Brown Paper Poo-kages Tied Up in String

At first glance, I was intrigued with today's reviewee, Stranger in A Strange Town. The title was a good start and though the template is your standard blogger one we all probably started with, at least it wasn't jaundiced, replete with brain-bludgeoning bebop or soul stabbing symphonics, flashing bits and bobs, or fauxwards and badges reminiscent of boy scouts.

I start with the profile, hoping as always to get a little back story on my mark. Legacy 2000, who exactly are you? From the staggering amount of info in the profile, I garner Legacy 2000 is an XY involved with two other blogs. Given the spartan nature of his profile, I peruse the other blogs looking for clues but no such luck. A once over of Stranger in A Strange Town tells me that Legacy 2000 last blogged in August and has logged a total of sixteen posts for 2010. With the busy week of lashings Miss Missives has had, I have to say, I salute the brevity. Still, 92 followers on 16 posts? This Legacy must be a veritable savant. It isn't often that a blog has so few posts that I am allowed the pleasure of reviewing it post by post, picking over its meat and marrow with my sharpened nails until only the carcass remains.

Okay, first post, 1991:
It is barely two paragraphs. I love flash fiction but the mere seventy-five words on the page, perhaps intended to convey a certain ennui, are utterly forgettable. The words are gone faster than a Tic-Tac between my molars and far less memorable.

On to post two, Into the Looking Glass:
Again, it is brief. If it is meant to be symbolic, I don't get it. Miss Missives is beginning to think Legacy 2000 needs to be put over her knee.

Post three, This Old House:
Well, this one is quite a bit longer. This post did elicit some feelings but I am confused as to whether he buried someone in the basement or lost a family home in the widespread mortgage crunch. There is the hint of a narrative here but it is somehow, detached from the writing.

Post four, Stranger in a Strange Town:
Ah, the title post. Perhaps there is a profile buried here.

We are all travellers, our destination the same, the journey itself all that matters.

Feh. This strikes me as Fauxlosophical and Legacy 2000's words are beginning to feel like giant swaths of heavy, beige, velvet weighing down my eyelids.

Post Five, Then and Now:
Here is the sum total of what I took from this post, Cheers is no longer Cheers. Where's Norm? Who's Norm?

Post Six, At the End of the Rainbow:
So it would appear that he is recently divorced. It feels like he is trying to talk himself into something, I don't find it compelling.

Post Seven, Death of a Stranger:
All I can say is what the fuck man, what the fuck?

Post Eight, Old Friends
At the very least, I get this but it still feels removed some how.

Post Nine, Song on the Radio:
Is Legacy 2000 smoking pot or under the haze of a plethora of prescribed painkillers? At this point I am entirely unsure of the point of this blog.

Post Ten, For Crying Out Loud:
I am thinking the same thing. Am I done yet? So he went to a strip club and met a girl who needed him for a few minutes. So what. He should be thankful he wasn't talked in to paying for her breast implants. I know it is meant to be poignant and full of regret but Legacy 2000 still fails to tell a story. I know there is a story in there somewhere, beneath all the packing material but it fails to surface.

Post Eleven The Girl with April in Her Eyes:
My own eyes are glazing over and all I can think is this is what people write when they are thinking too hard about how "writers" "write".

Post One-Hundred and Twelve, oops, Post Twelve, just feels like Post One-Hundred and Twelve, Original Sin:
This is the best post yet and offers a glimmer of hope that this guy can actually write. There is narrative, there are impressions and even one very memorable sentence. This is better, much better.

Post Thirteen, Strange Days:
Poems are not my thing but this is at the very least evocative.

Post Fourteen, Old Man:
Ok, so dad drank him self to death and now I get a visual of our author stuck perhaps, safely encasing little tidbits of emotion in thick kraft paper, wrapping it in loops of twine until the small gift inside is entirely obscured.

Post Fifteen, The Prisoner:
Nothing to see here folks, move along. Ok, I am the real prisoner here but I am nearing the end.

Post Sixteen, Lady in Red
Again, a modicum of evocativeness but the mere skeleton of an impression.


I am left feeling like this is a shell of a blog. It's a brown paper package and I know there is something underneath but I don't know what's there and I'm not sure I even care anymore. The brown paper package could be filled with poo, a tween's Halloween prank or it could be a man who is trying to write in earnest but cannot get out of his own way.

From the Miss with the Missives, you get a










because like many before you, you're doin' it wrong

you get one of these for being purposefully enigmatic







but for your brevity, you get a half star.

The Real Housewives of Mumbai

I was utterly tempted to insert into my review some Bollywood Greatest hits on autoplay, however, after a long week spent lashing the masses, I am just too tired to hurt the ones I love. Today Miss Missives is charged with being your interpreter of maladies and a quick look at The Mad Momma tells me that boring has gone global, tedium has been outsourced. My dear readers, would it be better if I didn't absolutely insist on giving the ending away right out the chute? My apologies.

It would seem that Indian mommybloggers have much in common with Western mommybloggers. Of course there are the exceptions to the stereotypical, often vilified mommyblogger, but Mad Momma is not one of them. She hits all of the important milestones for mediocre mommyblogging.

Mediocre Mommy blog checklist:

Uses one of the following words in the blog title:
crazy
insane
wacky
mad
rants
musings

Check.

Take out of focus pictures of food or children or furniture. Make sure photos have zero emphasis on composition.

Check.

Refers to self frequently and fervently as a mommyblogger.

Check.

Have a generous space devoted to badges and awards.

Check.

Fill your space with boring, meandering content.

Check.



Mad Momma, your header image is fuzzy and boring. I cannot read the header text unless I highlight it. Your header

“...is missing her home of five years. BADLY”

is grammatically incorrect. I could say that you use grammar badly. Your About Me doesn't actually tell me about you beyond some basic demographics. You have an entire tab devoted to Our Cesarean Stories. The graphics on your "Badges" page show up in neither Mozilla Firefox nor Internet Explorer. Your sidebar is, okay. Your template is about as visually exciting as a pile of dirt which would fail to matter if the writing compensated. The writing does not compensate for the template.

