In Which a Continent is Redeemed

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

In Which I Talk To a Dave Matthews Band Fan For the First Time!

Brooke moved from the US to a penal colony called "Australia" because she found love. Now this is pretty much a perfect blog to review, because the writing is fun and everything else is horrendous, which means...

Hooray for constructive criticism!




So let's get to it:

What's a blog? Well, probably not a good name for a blog, for one. Not much we can do about that. Here's a start, though. While you and I are very different people in real life, blogging allows us to dig deeper and find the things that unite us. You know, the important stuff. While in real life, for example, I will never know a fan of Dave Matthews Band, and consider that name blasphemous, especially so soon after the death of a real musician (Mark Linkous Rest in Peace), blogging allows us to connect on another level, where musical tastes are meaningless.

So, the design. You need to move this blog away from the iWeb platform and onto a real blogging tool like Blogger or Wordpress, which will get rid of most of the annoyances. It's very easy. You will no longer have "Read More..." links that add one line to the post. You will no longer have a strange URL like http://www.whatsablog.com/whatsablog.com/home/home.html. I mean, I don't even know what's going on there. And you will have posts named after their titles, rather than after the caption for the pictures. Look, you like your blog enough to submit it here, so it's time to do get rid of the weird stuff. No big deal. I'm not angry or anything. But come on. COME ON!

Man... Sandra Bullock is making me cry. Goddamnit.

Where was I?

In your About page you say you love shocking pink. Now, I don't know what mental disability or childhood traumas make people like shocking pink, but you know everyone else hates it, right? I'm not saying people hate it like it's a quirk. If I see you chew gum with your mouth open I get a little annoyed. But if I see shocking pink on a blog I want to kill someone.

And as long as you're asking What's a blog, I can tell you it's no excuse to use i instead of I. Most likely, your response to that will be "That's MY style." Well, it's your style, and it's the style of many other bloggers who write annoying blogs with no capital letters, because HEY, it's the Internet, and it's our democratic right and duty to choose our style and do away with the Fascist capital letters. You know who writes with capital letters? The Man, that's who!

But that's just another example of the same problem. You don't hate your readers, so stop treating them like they're your enemy. Get rid of "Read More" links, use a real blogging tool. No more pink. Capital letters are there to help the reader. If they're not there, you shift the attention from the content of your writing to your style of writing. And why does your font turn bold when I click on individual posts? What's going on here?

And I'm saying all that because it's a damn shame. I like you and I like your husband with that perfect hair of his. I like it when you write, "and i said to the universe, ‘fuck you, universe’!" I think you're funny, you know? And honest.

But then you had to take it too far, didn't you? I like butts. Some of my best friends have butts, but it's a thin line between putting it out there and putting IT out there. It's okay if you decide to write three posts about a butt problem, but "i finally had the mother of all turds" is off-putting. To me. I mean, if you wrote that to test your readers, then I guess I failed. I failed to see brutal honesty in the pooping-blood stories, I was too conservative to get over the use of i, I failed to click on "Read more..." and I failed to appreciate the shocking pink.

But it's your job, as an intelligent writer, to ask yourself if the failure is not actually yours. Take your time. Your defense mechanism might dismiss this review. But then, go back and think about it all. Are you confusing brutal honesty with over-the-top poop-stories? See, you write about your pre-turning-30 feelings and mention a letter you wrote to your 30-year-old self when you were 20. Now, printing that letter on your blog would have been honest. Showing me your 30th birthday-party underwear is nice, don't get me wrong, but when you wake up from your hangover, maybe we should all reflect together. Let's read that letter, think what we did wrong and what we did right, think about our 20-year-old selves, and most importantly, rethink those underwear.

