Parenting Blogs Are Like Sitcoms, But I Need More Dimension

Dear Bloggers,

This is Rassles. I would like to apologize for the lateness of this review, but I currently do not have internet in my shitty apartment because the guy I scammed it from moved to South Carolina, so I've been writing this during my lunch breaks. Okay, and yesterday I took a three hour lunch break because I am devoted to you all, and because I am sick of working. Game on.

Let’s get one fucking thing straight: I probably don’t give a shit about your fucking kids. If I did, I would read their blogs.

But if you must write about your kids, and you have every right to do so, force me to care. These are the most important people in your lives, so fucking make it count. Be Studs Terkel or Ira Glass for your blog and give your children words that justify your adoration, give them quirks and vices that mean something to you, make your love for that little beast a main character in this tesseract of drama and sippy cups and diapers and parenting and bullshit. Most children do the same silly crap, and the fun in reading this stuff is learning how you see your child.

Embarrass yourself, because your devotion to them is more important than personal pride. Perceive and accept your own temporary insanity when you get that blinding excitement because your child like, does stuff.

Do it for me. Do it for your readers. Do it for your sticky children. Blogging parents usually don’t understand this. Oh sure, they say they get it. But they don’t. They speak in cliché’s and recite Hallmark cards (Oh, my child lights up my life and he’s the greatest gift God has ever given me and I am so very thankful for this journey called life that we are traveling together) instead of actually writing something meaningful.

Baff. You make me baff. Not like a drunken secret hand-baff, where you just swallow it right back up again. I'm talking like, ruined shoes baffing.

Blogs are interdimensional – I want your goal to be five. Five dimensions. Point, line, cube, gravity, time. That’s what we’re trying to hit here, people.

Point: You have to start somewhere.
Line: Connect your points.
Cube: Start adding corners (quirks and vices, for example).
Gravity: Your corners are connected, now pull. Fill them with something. Some corners are dirty, some are exposed, some are wrong turns, some bring about self-awareness. Some are scary-ass cliffs, some are fun, swervy curves, but all of them are a part of you.
Time: This is the hardest one, because people don't understand that it's cyclical. They don't think about the velocity of their words, about navigation and history. Your blog should be a maze of personality. It represents YOU, for chrissake. Everyone believes they are unique. Fucking prove it.

Just so you know, Daddy Files, I’m using some of your blog as a decent example. You are doing it right half of the time, even though I feel like you're gunning for a family sitcom. You've mastered the cube, and sometimes you have gravity and time, but usually? It's just the cube. Still, your child is a person to me, not another zombie brat.

You're unafraid to voice your opinions, and although I love that you have an opinion in the first place that isn't just a rehash of something you've read, sometimes that shit gets a little bit tedious. I think, in those posts, you're trying to be controversial, the way you start on the offensive and punch with conviction, but they just don't ring true for me. I kind of glazed over them. Like plain Munchkins.

I don't care for straight up opinion in my stories. I prefer artful narrative propaganda.

Also, any post that mentions Tiger Woods I skip on principle.

Technically, your writing is flawless. At first, you are careful, with slight, thoughtful humor. In reference to your early posts, I wrote this: Dude, I am sure you have a tirade lurching around inside of you somewhere, and you're straining to hold it back. WHY ARE YOU SO INHIBITED? I was bored. I was all set on Abercrombie-rating the fuck out of you.

But then summer 2009, you start spinning things around. You get a little feisty. Things don't vary in topic, just tone. You unshackled one manacle, but you still have one more.

I want to see you hurt, Johnny-Cash-covers-Trent-Reznor fucking HURT. You hide that, pretending it doesn't exist or shifting the blame onto something else, because you're afraid of...I don't know what you're afraid of. Public vulnerability? You follow the trend of aggressively berating things that should make you feel shame but are a secret source of pride (you can't hide it from me, I fucking invented that tactic). You never just soul-out. Which is fine, it takes time. I'm just letting you know I can see through you.