That's the big problem for me because as we have noted before, when someone writes well, the minutiae of "proper" blogging matters far less. Your writing isn't terrible but it isn't a bit compelling. Your posts are far too long and they meander all over the place rather than have a central idea from which the subsequent branch offs flow. You write about salient topics like feminism and politics but you lack the ability to express your opinion authoritatively or pull in personal experience to draw the reader in. Of course I bring to this review my own cultural bias but truly good writing is universal.

A journalist, I am never short of words or ideas!!

Perhaps the medium you write for is a tome allowing for lengthy verbosity, but I can hardly imagine the editor is your friend. You use words like my five year old uses toilet paper, with no regard for economy. Your pieces, even the more serious among them, devolve into written diarrhea, the prattled chatter inside your head. This is sweet but it goes on so long that the sentiment becomes watered down and tired. This is nearly 2500 words. It goes on forever to make a point which could have been much more concise and interesting at 500 or fewer. Madmomma, organize your thoughts, make a goddamn outline if you have to, edit your words, cull them down to what's necessary.

Until then, I really just cannot be bothered. Yawn.

Princess Di You Are Not

There are websites I don't fancy but regard with a degree of politesse because while they fail to be my cup of Earl Grey, may be someone else's Red Zinger or Constant Comfort. Then there are blogs so heinous, so woefully lacking in even the smallest shred of redemption that I cannot refrain from peeling off the well worn suckling pigskin gloves and sharpening my fingernails for a soul satisfying pick through their viscera. If The Power of Only One is a fenestella into the soul of Lisa(who by the way is one of two followers of her own blog), then all I can see is piled high plates of moral superiority, a pretentious lack of awareness and false academic snobitude, all worthy of little more than steaming handfuls of schadenfreude.

I'm going to get right to the point here and skip any red herrings or needless hand wringing, Lisa is going to get a few Flaming Fingers on this one. I will, however, do her a solid and not review her other blog in tandem. Lucky girl you are Lisa, because I don't think you have room for all the fingers I'd be offering.

In the Power of Only One, Lisa sets out to "empower" readers with the "knowledge" and "means" to change "key global issues." I couldn't find any credentials or experience that make Lisa just the person to help us understand the problems of our larger world but hey, everyone can aspire to Angelina Jolie no? Lisa's profile on the reviewed website offers little more then platitudes but one can glean a bit of info off the profile of her personal blog. The Power of Only One itself is a mess with a header stuffed full of tiny, empty words, a dull layout and messy, overcrowded sidebar. Lisa posts beginning January 1 and manages until April. So it would seem this blog was an ill-conceived New Year's Resolution that got boring just about the time Lisa got herself a boyfriend perhaps. Looks like Lisa's commitment to the global community lasted a bit longer than one of Miss Missives overpriced whipping sessions. Professionally pinked-cheeks don't come cheap these days, thanks be to Jezebel that some thing are just recession proof.

This is what it was like reading The Power of Only One:

Now sit down y'all readers of the internet, nope don't put your dirty feet on my purty carpet just listen while I elucidate you on the state of the glo-bal community. Can y'all say trafficking, yes that's it, tra-fick-ing, good, good. Now I am going to define for you prejudice. Look I am linking to a definition of prejudice. I hope you understand now. Look at the sad little pictures of African children. See I am doing my part to be a good citizen of the world by showing you what clearly you must not know since you are totally unawares of things like Da'fur and the Sedan, well and even the search capabilities of the internet for that matter.

Okay, that is not a direct quote from Lisa and yes, I will cop to it's mocking tone but this is what it felt like to read her words.

Here are a few of Lisa's actual words(not my poor, animosity-laced, ambiguously-accented renderings) just so you can really soak it in:

dedicated to helping the ordinary one person become an extraordinary impetus of change. This site will address key global issues such as poverty, hunger, AIDS, human trafficking, and domestic violence. The main goal is to empower individuals with the knowledge of the issues & the means to make change--one person, one step at a time. The united efforts of the many “ones” will create a mighty change. "A waterfall starts but with one drop, and look what becomes of that". (somehow Lisa got confused and thinks it's her job to give us knowledge, which of course, in Lisa's mind means linking to real repositories of knowledge)

I am not a company or a non-profit organization. I am just one. One person. One mom. One teacher. One American. One Texan. One daughter. One sister. One friend. One member of the human race who has challenged herself to save the one...one day, one word, one post at at time with the POWER OF ONLY ONE. (Uh, until April that is)

I would wager that most among you are pondering why I would even link the two together, Kipling and racism. Perhaps you did not know that Kipling penned the White Man's Burden, a poem that extolled the racial superiority of the "White Man(this is what happens when someone audits one literary criticism class and then fancies themself an expert)

I have spent all day trying to come up with a new global issue to address here. (Really. All day huh?)Several different ideas came to mind, but none of them "got the blogging juices going." (Nothing like human despair to get the ole juices flowing.) So I did what I always do. I "googled". Googling Top Ten Global Issues solved the dilemma. There in the search results, I found the answer. Racism. Instantly, I knew which direction to go.(I bet that's exactly how the Dalai Lama comes up with ideas too, lord knows he twitters.

I will spend the next month delving into and exploring the issues of race and racism. We will discover the many ways racism rears its ugly head in cultures across the globe, as well analyzing as the legacy of racism in these various cultures.

To start this journey, I would like share a video produced by The American Anthropological Association (AAA). Use the this video to start thinking about race and racism. (Ok, now Miss is starting to feel like a six year old sitting on the "reading carpet" at the back of this bitches class, does she really address adults this way? )

One of the things I found most distasteful about The Power of Only One, was this undercurrent of unacknowledged white privilege and colonial view of social problems. Lisa also reposts some Langston Hughes poems, oblivious to the irony. Every time I read her I just kept seeing this well-meaning perhaps but completely unaware Scarletty O'hare type, uppity school marm, and Miss Missives knows uppity. I am not saying or even intimating that Lisa is a racist, I don't think she is. I do, however, think that she likes to bath in the juices of her own superiority and is lacking in some badly needed perspective. Let's just recall for a moment that she undertook a do-gooderish blog that lasted about as long as a Britney Spears marriage, and then minutes into it, submitted it to Ask for some kind of hearty back slap or humanitarian award.

