Why I Am Not A Poet

For awhile I hated poetry because I didn't understand it.  All poetry was sensitive glitter, reserved for smug, self-important assholes, who were haughty and deep.  Like Linda Lovelace.  Or dungeons.  Or secret dungeons.  Or French people.  French people who locked their souls in secret metaphorical dungeons, where their poetry was chained and whipped daily because it plundered baguettes, tongue-kissed Madame Dupont, and took the road less traveled by, but someday we will have jaunty berets (je ne sais pas) and be free from le tyrannical aristocracy, oui?  Tres bien!  Louis!  Richelieu!  VIVA LA REVOLUTION!

So...that's what I think about when someone says "poetry."

One day, I discovered what became my favorite poem.  Another day I went to France. You know what? I like smug and glittery when the constituent is sardonically aware of its own narcissism (this is more prevalent in poetry than in France). 

And about half the time, that's what it's like over at From Quiet Thoughts.  Brown is a poet from San Francisco with dreamy bedroom eyes, thoughtfully propped up against a pillow in his profile picture looking pensive and bored, as if porn just doesn't get him off anymore since the internet made it all socially acceptable to jerk it all the time. He could so be French, especially with all the cigarettes and wine.

Honestly, I fucking love about a third of his poems, I want to edit the hell out of another third, and the rest?  Fucking dungeon, like he's trying to be a poet instead of just being poetic.

Because sometimes, this happens:

About Me:  Increments of time, attach themselves to light, creating impassioned pixels of reality. We are what we see, feel and hope.

which sounds like lyrics to low-fi-electro-indie-rock and other things that are trucked with hyphens and pictures of mustaches that lack any real hair. What does this say about Brown, as a person?  We're just particles fueled by our perception of reality, who can really know anyone, and if you can't figure it out then you don't deserve to know and all that priggish bullshit and SHUT THE HELL UP.

Which means Brown is a cheater.  Fuck that distant, vague crap.  He should do it better because I know he can, even though sometimes he could benefit from an editor, a little more self-awareness,

and a little less of that thing, you

know.

That thing that "poets" do, where lines are
separated
for no apparent reason, although
the idea is free verse
and the pauses between phrases can be inconsequential and

the result
is annoying.
(dungeon)

I'm a big fan of Rodin (OMG YOUR PROF PIC MATCHES YOUR HEADER OMG), so the header is fine, but poetry thrives on suggestion, aesthetics, and rhythm. Brown excels at the first, does a good job at the second, and needs to work on the third. Part of aesthetics is not just avid prose, but how the poem looks, and honestly, that template reminds me of fungus.  Stop feeding shit to your template.  Pick a paler, less offensive green for the words - that alone will improve things. Think about flow and meter.  You know how to write.  Do it better. 

I applaud the flows of nonsense because he's practicing his attack.  Sometimes the prose is a bit awkward and clunky, but he's exercising and I respect that, despite the overt naval-gazing, mostly because there isn't a lot of filler.  There's just good and bad practice.  Sometimes his spelling is fucking barbaric, he does the "your/you're" thing and if that shit is intentional to prove a point, like we're too hooked on grammar as a society or something, or if you purposely substituted "poured" with "pored" as a play on words, know this:  that doesn't make any fucking sense, but I'm over it, because I read that one about the snail about 500 times.

I'm a sucker. 


               for effort and skill, but

   because sometimes he sounds like he's trying to be a poet instead of just being himself.

Wankers

You are all a bunch of wankers. No, not today’s reviewee.  YOU.  The one sitting at there with your eyes glued to your screen of choice.

I got six pissing comments on my last review and three of those were from Shiner. Poor show, people, poor show. That is not to say that I don’t concede that my review may have been pissweak boring, but if you can’t rip the shit out of the reviewee, couldn’t you at least turn on me, telling me what a useless pile of pap my review was and make a day of it?

Pah-thetic.

I have nothing if not an ego that needs to be stroked, even if I put in a starfish performance, so I can tell you, it was an effort not to throw my hands up with a “Fuck the lot of ya’s” and bail on this review. (Insult must be said with broad Aussie accent or else it loses all effect) However, along with my need for validation I also have an overblown sense of responsibility, so here I am.

Fuck you Shiner. Fuck you cause I heart you so much and didn’t want to let you down, cause bugger me backwards – I had to spend an evening with this dickhead.

Kavisolo. You moron. Go back to the heathen shithole myspace den of iniquity from whence you came. (There is no real iniquity in your ‘blog’ – I just like the word) Far fucking out. Ugh. I don’t know who you are or what you do, except stick up youtube clips and photos of yourself. I do know that you have glasses and look like a nerd. Albeit an ironic hipster-ish type nerd. Book. Cover. Judged.

Are you Indian? Gay? That is what I can tell seven pages in but the little legs on my inferential skills are paddling like crazy to keep this semblance of a real person afloat.

Hold the phone – I FOUND something. Page 17. You left Australia fourteen years ago to live in Canada. Well there ya bloody go mate. And shit. I just saw that I was seventeen pages in and you were only in January of this year. I am sorry Kavisolo but even with your minimalist template and lack of side-crap, your stupid way of  only being able to navigate from page to page sucks ass. Wait – hold that telephone receiver yet again my dear reader-come-telephonist. Here we go. Retarded Redpen just hit the archive button and lo and behold all is revealed. The archives appear in one damn funky looking collage. I like this bit.

