share of them, thinking that I could heal them, fix them, or love them. At the time, it felt normal to me to have someone try to choke me, throw things at me, call me the most evil names on earth, and hit me. Love was pain for me, because that's how I was raised. However, I'm long past that long dark teatime of the soul, and bad boys on steroids have no place in my life anymore.

Being around someone who hurts themselves with impunity, hurts other people with entitlement, and prides themselves on their own mental illness is like falling through an outhouse floor into an infinity of ancient excrement, squirming with maggots, that coats your skin with a filthy lung destroying warmth. As you can imagine, I don't enjoy it.

I'd barely glanced at Claudia Calling when I agreed to review this blog for Shiner.

My bad, y'all. Let me just give you a sample:

If I went to confession, this is the cheat sheet I would take
--I have had unprotected sex on three different occasions with three different men (other than my husband) in the last 2 months.
--I don't do any fucking housework anymore. I just don't.
--About 7 hours of my work day is spent fucking around on the internet or staring off into space.
--I know that my drug and alcohol use/abuse will lead to a premature death, but I don't want to stop.
--Only very rarely do I drink at work.
--On one of those occasions, I actually did carry a hip flask in my garter belt, and it was pretty sexy.
--I don't consider myself a drug abuser because I only smoke weed. I'm more concerned about the drugs my psychiatrist prescribes, which don't mix well with my alcohol habit.
--I'm almost certainly going to end up hurting SkullsAndShit if I keep seeing him, and I don't want to break things off because I enjoy him. Wow for real. He's enamored. I don't get it.
--I've been leaving slightly suggestive comments on Trucker's Facebook updates just because I know it drives Trucker Wife crazy. Ah-hahahaha! She's such a narcissist. It really brings me so much joy to fuck with her. The lesson here: Narcissist v. Sociopath? Sociopath wins every time. Respect that shit.

I'm pretty sure that Claudia thinks she's being all badass and brave by blogging about her sociopathy and her need to hurt other people (and herself). Allowing herself to be anally raped and not fighting back is just par for the course.

However, I've worked with (and loved) enough crazy fucked-up people participating in their own emotional dismemberment to last a lifetime. Thanks, but I'm full-up on crazy here, and doing my best not to fall into the abyss again. I've fought it, and clawed my way up the rocky cliff until my nails bled, and right now, in spite of everything, I'm beating it.

So, finding someone who wallows in the crazy, who glories in it, and who does damage to herself and others without caring...that shit pisses me off.

I read about 10 posts. That was all I could stand.

Claudia/Lola: You're a dual-diagnosis clusterfuck with a fatalistic outlook who wants to hurt yourself and/or die. I refuse to participate in your ritual disembowelment. Find someone else to sell that shit to, or start doing the hard work to heal yourself. And I'm not going to lie...I know, as someone who was physically and emotionally abused for years, and still bears the scars, that it ain't easy.

But it's a choice.

As Alice Sebold said, in her memoir, Lucky,:

You save yourself or you remain unsaved.

You're not saving yourself, Claudia/Lola. You're a willing participant in your own destruction. And truthfully, your rape of yourself is far more excruciating to view, even from a distance, than I suspect your original sexual molestation ever was.

I can't rate you. I don't want to damage you further with flaming fingers, and I certainly don't want to reward you.

We're here, we're queer, get used to it

One of the things that amazed me, when I started reading Lori Hahn's blog, lo these many moons ago, was how normal she was.

I mean, not normal in the bad, boring sense, but normal in the good sense: down to earth, funny, wise, basic. The kind of girl you'd want to get together with and drink red wine and talk about dating and work and teen woes and vaginas with. The kind of girl you'd want to cozy up to in a chic restaurant and share dessert with. Cool normal. The fact that she'd be talking about dating girls, and I'd be talking about dating men wouldn't matter, because in our essence, we'd be sharing the same struggles...balancing work/lovelife/motheroood...growing into our own as women...finding work we love to do...finding people we can work to love.

So, last month, when Lori closed her blog, I was sad. But like so many bloggers do, she closed a door, and opened a window: Our Big Gayborhood.

And, like most things, it's a mix of goods and bads.

The good:

I like most of the writers, and I find the topics they select, for the most part, interesting. I like the header image, the fact that the blog uses tabs, and most of the content. In an overall sense, the blog experience is more positive than negative.

But, I think it could be improved. So, that's what I'm going to focus on:

1. Some stuff has gotten lost.

Blogs are primarily a vehicle for telling stories, unless you're Glenn Reynolds or something (and who really wants to be him?). The blog is too newsy and not storied enough...for me. Way too many of the posts read like a fifth grade report on being a lesbian.

If you're going to out politicians, I want juicy details. TELL THE STORY. Tell it in a way that sucks me in. This story is full of juicy, schadenfreudian details, and THEY AREN'T TOLD in this post. Instead, the author jumps directly into lecture mode.