This blog feels false, like all the unseemly greening of consumerism that has become so rampant. Companies implore us to save the planet by buying something and Lisa aims to save the world by uninterestingly compiling some random words of others together in an effort to display her vast knowledge of global issues via her rare direct access to Google. The writing is wrought with one part emotional hand wringing and seven parts look at me doing something important and worldly. Never mind Lisa does little more than link to other, more credible sources of global enlightenment. The space is little more than links to sites with original content, some reposted videos and lifted quotes on prejudice, lots of liberal unattributed quote lifting--they say teachers don't cheat. The only thing that could have been more cliche was the Indigo girls set to auto play.

And now for the good news because you know Miss Missives likes to hand out a little candy with her spankings. The good news is, just four months in, Lisa threw up her hands and said to the disenfranchised of the world, this is just too hard.

There are some people who empower others and then there's Lisa.

Hi My Name is Kori and I am a Memeoholic

Here is what I know about Kori. Kori is in recovery. She is intelligent and often thoughtful. Kori has a steady job she is good at. Kori has four kids by three different fathers. Kori has serious Baby Daddy Drama. Kori has a shitty man picker. Kori has a daughter that when the blog first started was going to purity soirees but is now a single, pregnant seventeen year old. Kori is a Dr. Phil guest waiting to happen.

I gave this blog a fair shake. I tried to like this blog. Miss Missives nearly always roots for the underdog but I never warmed up to Kori, her life or more importantly, her writing. On a personal note, I find it maddening when people do the same thing over and over again expecting different results. I find it perplexing when someone has a child with someone who turns out to be a, let's just say, less than stellar model of fatherhood or mate and then continues to procreate without getting a serious head-shrinker autopsy of what went wrong the first time. Miss Missive's very own mother got herself knocked up with the lil' Missives at the tender age of seventeen, married young and divorced young. But she didn't go ahead and repeat that judgement lapse three more times. Yes, I'm sure Kori loves her kids and it's not their fault she saddled them with suckfest fathers. So when she blogs about the problems these decisions have caused her over and over again, I can't shake the feeling that I need to buy Kori a copy of Smart Women Foolish Choices and read it aloud to her until she can recite it by memory.

As the title suggests, Kori Rants and sadly little else. Clearly she gets something out of her brain dump. Using a blog as a safe place to dump your internal rant to rob it of its power is a perfectly legitimate use of the space but not something other people will necessarily flock to. I know life is hard and we all make choices that bite us in the ass now and then, but Kori is intelligent and thoughtful and at least on the road to some level of self-awareness, so it's hard to watch her stumble over her own feet time and time again. She herself quotes,

I'm the piece of shit around which the world revolves.

The better part of the blog reeks of the self-abasement, self-pity and self-involvement that the quote suggests.

In 2008, Kori's friend April introduces Kori to her new drug of choice, the meme. Very quickly, See Kori Rant devolves into See Kori Meme. Kori, if you must meme then cut the verbose intros and jump right into the story. You can finish the piece with an epilogue crediting who gave you the idea. Put more simply Kori, you need to fuck the reader first and then take them out for dinner and banal convo.

Kori also gets caught up in all that is bad about blogging.

my ratings over at buzz are slipping, and I actually care

You must not care. Kori, forget the rating, clicks, hits, blogrolls and the like. You are not at the writing level where you have a shot to turn See Kori Rant into See Kori Reach Heights of Blogger Fame and Make A Dooce-Like Fortune While Brain Dumping on the Hapless Masses. Not that you couldn't someday, god help us all, but right now you have to focus on your writing as a craft not a popularity contest. Most of us have moments where we pine for comments and accolades but at the end of the day, you must be content that there are people reading, nodding their head or pulling for you.

Ok, now that your bum cheeks are all pink and stingy, would you like some good news? Once in awhile, when you are not ranting, you can actually write.

This is memorable. Now if you had cut the first two paragraphs and started with the third, it would be better, much better.

he would disappear and I wouldn't know where he was at all. The last time it happened, he and I had argued and he threw Sam’s stroller through the picture window and, literally, walked off into the night. I have a very clear memory of that August evening; he walked out of the house and I could clearly see him stroll across the yard nonchalantly, keys jingling (my keys, too, as I later discovered) and whistling. Then he stepped off of the curb into the street, and it was like something out of a movie; as soon as he stepped out of the light shed from the street lamp, he was immediately invisible, instantly gone from my life.

This is good, really good because it is solid, evocative. The way you describe it I can see it in my head, I can feel for a moment what it must have been like to have the person you should have been able to count on just disappear, leaving you alone and vulnerable with a young child.

This is the stream of consciousness stuff that Miss Missives abhors. Skip the mental To do/I did lists, slice of life stuff can be done well, like this,

So I thought I would get him fixed, thinking that at least then I would have to worry about any gross cat ejaculate on my blanket. Took him in, got him fixed, all was well until about two months LATER when one of his testicles grew back. Sure, sure, maybe the vet who had been practicing for 20 years made a mistake, but I am convinced that the fucker was just that special. For some reason, the fact that this guy loved me so much that he stubbornly grew back at least one testicle, well, it made me fall in love with him as well.

This has potential but needs ruthless editing. The purpose of your blog shouldn't be to just post, it should be to post something worth reading. Go back over a post like this and as I have said before, pretend you are on a word diet and cut out what you don't need. Your words should move the narrative forward, or add color to a story, evoke details, smells, feelings, not simply fill a page.

