It's good to be the queen

Love Bites: It's old home week on Ask, and like a case of the clap, the Queen is back, y'all. Here's a review from our long lost Queen Mutha...Didn't you just know she'd miss channeling her inner bitch?


Hi Y’all. It’s yo’ Mutha here. You knew you couldn’t keep me away. Sucks to be you.

My victim today is April, from April’s Little Family. April has a cute little blog with lots of adorable baby pictures and, for the most part, mercifully short text entries.

I can sum this up with the following formula, where ALF = April’s Little Family:



Have you ever rented a movie and found that it was just too inane to even bother watching to see how it ends? This blog is like that movie.

April likes to Twitter. Doesn’t that sound Spring-timey? Yes, here’s her recent twitter talk:

 ...sleepy
 kids and hubs are sleeping... house is quiet :-)
 ...and, it's morning againg :-)
 nighty-night everyone. sleep well :-)
 if you're looking for me, check the couch cushions.
 every time i start to feel good about life, i look at our credit card balances. then i feel like puking. blech.

Now that last entry - I can get into that. Let us into that dark place where credit worries are making you sneak a beer out of the fridge. But she’s not going there, at least not with us. Does April have a hidden secret blog somewhere? Does she have someplace where she writes about her latest shaving mishap, her secret sexual desires, about hiding her secrets from her husband, being so pissed off that she is just about ready to explode?

Nah, she’s perky.

Too bad, I like those dark, bitchy mommy blogs. I’m perpetually in search of the Alfred Hitchcock of mommy bloggers. Still, over 50 people are following her twitteronomy, so there must be something going on. I delve in to her archives to find something substantial:

Hubby stuff
baby stuff – Dear Lord in Heaven, YES! They’re cute already, can you stop now?
stuff about her colds
stuff about her house
car stuff
Some Very Long Posts, which strike me as haikus gone terribly wrong.

I did find one nice post about April hitting a man with her car. Otherwise, I’m getting nothing here.

Who should read April? The 55 people who already follow her on Twitter.

Who should NOT read April? Anyone else on the face of the planet.

How can it sum it up in a rating? One Very Dirty Diaper. This blog stinks and it needs to be changed. That’s your job, April.

I abhor an ad whore.

It's beginning to look like Old Home Day around here. Picket Fence is a blogger who has several of our former victims on her blogroll. Fortunately, they're the good ones - for the most part, so I give her marks for good taste. My blog isn't there, but what can I say. Even I admit that I suck. But then again, I'm not up for review, either.

Unfortunately, she has ads on her sidebar that are front and center. Move your profile information up and get that other stuff out of my face. Roll up your archives, that will save you inches of sidebar.

Those to whom you have linked in your blog roll, get a listing which includes their last posts, date and time which those posts have been published. That's an awful lot to list, don't you think? Maybe get rid of the time line and just list the post names and the site address.

Consider reducing the number of your own posts on your front page. Seven? That's very busy. Especially when you tend to go long. If you're good enough, people will munch up your archives to get more.

Your template is easy on the eyes, but your site resizes when I load each page in Firefox. Check your site in Firefox and see if you get what I mean. It's fine in Explorer. Notice how I didn't mention any bodily excretions when describing your template. That means that I like it.

The writing is nice, but I am just not hitting a groove here. I am sure Ms. Picket has lots of followers, but I'm not one. Not yet, anyway. She writes about her day to day stuff and it goes on quite a bit. She tries to be snarky, bit it's not happening. Ramp that attitude up if you want us to feel the love. Hit us with some good stuff. I can tell it's there, but you're hiding it well. Pick a topic, embrace it, enhance it. Dazzle us with your writing and then stop.

Get rid of the ads, sweetie. Set an example for the rest of the blogosphere, you don't need those ads. I am sure you could make more money from a well-placed lemonade stand. Good work, make it better, I'll be watching.



For the record, one star just means you didn't suck. Aim for three or more. You've got it in you to do better than this.

106 is the number of the day.

Cool Blog Award! I wish I could concur.

This was a tough one. The author of Real Virtuality (RV) and I come from two very different cultures and although she speaks English fluently, some of her native phrases are foreign to me. Also, I make it a point not to judge poetry. This blog is roughly 85% poetry. Some poems are short and sweet and some go on for fucking ever.

Here's RV's header:

Threads Tangled untangled Composite run through Ravel, Unravel Is there a link? Weave a design And the thread itself not know Where in the picture Does it lie.

What the fuck does that mean to anyone, in any language? I know it's supposed to be 'angsty', but help me, Rhonda, help me get it out of my brain.

So, why is 106 the number of the day? Well, dear Reader, that's the number of scrolls it took to reach the bottom of RV. Do I need a superior mouse for these long-winded bloggers? Nah, she just needs to learn where the SHUT UP button is and put it to use once in a while.