Template is fine, I guess. A little Aryan Nation, but fitting (I don't mean you're a neo-Nazi, but it's just...you know...OMG LOOK AT MY PEACHY BLONDE FUCKING ADORABLE SON POINTING AT SOMETHING). Your archives drove me fucking bitchcrazy, with the whole "one post per page" at a time thing. Your Twitter feed is just a black wordless box right now, which I strongly prefer to an actual Twitter feed. But the rest is fine and uninspiring.

So.

You write well. I've been reviewing seriously well-written blogs lately. In terms of sitcoms: The whole thing is a little Everybody Loves Raymond (and that show is hysterical sometimes, I don't care what anyone says), I prefer Roseanne or Arrested Development, but be careful: you're teetering into According to Jim territory.

I've used that before.

I wanted to give you three, but I just can't do it.






Because I feel like you're doing half of this just to be cool.

Your Blog Is Giving Me Shingles. Itchy, Sexy Ones.

A review from Rassles. Once more. With feeling.



Dartboard? Okay. Come on, Rass. You can do this.

YOU ANNOY THE FUCKING FUCK OUT OF ME. YOU ARE OBNOXIOUS. IT CAUSES ME BOTH CORPOREAL AND ETHEREAL PAIN TO READ SOME OF YOUR SENTENCES BECAUSE I WANT TO REFRAGMENT THE FUCKING LOT OF THEM.

Also, apparently I am a sado-masochist.

I am fucking irked to the point of shingles. But then, I'm coyly flirting with my computer screen, oggling these sophomoric sketches (which lead into each blog entry with the finesse of a hobbled Tibetan ox), blushing, casting sidelong glances. I'm doing that thing that I do that pisses me off, where I arch my back and half-smile and pull my shirtsleeves over my knuckles. I must be getting my fucking period.

He’s like the friend you don’t want to introduce to people. You’ll hang out with him, sure, and when you share stories about his verbal rampages you call him “this guy I know" but never "a friend of mine." Because you will tell stories about him, because he's entertaining as hell. Just annoyingly so.

Then one day you and a real friend run into him at a bar. You exchange unpleasantries and separate thoroughly agitated. Your friend innocently asks, "how do you know that guy?" and you arch your back, half smile, roll your eyes, shake your head with annoyance and state, "He’s just this guy" or "we were in a band together."

Why don't you want to admit your friendship? Well, he rants about marketing shit and customer service reviews that you really don’t care about. And then he rants about marketing shit and customer service reviews that you don’t really care about. And then? He rants about marketing shit and customer service reviews that you don’t really care about. Has he ever worked customer service, or is he just a dick?

Tonally, he traverses between unnecessary arrogance and berating himself with the proper dash of pomposity. He needs to work on comedic meter, but really, I mean, who doesn’t?

He claims to have destructive apathy, which I would be more inclined to believe were he a careless loafer laced with a thin string of nihilism, but he’s more mean-tempered than that. More callous. And also, more sensitive, which makes the whole situation soooooo much more irritating.

See, you don't want to admit it, but you want to shamefuck him. Like Shia LaBeouf shamefuckin. I can’t believe I’m typing this right now. But you know what I mean: an annoying shit of a dude that is irritating and unattractive and charming and you’re embarrassed because you want to shamefuck him really, really hard.

Back at the bar, after silently imagining (for about half an hour) exactly how that shamefuck will unfold, you explain to your friend that you can’t focus on your conversation because that guy from earlier? You want to shamefuck him. And he laughs and tells you that he feels that way about his friend's mom. And then you buy him a shot and make him swear to secrecy with pinkies and blood, but you still don't tell him about Shia LaBeouf. That one goes to the fucking grave.

Yeah.

Dartboard, you're still annoying. Go fuck yourself. I don't want to give you any stars, but I’m going to, because you're funny enough and good enough of a writer. But seriously, go fuck yourself.

How about this: I want you to go fuck yourself, and then I want you to call me and tell me exactly what you were thinking about while fucking yourself. Okay? Fine.

Son of a bitch.

You Would Never Survive in the Wide, Windless Sargasso

A guest review by Rassles:

There are some trends I’ve never fully climbed aboard. Sniffed out and left for rotten scavengers, yes, but I’m way too preoccupied pretending I’m unique to feel their appeal. Two of these trends, which concern the blog in review, are online dating and…well…pirates. Aye, landlubbers, beware: I’ve no inclination to identify with fearsome buccaneers or use the interwebs to find love. But! I do own Captain Blood on VHS and a friend of mine met her husband on Match Dot Com.