So Kori, since you are familiar with the Program, I'd like to give you Miss Missives Blog Recovery Twelve Step Program:

1. Admit that you are powerless over Memes. If you have to utilize them as a jumping off point, then at least jump right into your story(stop the relentless posturing intro and just tell us) and finish it off with the "blah blah blah thanks to Sookie at SookieSniffsSuperglue for this Thursday Theme blahhgity blah blah.

2. Come to believe in the power of ruthless editing. The backspace and delete buttons should become your two new besties. They are there to help you rid your writing of the minutiae that no one cares about and clogs your writing like a giant ball of hair in a shower drain.

3. Make a decision to focus on moments and feelings, words that evoke, not a laundry list of first I said this then I said that, then he left, now I'm scared and confused. You write like salt and pepper and I want more coriander and fenugreek dammit.

4. Make a searching and fearless inventory of your crimes against blogging.(see our FAQ or a good litany of gross missteps)

5. Fix them.

6. Don't stop believing that you can write, but work at it a little. Stretch yourself and be better. There are plenty of writing exercises to be found online or other writers you admire that you can use as a jumping off point. Don't be content to brain dump, you are better than that.

7. Check your work. Blogging doesn't require the relentless fact checking and editing of academia but errors like bow instead of now, typing mishaps and spelling errors are distracting.

8. Mix up the length and type of your posts more. People will be more likely to chug through a long post about your current man problems if you vary it a little.

9. Stop whining so much, you created this life you are living. Have a little cry, blow your nose and move on.

Well dearest Kori, the summer swelter threatens to put a little blush on Miss Missives alabaster visage so I will have to let the peanut gallery fill in the last few.

10.
11.
12.

In the meantime, you get one of these:







And one of these for forcing Miss Missives to step through so much shit to figure out that you CAN write.

Oh Very Young What Will You Leave Us This Time?

Hello Askers, Miss Missives here. Now before you get too excited about my return and soil your pretty little knickers, let it be known that I am only here doing Madame Bellicose a favor. She is one brooding broad but while Miss Missives lay ravaged on her tattered velvet chaise longue nursing a mighty malaise, Madame B. took over her workload wielding that whip from her hand like she was born with it. Now there are clients asking for her by name--that devilish Iron Maiden. Still, I'm glad to be back brandishing red pen and trusty paddle.

Speaking of paddles, today's victim needs to be put over my knee toot sweet. If Chamuca's life had an accompanying required reading list, it would read like this:
Doing Nothing: A History of Loafers, Loungers, Slackers & Bums in America
The Underachiever's Manifesto
How to be Idle: A Loafer's Manifesto
Lazy Daisy
What Your Poo is Telling You(I threw that one in for good measure just because I care.)

Chamuca is lazy. I don't mean lazy like a Sunday morning, I mean lazy like a slug on Quaaludes. Slow and steady can actually win the race but dear, you have to at least put your shoes on and step away from the idiot box. Oh Chamuca, I bet you didn't think you were going to get the mom treatment from Miss Missives today but darling, I whip because I care.

Sometimes Chamuca's writing reminds me a bit of Richard Linklater's Slacker, more characters, less narrative. She even employs the odd but no doubt fitting monikers like Uncle Ponytail Bachelor, Uncle Fighting Illini, Masturbating Cousin and Three-Finger Jack. If Chamuca was a character here and not the author, she'd probably be called Girl Who Refuses to Reach Her Potential. The fact is, Chamuca is a talented storyteller and an adept, if a bit lazy, writer.

She retches her stream of consciousness onto the page and at times it's too meandering for my liking but she has a strong point of view and a decidedly wicked, funny bent. Her writing suffers the most common malady of even great writers, a lack of editing. Now I don't want to scare Chamuca into over-thinking her posts because she posts regularly and sometimes not over-thinking is what gets the job done. Still, if she spewed it out and then went back and cleaned it up later I think it would be so much more engaging.

Chamuca, you are hilarious, candid and yes, a bit of a whore you brother-fucker but you can write the shit out of a story when you pull it all together. Stop giving us everything and just dole out the good stuff. Look at something you have written and keep the broad strokes but eliminate the filler details that don't move the narrative forward. A little of the stream of consciousness is good because that is part of your voice but you need to do some literary Kegels and tighten that shit up.

As for the template and other such nicities, you get a resounding fine. Your template is simple and uncluttered, keep it that way. Your archives are in the preferred drop-down format which makes it easy to go roaming about. You also have a search feature that made it easy to look up what I needed, thank you. Your Blogroll is small enough to be meaningful though you might consider moving it to a tab on your Header.

And Chamuca, if you are going to work for a pittance, dear, fuck Olive Garden okay? Go get yourself a job where you either have time to fuck off and write or a lackey admin job where you can at least make enough money to be able to have casual sex without worrying that your lack of health insurance will make the accompanying vd unaffordable. Stop telling prospective employers you were shit-canned and put that pretty little storytelling mind of yours to good use.

For your work, taken as a whole you get:





With a promise of an IFuckingLoveYou if you tighten up.

For having to dig a bit to find the really good stuff, you get:

Eternal Sunshine of the Nerdy Mind

Miss Missives has a dirty little secret. Fine, Miss Missives has quite a few dirty little secrets in her back pocket, but here's one out of the bunch. I love nerds. Love them.

There I said it. Some girls like the suits, the jocks, the bad boys, I like the late-to-bloom nerds.

Dictionary.com defines nerd as:

a stupid, irritating, ineffectual, or unattractive person, or an intelligent but single-minded person obsessed with a nonsocial hobby or pursuit.

No, no, no, they've got it all wrong. Nerd, unlike the other n-word, does not have to be pejorative. Urbandictionary.com more accurately lists among its definitions:

An individual persecuted for his superior skills or intellect, most often by people who fear and envy him.

An individual who does not conform to society's beliefs that all people should follow trends and do what their peers do.

A person who gains pleasure from amassing large quantities of knowledge about subjects often too detailed or complicated for most other people to be bothered with.

A four-letter word but a six-figure income. The person you will one day call 'boss'.

