Death Trap

A few weeks ago, there was a spirited discussion on this blog about Indian kids showing up en masse seeking reviews from the soulless jerks that run this outfit. Amidst the usual talk about skull-fuckery and sodomy, we were left scratching our crania for answers. This week is the perfect example of a week in the life of this blog - 1 blog was decomposed cat litter, 2 blogs are from where this guy lives. And this guy.

I've always thought humor was universal, that a man eaten alive by a pack of compys would be as funny in Swahili as in English. But reading today's reviewee has me doubting that assumption. Forgive me for the bias, but "Kaushik's Magical World of Nonsense" already sounds like a bastard child of H2G2 and the Discworld series. But I shrugged off that feeling and dove in for the review. Kaushik, from his blogger profile, is a shoe. Well that didn't make any sense, so back I went to his blog. It appears that Kaushik is a student of the assembly line of Indian geniuses "Indian Institute of Technology" which means he'll soon make more in a year than I ever have.

Where do I begin? I ignored the 2 latest posts - I don't read poems, and will not follow you on to your "other" blogs. So a post imaginatively titled "My trip to Bhutan" is a start. As I read on, I realized I was badly mistaken in my bias and that I was in the company of a literary heavyweight who made words do his bidding. His thoughts opened up a tired old predator's mind to the mystical wisdom from the east. His posts were sublime, evocative of what every aspiring writer hopes to become, and should finally change everyone's opinion about bloggers from India.

Just kidding. Kaushik rambles on without pausing once to breathe, think or contemplate editing. He repeats phrases and humor "devices" (lame ones at that). Back to your post on that trip to Bhutan - I tried reading it Kaushik, I really did. About a third into that cesspool of minutiae, I scrolled down to check on how much was left and all I could do was yell "FAAAAAAAAAK YOU". Why bother with verbiage if it adds up to nothing? Why is brevity such a lost art? Stretching a story out for comedic value has worked in the past, but it took a Kaufman-esque reveal in the end to keep things interesting.

I do not need to prove that I spent time reading your blog, that I tried searching long and hard for something redeeming. And what I dfaskl;dfhasfkljas';asjdglkasdgjaskl;dgjasdkl'gjasdg. Wait sorry, that was me banging my snout to the keyboard in frustration. You seem to have attended some sort of writing workshop, and if this is the product, I'd suggest asking for a refund. And the heads of the idiots who encouraged you. It also appears that you've authored some prose or a play or whatever the fuck this means. Good lord, mercy be upon the souls subjected to your dimwitted humor.

I really have no "advice" for the reviewee, some things are beyond repair. To those looking for some entertainment this Wednesday afternoon, I'd recommend stabbing your eyes with something sharp and metallic, and downing a gallon of bleach. The ambulance ride will keep you more engaged than this inane collection of thoughts, poems and "jokes".

Five Fuckin' Flamin' Fingers.

Seasons in the Abyss

There is a part of town I live in that is even more hipster than the rest of elitist central I call my above ground home. This street is home to an Army Surplus, oriental gift stores, coffee shops frequented by the ones of the sapphic persuasion, and bookstores on metaphysics. It comes complete with a bike store, vagrant hippies and lunatic army vets. I once stumbled into a musky bookstore that was only a door on the street, and found that it housed quite the collection on witchcraft, pagan literature and rows upon rows dedicated to the "dark arts". What made things even more weird was that there was not a soul in sight, and the eery silence urged me to exit before some inter-dimensional portal sucked me away.

Not that it has anything to do with the victim of the day - Nikhil Narayanan, author of "Half an autobiography". Nikhil is a copywriter and is into hawking advertising. He says about himself - "The less said the better as familiarity is bound to breed contempt." So much so for an autobiography, and good luck with readers' contempt. The location, blog template screams Indian emo kid, but we'll do what Gandhi did - walk on with the other ass cheek exposed. Or something like that. I personally don't hate the template - it is simple, no bling or widgets. I've always felt that light text on a dark background can be easier on the eyes, as long as the contrast isn't black and white, as it is on Half an. Nikhil would be better served by wider columns and a different text color.

The latest post is somewhat interesting. We love stories here, and we get one right off the bat - about adultery no less. I had half a chuckle at the reveal, but it took far too long to get there - longer than the ride from Frazer town to Langford road. Since there is no formal intro. and I slacked off way too long to spend a long time on the review, you'll have read along as I make shit up.