You get spray tanned. You like E! Channel. You read Perez Hilton and Dooce. You call your husband (who surfs, by the way. Yep), Hubs. You like Dave frickin' Matthews. We're different people is what I'm saying, Brooke. Yet we're the same. And your job is to show me that I'm right. Your job is to show me that even though on the surface we're different, our humanity unites us. I see your humanity when you write about offending your father, and I see our common bond when your husband is away and you write "it’s so damn quite in this house." But there are not enough posts like that, and when they're there, you quickly move on, as if you're afraid to come out as depressed. Living in Australia, you might appreciate this one: Nick Cave was asked in an interview why he left sunny Australia to live in dreary London, and he answered, "Because in London you're allowed to be depressed."

Honesty is not about poop-related injuries, but about writing to find the truth about yourself.

Because I want you to move to Blogger, I give you this button:

And because I love you and believe Your Truth is Out There, I give you

HELL

The sad thing is that working in a restaurant should get a blogger some great writing material. A diner sits there and tells another person what he wants to eat. In this strange pseudo-Feudal world of dining, that person now has to go to the back of the restaurant and make sure the customer gets what he ordered, then bring it over to his table. Now, the diner doesn't even raise his head to acknowledge the waiter because he's talking to his wife about Tiger Woods or he's tweeting, "I'm in a restaurant. HUNGRY!!! LOL." Then at the end, he gives the guy some cash while loudly complaining to his wife that the waiter should have paid more attention to his table and that the pasta was sticky.

And here we have a blog, Even Idiots Order Pizza, that's all about making fun of this absurdity of the service industry, where for a short moment people get to DEMAND others give a damn about them. Unfortunately, the blog fails.

And I don't want to be mean here, Sam. Unfortunately, though, instead of identifying with you and telling myself, "Can't these people see there's a human being behind the notepad and under the food tray? Can't they sense a soul on the other end of the line?" I see you as a condescending whiny prick with nothing to offer but your own published self-delusions.

Let's go through the first page.

A woman calls Tech Support with a question. Sam is being an ass about it. The End.

Then, back in the restaurant, some people ask to split the check. Apparently they do it in a complicated way, although we're never told what they really wanted to do, because Sam is more interested in being a wise-ass: "Turns out I was supposed to take a tip out somewhere and do a handstand and summon the rain gods and do their taxes. Federal and state."

Next, some guy orders a small pizza, NOT REALIZING IT'S ACTUALLY PRETTY BIG! Ha! Thank God you have a fucking blog where you could write this shit!

Oh, fuck it. I'm not going any further down the page. I will do a quick search in the archives to see if there's anything good...

He's waiting on an old deaf guy who can't hear him, and then he makes fun of him. A woman enters the restaurant and asks about the beverage selection, so he describes her as an idiot. Well, looks like I've read everything I needed to read.

OK. Look. I could give you some tips about the blog. I could say the template is simple and nice, but you should probably fix the date thing on the left. And I could tell you that no one cares about labels. No one is going to say, "I wonder what his SNIPPET label is like!" You have a links tab with only one link. Whatever. Your blog is not your problem. Your life-choices and your attitude is your problem. You live in Hell, and the sad part is that you've found your way there all by yourself. And as much as I appreciate a person pointing out the absurdities of modern-life, your blog fails to do that, and worse--it only helps you stay in your Hellish self-imposed exile.

Maybe you're just very young, and subconsciously you think that being a jerk helps you distinguish yourself. Maybe you feel like writing your blog makes you better than others. Young people tend to do that. I was like that in my early twenties. High five! And look at that: I didn't go far enough in the blog to find out anything about your personal life. I don't know how old you are, where you live, what your favorite movie is, your favorite color, band, time of day, season, football team, and yet I know you live in Hell. You're burning in a lake of fire and you don't even know it. Your hatred consumes you, and you pretend to like it. You make fun of deaf people because you feel invincible, not knowing you've already suffered the worse tragedy a human being can suffer: the death of your soul.

Rs.50 lakh per month?!

Let me get straight to the point. Thauseef is a great writer who's doing something really wrong: Either he forgets people are reading his blog, or he pretends not to care. This means two things:

1. He published 4 posts in 2009.
2. Even with that limited output, he manages to make me angry.

And I'm angry because he writes so well. When I first looked through the blog and saw the long posts, I thought, "Oh, looks like we got ourselves a writer!" because there's nothing more pathetic and amusing to my cynical self than a person who can't write and thinks he can. I had a review already written in my head. It was going to be really funny, too. But then I actually read the blog, and... motherfucker can write! It's a thin line between using big words to appear literary and using them well. And Thauseef pulls it off. I mean, the man can write. He just doesn't.