RV has more embedded videos than Carter's has liver pills - I counted 21 on her front page. In fact, YouTube.com has only 16 videos. You win, but in this case, winning sucks. RV thrives on disjointed language. She has scads of nonsensical paragraphs which make our journey through her blog seem like we're lost in a psychopath's English garden maze and on every corner shrub, there's another goddamned embedded video.

Template? It's long, it's white. Flush it. It looks like a roll of toilet paper.

But what's she all about? Oh God, who knows? Blah, blah, blah, atheist, blah, blah, blah, feminist, blah, blah, blah another long ass poem. I can't spend all week trying to decipher her drawn-out posts. Maybe she thinks that if she just keeps on going, we'll like her more, not unlike a porn star on Viagra, who bangs his leading lady for hours. Come on babe, we've had enough. Get off already. There's not enough K-Y in the world for your length.

Here's my take on what would make your blog better:

• Shut the hell up. You write too much. You've bored the world to death already. Take what you think you want to say, divide it in half, divide it in half again, cut a tenth of the remainder off and publish that portion. Even so, that may be too much.
  
• Cut your front page back to FIVE or less posts. You currently have 31 posts on your front page. You've earned a special impromptu rating for your verbal diarrhea overflow:
• Date your posts. I hate that you only list the day of the week that you posted on. We track things by date, here on the planet Earth.
  
• Sidebar. Too much. Killing us.
  
• Stop mainlining You Tube. Your site already takes forfuckingever to load.
  
• If you want to capture your every thought, get a pen, write things down in a notebook and put them under your pillow. We do not need every single thought that flits across your neural net captured forever in bits and bytes. Pick a thought/feeling. Write about it for five minutes and then STOP. Less is more. Consider the Zen in that statement. Own it.
  

Short bus for you, my dear. Wear it proudly. Someone will be out soon to repossess your keyboard.

It's Not Your Barbie's Blog

Frequently in my life, I feel like I need to wash my mouth out with lye soap, scour my tongue with 60 grit sandpaper and gargle with bleach. Especially after I have posted certain reviews at this site. As a kid, my mom nicknamed me Garbage Mouth. Thanks, Mom.

Deep within my psyche lies a steaming pot of sarcasm, profanity and off-color humor, precariously held in check by my upbringing, which included weekly fire and brimstone sermons. I tend to let the cork out during my reviews, and then feel guilty for days afterward.

So anyway, I was sitting at church this week, and we were subject to yet another liturgical flogging about being a good example to other churchlings. I was wracked with guilt. I pretty much know I am scum to the core, but I felt like I should reform and be a Good Girl* henceforth.

Right then and there I said a little prayer to try to help me deal with my mouth:

Dear Lord,

Please help me not to use bad language this week. And please forgive the bad things that I did to the cat last week with the fork. Help me to be more muthaly to my children.

Thanks in advance,

Mutha.

As Sunday turned into Monday, I started to become mightily worried. Could I actually review a site without using a slew of cuss words? Must I delve into profanity and potty mouth to make a point? Does sarcasm cut less deeply without the F Word? We may never know the answers to those questions.

That's because this week, I was given Queen of Her Own Universe to review and choirs of angels sang.

Frighteningly incongruent images, gotta love it.

Jasmine has a sweet ride, although Blogger is her chosen highway. It's a crimson-flushed custom template that is as creamy as triple extra mayo on a Whopper with Cheese.

Yes, I know it's pink. That's sort of hard to miss. I know that some of you hate pink. Personally, I hate white type on black. You may equate pink with Pepto-Bismo or Mary Kay Cadillacs. Listen, Jasmine does pink well. It is unashamedly pinkedy, pink, pink, and yet, the colors jive, the accents are attractive and the site is laid out nicely.

The entire site is easy to sink into. It is thoughtfully composed and funny. She sharp-edged and sometimes raw. I like that. Read about Jasmine seeing a jpeg of her adult son, nude, with a major erection. Read her 'Best Work', which she has properly placed, smack dab, on her front page and see if you don't love her.

Getting into her archives, I found that she's much better now than she was a year ago, even six months ago. She was into loud fonts and colors and tended to run on too much, but she's refined that. Jasmine, don't slide back into that. Let your words speak for you, but be their master.

In fact, the more I read, the more smitten I became. I even found out that I am not alone on the blogway to H-E-Double Toothpicks.

Here's some helpful hints from the Mutha:

• Link your site address into your banner.
• Lose the major spacing which is used for emphasis between certain paragraphs. I hate scrolling. It makes my index finger get all muscular and that's so unattractive.
  