But the rest sucks. It is all poser crap with ‘I’m-so-clever-cos-I can-find-quotes’ fraudery (it’s a word because I said so) and no writing, at least none that I can be arsed finding.

All style (kinda) and no substance. You miff me in your need to be reviewed. Is it a postmodern joke that I don’t get?

Whatever.

      

Jambo

People like to make connections. Diving head first into Blonde’s little list on herself I noticed she used to speak Swahili. My dear old mum speaks Swahili. Blonde has been to Tanzania. And I have been to Tanzania. Snap! So with those little connections Blonde wormed her way into my affections. A little bit.

Her ‘cast’ is long and all edgy 30-something TV show. Really? If I had to cast my mates and exes it would be all ‘Dude Who Didn’t Age Well At All – SUCK IT!’ and ‘Clingy Bitch Who Dumped Me Cos I Didn’t Visit Her in London When She Lived There – HELLO I Was a Student Back Then!’ See? Definitely not as cool as her mates.

I got the distinct feeling I am not as smart as her. Look, I don’t mind coming to my own conclusion that my grey matter is not as well stocked as someone else’s but when I feel I am being gently taunted with it, I get all pissy and insecure and jealous and write reviews that possibly turn into a bitch-fest. Maybe. We’ll see.

Blonde writes well, but she writes like a chic-lit novel. With a blog, more so than in a novel, the reader expects to connect (there’s that ‘c’ word again) with the actual real-life author, as well as get a good story. I felt that sometimes her style of writing, while wry and funny, held me at a distance. She doesn’t have to be the slatternly Bridget Jones type of gal but being so self-contained must be tiring.

Blonde is champagne – she is witty, crisp, urbane and very consistent – she is certainly advocating a good ‘brand’ but after a while she clagged on my tongue and I felt like something a little more down to earth. Like Coca-Cola.

Even so, if I was a single gal about London, I would probably want to be her, first world gripes and all.



Two stars because she writes well, as a PR person should.




The guilt.  She suffers, I suffer.  There are some things a teaching stint in Africa can't assuage.

Hi-Tech Hate

Sigh. If a review opens with a sigh, chances are, things aren't getting any better in the near future. See, English isn't everyone's first language and it's a concept that takes some getting used to. Yeah yeah, the dotted ones claim to use English as their first language - but don't you deny it - it's not what your racist granma uses to complain about your tan looking girlfriend. It's not the language your movie stars use to shill for "fairness creams".

But the thing is, the language has a few easy to understand, and follow, rules. Mind you, I don't care too much about grammar - that's a beast very few have tamed. But the Queen's tongue does lend itself to simplicity at the worst of times, if you tell yourself -

• I will always say I, not i
• Capital letters are great, when used correctly and WHEN NOT LIKE THIS
• Commas break a sentence like this, and this, but do not end it like this,
• Those red wiggly lines you see are might look like they're somewhat annoyed, but in reality what they're saying is HOLY FUCKNUTS BATMAN!! THIS IS A FULL SIZED KEYBOARD THAT YOU CAN TYPE FULL SIZED WORDS ON, SO COME ON TAKE A GODDAMNED CHANCE!!!
• You typing is not the same as you talking. If you mix up the two, chances are most of us don't want either

Anyhow, when was the last time we saw an IFLY? When was the last time someone published something on my reader? Oh wait, I don't know - I haven't logged in for the last 3 months. So it angers me to no end to see a blog with semi-regular new posts (or so I think - I can't figure out the bloody site navigation) that has nothing but useless drivel.

In the past, I'd rip on blogs called XYZ Journal, useless updates, and simply missing the point about blogging. But now, 2 minutes away from the next day, I simply don't care. I'm not even sure if my idea of blogging holds up anymore. I thought it was a place to weave stories, to conjure posts with the magic of words. But perhaps it is a medium to vomit what you can't fit into 140 characters. If the meek shall inherit the earth, maybe the lame will keep the blogs alive.

This was supposed to be a review but I'll end with a plea instead. Shakti, and the others still "blogging". Read a book. Just one. Any one. Please?

I'm Not Dead Yet

I haven't written anything on my personal blog since, oh . . .Christmas. I have nothing to say. Nothing even remotely interesting has happened to me. So, I just decided not to post until it's worthwhile.

I wish my reviewee would have done the same.

This is what's supposed to inspire me to write? A damn photo blog? The only writing is lame captions written in poor English. Aces. Ours is a blog that reviews WRITING. What in God's name am I supposed to do with this shit?

So yeah, Jidhu? Thanks for bothering to read the FAQ before submitting. Or any of the past reviews. Also, thanks for using us to get hits. You know what happens when asshats use us to get hits? I don't link anything other than the original link to the blog.

I don't know what to do right now. I'm here to review writing. I'm a "writer" (note the quotes), not a photographer. What the hell do I know about photography? I mean, I was the photographer for my junior high school newspaper 15 years ago. I got some awesome shots of the JV Boys Basketball game. I took a photography class in college and spent my time shooting gravestones at this old ass cemetery. Yeah, pre-emo, baby.