And to make things worse, here's his latest post. It's called, "Work - Or some other magic." See, Thauseef found a job. The man who has poetically struggled with love and with writing and with finding his place in the world, is now getting places. Good for him. He got what he wanted. But I don't care anymore. What starts as a post about him questioning his new life and the choices he's made ("It is surprising, on retrospect, that despite my ardent belief that my life and my perspective have always been different from the rest, I have somehow ended up having the exact same life that most people do"), becomes, well, here are some sentences:

He had sixteen years of experience in the field of Networking and had a successful record of Rs.50 lakh per month on Networking range of accessories.

Sometimes, you have to sell the material without profits just to get the products moving. With the distributor sitting in UAE, he has bestowed complete sovereignty of Finance control to a boy in the Chennai office.

On the other hand, market scenario reflects certain shortcuts and steps to be taken to quickly create the brand awareness.

So, Thauseef, here are my suggestions:

1. If you write long posts where you talk about everything that's happened in the previous year, people are not going to read them. Many bloggers like to say--and I've seen them say it here many times--that they only write for themselves. That's a lie. Even when a person writes a journal he keeps in a locked drawer, he still hopes someone would unlock that drawer when he's dead. You write a blog because it helps you deal with whatever you're going through, but also because you want people to read it and love you for it. So take those long posts and divide them into a few short posts published more frequently.

2. If you include the words "Rs.50 lakh per month" in another post, then you should stop writing.

3. I called you "a great writer" on that first line, but writing is also about editing yourself. You can't talk about market scenarios and brand awareness and expect me to give a damn. You can't write long posts (33 Page-Downs) and expect me to read them. I wanted to love your blog, I really did, because when you want to, you make me feel. You're writing with soul and you're not afraid to be honest, but the way things are right now, your blog is unreadable.

Blame Humor Bloggers

A review from People in the Sun:

So last week I got this nice review done, and most people thought it was alright. Hell, it even had a Nazi joke! And here, so soon, is the review that will banish me forever from this community.

Because what we have here is a Humor Blogger. And I don't hate it.

Now, I understand the hatred for Humor Bloggers. They're bubbly. They're constrained by the need to tell jokes. They're like a bubbly community of monstrous sad clowns. They're my supervisor in the call center 5 years ago. She smiled her stupid smile even when she told me 5 minutes late is still late, and that at 8am I'm already expected to be ready by the phone. Because she had to smile all the time or else she would have exploded with self-pity and self-loathing and self-delusion.

So I understand the instinctive hatred for Humor Bloggers.

But beyond that, what do we have here?

First of all, I hate original Blogger templates. Find a blog you like, find the template link at the bottom, and get yourself a new template. I mean, that "Just hangin' out" line in the description is invisible, for Canadian Christ's sake.

Oh yea, he's Canadian. Whatever the hell that is.

Now let's go down that sidebar:

Humor Bloggers button. A Christmas pun. Links to his Canadian Politics blog. His chatting-about-music blog (why do all his blogs start with these dots? What am I missing here?). His awards-other-bloggers-have-given-him blog. His blogroll blog. Another Humor Bloggers button. A picture of Elvis ironing. It's moving endlessly. Because it's a GIF. Who gives a fuck. It's the most annoying thing I've ever seen. Two more Humor Bloggers buttons. God I'm getting annoyed. And Friendfeed, and Tweets, and Followers, and something called LOL BLIPS Rating, and this thing that tells you where traffic is coming from because as a reader I'm supposed to give a fuck? And some stickers, which are these horrible one liners you find at that call center supervisor's cubicle, and of course: yet another Humor Bloggers button.

Man... And there are more buttons at the bottom? Shit!

OK. I feel this review is already too long, so I'm just going to go through the content quickly.