• Roll up your archives, eventually they will get excessively long.
  
• Keep an eye on length. We have to fight not to run on, don't backslide on that.
• Add some navigation on the bottom of your front page to allow users to access older posts.
• Consider using categories, but don't run a whole list down your sidebar.
• If you are the only author, you don't need your name on every post, just the date is fine.
  
• That's about it, Chickie Poo, just keep writing and don't let things get sloppy.
  

Stop by and visit. She's great fun. The only problem is, to rate her, I have to swear.

Damn.

* Don't feel bad for me losing my language on this site, I pretty much blew it on Tuesday when I called my mother-in-law a life-sucking Shelob-bitch from Hell. But if the shoe fits...

Pigs and Rats Make Me Smile.

Four lines into Ghost of a Smile, Heather applied the term 'douche bag' to our venerated Olympic Hero, Michael Phelps. I was laughing right off the bat.

Heather is a leftist, hippy, greenie. Her husband who advocates for wind farms, has a great site of his own. His is simple, effective and pleasing to the eye (that's a freebie mini-review, hubster). What a team. I could set up a commune with these folks. We'd live off the grid. Can I tend the rabbits, George?

Her content is great fun, easy to read and entertaining, although she says she doesn't know it. I have to admit that the one post that really hit home was about her purchase of a renaissance dress. In this day of economic crunch, it's a serious indulgence which says, "I am going to play with my baby girl and really get into it." I do this with my little girl. I know, you can't picture she and I in princess dresses, drinking tea, can you? I thought I was strange for doing it, but apparently I'm not.

I like that she's pretty dedicated to posting most every day. There are not weeks of lapses between writings. She's not a lazy blogger, but she usually picks one topic, covers it briefly - and that's it. She's not beating us over the head with every single detail of her day - unlike the vast multitude of twitter-pated mommy bloggers. She left me with more questions than answers in her posts. Those questions sent me into the archives for answers. I liked what I found.

There's very little crap on her page. Nothing glares, blinks or otherwise pisses me off. No counters, badges, or other gizmos. I didn't have to zap her colors. We don't know what the hell her weather is or where her visitors are coming from geographically. It's a clean page. However, she does have a rat on her front page. Are rats clean?

"I'm a hamster not a rat, you idiot,
let me out of here and I'll bite your arm off."

I really like her photos, especially this one. Heather's selected music clips are great and the listener decides whether or not to listen. I hate sites where autoplay music jumps out at me like a VC attack.

One thing that we know is that size matters. Heather keeps her posts fairly short, sometimes almost too short. But she makes a lot out of those words. Not every post is outstanding, but there are a lot of great things right on the front page. Why am I not complaining about too many posts on the front page? Because they are, for the most part, good reads. Keep it up, Heather.

Visit her toplisted links, they are all great and she puts them right up front where we can find them. The Wind in My Vagina, the name alone won me but the banner, content and setup held me. I just love it when one excellent blog leads me to others. It’s like striking gold. Her toplist links open in a new window, which helps keep traffic at home. Smart.

Here are my suggestions:
1. Shorten up your banner a bit. It's humongo-long.

2. I prefer monthly archives to weekly, seeing a month at a time makes it faster to read your work without having to go back and forth repeatedly. Keep it drop down. Move your archive box up in your sidebar.

3. How about adding a drop down category list? I’d love to see what else is out there that I might have missed. Avoid a long listing that mucks up your sidebar.

Heather, I love your site and have subscribed, you get:

Grind It 'Til It Hurts

I woke up bright and cheery this Monday morning, birds chirping at my window. I checked my email and received my victim for the week, The Daily Grind. I strolled on over and checked out her blog. The template is great, probably one of the nicest Blogger templates that I have seen. I had high hopes. Well, they say hope is a cruel thing.

Stephanie is an accountant. Her husband is a soldier. She posts about honoring the troops and tells a story of an airline flight where the passengers applaud the troops. I might have thought that cheesy, but I have seen it happen. One of my kids is a soldier, and once when I picked her up at the airport, she was in uniform and people left and right thanked her for serving. I guess people on planes are just thinking more about the whole terrorism thing, than those of us on the ground. Anyway, I give Stephanie credit for using her blog to support the troops.

Content:

Stephanie relentlessly talks about her money like a spoiled cheerleader. She shows photos of her brand-new Beemer (you can see part of it at the top of this review), which her husband just bought her for her birthday. Congratulations, I officially hate you. My husband can't remember to get me a card.

She takes care of her kids, with the help of an au pair. She tells us not to call her stuck up, but it seems like the shoe just might fit in this case. It's always in poor taste to brag about your bank account and possessions. Ditch that attitude.