Beyond that, the organization of a post is crucial, and subjects need to flow into one another. The post could have started with the idea of people turning colors based upon sexual identity (great visual), and then have segwayed into the fall of the Republican hypocrite, who's clearly magenta on the color scale. Then, move into a discussion of public figures, and the issue of outing themselves or being outted. The organization of the post is the main problem that keeps the reader from being fully engaged. I'd urge, for political commentary, some reading of Leonard Pitts, Jr., who does an excellent job of merging story telling with political commentary. For instance, here's a good example: Jihad Jane. Pitts uses Jihad Jane's story to make a point, but first he has to humanize her...let people in...help them understand her. He tells her story to make his point. He doesn't make his point to tell her story. That never works.

You can't just stand on your soapbox and yell, people will avert their eyes and walk on by. Instead, you have to expose your humanity and vulnerability, and show people why they should care. You have to make them WANT to care. Jihad Jane's story is compelling not because she is so different from all of us, but because she is the same. It's our sameness that brings us together, not our differences.

2. I'm not sure who this blog is written for. I'm a straight girl, and this is a pretty queer blog. There are a lot of subjects here that appear to be written primarily for queer audience, and frankly, I don't get them and/or have a lot of interest the subjects. So, who is your target audience? If it's me, you need to do things differently.

Lori's blog was compelling because she was so very human, so very much like me....middle-aged, looking for love, raising kids. I could relate to her and thus enjoyed the gift of looking at life through her queer eyes. But, this blog doesn't connect to the average reader as well, probably because it feels much less personal and revealing.

The difference is like reading a term paper written by a high school student, and reading that kid's secret journal. The one is always going to be more compelling than the other.

3. Gayborhood needs editing up to some consistent standard. It's awesome to have a diverse pool of writers, but you need to tighten things up.

Some posts are conversational, others read like a college term paper:

When the United States Army announced the creation of a Women’s Army Auxiliary Corps in 1942 not everyone was happy. A writer for the Miami News spoke for many of his fellow Americans when he decried the plan, saying women who would be interested in enlisting were “the naked Amazons and the queer damozels of the isle of Lesbos.”

Well, he wasn’t entirely wrong. Of course women who weren’t stereotypically feminine and who loved the company of other women would have been especially likely to get excited about serving in the military during World War II. Other young women may have signed up assuming they were heterosexual, but once they enlisted, the military was to many of them like a poor woman’s Wellesley or Bryn Mawr: Like students in early twentieth-century women’s colleges (those wonderful hotbeds of lesbianism), women who joined the military now found themselves in an environment where females worked together in important pursuits, and where they could become heroes to one another without the constant distraction of male measuring sticks. It’s not surprising that many women discovered lesbian feelings through their military experiences in World War II.

Wow, that's a fucking wall of text that will knock the blocks outta your brain. Break some of those sentences up into smaller pieces, remove the redundancy, and clean that shit up. Y'all need an editor, BADLY.

For instance, this piece could be incredibly poignant, if it had told the story, instead of turning into a "my summer vacation as a transsexual" report. TELL THE SMALLER STORY, instead of trying to turn the post into something larger. If you tell the small story properly, the larger point will be made.

4. The blog template, itself, isn't particularly user-friendly. You have tabs, you just need to use them more wisely. A lot of what is in the sidebar should really be behind a tab. Put the Author blog links behind a tab, use the label function and put a list of topics on another tab, etc. etc. For a multi-writer blog, I'd recommend something more like what Gawker does, because you're really becoming more of an online zine and less of a blog. And, the focus should be on the content, and not on the sidebar.

So, there are the cons.

But then, there are jewels like this that are the whole reason that I blog, and read blogs, and review blogs.

So, my candid advice is: do more of this, and less of this. Stop throwing words and labels at people--feminist, homophobe, patriarchal, heterosexual, queer--and focus on being HUMAN. Your best posts do that, your worst posts use words like walls.

I'm saying that selfishly, of course, because some parts of the gayborhood are just too preachy to engage me. I received all the preaching I ever needed during the first 22 years of my life, growing up Southern Baptist. The baptists have their own dogma and special words of the faith, too, and they are turn-offs to anyone outside the clique.

When in doubt, Hedon is always right:

I guess what I’m recommending is to simply live your life. When you find the right person, grab on and make the commitments between yourselves that will make your lives a joy.

For now, I give you one star, with the promise of more if things get better.

red rocket, red rocket

Once, when I was about 10 years old, my mom and I walked over to the home of the lady who cut my mom's hair (she was a neighbor, and had a "beauty shop" in her basement). I was allowed to amuse myself by playing with her middle-aged poodle outside on the front stoop. I thought we might play a nice game of fetch, but the dog had other plans. I saw him as cute small and fluffy, he saw me as a sex object. Out of his groin, he sprouted a lipstick shaped erection and began humping my leg. I shook him off. He circled like an airplane coming in for a landing and hit me from a different approach, gyrating furiously on my calf. I ran. He pursued. I dodged. He weaved. No matter what i did, there it was, there the red rocket was, searching for some point of entry, looking for satisfaction.