Today's reviewee, Matt Stratton, is like the alternate nerd universe's Mark Ruffalo.

Mark Ruffalo:



meet your nerd doppelganger, Matt Stratton:



In Matt's own words, Matt's blog:

focuses on the areas Matt finds interesting,

which leads me to one of my only problems with nerds. What the average nerd finds interesting versus what the average nerd-lover finds interesting, are frequently universes apart, as hottie patottie Mrs. Matt can attest to.

Matt posts a bunch of Tech Tips, Wordless Wednesdays, Follow Fridays and his personal fitness challenge. The tech tips are well-written and understandable even to the relative technophobe. The Wordless Wednesdays, well, they are wordless and on Wednesday so whatever. The Follow Fridays were lost on me because I really have to admire some one's tastes before I care to read what they read.

If I want to know who to read, I'll check in with David Sedaris. If I require a restaurant recommendation, I'll ask Thomas Keller. If I want to know where to get my heroin, I'll hit up Amy Winehouse. If I want to know who I should follow on Twitter, Matt man, it's not coming from you. As for the Fitness blogging, I see the benefit of keeping yourself accountable and trying to garner some much needed moral support but my problem is all of these things mixed together creates a bit of a jumble in the demographics department. I have a hard time figuring out just who Matt's reader would be. I liked this but for me it was one of just a few things that got me to slow my skim.

As for design and layout specifics, Matt, Matt, Matt. What I would hope for is that you are one of those techies with a catalogued system for their software and power cords labeled, almost artfully bundled. In fact you are more like the guy with lonely hard drives scattered on his desk, boxes of Star Trek figurines shoved in the back of the closet getting crushed by your camera bag and a jumble of stray cords piled up on the floor.

Now literally, just minutes away from pushing publish on this review, I discovered that Matt has substantially altered the layout of his blog. Perhaps he realized Miss Missives was picking through assimilating her review. He did make some changes for the better but Matt, you still need to cleanup the DOUBLE sidebar and move some of that stuff onto your tabs, which need to be merged to one set of tabs by the way.

So Matt, for Miss Missives, you get one smoldering look because you are the kind of guy more women need to get to know(yes Mrs. Matt, I know he's taken, I said the kind of guy). Your blog however, gets a Meh.








But Bill Gates offers up a High Ten, compadre:



Side note to the women currently traversing the dating world: give the nerds a chance. They might seem goofy on the outside, but you can always work on the clothes, glasses and haircut later. They are so great for so many reasons. They are good with the nookie. Think about it, all that time thinking about sex, imagining sex, dreaming about sex, coupled with a desire to make you happy? Give it to them and they are grateful. They are trustworthy. They're not going to flirt with or ogle other women. First, they don't have the social confidence. Second, they're more interested in the nearest electronics store. Third, they really respect you. Forget the alpha male and embrace the beta guy, trust me, you won't be sorry.

Mother and Child Reunion

In Mother and Child Reunion, a tune penned by Paul Simon, lyrics mention "a strange and mournful day" and "I can't for the life of me remember a sadder day". This was all fans needed to speculate as to possible meanings. Perhaps the song referenced a child given up for adoption about to meet his or her mother. Maybe the mother or child had passed and now the one was joining the other in death.

When asked about the song, Paul Simon related that the title, Mother and Child Reunion, was lifted straight off a New York Chinese restaurant menu where it was used to reference a chicken and egg dish. Get it? Mother and child reunion? I thought it was clever because rather than be deep, the title referred to something that couldn't be more fleeting, Chinese food.

Anyhow, I'll allow you a brief peek into the twisted thought processes of Miss Missives. Thoughts of Mother and Child Reunion led me to thoughts of the chicken and the egg which led me to the classic dilemma of which came first. This in turn made me think of the Chinese dish, which made me think again of the Paul Simon song, which led me to ponder, which came first, the mother or the child? In this case it is clearly the mother which very circuitously leads me to my main point(yes there is one). The mother came first and with or without the child, the mother is still a woman, or a chicken or something.

My gripe is that so many women become mothers at the loss of nearly everything else. Jesus, no wonder so many women go through empty nest syndrome(see another chicken reference), because they all too frequently define themselves by motherhood alone. If I hear one more person(because yes, we are still people) refer to herself as a mommy to anyone other than her children, I will take needles and shove them in my eyeballs.

This is not exclusively directed at today's reviewee. Lolly, I get it, you're in the first year. That first year is very difficult and balance can be nonexistent. I know it can be hard to define yourself by much else when you are enmeshed in new babydom, but I know plenty of women with babies who still talk about other things.

Mommy Is Rock 'N Roll is your garden variety snoozefest, the quintessential mommyblog where the new baby is all encompassing. I can't sugarcoat it, there is very little here. Lolly has the same excitement of most new moms, figure woes, internal debates, sleep deprivation but her writing skills are not enough to lift this common experience up to a place where others can relate to it.

Lolly, like so many other moms, you are a thoughtful mother with a beautiful baby and almost nothing to say. If you want people to read what you write, you have to vary it a little. It's not that you cannot write about your daughter, or breastfeeding or slings or the things prolonged sleep deprivation does to a person. You can, but you need to pick out anecdotes, funny stories, unexpected things and throw in some stuff completely unrelated to Lolly the mom.

My best piece of advice? Go read great mom blogs and figure out why you like them. Are they funny, confessional, snarky, all out crazy? Figure out what they are doing right and emulate. I'm not saying copy or try to be them but it's okay to use these engaging blogs as a lesson on how to make yours more engaging.

As for the specifics, the template hurts my eyes. I don't like faux animal print. I didn't like it when Dolce and Gabbana used it, I certainly don't like it when it's splashed up on a page I am expected to read. I don't like pink font on black background but thank you for a font large enough to read without inciting some kind of violent head pounding. The sidebar could be cleaned up but it's not out of control. Get the Google ads off your site, the seventeen cents you are making a week isn't worth it. Pare down your blogroll or move it off the main page. If your blogroll is in excess of fifty blogs, it no longer means anything.