We need things to keep us humble in life. Stephanie's got a mother that she doesn't quite get on with. That makes the writer more real to me. My mom's in the ground, and I miss her, but we had spectacular fights when she was still breathing. Once she called me a bitch. She was right.

Memes, Tuesday Toot, Wordless Wednesday and Friday Hodge Podge. 'Nuff said? These themes scream, "Give me a topic and I will dribble something out." Too often, in blogs all across the world, that something ends up resembling sphincter-blistering anal leakage, which goes on and on, like dry heaves of the ass. Stephanie, ditch the themes. Lead the pack of mommy bloggers out of the darkness, by coming up with your own ideas. If you must use themes to drum up traffic, write excellent, thought-provoking posts that shine.

Slepping Problems:

Don'tcha think that if you were going to request us to review your blog, you might at least check your spelling? Obviously not.

You're a professional woman, Stephanie. Invest the time it takes to spell properly. Do you ever mention your blog to clients? Can you imagine what they are thinking when they see that you suck at spelling and you're the one handling their money? Use your spell checker, it makes us all smarter. Learn how to use commas, periods and caps. Alternatively, you could just have your au pair type things up for you. She's on the clock, anyway.

The Sidebar from Hell:

You're ruining this gorgeous template with column headers which are intentional misspellings of your title. They are repeated twelve times down the column. It's like some sort of screening test to keep out the dyslexics. Ditch those, they're not working for you.

You have ads, banners, awards, and to cap it off, a category listing that is forfuckingever long with eighty categories holding an average* of 2.2875 posts each. I think that's a record, folks. Pare that shit down.

Roll up your archives and move them up in your sidebar. Banners, awards, move that stuff down. Link your top banner with your blog's web address (www.whalenmom.blogspot.com), this will help keep traffic at your site.

The Grand Finale:

At the bottom of the blog is a self-congratulatory banner, which proclaims:

Isn't that a kicker to the rest of us? She's the pinnacle, the rest of you schmucks can turn in your keyboards and go home.

You get the award for the spelling and grammar mistakes


and for the pundit blog banner and the bragging.

Clean it up, you have some devoted readers who deserve better than what you're giving them. I see good in your blog, but you're doing a great job of keeping it hidden. Come back in a year and see us again. I am sure there are stars in your future. Keep the rad template.

______________________________________
*Yes, I did the math. And I'm not even an accountant.

Pinching Her Lemons

Lemonade and Kidneys
Aug. 2008

Lemonade and Kidneys. It's not a new taste treat, thank God. Ruth has polycystic kidney disease, her young son has it, too. She's fighting the disease and raising money for woefully underfunded research. Ruth's blog is conversational. The detailed information about what it's like living with kidney disease is very readable. She doesn't shun proper use of caps or use strange punctuation (remember the guy who used two periods for each sentence?) to make her point.

She's trying to do something good for humanity, but I have some issues with her site. Am I rotten for picking on someone with kidney disease? Well, as a matter of fact, I am a card-carrying bitch. You can ask my husband. He'd probably lie, because I give good head and he doesn't want to endanger his sex life.

Anyway, Ruth covers a lot of ground blogging about polycystic kidney disease, her life, George Clooney, fund raising and cookie sales. I got a flash of what ADD must be like, as I jumped from topic to topic reading her blog. See? Saying anything negative about this lady makes me feel like I just kicked a puppy and it belonged to one of Jerry's kids. Oh well, life's a bitch. Moving on.

I spent HOURS in her archives, with nary a cookie to sustain me. There's some great content there, but quite a bit of it is mind-numbingly long. Ruth, child, you need to get out your scissors and trim your post's length, my love. This tiny snippet got my attention. This one, on weight loss, a subject near and dear to my Fatty McFaterson heart, needs some surgery. You have wonderful content, but it's hidden in laborious posts. Free it from the bonds of literary diarrhea.

Dramatic posts, like this one, grabbed me with both hands. While you've got me, could you rub down and a little to the left? Harder! Oh, that's it. By the way, about that post, I think those fellows were trying to flag you down to hurt you and I am damned glad you didn’t stop. Readers, if you haven't read that post, back up and read it.

Here are some easy fixes that will help your blog:

~ Seven posts on your main page are just too much, especially if you tend to be verbose.

~ Make that donation link at the top stand out better. That seems to be one of your primary areas of focus, but it's visually weak.

~ I don’t like the line of stars between paragraphs to set off different topics. Your choice, but that's my opinion. When the posts are so long that you need chapter dividers, get out the pruning shears.

~ A drop down archive listing would be better than what you currently have.

~ Consider using HTML code that opens your blog links in another window, this eliminates traffic loss from your blog as people visit your suggested sites. Let me know if you need that code. For that matter, import your blog to Wordpress, a much better place to live if you're a blog. You can make links open in a new window automatically.