You can imagine the trauma.

I sat at my desk this morning trying to think what today's blog reminded me of, and this childhood story was the closest parallel I could find.

You show up, there's a red-pantsed rock star looking dude on the header. Then, oddly, this statement:

If this blog helps send just one deserving kid to camp, it will all be worth it.

Umm, okay. That makes no sense, but fine. Then, the author's e-mail address. Again, makes no sense, but whatevers.

As always, my first stop was on the about me, where i learned that the author was "I was born at a young age…" Helpful.

I'll be honest, I spent 45 minutes reading posts, all of it with that damn poodle of a blog trying way too hard to rub his penis on me.

I couldn't do it. The content TRIES TOO HARD. There's too much. For every hit, there are 10 misses.

Consider this post, for instance. It illustrates really well that Bschooled is doing it wrong.

It's too much, B. You don't need 3 mediocre sponsors. You need ONE GOOD SPONSOR. You don't need 10 crappy humor bits that try too hard and miss. You need ONE GOOD HUMOR BIT that hits the mark.

You need to learn to edit yourself. Your natural impulse is to go all red rocket crazy, throw some shit on a page, and hump us all to death. Take a valium, FFS.

If you aren't spending time on /b/, go there and absorb some juicy goodness that isn't dated as fuck. Just mind the splooge puddles over there. If you are spending time on /b/, get the fuck off the computer and get a damn life. If you don't know what /b/ is, that explains a lot.

Your blog could be funny, your charicature of the Iron Chef commentators was dead on. You have a great ear for dialogue. But you're ruining it all with your fucking red rocket.

In honor of you, I present a new rating: Doing it wrong.

Spawn of the Dead

Hey peeps. I'm back from the undead, and ready to rumble.

Lucky Scary Mommy is taking a spin at Pacific Playland today.

I should start by saying, ever so sarcastically, that I love a mommyblog. I especially have big love for a mommy blog that includes all of my personal pet peeves.

For instance:

Cash for posts? Check.

Boring, substandard content? Check.

Pictures of children I don't know and in whom I'm uninterested, in lieu of content? Check.

Pretending to be hyperbadassfoulmouthedcoolmom? Check (and god, I am thoroughly sick of this one...)

This is formaldehyde-scented death wrapped up in a shiny red & white package. The posts are stiff, the content feels posed, and there isn't a single uncontrived sentence on this blog. Oh, goodie. I've encountered the undead Kate Gosselin of the blogosphere.

Up front, a quick list of the things I hate:

I hate the three-column template with 1 main post and additional posts shown as snippets underneath that require additional clicks. I particularly hate that this template makes it difficult to get back to the main page.

I hate the ads that "scary" mom is using to subsidize her blogstyle.

I hate the content.

I don't hate the kids, but I hate that their mom is using them to create a name for herself and build an evil undead mommy blogging empire (muahahhahahaahahah!). Scary Mommy is begging for a nail-studded baseball bat and a sharp pair of hedge trimmers.

Scary Mommy is never real. For the record, real bleeds. Real sweats, real cries, real poops. This is what real looks like:

...no words I put down can fully capture the aching emptiness I feel at giving birth to babies and coming home from the hospital without them. What we endure to bring our babies into the world is easily forgotten when we cuddle the thing so hard won. When we smell its soft head, trace our fingers down a chubby, pink body, whisper silliness and love into its ears. But I don't have that now. I sit alone in rooms and wonder about the new lives I just ushered too early into the world. I carry guilt heavy in my chest. Why wasn't I strong enough to carry them to term? What defect brought on labor at 33 weeks?

...read more

Real moms agonize. They blame themselves, they address their fears of not being good enough, they bitch, they moan, they show their asses. They say, "This shit ain't easy, and it ain't for suckas, yo?"

Scary Mommy is not real in any sense of the word that is meaningful, at least to imperfect mothers like me. She's glib, heartless, and flippant. She died a while ago, but no one has noticed since she plods along in exactly the same happy dead way.

My objective system of blog rating goes like this. If the blog so fascinates me that I'd drive 60 miles out of my way on a business trip to meet the blogger, it's a damn good blog. If I'd drive 10 miles, it's decent. If I'd consider running the blogger down in the grocery store parking lot, it's going to get a flaming finger. If I need to put the double tap into effect, it needs to fuck off and die already, because it's already 78% dead. It's pretty scientific, when you think about it.

So...I would never sit down for cheap margaritas in some chain restaurant in the wilds of New Jersey with Scary Mommy. I do not read her blog and think, "I'd like to meet this fascinating woman." Instead, I think: "She has no soul. She is a zombie who might eat my brains for an appetizer instead of the Mexican eggrolls. Where the hell is my sawed off shotgun?"

There are good mommy blogs out there written by women with heart, courage, humor, passion, and zeal.

Scary Mommy isn't one of 'em.

What rating do I give this fake/dead blog? I felt the need to create something new:










And for making me waste my time...