I guess "autobiography" is one way to describe this blog - he does fuss about things that happened around him - even if it is about a team that hasn't done anything noteworthy in the last decade. There's introspection, isn't that what autobiographies feature? It wouldn't take much to dismiss this as part of the collective depressed lot we get from India, but it's better worded than most of his peers. I really wonder what's eating them, don't they have all our jobs? Still, a point for quoting from The Doors.

There's fiction and interviews, and you can't shake off the feeling that all this is just filler. Nikhil can write, but doesn't seem to be focused on a theme. It's hard to take a blog seriously when there are twopoems about "life" followed by a prank call to a bank. He has loyalties, strong enough to carve on his skin, but shows an unfortunate taste in clubs again (Manchester United? Really??). Nikhil ventures into fiction, and oh bother, it's getting really difficult to tolerate him at this point.

But every now and again, like Rooney playing once a season, he brings things back. I was reading this thinking "oh boy, another dialogue", when bam, there was raw emotion, real feelings, and effort. Nikhil, you can be funny and eloquent. But dammit man, why so serious? Why do I get the feeling you're just being lazy? Whatever brain cells you haven't killed from alcohol and nicotine seem to be capable of imagination and random humour but why serve stale ideas that you might have thought while on the can?

I had to dig through 2 years of writing to get to something linkable, something that caught my eye. You have things to talk about, causes to support and places to visit. So I must ask again, what's up Nikhil? You've been writing for five years now, how about some consistency and quality control?

Pour a drink, turn on some music and light one up. Get that shit out of your system and cheer the fuck up. You can think, you sure can write. Try harder, edit more and write more often. Stop trying to be clever and funny. Don't force it, and good writing will follow.

For general doom and gloom you get,

And for somewhat engaging writing two stars.

Brown Paper Poo-kages Tied Up in String

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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


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

From the Miss with the Missives, you get a










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

you get one of these for being purposefully enigmatic







but for your brevity, you get a half star.

Naked Eye

Heads-up : Today's website is NOT WORK SAFE. Don't sue me if you little perverts get into trouble.

Humans are characterized by an unending quest for betterment, a passion for innovation, hunger for progress - all to get their porn faster. Sure Edison was the "Wizard" of Menlo Park, but he was also keen on delivering the nasties in moving form. Dial-up, broadband, fiber optic - the internet has come a long way to deliver kinks no one knew existed. Hell, rule 34 has porn for my kind covered, too.

So when I visited today's reviewee, I was presented with gallery upon gallery of female primates exposing their privates. Still pictures of not-at-all attractive ladies? What is this, the 90s? I truly am appalled, and that's not just because the blog is called "Hate and Anger". We get all kinds of blogs to review, but this is new. Since when were we in the business of critiquing pornography? It doesn't even look like the blogger takes these pictures, so it's not like I'm expected to appreciate "art" in pictures of annoying TV hosts.

Skipping right past the fugly template, and the annoying sidebar, I followed up on the tabs. Peter Parkour is a 39 year old trucker(!) who idolizes a certain red suited wall crawler. Although a tad on the verbose side, his profile page was the most complete I've seen in a reviewee, and it gave me some hope for my assignment. A Me 101 tab (guess your profile wasn't enough?) carries more info. than I care about, but got me interested in a series about his niece who was shot. Following up on the story, I found myself listening to Peter, an adult with stories, a trucker with intelligent thoughts.

Digging deeper, if you can stay on his blog long enough to skip past the silly thumbnails you'll find a an ex-con with a plan B, a 39 year old who's back in college. Just that one post told me more about you than other tab or silly list did, Peter. Sure you're sharing space with teenagers, love geek shows and Olivia Munn, but why behave like a horny undergrad? The best part about youth is that it's a one time affair. Your blog is "Hate and Anger". What hate and where's the anger? Just this one tiny piece?

You depend very heavily on the "I am" meme you've picked up from somewhere. I don't like the length of the posts, and hate the idea of formulaic writing, but you come across as guy I'd drink a beer or 27 with. It's not like you're short of things to say. You turned vegan 6 months ago, and as much as that thought repulses me, you clearly have material to work with. Cut out the graphs and blunt facts, talk about how your life is different. Get creative with words and sentences. I'd much rather have you say "I wake up ready to assfuck 14 virgins" than "I don’t wake up feeling swollen and sluggish".