~ Edit your content. Don't make me spank you. Now this doesn't mean every post has to be five lines or less. Just take out the extraneous stuff and polish up your lemons.

~ Enlivening your template. Your banner/footer is OK. The second line is hard to read on the lemons, but I am a fool for yellow. How about throwing some of that color elsewhere? Hang on here, I mean, without going nuts and making the whole damned thing yellow. Captivate the eye a little more. Patterns, colors and fonts make our visits more enjoyable. Your blog design is, quite frankly, a huge yawn. Although, I have seen worse. Much worse.

I give her because she needs to work on her dismount.

Ruth, punch it up and bring your juicy lemons back for another shot in six months or so. This topic and your own personal battles, are far too important to not let your blog shine.

Thus ends the review ... or does it?

_____________________________________________________________

For those who feel I was way too easy on the Geezer: I took a hard look at this blogger. I didn't cut her the slack that I did the old guy. But my personal opinion is that she fucking rocks for having the energy, devotion and sheer balls, to help others when she, herself, is ill.

Live long, prosper and feel free to bite me if you don't agree.

Mutha's Hot For The Geezer!

It is my privilege to present to you, The Whinging Geezer, a relatively new blogger. Now, when you look at his blog, the bloggy snobs among you are going to balk at the template. Sure, it's plain and homely, but give him a break - he's a senior citizen for crying out loud! Not only a senior, but one who is tech savvy enough to create this little spot of geriatric love in our nasty, cold blogosphere. View it in Explorer (Gag me with a browser - I'm a Firefox babe.), it looks better over there.

In a web-world of porn, crime, identity theft, child abuse and mommy bloggers, this dude is a breath of fresh air. He gives insight into what it's like to be a freaking gentleman. How long has it been since you have spent some time with a real gentlemen? Probably too long. My grandpa died when I was a kid and he was meaner than cat piss. I can only imagine what he would have blogged, but the Geezer blogs about the ten commandments of happiness (numbers 4 & 10 are hardest for me), being a caring person, having values, respecting others.

I know that there are ladies and gentlemen out there over the age of sixty who are in tune with the internet, but frankly, they are few and far between. It takes a special kind of person to get with the technology and launch himself headfirst into the web. Kudos to you, Big Guy, keep writing.

Geeze-baby, here are my helpful hints for you:

1. Pick some colors, man. The white makes me think of my Gramma's old Frigidaire, but maybe it's a personal statement. Either way, I can't count it against you, because my own husband once wore five different shades of red out in broad daylight, so I know not all men are great fashion guru's. Here's a hint, ask a gay man or a woman to punch it up for you.
2. Right below your photo, your "Who is the Geezer" link is off to the right and the line cuts off in Firefox. Try downloading Mozilla Firefox and check your blog in each browser when you make changes. Many internet users are hooked on Firefox because it is just hands down better than Explorer. A lot of sites look great in either Firefox or Explorer, but sometimes there are little things that just don't jive and then your site looks all funky. Best to double-check. I wrote a short story once and it looked great in Firefox, but was riddled with HTLM code errors in Explorer, best to be safe.
   
3. Your "Subscribe to the Geezer" button does not link into a subscription. It just loads a new front page.
4. I typically don't like three pane blogs, but since you have thrown all the ads off to the far right, I can go with it. They're easy to ignore. You're saving for your retirement, so you go ahead and keep raking it in with the ads, with my blessing. Although with your Exxon stock, who needs ads?
   
5. I see that you assign categories. Some of your categories are redundant. The How To Spot a Geezer post is assigned as geezer, manners, morals, old guy and old-fashioned. While I agree that it does fit all of those terms, each of those categories has only that one post. Try to pare it down. As time goes by you will fill up the categories, but try to remember that as your blog grows, your category list will grow like a tree and it will be harder and harder to prune it back. Stick to a single term that covers it, you can use more than one word in a category, for example: 'old-fashioned morals and manners'. That way you get descriptive without having people click all over the place only to come back to the same post.
6. Last, but not least, I like what you write. You tend to copy and paste a lot of stuff from the web and then comment on it. I find that your own words resonate more with me than that other stuff. If you find you are getting more feedback on your own stuff, wean off of importing news. You have it inside you already. Just let it out. Talk about you.
   

He needs more hits folks, so amble by and take a pick out of the category cloud.



I am proud to be this Geezer's very first subscriber.

Cheeky Fellow

The Cheek of God is a relatively new blog, started five months ago. It’s about Tysdaddy's secret family stuff and what’s beneath his admitted unibrow. By the way, Brian, what does the Cheek of God actually mean? I also had to look up the word palimpsest, thinking at first it had to do with male organ flaccidity. That's my mind for you. Bad Mutha, bad. Turns out it is something to do with reusing paper, so now I'm going to hell for mocking. OK, fine.