The Subtle Art of Blogging

Dear sweet lady from the UK or Australia,

Why on earth did you submit your blog to us? You have to know that we are not fond of mommy-blogs, as a genre, and we're very, very bitchy and demanding. We are not your target audience, and you are definitely not going to be happy with anything I have to say to you today.

You write:

I started this blog in January 2008 with the following aims:

1. To improve my photography
2. To learn a new skill (the subtle art of blogging)
3. To have a pictorial record to look back on at the end of the year.
4. To prove to myself that once I’ve started something I can jolly well finish it!!

You've accomplished your goals, at least to your own satisfaction, so you really don't need us. And, I have a feeling that honest criticism is going to cut you like a knife. So, here's a backpat for keeping a chronicle of your kids' growing up years, and taking plenty of pictures, and it appears, being a very good mommy.

If you can't handle sharp feedback, STOP READING NOW. This warning is for your own good.

Okay, here comes the rending.

Goal 1 - Pictures: Your photos are poorly focused and have zero emphasis on composition. You need to do your homework. There is more to photography than point and shoot. Do some research, read up on how to properly frame a subject, and really WORK at it. These times will pass quite quickly and at this point, all you have to show for your efforts are some blurry, smeary, not very interesting shots.

Here's a good place to start.

Goal 2 - The Subtle Art of Blogging: You've put words on a page, on a regular basis, that much is true, but you haven't learned to blog. Blogging, at its essence, is telling stories. It isn't keeping a journal. It's writing, FOR AN AUDIENCE. Even if that audience is only family members (only), they do not deserve to want a bullet in their head after reading something like this.

Barbara, congrats. You've turned the miracle of birth into a scientific manual slash middle school girl's diary. Holy fuck. No one wants to read this. It's painfully dull.

A story is not "I went here." "I did this." "I saw this."

Go here. This is blogging. It takes more time than just regurgitating, "and then we bounced on trampolines" onto a page, but it's also clearly BETTER. It's something that people actually WANT to read, even though it involves sucking a bird's guts into a vacuum cleaner (and the word protein is misspelled). That's the SUBTLE ART part. And, that's what your blog is lacking at present. A good blogger can make getting blood drawn interesting. A bad blogger can make childbirth dull.

It's good to write, but it's better to be a writer, and actually THINK about the words you are writing.

Your blog at present:

This isn’t a great picture (I still haven’t got around to reading the manual on photography in low light) but the girl saw it and immediately said “I look great in a smile and a pink plait, don’t I”.

(note grammatical errors and boring introductory sentence)

What your blog COULD BE, if you worked at it:

I didn’t see it at first. I was talking to husband about his day and was walking from the living room to the kitchen.

There it was. A pile of feathers on the carpet–all that was left of the cat’s lunch.

Crap.

“Your cat did that,” he said. I just sighed and went to find the vacuum cleaner.

Do you see the difference, how the first few sentences suck you in, and make you WANT to read the story? How it's clear that this IS a story? Even this example could use more editing, but the beginning is GREAT. It takes work, that. But you COULD do it, if you tried.

Here's an example of how the pink plait could be reframed:

When she saw the photograph, the girl said “I look great in a smile and a pink plait, don’t I?”

I agree, she does.

Do you see the difference? You could then go on and talk about how the photo could be improved, how use of the manual might allow you to properly focus the lens, how you wish you were improving faster. But the focus is on the PHOTOGRAPH and the girl, not you.

Obviously, your voice is going to be different than Franklin's or mine. But, primarily, the subtle art of blogging consists of GETTING OUT OF THE WAY of your story and telling it in a way that is visual, stimulating, and engaging.

Also, you selfish cow. Why, oh why, would you tell us about making a Christmas cake (nut-free, no less), and not provide a recipe? That's just evil and wrong. You did the same damn thing with your mincemeat post, which means you are not only selfish, but you have selfish tendencies. You should share. That's all I'm saying.

So, move. Get out of the way. Tell the story. Focus on the subjects of the story. Make it come to life. Use interesting words. Think about whose eyes are seeing the story happen, and how THEY would tell the story. Use their perspective, not just yours.

That's blogging.

And you, my dear, are not yet a blogger.

But you could be.

I give you

Land of wonder, spices, mystery, and incredibly dull bloggers

India has attacked us again. I blame Crowley, who I'm certain is somehow responsible for the fact that all of the blogs up for review in the queue right now are from India.

Fuck me sideways with a pickle. One of these pieces of refuse is clearly dead, so I'm discarding it. One has opted out on being reviewed. The other two aren't enough, singularly, to deserve an entire post.

First, Summer Diary. Ugly black & white template, and I have no idea what this person is doing. I like teenagers, I had a house full of them on Saturday, but this blog is like attempting to decipher meaningless gibberish posted on random coconuts and tossed into the ocean to arrive willy nilly on the shores of our brains.

I feel dumber for having spent 20 minutes on the site.

Fuck you for submitting to us, you stupid twat.