Where was I? Oh yeah, I'm not a photographer. So here's a layman's critique of your photography, Jidhu. It SUCKS.

Your minimal "About Me" says this blog is for you to express your feelings, ideas and interests. What feeling does this express? (Yeah, I linked. Sue me.) Your caption "Guys repairing pipes" is RIVETING. Does the photo mean something to you? Was your father a mechanic and you spent weekends working him, so there's some sentimental value to the picture? Does your "interest" in those guys bring up romantic "feelings"?

What the picture expresses to me is that you went out into the parking lot and took a picture of some shit, just to have something to post on your pretentious blog.

I'm done. I estimate there are more words written in this review than in the entire blog reviewed.

We have had one of these for awhile, so you get a . . .

The Holy Shit Trinity of HoHum

The Yogi Zone is really not one blog, but three. And yet it is still one. It’s a paradox.

What I mean by this is that thematically, and subject matter wise, Yogesh Patwari has had phases.

The first phase, and by far the least interesting of them all, to me at least, was what appears to be some sort of note taking exercise, a recording for posterity of the events surrounding his completion of undergraduate education and interviewing for varying institutes of further higher learning. These entries are written in a sloppy shorthand, in which no acronym is spelled out or explained and in which it is apparently okay to abbreviate capriciously. Holding me at an even longer arm’s length away, it appears that he’s applying to an MBA program, so much of the subject matter of the interviews he relates is all about topics that I am sure would be fascinating to an MBA candidate.

But not to me.

Oh, and when he relays something that was spoken by someone else, he writes it in transliterated Hindi. I don’t read Hindi. Even getting Google Translate to translate it for me is a chore since I first have to convert it from its transliterated form and then translate it. And quite frankly, I could not be bothered.

YogiZone Phase #1 gets an emphatic Proud Rider of the Short Bus.



The second phase is all about Yogesh's life in the Indian Institute of Management Bangalore (IIMB), where our intrepid scholar finds himself surrounded by geeked out engineering students, harder work and lower grades than he had anticipated, misanthropic birthday rituals, and fewer dating options than he had hoped for.

In this phase, he occasionally gets political, particularly about the caste-based reservation system in higher education (for you westerners, think Equal Opportunity or Quotas) as opposed to his ideal meritocracy.

This phase is much more interesting then the last, as he spends much of his time detailing what life at IIMB is like, posting pictures, etc. It reads a bit like a Bangalore version of Tom Brown’s School Days. And it seems to reach its finale with him on the job hunt as he approaches the end of his schooling. And then he finishes at IIMB, filled with mixed emotions.

And then he goes silent for two years.

YogiZone Phase #2 – I don’t know how to rate you. You amuse occasionally, and you annoy occasionally. You drive me crazy with non-sequiturs and murky writing. You force me to do a shit load of homework to even find out what the hell it is that you’re talking about. And yet, I was interested. In the same way I find watching foreign films interesting. I know nothing about the context, and yet life in other parts of the world is fascinating. So there’s that. My inner anthropologist gave you a single star for this section, but my inner editor took it away.

(This is the space where a star would have been if the editor had not redacted it.)

The third phase of the Yogi Zone forces us to believe that within two years Yogesh has gone from a sad sack loser who couldn’t buy a date to a married working man, detailing what life is like in Mumbai and odd people he encounters commuting to work or in the process of finding a place to live. Just out of the blue, he mentions a wife and starts offering marital advice.

I found this segue fascinating and disconcerting at the same time. Almost as if two years after the original Yogesh abandoned his blog, Bizarro Yogesh found the log in information and in essence hacked the account. Working against this theory is that he still insists on writing whole conversations in Hindi. Which I am not going to translate.

Since this phase seems to be the living breathing part of this blog, this is where I am going to focus my advice.

But then I read this little snippet, written in June, right around the time that this review was requested, and it gives me pause:

“I have listed my blog on all these blog directories on the net (in the hope of getting the most coveted of all prizes for bloggers around the globe - traffic!).”

It makes me wonder, what advice I, an ugly westerner, can offer you to improve. Or do you think that your shit doesn’t stink as is?

Well, guess what, sir. You are wrong, sir. I have smelled your shit, sir, and it doth smell of shit.

• Know your audience. You submitted to a western, English speaking audience for a review of your blog, which is liberally peppered with Hindi. I don’t expect you to write only in English or only in Hindi, but how the hell am I supposed to rate you when I don’t know what you’re saying 10% of the time? How would you have liked it if I had written this review in Romanian or Korean? I get it – people in other countries speak other languages. But why did you submit for a review HERE? Oh yeah, the traffic.
• This one’s a bit less concrete, but you have some amusing things to say, but often the amusing stuff is packed in with a bunch of dreck. Several of your posts ran out of steam long before you ran out of words. Others forced me through too many mental calisthenics before getting to the payoff. Edit thyself. Not every word is sacred.
• Find something real to write about. Almost every post here is a diary entry. There is no soul. Perhaps that’s on purpose. Perhaps you fear revealing yourself to the world. But Yogi, if you want my affection, you must give of yourself. And, aside from conveying frequent feelings of anxiety and inadequacy, you don’t give us anything of yourself.