This site is not for someone who wants to read eight or ten lines, get a good laugh and go on with their day. You’re going to have to spend some time reading - maybe a lot of time. I love the faded photos that he has chosen to insert, especially his Dad’s photo, which just resonates with me. The accompanying story is wonderful, too.

Brian seems an interesting character, likable and genuine: “I’m a middle-aged, balding, big-eared, unibrow-sportin’ monstrosity with a gentle heart.” Who wouldn't like that? He writes about his struggles to determine where he fits in as far as his faith goes and his search to try to understand Christianity. He questions, searches and at times, belabors the point. Read what he wrote about watching a fellow at a restaurant and cringing as he realized that he had been just like that in his earlier years:

"I was quite funny, and I didn’t care whom I hurt to get a laugh. If I stepped on your toes during a conversation, it was your fault for not keeping up or stepping aside. I belittled others and carried on as though my opinion was the only one worth hearing. Heck, the guy even looked like I did back then. It became pretty scary and set a pall over the remainder of my day. Why? Because I regret many of my actions from that period in my life. I regret that I didn’t learn to keep my trap shut and give others a chance to be heard. I may have learned a few things had I just shut up once in a while."

I had to quote that, because that great statement was hidden in an excruciatingly long post. Trim those down Brian. Give us the meat. But for all the theology in this blog, he's not preaching to us, and I like that.

There are some interesting topics:

• Brian had weight loss surgery in 2002, but doesn’t post a lot about what’s going on with that now, I hope that he’s healthier, his about photo looks pretty healthy and svelte.
• He’s working on quitting smoking, and no one in his family even noticed.
• His oral surgery story made me weak and a bit queasy with sympathy and hope that I never go through what he’s been through. I brushed my teeth right after reading that bit. Flossed, too.
• His short freewritings are my favorite part of his blog.

Brian's template isn’t bad, I do love tabs. It’s readable and the sidebar background colors set off the inner panel nicely. He doesn't need three panes. He could easily do with just two, and I don't really like the way the banner distorts the words of his header with streaky rows of white gradient.

The template is there to set off and showcase your writing, much like what a wooden frame does to a canvas, but this one isn't doing you justice. In no way, however, is this template in the rotten, horror of death category as some I have seen recently.

Face it, we’re living in a fast food world where we are used to getting our reads in quick bites. Some of the posts are longer than my crazy Aunt Bernice's armpit hair.

Here are my recommendations:

1. You can ditch signing your name on each post. We know who you are. I know you have a guest from time to time, but only twice so far, so it's really not an issue.
2. Do you need separate categories for faith, religion and Christianity? It makes it hard to navigate. Paring down the categories makes navigation easier.
3. Four or five posts on your front page are more than adequate. You have eight.
4. Consider carefully your words. Make each phrase count. You knew we would get you on this one. Less can be more. Most people didn't visit to read a dissertation.

Bunny Gets Bad.

I do keep an eye out for the victims that I review, and I want to tell you that the author of Law and Motherhood has done an incredible job of cleaning up her template and making her blog much more readable. I would like to commend her and offer her the coveted:



that she deserves for making an effort to work on her template, which is a far cry from what most bloggers do when they have been spanked. Good work Mom, every blog is a work in progress. I also love that you have not whined about your review and that shows some chutzpa. Good work and keep at it.

You can always roll the dice and resubmit your blog in the future if you feel you want to have us look at the content again.

Fantasy Review

Last week I was forced to kick fuzzy bunny butt. It wasn't fun. OK, it was a little fun. But I was not looking forward to trashing another poor mommy blog this week.

Imagine my relief when my assignment took me to Prefers Her Fantasy Life. I read FM's (Fantasy Mom) tag line, “I used to care, but now I take a pill for that." Love it. I can so relate. FM's banner took me right back to my childhood, because I had that Cher doll as a kid. I cut all of her hair off, my doll looked more like Sonny than Cher. She and my Bionic Woman doll shared my bed for years. Get your mind out of the gutter.

Her side bar has ads, which I hate. She also has a lot of useless widgets that really could go, but they didn't bother me - much. That's because my eye caught the sweet jewelry that she makes. My review could have been bought for the little blue bracelet that she crafted, but that's the price that we pay for being anonymous - upcoming victims don’t know where to send the payoff money. Bummer.

I forgot about the somewhat ugly sidebar once I started reading her stuff, I laughed my well-padded butt off at her bit about leaving food in the car. I once left two chickens and a gallon of milk in the trunk for two days in July. I nearly had to junk the car. I kept reading and at one point, had to have my husband come listen to the song about how a man’s gonna lie to his kids about doing drugs and having premarital sex. See, I am not even off the front page and I am already laughing and wanting to share her stuff.