So here we have a self-proclaimed saucy pirate wench Swashbuckling Through the Murky Waters of On-Line Dating. A long title, yes, but cute and piratey, promising a narrative goody bag full of Oedipal greasy-haired assholes with over-inflated sexual egos who leave toenail clippings in shag carpets and keep secret wives. Right? Why else would we read an online dating blog?

The template is standard white-on-black Blogger, stained with thick, blazing purple links that offend the backs of my eyes after just a quick scan. I never really know what to say about templates. As long as you smell okay and you didn’t buy your shirt from Spencer’s, I don’t give a shit what you wear (let’s face it, “one tequila, two tequila, three tequila floor” was kind of funny for about ten seconds when I was thirteen, and more importantly what kind of freckle-faced scallywag can’t hang after only three shots of tequila?).

But Leslie, my friend, those purple links are a cheap, ugly distraction. Do you buy your steaks from Walgreens? No? Your template suggests otherwise.

Firstly, this blog, as I was led to believe based upon a short profile and header sentence, is not about perilous dates, mutinous sexual trysts, or a collection of hilarious critiques and conversations between a formidable provost barking insults at the dirty, rotten, scurvy dogs of dating. So I’ma gonna keelhaul a bitch.

It’s a fuckjumble of poseur posts, where Leslie pirates a man’s personal ad and a picture from nonspecific dating websites and offers her opinions, which are usually painfully obvious insults with semi-clever name-calling pawned from Urban Dictionary. I know this because she links Urban Dictionary. Constantly. She links youtube videos that loosely relate to her topic and random websites detailing household namedrops everyone already knows about, like Sixteen Candles and Lorena Bobbit. She’s a big fat stump-legged linker.

Now Leslie, how about swinging your fucking cutlass like a real bad ass to strengthen those lame, tired jabs of yours? Sharpen your insults. Fire more pirate words. If you are going to be a pirate, Be A Fucking Pirate. Y’en’t bucklin’ no swash, lass. L’est not in my good eye. You already plunder the faux dignity of men directly from their online dating profiles, even post their actual pictures (I think) which is a total dick move, especially if these guys are paying for private profiles on whatever dating site. Sail smartly. Thar be sea demons.

I would link examples of non-hilarity and tortuously weak insults, but seeing as every post is basically the exact same thing it’s totally pointless.

You sound bitter, wounded, and painfully desperate to appear sassy and strong. We can smell our own. Your words reveal much more about you than the jerks you ridicule, but I don’t think that’s your intention, and it pisses me off. It would be better if you weren’t hiding behind trying to be a fucking pirate.

Oh, and what gave you the addled idea that you needed to create a new tag for all them posts you shot up in that there blog? Bitch, you know what tags are for? Two things: (1) categorically linking your posts, and (2) my fucking peace of mind. Yours offer neither. How am I supposed to draw comparisons between “Douchebags of the Week” if you’re making me sail all over creation? There is no uniting concept between these topics. I don’t even think you could *define douchebag in the first place.

More importantly, you have, and I fucking counted, on my fingers no less, thirteen different “of the week” themes for thirty-nine posts, and seven of those themes have an example of ONE. Themes, by nature, are recurring. Remember that.

If you insist on this “of the week” stuff, with richly diverse categories like “What Not To Do While On-Line Dating” and “What Not To Put On Your On-Line Dating Profile” and have no cohesive elements to pull things together other than the thin veil of piracy, play with it. Make them “Freak of the Week #37” and “On-Line Dating Experiment #242.” Rally up your posts and restrategize, because this shit ain’t working.

The only posts that are worth reading at all are your status updates. They prove that you can be conversational, honest and observant, with definitive smirk, although they do fall slightly flat. Still, they're way more productive than resorting to making fun of mullets and mid-life crisis-es. Avast, ye strumpet! These are classic topics for humor, but if you’re not going to offer anything substantive to the already extensive inventory of Hilarious-Shit-To-Say-About-Things-That-Are-Obviously-Pathetic, then don’t say anything at all. Also, stop raping your words with unnecessary hyphens. Do you get a nickel per hyphen? That is a fuckload of nickels.