Overall, I found the final phase of this blog disappointing, shallow, and pointless. Unless you’re an MBA living in Mumbai, looking for same, for sharing amusing-ish anecdotes. Which I am not.

After long and careful deliberation, I have no choice but to award you the Abercrombie poseur rating. Blogging does not make you cool, in and of itself. Sorry.

I was so much older then, I'm younger than that now

Trillian,

I realize you're only 16. That makes it easier for me to forgive some of your more angsty or boycrazy moments, since we've all been at "that age".

But you presumptuously call yourself a writer and you've submitted your blog to be critiqued here, so I'm going to attempt to treat you like an adult and be bluntly honest because I genuinely like you and think you deserve that.

Have you noticed that as soon as you were diagnosed with bipolar disorder (over a year ago), you have written about little else and your blog has become super emo? I'm not trying to discount your illness, but do you have anything else going on in your life that you could possibly write about?

UN Peace Mission to Bombay but never write about it. You do the same thing with a school trip to Singapore. You actually write about a school trip to Malaysia, but it ends up coming across as a journal entry where you literally talked about cute boys and what you bought when you went shopping at the mall. Where are the hilarious stories involving the people you met? Where are the descriptions of the things you saw on your trips, written so I can imagine being there?

Hell, you even spent some time locked up in an institution of sorts, and all you could do is give us a description of the people who were there with you. You've given me a cast of characters, but no actual play. I feel gypped.

I'm frustrated, because I know you can write. You use correct spelling and grammar, which is amazing when most of the reviewers get stuck with the blogs of grown-ass adults who have no fucking clue. You write about things other people are scared to. You can turn a phrase beautifully and take pride in your writing when you take the time. I want more of this.

But 80% of the time, you only talk about your current mental state or write pretentious pseudo-artist crap. I'm not sure if you've noticed, but we don't have a lot of patience for people who think writing about their angst makes them deep, introspective and unique.

Here's some big-sisterly advice from someone who's dealt with depression herself: if you wallow in shit, your cuts are only gonna get infected.

I'm not telling you to repress what you're feeling, but just to avoid things that trigger your depression and anxiety. Yes, writing about pain sometimes helps one deal with it, but there's a difference between that and relishing the pain to the extent that you end up defining yourself by it. And you really have much more potential than just a fucking definition, chica.

While we're on the subject of immersing yourself in your drama, why aren't your comments set to be moderated? Since you have an ongoing problem with trolls, it makes me think you enjoy the antagonism.

The problem is . . . I actually agree with the trolls half the time. I don't agree with how abusive they are, but I can see where they're coming from. You mention your maids, your tailor, spending a shit ton of money on shopping, and your FIVE expensive cameras. True, you have a mental illness and abusive/emotionally distant parents, but nonchalantly acting like a rich bitch makes it hard for me to feel that much sympathy for you.

Some more big-sister advice: I really think you should do some volunteer work for people less fortunate than yourself. It'll help put things into perspective, give you something to do other than think about your drama and provide blog fodder that will probably be more interesting to your readers.

And PLEASE, PLEASE, PLEASE, take your fucking pills. Who gives a shit if you get fat? Imagine all the mentally ill people who can't afford their medication. You being flippant about your pills is completely offensive and makes you look like a self-indulgent princess.

Anyway . . . because I actually, truly, love it when you quote a relevant song, book, or poem at the end of your posts, these are for you:


You are not a beautiful and unique snowflake. You are the same decaying organic matter as everyone else, and we are all a part of the same compost pile.






That I must be their scourge and minister.
I will bestow him, and will answer well
The death I gave him. So again good night.
I must be cruel only to be kind.
Thus bad begins and worse remains behind.

She's Leaving Home

Greetings primates. Life in an underground bunker isn't that bad. The scotch is plentiful, and only the finest tobacco makes it to our cigars. We avoid blogging, civil conversations are our joie de vivre. That, and typing with claws is damn near impossible.

Call it an experiment or a voyeur's wet dream, lurking on this website has been most beneficial in understanding your race and the hardships it puts itself through. It doesn't take long to come up with a set of rules, and even less time to be beheaded for not sticking to them. As such, the laws of this land are simple:

1. Avoid cliches.
2. Tidy design lets even high school dropouts appreciate writing.
3. Respect your reader's time and patience.
4. Read the bleeding FAQ.
   

On to Quaint Murmur then. This review would probably never see the light of the day had Shiner not threatened to cause grievous physical harm to my aging exoskeleton. Cliched title? Check. Uninformative "About me"? Check. "Amethyst Haze" is a 22 year old student who describes herself as a dreamer among other things. This will take time. And more scotch.

Considering the recent deluge of DOA submissions, it's a relief to review an active blog. The template needs work, but more on that later. It's the writing we all care about, and it's something everything else would be forgiven for. Everything about the blog screamed Indian emo kid, but one must stay objective in this gig.