Her photo of the beer bottles beats to death the endless parade of adorable kiddie photos that we typically see on mommy blogs. Kids are cute, but beer bottles on a mommy blog just makes a statement.

It was startling and a little unnerving to see her Danny Bonaduce photo, which looked like someone photoshopped Alfred E. Neuman's head on Arnold Schwarzenegger's body. It’s just unexpected, and isn’t that what makes it worth the second look?

This blogger is new, only a couple of months out, but I think she has promise. Here are my recommendations:

1. Move the archives up on your sidebar, people want to read deeper and this is your only way for them to get to it. Change your archives to a drop down format.
   


2. I love your writing, but you sometimes roll on a bit much. Before you publish, read it over and see if there's anything you can trim. Less can be more.


3. I would lose the ads or at least keep them under control. Cutting grass or taking in laundry are better ways to make a buck.


4. Move that jewelry widget up and move the other stuff way down.
   
5. There are too many posts on the front page, you could limit that to four or five, max.

I can say that there’s a reason that this blogger is ranking on the humor blog lists. I like her, in fact, if she got rid of the ads I might love her, but as it is, she gets:



Mutha doesn't click with everyone, Rubber Duckies. Personally, I like to stumble around the web, and when I find myself in a bad, ugly or just plain boring blog, the red X is my friend. If I am reviewing your blog at the time, every blinky, crappy widget that you have is going to get my fingers flying on the keyboard as I spew out my venom. It's up to you, but if you're in the crosshairs queue for the Mutha, I suggest you start cleaning out your drawers, I won't be this nice all the time.

If it's a piece of shit, you must convict

I’m suing Law and Motherhood for misrepresentation. There isn’t anything that I could find about the law in this blog, except a violation of the law of common sense. She posts under a pseudonym, but directly below her photo, she lists her real name, occupation and a few past jobs on her Linked In profile. Get rid of that, tout de suite. All this information, coupled with the photos of your little ones and your profession just screams, “I have money, please abduct my kids and here is a way to google a map to our house.” I was able to get your town and address in less than ten minutes and I am not even a stalker – OK, I’m a nice stalker. A little anonymity goes a long way when you are posting your kiddos on the web.

I like her banner; it’s interesting and novel. I thought we might get to hear some great dirt about what it’s like to be a mom and a lawyer. But I didn’t find any stories of day old coffee; the rush to prepare interrogatories at three AM to beat filing dates; no tidbits about run-ins with other jurists. Nada. Maybe she’s just respecting confidentiality, but man, that’s boring, don’t tease us. We want dirt.

When I scrolled downward, my eye caught the horrid, triple pane of death, which is her template. I am not a fan of triptych style blogs, they are visually confusing, unless it’s done well and this one just ain’t. She’s got more useless crap than I have in my kitchen junk drawer. Blog banners, ads out the wazoo (I counted twelve), awards, political statements, meme lists. Kill me now. Then she has a little congratulatory blurb on the bottom giving credit for the blog design. At least that tells us where NOT to shop for our site workup. Go look, then tell me if your head doesn’t feel like it’s going to explode.

The perpetrator writes mainly about her family life; some overlong, but cute haikus about barfing in the back seat, and a lot of information about attachment parenting. I love attachment parenting, but yawn. Slap me awake, Love Bites, you know how I love that!

Lawyer momma, pick a topic and stick with it. You jump all over the place. You grab me with a witty little bit about shelf paper, and then, you’re off topic in the same post about how tired you are and your kid’s tantrum. You had me and you lost me within seconds. Fighting with sticky shelf paper is just weird enough to be potentially interesting, but you blew it. You’re writing poorly organized letters home and frankly, there’s not much worth reading or reviewing here.

Now, there have been blogs that I have read, where I have just really clicked with the writers, their topics and have subscribed to right away and stayed for years. This wasn’t one of them. Apparently I am not alone; she only has one subscriber, which is probably her husband.

Here's your rating:


You want fries with that?

Some Mommies Need a Punch in Their Uterus

I signed up with Ask and Ye Shall Receive to guest-review mommy blogs. I am a mother, a mommy blogger and I know what I like in a good mommy blog. Easy, huh?

I got cocky on my first gig last month, that one was a real peach. Not so with The Bean, the Brat and Bedlam. Heck, it was hard just to keep from slamming my browser shut after the first five minutes, out of sheer frustration. I wanted to find something great in this blog, but I didn’t find anything that flipped my switches. I sat at my computer for three hours picking this babe apart and came up nearly empty.