Secondly, this one. God save us from the unrelenting angst of teenagers. Were we all this inwardtwisted awkwardness? But some of it holds drops of promise. To that promise, I say...use good grammar. Choose your words more carefully. If you write dialogue, make it cleaner and more clearly identify who is speaking. Keep writing. Clean up your sidebar, and find a better place for the quote under your header bar. Don't try so hard to be unique, but instead focus on distilling your words until they are really and truly yours.

I give you a single star, work upwards to the rest.



These are my missives to India, sent in a digital bottle.

p.s. More importantly, if you were going to be an ironic, made-up superhero, who would you be?

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.

Fear and Loathing in Upstate Washington

Mommybloggers love us. Is it wrong that I can't reciprocate their affection?

Let me just say it up front: I don't get it.

Today was my daughter's 16th birthday. I surrepticiously snuck off last night and planted a half dozen signs touting her birthday all along the road leading to her high school. She was embarrassed/thrilled.

Today, my son took a nosedive in the school cafeteria, beating the crap out of his face and permalocked his bike to a bike rack at school. I have to run to my boyfriend's house after work to borrow a bolt-cutter so I can rescue the bike tonight when I get home from my job, in between cooking dinner for four teens and celebrating a birthday.

This is basically a standard-issue day for Love Bites, Single Mom Extraordinaire.

But I don't blog about my kids very much. My blog is MY space. Most of my life is filled with kid activities (I do not exaggerate here, not even a little bit), but my blog is for me. That's not true of The Gonzo Mama, whose blog is primarily about her identity as a mother, interspersed with a few politically conservative posts.

Like I said, I don't get it. I love my kids, but I don't particularly want to read/write about them. So, when other moms spend all a significant percentage of their lives focusing on their mommyness, I find it...not annoying, not frustrating, but just fucking boring.

Also, there is something indefinable (for me, at least) about this blogger that just bugs me. I'm trying not to hold that against her, but still, the skin on the back of my neck spent the entire time I was reading Gonzo's blog trying to crawl its way up and over my head.

And, that's coming from the blog's resident conservamommy former Southern Baptist Sunday School teacher*. I snickered whilst imagining how some of you pinko commie heathens are going to recoil in horror, like vampires confronted by a garlic farm, from her defense of Glen Beck, complete with smarmy fat facial photo.

Gonzo Mama fancies herself a writer, and she's not bad. She's just not my thing. I don't believe there is anything she could do differently to make me care about her blog. We just move in different circles, and have different interests. VERY DIFFERENT.

The blog design is, frankly, hideous. The header color is pepto bismal pink and reminds me of my last horrid hangover. The background image looks like what I puked into the toilet during said alcoholic debacle. I can't help but think that perhaps that wasn't what Gonzo Mommy was shooting for, design wise, but since she named herself after Hunter Thompson, who the hell knows. At the least, she's confused.

I also find it difficult to muster the required enthusiasm for her politics, but I don't hate her. I just don't care. It's great that she's adopted all these children, but the fact that she then spends time online bitching about their mother's failure to pay for their back to school shopping, and that SHE TELLS THEM WHEN MOM FUCKS UP takes the shine off of her halo, for me at least.

My prescription to Gonzo Mommy is this: Girl, you need to watch a little Chris Rock. I want you to watch this entire episode. Taking care of children DOES NOT MAKE YOU SPECIAL. It makes you average.

You have this idea that you're St. Gonzo of the Rural Northwest, surrounded by evildoers, but you're AVERAGE. I am weary of self-righteous bible-thumping mommies parading themselves around rural and middle America these days, tea-bagging it up and patting themselves on the back as if they are the last residue of salt & light in this heathen world.

Goddamn. What WOULD Jesus do?

Would Jesus tell a kid that his/her mom didn't deliver on the back-to-school shopping money? Or would he just handle it?

Would Jesus listen to Glen Beck? Or would he change the channel post-haste on that slimey asshole?

Sometimes, I wish Jesus would hurry his sweet ass up and get back here so he could slap the shit out of some people. To be blunt, I'm not sure you know him like you think you do.

There are ten million snarky Jesus-and Glen-Beck worshipping mamas just like you polluting up the 'sphere right now, and most of us just don't care. In fact, I'd prefer it if y'all started up your own hen parties with warning signs so the rest of us could dodge them, and just clucked at each other incessantly.

Preferably, not online.

Lastly, when a woman who can't even bring herself to use the word "fuck" submits her blog here of all places, I have to assume that she was either dropped on her head at birth and is suffering from a TBI or is terminally stupid. Here's your rating:






*Nobody can deliver a jesus-smackdown like a recovering Southern Baptist.

I'm a bitch, I'm a lover, I'm a child, I'm a mother

My son is sick. He's sitting on the big olive green chair coughing as if to emphasize this fact.

I'm sick. I got sick on Tuesday while working in Orlando this week, and have stayed sick now for a full 7 days. Someone asked me today if it was swine flu. I haven't been tested, but if half of Orlando and another unnamed Florida city come down with h1n1, it may in fact be my fault.