Amethyst, you're from a part of the world that fiercely values its identity and your writing shows that. But why do I get the feeling I'm reading the words of Ted Mosby crossed with Zach Braff? All these thank you speeches sound alright when read one by one, but collectively make it sound like you can't stop gloating. And that's just a tenth of your self-indulgent "thank you" posts.

We visit blogs for stories, to identify with journeys similar to ours. It's why retarded mommy blogs get 300 comments, and why the folk here wait months together to add a new blog to their readers. Amethyst, you have stories. Some random. Some mundane. Some are pretty good. It's a start. You try your hand at creative writing. It's not for me, but I can see that you're trying to flex your writing muscles and that's okay. Go on, explore what writing has to offer. But don't compromise with rants and smileys.

Your posts are ungodly long, and you need to work on obvious typos. Proof-read, edit, take a little time to read your own writing. Your fonts are never consistent, and your post-dates don't always show up. Clean up your layout, 3 columns are a waste of space. Use a private test blog for your template and find something less banal. Speaking of cliches, how about something original for your title and author description? Write about yourself, your blog and post it for everyone to see. What disappoints me the most about your blog is the tone of your writing. I kept asking asking myself "who are you?". And that's not just due to your spartan profile, but just who is this person spouting random wisdom? Sagacity and advice, really? No wonder 40-year olds chuckle at teenagers' blogs.

Amethyst. Slow down. Pace yourself. Think of the direction your blog has to take. Don't hit that damn publish button right away. Keep your voice, but use it for something that needs telling.

For decent to good writing, I'm giving you 2 stars.







For trying a little too hard you get:

Could you hold this for a sec? Yeah, it's just my emotional depth.

Hi, my name is Rohini. I am a vibrant nineteen years old, and I've got it all figured out.

I discover truths every day that you never contemplate, because I am different.

I am lost and wandering and idealistic and I write mediocre poetry to prove how whimsical and romantic I can be, and I totally understand the plight of the underprivileged because I took a course on it after prep school. Don't judge me because I'm from Suburban Jerkwater, India. I'm not like them. I am different. I get it. See? Here is one college essay that proves my profundity, which is a word I learned in my thesaurus.

You know what? I'm pretty sure I wrote college papers on a whole slew of topics that are a bigger deal than your slew of topics, so I will just go ahead and give you a couple of those.

As you can tell, I am very insightful. Here, catch. Another poem. It's about soldiers because I understand them in my soul. This is because I am sage.

But don't let the heft of my soul intimidate you! I am a regular teenager and I goof off with my friends! Yes, that is a very long one, but I was so excited about telling you I had fun that I couldn't bother with paragraphs and splitting up the entries by day, because we did so much! :)

Wait, what? Oh. Um, okay. You want to hear something...you want me to show you what it was like. I heard that once. Show don't tell. But I'm trying to show...I am trying too hard? How can you try too...oh, like I'm trying to be impressive instead of just being me.

Well, okay, I wrote this once, but I don't know, I mean, it's kind of ramblesome but it's how I really feel. I don't know. I just really miss them. Yeah. I mean, and I started this internship, and now I kind of...you know. Lately I've been thinking that there is so much I have to learn.

Awesome Sauce: Now With Less Awesome

Dear LiLu,

I am conflicted about your blog. Granted, I'm molded from fluxing confliction anyway, which is why I am so fucking charming, so this was expected. But still.

I started at the beginning.

At first, I liked you. You were honest and conversational and relateable and perfectly inappropriate, with refreshing self-assurance and offering unique views on common subjects. You displayed personality and good humor which made you, in many ways, uncommon. Stories were long-winded but interesting, everything dripped attitude.

I was semi-entranced. How is this possible that people like you exist outside of sitcoms and romantic comedies? You live in the world of Friends, and I live in MST3K. Seriously, it's all cheesy movies and sardonic robots up here on the Satellite o' Love.

Eventually you began doing TMI Thursdays and Shiz My Boyfriend Says and Stupid Fugly Things and Other Abbreviated Memes I Don't Care About. You and your boyfriend are entertaining and cute, I'll give you that. I skipped the others on principle. Why, internets, must there be a day set aside for telling the fucking truth? Shouldn't we always be boldly oversharing? The answer is yes, yes we should. Then recently, you ended them. I applaud your decision to un-limit yourself. You're best when you're uninhibited.

Oh, but you, like, stopped being cool.

All of a sudden your life wasn't your own and became a collection of catchphrases of FAIL and AWESOME SAUCE! and bold letters and....waaaaaaaaait for it....witty asides! I mean, you like things that are funny and can be funny yourself, in a non-threatening OMG-I-am-so-gross-in-the-cutest-manner-I-can-muster-exclamation-point! AWESOME SAUCE. Clever pawned internet slogan! Spelling words like they sound instead of how they're spelled (ON PURPOSE). Must-see Youtube video! ANOTHER clever internet slogan! Awesome sauce! It's annoying. But it's AAWWWWWESOOOOOOOMMMMME SAAAAAAUCE! Plus, I read "Firefly" and I think Malcolm Reynolds, and you just choke the joy out of my fucking world.

Then I read this regarding finding your "e-voice," and immediately morphed into sore snobbasaurus. Before I was irked. Now I'm pissed off.