See, I am a mom a half dozen times over and even I, The Queen Mutha, got sick to death reading about the Bean and the Brat. I love kids, and yours are cute, but MAN, isn’t there something – anything else in your life but the running dialogue of the cute stuff your children have done/said?

Let the ranting begin:

Did you really say that you left your sleeping children alone to go out to a pot party? Or did I misread, please tell me you had a sitter, please? I bet the kids just loved Mom coming home smelling like pot.

[Note: I read later in the comments that you didn’t leave them alone, you have live-in help. Now, I am so completely envious of any help at all, let alone live-in help that I have to hate you all the more just on behalf of those of us who have to do it all alone.]

About those passive aggressive fights with the father of your kiddos, here’s a hint: the kids know. It’s fucking them up. Stop it now. Yell, scream, cry, but don’t use sarcasm and the silent treatment thinking that the kids are oblivious. They know.

Generally, it’s not great to label our kids – even in cyberspace – with titles like "Brat," unless you want them to be a brat. Wasn’t there anything a tad less negative that you could call him – maybe, "Little Shit or "Complete Waste of Sperm"? Do you call him Brat at home, even under your breath? He knows. Brat’s reading at three, Brat knows.

Still, there must be something going on here, she has 300,000 hits on her site and she’s not even showing her sweater puppies or saying naughty words. She’s a self-proclaimed journalist from India. The English is ok, not bad, but I knew from the start that English wasn’t her first language, maybe it was the long strings of Indian words with no translation listed that clued me in on that one. It adds a bit of flavor, but in the end, it wasn’t a flavor that particularly appealed to me. Funny, because I just love Kofta Curry.

Specific Ass Ripping, better known as, "let’s get into her template":

1. The banner was a photo of her kid, and then while I was reviewing it, she changed it to a plate, a red blob of yarn and a bright yellow circle (maybe a beer in a highball glass?). Bring back the kid. This one is meaningless and it sucks.

2. Oh, bloody hell! The posts are so goddamned long! I scrolled down to see what else there was on the front page. Tons of little kid photos, I scrolled and scrolled and scrolled. Then, just so that I could be a smart-ass, I went back up and started scrolling again, this time I counted how many turns of my mouse wheel it took to actually get to the bottom – you know, as in "how many licks it takes to get to the center of a Tootsie Pop" – It took 96 friggin' scrolls!

Come on! This represented 10 posts. My God....diarrhea of the mouth. You may think you’re a journalist, but in the real world of print/blogging, no one has the space or time for what you're writing. Cutting your verbosity would certainly improve this blog. Cut back your front page to about four posts and let the people who don't die of boredom delve into your archives.

3. Roll up your archives - and pick one – the calendar or the archives, we don’t need both. No one's going there anyway, they all died of boredom on the front page. Seriously, you have 300,000 hits and 34 subscribers who want you to punch this thing up.

I give it:
&



Note from Love Bites: If the incredibly nice Mutha ripped this blog a new one, just imagine what the rest of us would have done.

Queen Mutha

I finally get my crack at being a guest reviewer, I get the chance to be a real bitch, to let my evil eye roam all over an unsuspecting site and who do they give me? The Queen Mum. Damn you, Queen Mum, damn you!

The problem here is: how can you trash someone who has grabbed you right from their damned gorgeous banner and then made you laugh, read and laugh some more? Really, Queen Mum, we are so similar, although I have never called my tits Sweater Puppies, until now. I wish I could tell it like this on my own blog, but I don’t have the chutzpa. Too many people know where I live.

As for layout, I would clear up the sidebar a bit. Move those meters and award buttons down. Move those archives up, let us do more than just scratch the surface. You have sections for recent posts, recent comments, category cloud and top posts. I would look into shortening those up or maybe ditching one (or two) of them.

The posts are a nice length, ok, some are a tad long, but nicely readable with competent spelling, grammar, and punctuation. I did encounter a double period – strangely enough on a post about periods. Ironic, isn’t it? Sometimes she veers off on a tangent, but don’t all mothers? Mine always did, she was always losing her train of thought --- sorry. Back on topic. Once again, there’s not much to bitch about here. Which, in itself, is something to bitch about.

Nothing flashing, no music playing, she’s not pushing ads. Black type on white background keeps me from getting pissed off and having to hit my zap plugin. In fact, I didn’t have to zap a single thing at this site. Amazing. It’s a well-planned blog. Plan to spend some time reading.

I got caught up in the content and spent the better part of the afternoon delving into the archives. Which Wiggle is the most fuckable? Damn it, she’s right again. It’s Anthony. We’re some kind of blogmates, Mindi, and I am subscribing right now. I am giving her:


And, if she cleaned up her side bar, I would fucking love her.

[Editor's note: THANK YOU!!!]