Lolly, Ask is a site that will definitely pants* you with no remorse. The reviewers here write and read and I'm not talking about Christmas newsletters or thank-you notes. While we complain about clutter and design and even grammar, you'll notice that people who can really tell a story generally get a pass. The reality, however, is that most people cannot tell a good story. Even if Princess Di and Michael Jackson came from beyond the grave to take them out to lunch, they'd still find a way to screw it up. So to turn around and write about the naturally mundane, like motherhood, is the equivalent of five Ambien and a Gin and Tonic.

Still, don't despair because the good thing about children and motherhood is everyone's baby is beautiful to them and your blog is your baby. So if Mommy Is Rock 'N Roll is what you want it to be, and you can look back over your old posts excited to read how you felt or where the baby was at that moment, then I suggest you pull your pants up and don't look back.














*d.Verb. American. To overpower someone and remove his trousers by force as a humiliation. Equivalent to the British debag. Usually only done to males as removal of the pants, the traditional male garment, is a symbolic emasculation. Pantsing in this sense may be used as an initiation rite, a punishment, or just done for fun.

A Litany of Langorous Longings

Ah, summer, what power you have to make us suffer and like it. -Russell Baker

Yes I'm back and yes, I am aware you probably didn't even notice I was gone. I cast off the dominatrix gear in favour of the gauzy livery of the season. I traipsed across some of the most bucolic beaches, I savored the most theurgical sunsets, I sipped potent potions until I settled into the halcyon disposition I yearned for. And yes, I took my thesaurus along fuck you very much. The summer has just begun in earnest and here I sit, ready to review a blog whilst I down my umpteenth Arnold Palmer and try not to wilt.

Susan, in an entry dated back in April, contemplates whether the malefeasants here at Ask actually read the blogs they have been punished, uh, I mean assigned. Sadly Susan and not entirely lucky for you, we do. Our personal quest to bring readers read-worthy blogs like this and this and this means we have to slog through blogs that are as feculent as the end of the state fair's overfilled port-o-pottys.

Susan also considers the crew here when she tells us,

they fucking scare me. Yikes. I mean, how about that guy with the big eyebrow? Holy Mother of God. Of course, one lucky blog submitter landed herself a "guest reviewer", who was actually kind of nice. Well, she only tore up about half an ass that day. I would take half an ass tearing anyday from this group.

Susan punctuates that with a nice little graphic at the end.

Now dear, if you did indeed get Nutjobber, I'm sure the whole acorn in the arse thing would be right up his alley, pun intended. However, you got Miss Missives, and I am less about ass tearing and acorn shoving and more about spiky boot poking. Hope you're not too tender fleshed.

Your design is okay. I can get behind the header but the small font on the red background gave me a temple-pounding headache. I am biased against the three column design because I never know where to look. I would ditch the three-column and add some tabs for things like your blogroll and awards, as they are better suited off the main page. Things like your About Me and Archives should be at the top.

As far as the writing goes, I think I know what you're going for but you're not quite getting there. The kid stuff is fine, contrary to popular belief, we are not fundamentally anti-mommy blogger around here, but it should be tight and it should be funny. This has potential as does this but they need to be heavily edited and scrap the openers which would have made me quit reading before I had ever got to the good stuff were I not reading in the capacity of reviewer. This is a good example of tight, it's the on-two punch and it's funny.

On a personal note, the reading experience for me was a bit whiny. I know, I know, it's your place to vent as you cautioned in your About Me. Listen, I know how difficult it must be to navigate the waters of divorce and exes and current husband's exes, and ex-exes and currents of exes and new ones and those other ones and well, their kids too. In the realm of divorce, it's rarely about just one parent being the bad guy. When you go on and on about your husband's ex-wife it makes you seem threatened or bitter and I don't think that's you. Seriously, she does not deserve mention on your About Me page. You are so much more than that and I know you have so much more to say. I think you have some good reasons to be angry but I would focus your writing, when you feel compelled to get something off your chest, on what she has done versus your opinion of her. Readers will get the gist based on her actions and you won't appear to have New Wife Syndrome. Or don't, what do I know.

As a whole, this was a little Meh with a side of one wee Star. Most posts went on too long, editing would go a long way to making this far more readable. Susan has snark but she needs to know when to stop writing. There is a lot of potential for great stories like crushing your kid's lemonade stand hopes, but seriously, you need to put a few stitches in that gaping hole because that shit ain't tight.

Just the Facts Ma'am

Remember the hey look at my carrots guy with his sum total of twelve posts? Oh how I miss carrot guy. After last week with Michelle and her eight blogs I was really hoping for brevity, you know, that perfect starter blog of less than fifty posts. Instead I got The Bob Files, where Bob has thoughtfully written around five-hundred posts. Sigh.

Alongside a career in computer something or another, Bob writes professionally reporting on sports for a local paper. He has also been relatively prolific writing short fiction, comics and even poetry, but mostly, he reports.

He reports about his job, his hotel accommodations, the state of Chicagoland's icecream and his young son's foray into the newspaper biz. He conveys the facts in a straightforward manner. He covers the who, what, where, when and why. That's what reporting is and writing isn't. As a reporter you can't embellish, leave out details with abandon, condense characters, or create. Just ask Jayson Blair. As a reporter, you are a statistician, a recorder of happenings, not an alchemist.

Bob has a cache of his fiction stored on the blog but most of it is dated and his blog appears to be a repository for his body of work. Miss Missives delved briefly into the fiction but concerned herself mostly with the actual blog entries. That Bob reports rather than creates is my main complaint with the Bob Files. He begins writing about something that could build into a great story, but it never really goes anywhere. And Bob, don't tell Miss Missives nothing good happened, because if you are an observer, a natural storyteller, something interesting always happens. Remember Paul Harvey's The Rest of the Story? That's what kept coming to mind as I made my way through the Bob Files. Where is the rest of the story? Where is the hook, the meat, the twist, the thing that brings it all together?