You didn't tell them anything substantial, LiLu. No guidance, nothing. I thought you were fucking better than that. To quote you quoting Inigo Montoya: let me sum up.

Essentially your advice was, "I was boring in seventh grade. I know. I KNOW! And then I started talking to people and I took a risk! Now I have an e-voice and you can too!" You are not helping people find their voice, you are telling them how to be heard.

A voice, my friend, is not measurable by internet buddies and memes. We measure voices with decibels, which, as everyone knows, are the referential sliding scale points used to quantify the intensity of sound. Duh. Dumbass. Sound, and consequently voice, is a slippery, discordant tramp of a thing made of invisible particles and temperamental waves and shit. There are obstacles to fight through until it becomes clear.

You might think you've found your "e-voice," but stop fucking gimmicking. Write unplugged. Dude, that is a fucking brilliant phrase that I totally just invented, but probably read somewhere and subconsciously suppressed. Seriously LiLu, I cannot support the logic behind correlating your individual voice with how well you successfully woo goddamn internet friends. That's just a desperation to be popular.

Which is your goal, I guess. You're making friends and you got a bajillion fans. I can tell because your sidebar is a jumbly-wumbly anneurysm of advertisements, admiration, and Bootleg Awards (whatever those are). There's a quirky, darkly adorable header image that looks like a Threadless t-shirt and a quirky, darkly adorable About Me that reads like a personal ad, explaining, " I have come to classify myself as a 'South-i-fied Masshole'… all the fun of a Northerner, now with the grace of a Southern belle!"

Please fix your fourteen feet of sidebar tags. Just copy and paste it onto a post and shove it up there on your tabs in between "Roll Call" and "Subscribe." I really don't like that grid of posts beneath your first two entries. Mouse-clicking is a complicated task, and you are forcing me to make a decision between O'Douls and Sharps, when before you were serving up Stella and sometimes La Fin Du Monde.

It's frustrating, because I really, really just don't understand you. Maybe the blog became too much work. You claim to be boring. But the best thing about you early on was your attitude and uncompromising sense of self. Lately, you're still nice, and you're still cute, but you sound just like everyone else.

Regards,

Shinerpunch




For the early years.







For losing it.

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.

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.

I brush my teeth everyday, therefore I blog

School is back in session, my little pretties, and believe me, I weep for my holidays too. I'm melancholy today as I stand in the corridor amidst the unbearable squealing chatter of the young with my arms folded, mourning the golden silence of summer that has ended. As I settle into the day to day, I'm beginning to wonder what the point of it all is.

The beginning of the school year always provokes déjà vu. A new batch of students arrive, their white tennis shoes like blinding fluorescent light bulbs, their eyes wide and hopeful. Crooked teeth jut out at me forming genuine smiles, but alas, their teeths' days of crooked originality with their charmingly overlapped incisors are numbered; soon they will be aligned with military orthodontic precision inside a shit-talking, ass-kissing mouth whose only language is cliche. Year after year, children unique in their artful ways are painfully shoved through the meat grinder of sameness, excreted out into the world of banality, mixed with all the other fat and protein, never to stand out as bright as they once had the potential to. A very few leave their mark on the world in some way, but most, even bright ones will end up settling for the shallow waters of life, never bothering to take off their stupid floaties to explore the deep end and see if there is anything below the surface that is worth the effort.

They will marry.

They will eat a buttload of junk food while watching T.V.

They will join a gym and lose all the weight they gained.

They will procreate, wherein the fact that they have made full use of their capacities as placental mammals and the fact that they have struggled with weight loss will completely hijack their entire sense of self, and they will think and talk about precious little else. They will start a mommy/exercise blog, and the only guiding principle for their posts will be that they must be made up, almost entirely, of the following words or phrases:

-vlog
-Wordless Wednesday
-mommy
-hubby
-baby
-potty
-contest
-giveaway
-meme
-blog radio
-twitter, tweet grid, tweets, twitter party, twinkling twitching twat (okay I threw that last one in to liven up this god awful list).

They will implode in their own redundancy and disappear from reality into a black hole of anti-art*

Which, now that I think of it, makes it nearly impossible for me to review this blog, because I cannot philosophically distinguish it from all of the trivial meaninglessness I see all around me. It cannot be separated from all the other gristle and tissue of homogenized mediocrity. It is one with the salmonella floating freely through this non-universe.

This blog is one of the many whose sole existence is justified on the basis of community engagement, encouragement (for getting through You-Name-Your-Crisis), and, I suspect, subconscious solace-seeking so as not to drown in the murky waters of nihilism. But I, for one, am annoyed with community engagement absent artful communication, I am discouraged by your empty encouragement that fails to connect with Me The Reader, and I feel depressed when I see how others find solace in your hackneyed anti-narrative.

I want more.