Tighten up your business. You are better than this. Fucking act like it. I would ask you to edit, but seeing as your short posts are unenlightening as they are, I think you should stop trying to be something and just write whatever’s in your blood, not what you wish was there.


For being annoying:






For sucking at insults and wishing you were cool:








* Okay people: a douchebag is a person with an illogical, amped up value of self-worth, unintentionally resulting in extreme worthlessness and obnoxery. See, the point of the term is to compare a person’s ego with a vaginal cleaning pump that really does more harm than good. Get it? Use it correctly. It’s like, okay: the monster’s name is not Frankenstein. The doctor’s name is Frankenstein. Drives me fucking nuts.

The Salty Professor

A guest review by Rassles:

The Ask Overlords wanted this review days ago. It’s like fucking homework.

No, I lie. It’s more like when you’re itching to play baseball, because at one point in your life you made an outstanding third baseperson, and then ten years go by and your friends are all, “play on our team” and you’re excited and first, and then you’re all, “okay but I’m superbusy and distracted right now because there are pressing episodes of Legend of the Seeker to watch on Hulu” and they’re all “what’s that” and you’re all “nevermind I mean It’s Always Sunny” and then the roguish Rajah of Reference in the group starts singing ‘Dayman’ and everyone laughs heartily, secretly thankful for Netflix, and you remember when YOU were the roguish Rajah of Reference back when you drank for sundayfundays instead of watching WGN all afternoon in your Double Dare sweatpants.

And that preceding paragraph is my formal apology for both (a) lately turning in my very long review and (b) neglecting to write a more suitable introduction. Then again, I could just take what I know about this blogger and my sweet intro and whip it into THE ULTIMATE MASH UP.

Speaking of which, when did “mash up” join the Common Tongue? I don’t know if I like it. Speaking of liking things, this blogger doesn’t like anything. Or anyone. At least, that’s what he wants us to believe, fucking hoser. Probably. It’s a theme he sticks to early in his blog (he’s only been writing this one since April) and lately he’s straying. It’s fine.

I Probably Don’t Like You is basically a collection of satirical essays on whatever pops into The Professor’s brain. That is not his official name but it’s the one I’m giving him. Yeah, he teaches at a college in Canada. Toronto? Probably. And even though he probably don’t like me, I really like him, despite the salty essay-ness of his posts.

I’m officially taking a stance against using an essay format in basically any form of writing, because it makes me feel like I’m reading a goddamn essay and essays are wicked dumb. But with his writing – okay, it’s like during each introduction he’s taking a slow, deliberate, annoying-ass cruuuuuuunch from a fresh apple right behind my fucking ear, and my neck trembles and locks in aggravation and I want to swing around and drive the whole royal gala up his nose with the heel of my palm, but then he offers me a bite and I accept, lingering through the crunch myself, and I can’t help nodding in savvy satisfaction, because it’s a pretty damn good apple.

For someone with the dry, acute skills of The Professor, the expository essay is acceptable. I don’t drift towards it naturally, because I like to be thrown right into the fuck of things from the get-go, but it’s a personal style issue and I’ll overlook it. He’s adept and deadpan in an affable, jaded kind of way.

I do not like the read more links. I DO NOT LIKE THE READ MORE LINKS. Professor, I understand you want them there because you’ve got some long ass posts, but I hate them. Drives me bonkers. It is a damn good thing you’re funny. You have solid pacing and generally well-placed asides.

Most posts are ironic anecdotes wrapped up with a buh-dum ching epigram that’s full of cheese. And cheese is delicious. This is not a day-in-the-life blog, but it is a unique opinion blog, which makes it personal, but I’ve said this before, and I am an Expert In Everything: put a little more self in there, because it’ll smooth personal credibility into the tartness of your words, helping readers distinguish your intelligent business from everyday snark blogs. Things will feel more genuine like they do in this post, which I am linking three times because I love it.