Every so often, Bob hits the mark, makes the connection, shows his funny side and delves beyond the straight reporting. Still, it happens infrequently enough that I don't think he's going to grab people who happen upon the site.

As far as design goes, the space is clean and uncluttered. The drop down archive is helpful and the categories are manageable, making navigation easier. Bob, I would add a Home button to your tabs and perhaps a Best Of in order to get readers and keep readers. Bob posts regularly and has posts of varying lengths, so he's on track there.

This isn't a case of a blogger that can't write. Bob knows the difference between to and too, he doesn't split his infinitives. He can put words together in a way that is clear and readable, just very little I'd actually care to read. Now I'm not looking for sordid tales or BabyMamaDrama. One doesn't have to slide into the maudlin, dramatic, confessional posting to tell a good story. Is it fair for me to want Bob to spin his class reunion into a tale of boy makes good, or cheerleader got fat? Maybe not but why else will readers come back than for interesting material? Good writers who want readers do not just write for themselves. Good writers don't simply catalogue, rather they selectively add and remove details that make the colors of life a little bit brighter, the heroine a bit more ravishing. That's why we read them.

I will illustrate this with a bright, shiny example. If you look at this post, notice how she left out a slew of the mundane details, the minutiae. Notice that each piece of dialogue is fundamental in pulling together the moment. Notice how she tell you about her grandfather through his habits and actions and words, not a straight head to toe litany. What she writes in very few words builds two characters that you can just see in your mind. Now do you think it happened exactly this way? Probably not, but good writing made it larger than life.

My advice to you Bob is this, read over some of your favorite writers and figure out what makes them good. You can write and you like to write so put some time into making it good for the readers too. Writing is like sex and Old Man Dunphy was right, making sex is like a Chinese dinner, it ain't over 'til you both get your cookies. Because I didn't get my cookie Bob, you get this:

Middlesex

Miss Missives has a general love for the odd, disenfranchised, different, marginalized, and fringe elements of society. Selfishly, I gravitate toward these people because they have some of the most fascinating stories to tell, stories you will never hear from the soccer mom or the angsty teen. They often tell tales that rather than be relatable, grab you for the very fact that they show a part of life you could never see on your own. Sometimes it's just another door to peak in through and sometimes it's a bridge to seeing someone's humanity.

So when I read that my reviewee was a

BDSM loving, dyslexic transsexual

I poured myself a big glass of cheap red and hunkered down expecting quite the read. Michelle, do you want the good news or the bad news first? The bad news is I didn't get the read I expected. The good news is, you are indeed just like everyone else.

It is probably a tad unfair that I judge a blog by what I want it to be, by what I know it could be, by what I know would draw people in and make them come back for more. Michelle's blog is her own and not a Choose Your Own Adventure where I get to pick the direction she goes next. Still, there's so much I want to know, and yes, much of it is her life as a transsexual but not for the prurient reasons you might think. Now after a little digging, I did come across some of her BDSM photos and got my first look at the cha-cha of a post-surgical transsexual--so, okay, a little prurient(it looks just like any other happy cha). Michelle does put herself out there but there is also so much she holds back.

In one post she says

the short time I spent on some psychiatric wards was among the more humorous and enlightening times of my life.

Michelle, where my dear are these stories? How did you figure out you came delivered in the wrong packaging? How did you come to terms with it? How did you tell your family? How did you evolve to the woman you are today? What did you think of Transamerica? Are these too painful, too personal perhaps, but these are the things I'd ask you over lunch and wine.

It is possible that Michelle has written more about this than I give her credit for because I couldn't read the entirety of her, as of last count, eight different blogs. Yes I'm not even joking. Miss Missives can hardly handle her own blog, reviewing duties here and a little Facebook and Michelle manages to juggle eight different sites to which she posts regularly. Who's the better woman now? Michelle is analytical and clearly likes to compartmentalize things, hence eight different blogs. There is the main site submitted for review, there is her home page, there is Linux Crusade, there is Technilife, there is the Story of L, there is her photoblog, and ShootGreen-her other photography site, and finally there is her bondage site. Oh, and she twitters too.

Michelle works in the Computer Engineering field and it reflects in her writing, technically adept, detailed, methodical but sometimes lacking the emotion and fire that I think such life experience would provide. I completely ignored the computer, photo and technical posts because I had my hands full with the more personal works. There are loads of technical posts but even her personal posts feel distanced. Maybe one has to put some space between themselves and their feelings when they have faced a hostile world for so long but I just know she has more to say.

Michelle, I'll tell you the same thing I told MongolianGirl, at least once a month, pick something you are afraid to write about and write about it anyway. I think you have stories to tell that you're not telling. These are your own words and they are right on.

What do I need? I need to shout. I need to scream. I need to take risks and feel the angry wind in my hair. I need to push my limits; to slam down the accelerator and drive like a maniac; to bear arms against the enemy and pit my wits in a battle of survival; to pilot an attack helicopter ... I need to destroy things; but in the name of good ...

You, like most everyone else need to edit, edit, edit. For example, this is very good but a little editing would give it oomph, momentum. There was a great deal of good information but even the most personal pieces often felt distant, plodding and technical. There were some things that stood out, like this and this and even this. And Michelle, you minx, you switched templates mid-review but I like the changes and your clean, uncluttered designs(yes, all 8 of them) get big gold stars.

Michelle, your blog is yours to do with what you will, and the very fact that this blog is a bit boring shows that you are a person like anyone else, and not just a personality, caricature or headline. If you want a good example of how to connect with a reader, share stories--even painful, unflattering ones, how to write about difficult and highly personal subjects, check out yesterday's reviewee. Look at this compared to something like this. One of the most amazing things about blogging is how it can connect people who might never cross paths in life outside the Internet. You have an amazing opportunity to connect with the world and show people who you are.