I want painfully beautiful sentences contained within a story that has a point. I want the writer to toy with words until they slither around my head and I savor their every nuance. I want the laugh sucked out of my throat, filling the space between me and my computer screen with audible delight. I want to jealously kick myself wishing it had been me who had thought to string those words together so eloquently. I want my mouth to gape open at talent, or at the bare minimum, effort. But mostly, I want utter generosity of self. I want the unhearthed innards of one's psyche, the best and worst of what is inside their mind. I'm greedy as fuck like that. I don't want the tedium of life regurgitated into my face with ready-made phrases while in the meantime having the shit hypnotized out of me by sidebars of blazing doom which attempt to distract me from the total and absolute lack of meaningful content.

Bookieboo -- I can honestly say that if I met you in real life and heard your amazing weight loss story, I would tell you that you look awesome and high five you for your hard work and congratulate you on your beautiful family. But here, on this turf, I'm going to dare you to take some of the travail that allowed you to give birth, make it through a difficult loss, and wake up everyday and get your ass to gym and put just an ounce of that sweat into crafting your blog posts into stories. I mean, what the shit is this? Tell some of those embarrassing tales from junior high school; don't just blog about how you talked about it on the blog radio. Don't talk to me about sex like I'm your next door neighbor's eight year old daughter; for christsake give me some substance. Knock it the hell off with the skin-deep twitter, radio and video bullshit, roll up your sleeves and get your write on and give me some art or get the fuck out of my face.

And would you please put your sidebar on a cabbage diet? At the moment it is gavaged with junk that stabs my eyeballs like pixelated syringes of poison and makes me hate humanity while simultaneously being thankful for being distracted from your annoying anti-posts.

No, Bookieboo, you don't get an B- on your report card for being a sweet mommy who lost a ton of weight. You made me question the metaphysical existence of your blog, and thus my computer, and thus the apple on my desk, and thus myself, and whether or not any of it has any meaning and I don't need that shit on a weekday in an environment where heavy binge drinking is frowned upon.

Run along to the mall now, I believe there is a sale at Abercrombie.




P.S. Your cartoon header sucks ballz, yo.


*I mean this literally and am not referencing the anti-art art movement, which actually has something to say.

Clattering Bat

Bloggers are winsome talky creatures. I had the opportunity of meeting the lovely and talented Gwen Alison, in the flesh last week, and during our 3 hour dinner chat, she told me about a blogger gathering she'd attended in her hometown.

"The entire room was full of people who talked - a lot."

Welcome to Rattle Tat.

This is a woman who is truly in love with the sound of her own voice, a self-described "freelance journalist" (I can only assume that she gets a per-word quota because she sure tries to cram those babies in there a mile a minute).

Let me give you an example:

After the third question it was clear the entire process was going to comprise geometrical shapes in absurd formations in which I was supposed to glean some trend.

Wow. That's pretty fucking exhausting to read.

And I have to say, it doesn't get much better.

It's verbose and sloppy:

This blog is an outlet for my compulsive writing, a recepticle (receptacle) for my verbal squits (squirts?), a haven for my verbosity - an assylum (asylum) from the editor's red pen.

Everyone can have a typo now and again, as I demonstrated so facilely last week. But this is a girl with multiple typos per post, even in her "about me" page. I bet her copy is literally a bleeding gash of red ink. This is a writer who needs to buy a dictionary to set alongside her well-palmed thesaurus.

The layout is nice & neat, and I like the colors. I like the name of the blog. It doesn't need three columns, as most blogs don't, and given that you know how to clean things up and put them behind buttons in your header, I have to ask why you don't do this with your blogroll, at the least. And frankly, I hate the "continue reading" links on any blog, but especially on yours where we get a sentence of introduction and, then, after the link, are confronted by an exhaustive cascade of black words.

But truthfully, any design woes are the least of the concerns here. It's the content. Frankly, it's ALWAYS the content. If we like the content, we will generally ignore the overall crappy look of a blog, but no amount of pretty trappings can whitewash a load of shitty prose.

I could like the blog, but it all feels so forced and contrived, as if each post is a "column" she's test-marketing to the blogosphere.

Consider this. It's very convenient. I don't get the sense that the authoress is actually doing any gut-wrenching soul-searching. It's just for effect, or at least, so it seems.

Almost every post is like this, wry and shallow, perfectly tailored for sale to a women's publication. Every post is about the same tedious length. Every post is full of neatly turned but empty phrases. Every post is cloaked in the same cultural identity-speak (urban hipster mommy). MEH.

I mean, this blog isn't terrible, awful or horrid. She has a deft turn of phrase. But, I don't love to hear her talk nearly as much as she loves to hear herself. Nor are we the sort of place to reward such endeavors.

Cute but shallow can suck my left tit. Thanks, but no thanks. I like real, even if it is harsh, gritty, depressing, and ugly.

But, I know real is hard to sell to the women's publications.

I give it:

The Wise Well-Constructed Disguise

Once again, I will call upon the mighty powers of Tom DeLonge to describe a blogger. And in this case, as almost always, Tom's assessment is fully accurate:

Mia tries too hard.

For starters, the layout is hideous. I mean HIDEOUS. It's a pyzam layout, and as a consequence, is based upon the standard myspace format, which means that the content is poorly spaced, too narrow to be easily read, and the colors are a horror show. Gray text on black background? Yellow lines around everything? Blue links? Entirely too much space is absorbed by the disconcerting and messy background graphics. This is kiddy stuff, Mia. What in the fuck are you thinking?