My dog is needy. She's crammed all of her 40 pounds into an 18 inch wide section of couch so she can lay her head against my leg and sleep. I hope we haven't infected her.

My daughter is annoying. She's disappeared right when I needed her to unload the dishwasher and help me fix dinner, so I'm on mom-strike, and writing a blog review.

Today is the worst possible day for me to review a mommy blog, because I'm full up on mommying today. The last thing I want to read about is more mommying. But, here we go.

3 Bedroom Bungalow, written by ex-pat Kat, is an exposition of contemporary military mom life while overseas in England.

Kat, as kindly as possible, you're doing it wrong. Reading your blog was actually painful for me, and I don't think it's because of the cold pills.

Kat has whiny children. Kat, why are you raising whiny children? The world is full up on whiny children, and they are not, in the least, amusing. It's our job, as mothers, to remove the whiny from our kids.

I'm not going to take this job upon myself, and publicly slap your children for misbehaving, but I will say that when people encounter you and your offspring in the grocery store, restaurants, and other public places, their faces assume a look of annoyance and like me, they wish that you would do your damn job as a mom.

Just from reading a couple of blog posts, I certainly wish you would. And you are posting about it, for all the world to read, as if it's cute. It's not cute. It's so not cute.

Kat does a lot of memes. A LOT. In fact, most of Kat's blog consists of meme posts. Kat...you're doing it wrong. That isn't blogging.

This blog is not the foulest piece of excrement ever to pollute the blogosphere. I'm sure some people like it, just like I'm sure that there are lots of people out there who like Kanye West and don't think he's a complete douchebag. I'm sure there are plenty of other moms out there who absolutely adore Kat's blog.

But, in my view, it's poorly (and sloppily written) and improperly punctuated. I have no interest in it. In fact, I have no idea why she submitted to us, or thought we'd like this hot sloppy mess.

I can't even get started on the template and the busy sidebar and all of the unnecessary shit this blog has going on. It's as if Kat submitted here with literally no idea of what we generally think about these kinds of blogs, or any regard, at all, for cleaning up this blog and making it presentable for anyone.

I give her

And this:



Go here. Read. Get better. Stop doing it wrong.

There's no sex in your violence

I have rules for myself but lately I've been breaking a lot of them. Normally, I take my blog from the queue in order. I don't skip around, and I don't pick and choose. I review good blogs and bad blogs, whatever is next on the list.

But lately, I've stopped caring so much about rules. I'm tired of reviewing crappy blogs, and I've started deleting some of the crappiest ones from our queue. I figure that if I don't even want to go to the trouble of reaming them a new asshole, because they're THAT bad, you probably don't want to read them. I also am tired of traffic mongering blogwhores who want us to send them hundreds of possible readers without actually doing the goddamn work of having a decent blog.

Fuck them. So, click, click, click. I deleted a half dozen blogs that I wasn't interested in having anyone review, including me, from the list this week.

This wasn't one of them. I briefly debated between this blog and a sex blog, called optimistically, "My OMFG Sex Blog," before deciding I just really wasn't up to reading about middle aged poon.

Instead, I opted for Textual Intercourse. Kevin's plan for this blog was, "I Write. You Read. You Respond. I Read." That hasn't happened exactly as he probably envisioned.

And that's a shame, because this is a really good blog. People should be reading this blog, and responding to it. Kevin needs comments and dialogue so he doesn't give up and stop writing.

I have no critiques of the posts, none at all. Some of them are provocative. Some, oddly enough, make me want to know more about the man who shit himself. Like, what happened the next night? Some leave me feeling wistful and sad, and remind me how easily childhood is broken. Some ask questions that probably should be asked, and aren't, like why men start out with a negative character reference when it comes to child abuse.

Some are meh, and I skipped over them pretty rapidly, but they might appeal to you.

This dude can write. He needs to do it more often. He needs to purge some of the dead wood on this blog. But, he can write. Really, when it's all said and done, that's all I require.

Kevin: Delete all the crap under "Other" in your sidebar. Look over some of your posts and decide if they're really finished. Write more.

Readers: Go do what you do.

I give him 3 stars.

Random is Dead.

An old nemesis of ours, random, died recently. He was stabbed to death, repeatedly, by the blogosphere. He is survived by his loving wife, miscellaneous, and his children mundane, slapdash, incidental, and indiscriminate. Donations should be sent to thesaurus.com.

Say it together, out loud: RANDOM IS DEAD. You put a knife into random when you put exactly zero thought into your blog. You gave random a kick that fractured his orbital bone when you showed you didn't care. You put random into permanent kidney failure because of your thoughtless, slipshod, disorganized writing.

You, and you, and you, you all killed random. You're all fucking murderers, every single one of you who misused and abused poor random, and made him your bitch.

This message particularly applies to today's reviewee. I have ADD and reading this blog is actually painful for me. It bings from one subject to another, zooming headlong from an interview with Nelson Mandela to stories about flatmates.