Like with many other bloggers, readers must endure the two most frustrating banes of blogging following blatant douchebaggery and the daily rehash: his shit is long (we can smell our own, sir) and he’s a humor blogger.

Cool points: The Professor efficiently name-drops the fuck out of things I support, like Robert Heinlein and Gilligan’s Island and Firefly and Proust. Okay, maybe not Proust. Okay, sometimes Proust. I’m a big fan of the name-drop, but more importantly I’m a big fan of not necessarily linking said drop, which he doesn’t. He assumes his readers are in-the-know, and I fucking like things that way. Good golly, he’s on his way to being a Rajah of Reference, but not quite…more like the Knave of Reference. With tart. Buh-dum CHING.

Get it? You know, because of the Knave of hearts, and he stole some tarts? Get it? GET IT?

Oh, even my weak jokes crack my shit up.

Also, he has an unhealthy obsession with posting pictures of Avril Lavigne,. It’s freaky. She fucking looks just like my sister and I keep on wondering who dared her to get Glamour Shots.

So this mash up is a failure. Whatever. In the end Professor, I’m giving you three stars. I dig this.

Shut Your Piehole

A review from Rassles, who I for one fucking love.


Disclaimer: It is four o’clock in the morning right now. I just got home from the Watchmen premiere, and I’m predictably pleased and provoked. And pooped. So Doug, I want to apologize that you’re not getting the sassiest review. But I’m not really that sorry, because you’ve been incessantly poking people in the paunch to pull this review out of their pockets, and that gets old.

I am one alliterate asshat right now.

For the record, I just did that thing where someone clears her throat for effect, in this case to cue the commencement of the review, and I don’t know how to spell it.

About a year ago, during one of the many times in my life I ran out of money for a week or two, a couple of friends and I decided that we were going to have good, old fashioned sober fun, junior high-style.

So we rode our bikes over to 7-11 and bought some Slurpees (total lie, we drove) and headed out onto the mean streets of Chicago, armed with Sharpees and a stack of stolen napkins, hunting douchebaggy cars.

Lexus in an alley? “Behind you.”

BMW by the lake? “Open your trunk.”

Maybe not the cleverest quips, or the dirtiest, but it really wasn’t that kind of night. This was about entertaining ourselves. There were Venn Diagrams and flow charts and “sorry about your headlight.” People would stare at us with our Big Gulps, coeds in their late twenties, running around cars and giggling like sixth graders, leaving napkins under windshield wipers.

To be clear, Doug does not write like a sixth grader. It’s that I’m almost ashamed at enjoying some of his stuff, because ideally I want in-the-know wit and a grand nexus of faint metaphor and the spirit of chuckles amidst the blood and the soul and the fists. I want fucking brilliance, and now I’m giggling because he said “piehole,” which is a much greater word, I think, than people realize.

I’ll bet Doug’s family and friends get a big fat kick out of his blog, because I’m sure it reads exactly how he speaks. To a stranger however, it looks like you’re having a blast, but I really like another kind of fun.

Not the biggest fan of the snarkyfauxnewscommentary. Snarkyfauxnewscommentary is fucking tired and basically fucking never ever ever fucking interesting, unless a writer either (a) is the first to comment on whatever news issue, or (b) dexterously weaves it into a personal experience. And there’s a lot of that crap in here, without necessarily following (a) or (b). Frankly, I just skipped reading them after the first thirty-seven.

His strongest posts relate to his family. Doug’s wife sounds like one good woman. This is good fun. Nearly always, though, I hit an interesting story that you NEED TO EDIT. This is a good dialogue buried in introductory dogshit. Take out the first seven paragraphs. They are completely unnecessary. Move a couple key sentences and integrate them into the post later on. Because really, which sentence is a better opener:

“Just so she's not a stripper or something…” my lovely wife joked, because she has a wonderful sense of humor.

All 3 of our children are now over 18 years of age.

Yeah.

We all know that Doug is an avid defender of Humor-Blogs, the fucking According to Jim of the blog world. So his earlier posts end with Humor-Blogs self-pluggery, but within the past couple months they’ve ripened into just-the-tip-just-to-see-how-it-feels quips. Still there, reminding you that no matter what he’s gonna stick it where he wants, but he’s not being a hoodrat about it. It’s nearly charming.