I mean, at a minimum, no one can read it.

On a blog, the focus is supposed to be ON THE WRITING. This design does nothing but distract from your writing. It makes you look like an unprofessional nitwit. You're a girl who brags about how much care you take of the details, and yet, this is your public image? I get that you work in the sex industry, but that DOESN'T mean that your blog needs to look like a tawdry myspace whore's home brothel.

Look at the difference between your monstrous template and something like this. In the second example, the emphasis is on the WRITING. The spacing in each of the columns allows the words to stand out from the background and look neat/clean. Each new post is clearly delineated, and the buttons above the header image allow for easy navigation.

Plus, it's so much less obvious. c'mon, Mia, a zipper??? Does everything have to be "out there" for you? Flowers, with their delicate petals and secret inner depths, are inherently sexy. Not everything has to be so fucking obvious.

And, that leads me to the content.

Mia: Write in full sentences. YOU ARE NOT BRIDGET JONES. This writing stratagem that you rely upon is tired and hack.

Consider this paragraph (though literally, I could have used any since you write like this throughout the blog):

Am nearly finished with current manuscript. Characters have taken over and extended the ending. Hopefully, will complete today and tidy up prior to submissions as it has already been requested as part of new anthology featuring retold fairy tales. Mine. Ali Baba. Cast of characters alone could have made it an epic.

Blogging isn't fucking shorthand. The paragraph should read as below:

I am nearly finished with my current manuscript. The characters have taken over and extended the ending. Hopefully, I will complete it today and tidy it up prior to submissions as it has already been requested as part of new anthology featuring retold fairy tales. [wtf does this refer to?]Mine. Ali Baba.[/wtf] The cast of characters alone could have made it an epic.

This ongoing lack of a subject in every single sentence is fucking annoying. Stop it.

Beyond that, the content is practically non-existent. It might count as content if instead of being a diary-like chronicalling of each day's events, your posts elaborated on ONE event per day.

For instance, the gas station story. Your extranenous commentary gives us nothing. Instead, why not simply recount the events, as they happened, with attention to the dialogue?

You know who are the masters of this? Rassles, Erin, and Ryan.

Consider this versus this. See how your constant, interjected "look at me, look at me, see me here, telling the story???!!!" distracts from the story?

Work on that. We get that you're a writer, but get the fuck out of the way.

If you want to talk about the fairy tale anthology, why not write about the process of writing? Consider elaborating on how the characters took control of the story. In fact, use their voices in your post to explain what happened. Not only would that be a fascinating insight into the world of professional writing, but it might help you sell some books by provoking our interest.

Other than your chronic need to interject yourself into the middle of every single thing you write, my biggest objection to your blog is that it simply tries too fucking hard to titillate. With post titles like "Do You Like to Watch" and "Anal Ease," it's just too fucking much.

We get that you are Mia Watts, urban seductress and uber sexy author of fetish novels. But c'mon, man. Give us a fucking break.

If we wanted to read all of that, all the time, we'd buy the fucking books. Your blog is supposed to show the woman BEHIND the kitsch. Are you actually a real woman back there, or are you just a super slut whose panties are nearly constantly down?

I have nothing against honest sluts. I happen to be one. I like reading them. But, I get the sense that Mia the Super-Slutty is a mask that you put on for work. Is there anything behind the mask? If so, I might be interested in reading. If not, I'll pass.

Mia: you could learn a lot from Tom DeLonge:

I couldn't believe what this lady was saying
The names she was dropping, the games she was playing
She dated this guy who now rides for Black Flys
How she's down with the 'wise well-constructed disguise'
Now I'd rather go dateless than stay here and hate this
Her volume of makeup
her fake tits were tasteless
So, I said I'd call her but never would bother
...

So when you see her standing there
With green eyes and long blonde hair
She won't be wearing underwear and you'll discover
This girl's not the one and she'll never be fun
You should just turn and run because you'll find out that
Some girls try too hard.

Here's my advice: Stop posturing. Stop trying so fucking hard. Get out of your own damn way.

Be real.

That's all we really want from you: realness.

One thing I've learned in my 40s: Sexy doesn't work this hard. In fact, the harder you try to be sexy, less sexy you are. Sexy isn't something you wear, or a calculated game you play, it's something YOU ARE.

Sexy should look effortless. Any man will tell you that his girlfriend's freshly mussed hair and sweaty natural nakedness looks far better to him than the elaborately posed pretense of playboy. When sexy looks this hard, it makes us tired. After spending an hour or so on your blog, I'm sick of you. I don't want to hear about your panties. I don't want to envision you naked. I don't want to think about your (apparently) frequently traveled ass. I don't even want any cock.

Your blog has murdered my sex drive.

The next time you write a post, make a conscious effort to be real, and to stop trying so damn hard. Ask yourself why you're writing what you're writing. Find your fucking soul, and show it to us. That would be a hellalot sexier than all of these glimpses of your undergarments.

For your superficial, subjectless content, I give you this:


For your hideous layout, I give you these:


For making sexy unsexy, I give you this:


Just put some fucking panties on, and stop showing me your snatch.