I don't get it. I don't think you will, either.

At a minimum, this site needs to:

1) Create an about me. Who are you, and why in the fuck are you polluting the blogosphere with your random bullshit? This is how poorly explicated your blog is: I read for 30 minutes and STILL don't know your gender. Are you a he or a she?

2) Get rid of the ugly ads. You don't need 3 columns. You especially don't need a 2-column wide ad. I doubt you have more than 10 readers at this point. Who is buying this ugly shit you're advertising? No one.

3) Figure out who you are and what you are writing. See item #1.

I'm going to repeat myself from a previous review because some of you aren't paying attention:

Knock off the shtick, and learn to tell a story without killing it.

Ultimately, blogging is a simple thing. If you write it, they will come. It doesn't have to look good (note: I once gave an ifuckingloveyou to a blog on myspace). You don't have to promote it. You don't have to get on everyone's blogroll. You don't have to join humorblogs.com and ten million other blog promotional pyramid schemes to promote your blog.

You just have to do one thing, and do it well:

Write.

I give you a short bus. This blog, in its present state, has all the wit and sparkling charm of a coma patient.

And fucking put Random to rest, in the cemetary, where he belongs. He's starting to smell.

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:

Pond Scum

Once upon a time, there was a nerdy college law student who wrote about his ridiculously stupid exploits, and got a book/movie deal.

His name is Tucker Max. And, he has one winning characteristic: he's funny. You read his stuff and you can't help laughing, even though you know you shouldn't.

Fast forward to 2009, and we find that he's inspired an entire generation of insipid, soulless clones with the ethics of pond scum, the writing skills of a kindergartener, and the classiness of Bourbon Street at 2 a.m.

Slopmaster has been writing about his ridiculously awesome life for years and years. I'm somewhat ridiculous and usually try to get as close to the line of appropriateness as possible. I'm now an expat in Africa and recently lost my virginity while here, which seems ridiculous but not that ridiculous. Anyway, I'm having lots of sex now to make up for lost time. I don't tell the girls I have sex with about my blog so I write all the bloody details.

Take one nerdy virgin with zero moral scruples or good judgement, locate him on a third world continent where he is making roughly 10,000 times the average per capita income and has no qualms about sexually harassing the hired help, and you get Slopmaster.

I am in the terrible position of reviewing a person I wish would die horribly in a fire. In fact, I would only want to read this blog if it reported on the author's death, and even then, it would only interest me for about 4.6 seconds.

Don't you wish you were me?

Oh wait.

I bet you do, because then, you'd have the chance to tell this person, in front of an audience of hundreds, that he can fuck off and die. Hopefully, an ignominous, heinous, painful death.

At the minimum, Sloppy, you alcohol-besotted pendejo, my wish for you is that you experience enough soul-scorching pain that you're forced to grow the fuck up and and learn to act like a man. If this requires you losing your dick and balls in a bus accident, so much the better.

Here's your prize:



Thanks for playing.

Sit Up Straight, Dammit

I am 43. I bet many of you didn't know that, did you? I am often told that I seem younger than the number of my years. I don't know why. Maybe because there is a certain goofiness about me, an informality that is most comfortable with people who are less conscious of their own dignity. Maybe, I am making up for the years I lost in an unhappy marriage where I was forced to act the part of a dutiful wife in a fundamentalist church for precisely 15 hours a day, for 12 years.

I don't know.

I have terrible posture, but I don't slouch. I bounce, stumble, skip. I walk loudly. I can't relate to those who slouch through life, they offend me on some level.

I didn't want to review you, but here it goes. I am a mother, I am often the one to suck up the task that no one else desires, and finish it. I bet you can relate.

Sometimes, we are accused of being non-objective sheep. To help counter that objection, I'm going to give you an insider perspective on how I review blogs.

It isn't particularly methodical, as I am not a particularly methodical person. I'm not a methodical writer, either. I tend to go with the flow. I find the mechanics of writing to be draining, especially if I can observe them from the outside of someone else's work.

First, I form an immediate opinion about how the blog looks. I scroll down the page, hoping to get some first impressions about the author. I look for an "about me" page that tells me some background so I can jump into the story with some fundamental understanding of who I'm reading. I look at the overall aesthetic statement that the blog makes.

Is it cleanly designed? Where does the blog's design focus my eye? The blog design should draw my eye TO the writing. It should frame the writing. It should not distract from the writing.

The purpose of a sidebar is navigational, in my opinion. The sidebar should help the reader transition through the blog, like a map, finding one's way to best posts and archives and answers to questions about the author. A sidebar is NOT a place to put advertisements. It is NOT a place to put awards. It is NOT a place to put a long blogroll or list of archives. I detest all of those.

There are ways to roll up archives to clean the sidebar so that the words in the sidebar don't distract from the words in the blog itself. This should be done, in my opinion, as it is more visually pleasing.

When I click on this blog, the first thing I see is a brilliant orange Oxi Clean advertisement. I see this before I see your writing, before I see anything else.