You get a shiny single star. But stick around. Edit. Talk about your Lovely Wife more, and your son that dates the stripper. That’s good shit.

You’re Everywhere, But You’re So Hard To Find

Have you ever fantasized about a woman who has an American doll costume in her role playing menagerie? Have you ever thought razor sharp wit and drunken buffoonery are a super sexy combo? Do you look like a little like this guy? Then sidle up and spend a few minutes with this week's guest reviewatrix, Rassles. She'll organize your drunk choo-choo party, or best you with her Live Band Karaoke. Then if you're really good, she'll make you some of Chicagoland's best stroganoff, what what. -Miss Missives

Okay, so sometimes you have a coworker, and she’s all like, trying to set you up with a guy she’s friends with because he’s “totally funny” and her “face hurt from laughing so hard” and you’re thinking, “Finally, someone with which to create a comedic duo that would rival Nichols and May,” but then you meet him he’s kind of cautious, and sometimes savvy, but not the raucous laugh factory you expected, so instead of hitting it off with an amusing guy you’re all shattered and grumpy and forlorn and get really, really drunk to make up for it.

That’s kind of how I feel about Free the Unicorns. And I mean, sure, technically the preceding story in no way relates to why I’m reviewing a blog today, but fucking whatever.

This is a comedy blog. Chowner is a man who wants to be very, very clever. And sometimes he is, really, but unfortunately, the skill is usually buried in posts that are exhausting in simplicity, or full of overused pop culture commentary and an abundance of obvious lines that were funny when I was twelve.

Still, you’re lucky, because I’m currently undergoing a second adolescence.

His writing is intentionally distancing and sarcastic, which I have no problem with, because he’s not obnoxious about it. There’s a thin line separating satire from sadism, and he doesn’t cross it. Still, if you’re looking for a blog bleeding personal details, you won’t find it here. This blog is like the auxiliary gym for C-Team at The Onion, or Something Awful’s slightly annoying but surprisingly engaging and informed little brother. You won’t find thought-provoking exhibitions on the human condition, and sometimes the humor is recycled and obvious, but there’s this artful wit lurking in the corners that makes me want him to be hilarious.

Chowner, in nearly every post, your last line is the best line, especially with the dialogue posts. But if your goal is banter: watch your pacing. Clip things down, because you’re dragging your rhetoric throughout the middle of the posts. The bitch of it is, if you cut out half of the crap, focus on the title and the last several lines you crank out, we’ll find prowess in your restraint.*

Your lists are strong, and some are downright crazy awesome, but I’m partial to lists, and I feel like this is where your personality inches closer to your readers. I know you’re not journaling here, in fact it feels like you’re building up a little comedic resume for that McSweeney’s submission, but slipping in little cubes of you will give your humor more edge and less monotony. Own your fucking jokes, personalize them, spit ‘til they shine. And I want to hear more about your failing one-man crusade for Unicorn Freedom, because somewhere in your past you had to have some conversation of hilarity to inspire such temerity.

The template is simple and has a horny pony, so you know. Win.

Using my unparalleled powers of inference, I have determined that Chowner is male, married to Sydney Bristow, and Canadian. I’m like motherfuckin’ Encyclopedia Brown. Give us an “About Me” page or I’ll find you and shave off your eyebrows in your sleep. And if you think that’s a hollow threat, I can introduce you to a Schick Quattro and a pair of fisticuffs aching to attest to my resolve.

Next, post your archives. I know you’ve only been writing since September, but I still want to hit up your past posts because I am nosy, and I hate clicking “Older Entries” over and over and over again. Oh, and just don’t do that continuing post bullshit, because it’s irksome, and you know…Razors and Fisticuffs: The Fucking Sequel.

Seriously, Chowner, you’ve got some gold: don’t make us bitches dig for it.

For being funny and pissing me off about it, I give you






And for making me go all Philip Marlowe on trying to find out who you were and whether or not you were funny, you get this:







*As I’m writing this, I want nothing more than to go back to my own blog and cut all of my posts in goddamn half, just to prove a point.