It's not horrible, see? And that's the tragedy of it all. I mean, it's not really for me, and I don't think I'd wake up and say, "I wonder if there's a new post up?" But I also wouldn't kick this guy out of my Google Reader. Most of the stuff is original and not annoying at all, considering the Humor Bloggers connection. In other words, ever met anyone involved in improv theater or stand-up, and you know they're testing material on you while they're supposedly having a regular conversation, and it's the most annoying feeling in the world? So this blog isn't like that. It's genuine, and even with all the buttons, you don't get the feelings that he's trying hard to make you laugh. He's doing whatever the hell he wants, really, and that's good, in principal.

But it also means that for every original Christmas Song post and for every genuine post about his health, you also have a couple of posts about US politics, which don't really go anywhere, a collection of cut-and-pasted editorial cartoons, and some posts about nothing, that you finish reading and feel like Will Smith just erased your memory with his Men in Black gadget.

And captions contests.

Now, whatever I think about captions contests is irrelevant. The commenters are genuinely having fun, so who am I to judge? And that's what it's about, really. Humor Bloggers are not monstrous sad clowns at all. They're not my call center supervisor. It's just a bunch of people who like to make each other laugh, and what's wrong with that? Knowing the Internet is full of shitty motivational posters, isn't a community of bloggers actually the best part of the internet? Congratulations, Internet, you're using your powers for good this time.

So at the risk of being the Paula Abdul of this site, I will say again that I didn't hate this blog, and I can't give him the fiery finger. But I can't praise it either.

The Dufus needs to make drastic changes to his design. Dufus, if Humor Bloggers forces you to put 10 buttons on your sidebar, you should join forces with other members and protest. This is YOUR corner of the Internet. How much traffic are you getting from LOL Blips? Do they deserve room on your sidebar? I bet even your most loyal readers can't stand this Elvis anymore. Put some Goddamn thought into what you have on your sidebar. And change your template. Your writing is original--so make the whole package look more personal. And get rid of those dots.

Unless its a Canadian thing. In which case, power to you, eh?

The Sham-Wow-ization of Our Lives

So I'm all excited because I'm asked to review a blog, which means that if it's an amazing yet underexposed blog I get to recognize it and let the world know. It's an amazing feeling. That's how Marco Polo must have felt! So I say Yes and wait for the link. And then I get this shit: The Sham Wow of the blog world.

I wouldn't say sites like these ruin blogs. It's like saying The Shopping Channel ruins television. Well, there's room on my TV for HBO, Comedy Central, Rachel Maddow, and Tova's latest scents, so what do I care? I've never bought anything from QVC and I never will.

But why did Amy ask to be reviewed? Just to get the added link? Just to get more people to visit her site and maybe buy some shit? Just for the chance that someone here mistakenly clicks on an ad?

Probably. But it's actually even worse than that. Amy is not just a harmless Sham Wow saleswoman. She's not another Tova. She's not the Video Professor. She's not Billy Mays, Alav Hashalom. See, unlike these people, power to them, Amy's giveaways come with personal stories. She's selling us water coolers while telling us about her elderly Nana. She's selling us some fucking towels while telling us how she was afraid her kid had H1N1. She sells us MOR shitty music while inserting some random family stuff: "My mom likes him, I like him, and even Lovie is pretty crazy about him. He's young but soulful, energetic but smooth." Like my butt!

Maybe it's me. Maybe I expect too much. Maybe I'm wrong to think that whoring the story of your child's H1N1 virus just to get a free set of wipes is evil. Not Nazi evil, just internet evil.

And you know, there's no reason to be too rough with Amy. It's not like she's trying, after all. You don't complain about the acting and the dialog on QVC, so why should I complain about this site? Good luck to you, Amy. I hope the freebies you get to write this shit fill your heart with joy and laughter, I hope Nana is okay, and I hope Lovie gets to see that dude play live one day.

(Oh, and of course you don't really care about this review--only about your ads. So I'm going to Make Mom Happy and click on some of the shit you're selling. You're welcome.)