I hear Billy Mays inside my head, even though he's dead. I like that he's dead, because I found his presence in life an ongoing source of displeasure. Why can't Billy Mays go away, even though he's dead? Hearing Billy's voice makes me feel disgruntled, and I want to click away, immediately, but I force myself to pay attention to the template.

Are you a witch? I like the idea of Wiccans, I would find that interesting about you, but I found nothing to confirm or deny your religious views. If you danced naked in the moonlight a la Gerald Gardner, that would be even better. The concept of skyclad worship appeals, as well. I like naked.

See how distracting a badly designed blog can be?

Based upon the above paragraphs, Slouchy, you should draw the following conclusions:

1. Clean up your sidebar, it is visually distracting.
2. Create a correlation between your blog design and yourself. The blog should fit your character.
3. Create an about me page to introduce new readers to the back story about you and why/what you write.
4. Why is there an ugly ad first thing in your sidebar, above anything else?

After being annoyed by the appearance of this blog, and the submitter's clear disregard for any and all advice we've ever offered on the subject of blog design, I start looking at what she's written.

I see a picture with no explanation. Great. I feel even more less connected than I did previously.

I see poetry describing her family as a tree. I might understand this poem if the author had deigned to give me some background information on her life, but she hasn't. I get that her family life has been less than ideal. I lose interest halfway through the poem.

I find a list of her best work. I start reading through it, and read all of her best posts.

What I find is that the basic framework of posts is solid, but there is a wordy tendency towards wordiness that I find tedious.

This post, for instance.

The hotel room was standard issue and dated. Between bouts of jagged, ugly tears (his and mine), I wondered that it had come to this: mahogany veneers and gold-plated drawer pulls.

I just get the sense that this author is trying too hard at this. I see the effort, in every post. There is no poetry in this for me. It feels, to be blunt, standard issue and dated. We've ALL had this experience. We've all stayed in this hotel room. There is nothing new here that connects on a tactile level for me.

And, it's frequently too obvious.

On the wall a sailboat trying vainly to hold back the roiling sea.

Oh, my! The roiling sea of emotions inside, you don't mean to suggest?!! How subtle.

Never since have I gone through two boxes of tissues in one night. As the pile next to the bed grew, it took on substance, heft, until wryly I noted that it was a sculpture altogether befitting the end of a relationship.

Do you see how the sentence structure here feels stilted, and not clean?

When we talk about editing, what we mean here is that clean prose, without the trite word usages and phrases that earned us pats on the head in high school, is better. The simpler way is realer. You don't have to say "altogether befitting," you can use other words that are more active, less passive, more visual, less contrived.

It doesn't have to be this hard, and it shouldn't look this hard.

This post is better. But still, you struggle with editing.

Editing is refining. It is going through a sentence to remove every extra word that impedes.

You need to do it.

This is not a bad blog, but it should improve. Every single post needs editing to the point of spareness.

That's my opinion. Which, I suppose, is what you asked for.

I give you two stars, for effort. That's not a bad review, but I'm a long ways from loving your blog.

Stuck a feather in her cap and called it "maccaroni"?

People. When you misspell your blog's name in its bloggy address, and then I click into it and find that you're still, still using a blogger standard template that you haven't even bothered to modify, I fear for you.

I fear that I will be forced to rip you a new asshole, even when I'm feeling all happy and lovey-dovey. And then, your mini-cadre of readers will start going on and on about what big meanies we are here, and I'll have to rip new assholes in a whole new set of fannies. Some of which will be unaccustomed to such rough ass treatment, but probably need it.

And, after spending a nearly perfect weekend relaxing, I'm so not in the mood.

Seriously, why must you people suck? Why can't you be bothered to read our FAQ? Why do you bother submitting if you can't even follow simple directions to make your blog less sucky? Why do you keep making me write the same damn things, week after neverending week, whilst you don't listen? Don't you think I get enough of telling people to do stuff that they have no intention of doing with the teenagers who live in my very own house?

How long do you expect me to be patient and keep reading crap that people submit, when it is obvious that no effort, whatsoever, has been made to improve their blog and/or content?

Dammit. Now I'm all peevish and bitter.

So, without further ado:

Today's blog:

1) It's macaroni. NOT MACCARONI.
2) Create an "about me" and move that shit off your sidebar.
3) Find a cleaner blog design, preferably with tabs so you can clean up your sidebar.
4) Get rid of the gadgets and crap, they look messy and add nothing.
5) Stop posting youtube videos in lieu of content.
6) Learn to write dialogue without killing it. (See example).
7) Irony, thy name art maccaroni.
8) If you don't have something good in the first ten posts, no one in their right minds is going to go digging, including me.
9) Actually, if you don't have something good in your first 3 posts, most people are going to click on to the next possibility, and you'll have lost a reader.
10) If you're going to blog, make it a point to distinguish yourself, in some way, from the other 41,683,205 mommy bloggers online.

You get a meh, and should be thankful for that. It was a merciful meh.

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).