For having the courage to be your authentic self, you get this











For designing and managing to juggle so many blogs you get this:





For making said blogs feel like a four inch thick Linux Manual and making me trudge through so many, you get this:

Rochelle, Rochelle

Several years ago I spent the night at a swanky hotel with that month's illicit paramour. This is of course before Miss Missives was in fact Miss Missives and got paid to leave the shoes on. I was what I would call easy but choosy and I chose right because we were up until the wee hours of the morning riding each other like roller coasters. Yes, John Mayer, my body is a wonderland.

I woke up ravenous and perused the room service menu for something good. As my eyes scanned over the poached this and frittata'd that, one magic word popped out at me, brûlée. No it wasn't the dessert menu it was breakfast, oatmeal brûlée to be exact. I was so hungry I ordered two. When it came, much like myself, it didn't disappoint. It was steel-cut Irish oats that must have been simmered in sugar and cream or half and half rather than water. It was like an oatmeal risotto, creamy, starchy, goodness. The top was covered with plump, pristine berries and the de rigueur brûlée crust that gave way as I broke through it with the silver spoon. It wasn't dessert, it wasn't breakfast, it was a little piece of post coital serendipity.

I bring this up because there is Crème Brûléed oatmeal and there is oatmeal. Rochelle over at Shoe Porn is serving up heaping spoonfuls of oatmeal, sans the brûlée, minus the fresh berries, maybe with a meager handful of bottom-of-the-box raisins thrown in.

On her first post she warns us,

this is not a foot fetish blog, please move right along.

Too bad says Miss Missives, it might liven things up a bit around there. If you want some hot this little piggy went to market action, you'll have to go here or here because Shoe Porn is pretty much just a bunch of shoes.

Now I love shoes as much as the next girl but the danger of blogging about one thing almost exclusively is you run the risk of banality. Remember, Sex in the City featured shoes as it's 5th cast mate but it wasn't the star of the show. Seeing post after post about shoes with little real passion or heart is like looking at someone else's stamp collection. Thanks, no. The unfortunate part of all this is that Rochelle can write. I don't know if she's really shoe-obsessed or maybe just felt her blog needed a hook. She may have a true passion for shoes but the shoes and the writing don't come together to form anything even remotely meaningful.

The blog design is simple which I generally like, however, for something as vivid and graphic as fashion, design is paramount. Would you marry a beautiful pair of Christian Louboutin perfection with a drab, boxy dress? Likewise, the sidebar looks like a woman who can't stop with one simple fetching accessory and instead bedecks herself with a slew of sparkles and spangle. The drop down archives are good, the About Me weak and in general, the whole thing feels terribly half-hearted.

My advice Rochelle is to close it down and start fresh. Write about living in South Africa, write about your job, your love life, even about your shoes, just not exclusively. Don't be affected or purposefully coquettish or clever, just be yourself. Because really, I think you can write but this blog is about as useful as two left shoes.

Body of Evidence: Musician Mommy v. the English Language

This week's victim is really more of a perpetrator if you examine the evidence. Instead of finding a crime scene teeming with torn bloodied appendages, corpses strewn about and epithets penned in blood, you have morbid amounts of random capitalization, ellipses scattered about like shotgun shells left behind after a bank robbery, and more medical talk than an episode of House.

So if MusicianMommyMayhem is the crime scene than I guess today I'm Dr. Fucking G. Nothing like a good autopsy no?

The suspect in question is Larissa, a twenty-something mom who has recently returned to school to pursue a degree in criminal investigation and I hope that's going well for her because the blog? Not so much. Larissa says that,

this is a place for me to spill, unfiltered and untamed

Unfiltered and untamed fine, but you can edit, no? The ellipses, asterisks and gratuitous use of caps nearly drove me to felonious assault. Seriously Larissa, what is it with the asterisks? As for the ellipses, for the love of Charles Manson, I plead of you, finish your thoughts. Much like most serial killers have rituals they employ over and over again, is excessive punctuation your modus operandi, your signature? Larissa I know this is supposed to be your space but you have committed a serious crime against the English language.

This blog is more repetitive than the Law & Order franchise. It is replete with talk of Larissa and her husband's medical problems. Now in fairness, Metallidad has diabetes and Larissa has Fibromyalgia so yes, illness for them is probably front and center. Still, does anyone actually want a breakdown of how well you've slept or haven't slept the past few days? Do I really need to know that you need to see a podiatrist? I know this is your place to unload but is this fodder you really need to reflect upon? I actually read a post entitled The Back of My Head is Numb. Thank you Larissa, that was five minutes of Miss Missives life she'll never get back. A blog is not a place where you wax on about picking up your prescriptions, stopping at Walmart or getting a reservation at Red Lobster. If you are submitting here and expect any kind of praise, it had better be about the writing. I know diabetes is serious but when your husband gets a toe amputated and you cannot even make that interesting, there is a problem.

As for the design, I actually like your header but it's aligned strangely and the tremendous widgetry has got to go. No one is going to MusicianMommyMayhem with the expectation of finding out when the new moon is and the live traffic feed is beyond unnecessary. If you want to keep the music quotes and behemoth blogroll, put them on a separate page. The graphic signature screams amateur scrapper, get rid of it.

Here's the positive. Greyson, your son, is beyond adorable. This post is getting a thumbs up if for nothing more than its brevity. This is the best thing I read. It has a point and a chronology that makes sense. Please note, not every post has to be serious or heart-wrenching but clear, coherent, non-medical ailment related, finished thoughts are a good start.

Yes, I'm levying some pretty serious charges here. When Musician Mommy offers her services as a proofreader, I just about accidentally discharged my weapon right in my mouth. Another post finds Musician Mommy posting lyrics. Nothing says fourteen year old's diary like lyrics people. Nearly everything I read was stream of consciousness, the stuff that belongs in your head, background noise, an internal to do list. Yes, you can brain dump all over the Internet but then don't leave your little corner of the web looking for a review.

Other than that, the indictment is as follows:

ADW, assault with a deadly weapon, the weapon here being a keyboard.
Aggravated assault on the English language.









I sentence you to blogging oblivion and issue you three of these beauties.