Thing is Peter, you may not have a double masters from Cornell, but you have been on the road. You've been breathing for 39 years. You have thoughts and moments. Some good, some silly. You repeat yourself, but yours is a tale I'd read. You've been very active with your posts, but I found only a handful of writing in the 25 pages I looked at.

I started with the review annoyed at what I saw, and I'm wrapping up pissed off at what I read. Space trucker, here's the deal

1) STOP POSTING PORN. END IT. DELETE IT ALL. STOP.

2) Just stop it.

3) Start over. Get a fresh blog.

4) Use a clean template, no sidebars, no cock sucking assholes.

5) WRITE man, WRITE.
6) Stop using the "I am" meme as a crutch. Use all the material you have for free flowing verse.
7) Work on the length of your posts and your story telling style. Save some for the next post or two.

I would have given this review a one line "FUCK OFF AND DIE" and 10 flaming claws of doom, but I'll restrict myself to just 2.

If I've been a bit harsh, it's only so that you do something better with your hate and anger. For having something to show for years of "blogging", and showing potential, 1 star.




PS : Look, my people!

Jidhu What Jighotta Do

PREFACE: Part of me loves posting on Fridays because it's a great way to wrap up a week, but part of me wonders if Friday is a bad day of the week for getting the community involved. I mean, my last review only got 8 comments, and we all know that the only way to determine the value of a blog entry is the number of comments that are on it, right? I just wonder if I am getting an accurate reading on my worth and value as a person?

Thank you for sitting through that with me. Now on to today's review.

Before offering up a review of today’s blog, I wanted to make sure I was clear on what it was that the author thought he was doing, so I asked Shiner to forward to me the content of the review request.

This is what he had to say for himself:

Name of Your Blog: Jidhu's Reflecton
Your Blog's URL: http://www.jidhu.blogspot.com/
A Brief Description of My Blog: Its my reflection

Well, if this is true, than Jidhu must look something like this when he ganders at his own appearance in the mirror each day:



Because I swear, this guy has never met a blog gadget he didn’t like.

I can usually overlook something like that, as long as I can find the links to the archives, but today, I can’t. All those gadgets take forever to load, and they really get in the way. That's one really big demerit right there, son.

Bypassing the template issues for now, then, how well is Jidhu doing with making his blog “his reflection?”

Well, shit.

I don’t know.

I’m just going to come right out and say it. The writing needs a lot of work. Ignoring the mechanics of his English (which needs the most work, but I'm allowing for cultural differences here – “Just expecting something and nothing do for the expectations is a wastage for us.”), the written content is almost completely and totally uninspiring. Which is really sad, because I think he’s shooting for profound and insightful. He seems to be doing a ton of copying and pasting from other sources, or posting things other people have written. But the end product comes across as trite and clumsy.

Let me give you a f’rinstance. He has this topic series in which he shows pictures of Life Lessons on post-it notes. One in particular was “Stop and smell the roses.” After which he provides a full paragraph on what it means to “stop” and another on what it means to “smell the roses.”

Maybe it’s just me, but I didn’t need that explained to me. I've been stopping and smelling the roses for a long time.

Okay – here’s another f’rinstance: He published a post laying out ten things he wishes to learn in the future. As I read it, I couldn’t help but wonder why he set his sights so low. I mean, he had “ironing” and “to wear a tie” on this list. If I made a list like this, I don’t know what I’d put on it, but I am pretty sure that I wouldn’t include things I could learn tomorrow from a “how-to” video or a Tech book.

And what the hell am I supposed to make of this little gem? I mean, I can't even get worked up about Jidhu being all emo and shit, because he never gets to that level of navel gazing.

In fact, the only time that Jidhu’s writing stops coming across as very self conscious and pseudo-profound and fake is when he’s talking about the subject he seems to have the most passion for – computers and technology. Sure the subject matter is not always my cuppa, but out of the blue, the writing sounds and feels free and original and possibly, dare I say it, even a more accurate reflection of the author.

Of all the posts I read, the one about how to revert to a Windows XP installation after upgrading to Windows 7 was my favorite. Really. And I happen to LIKE Windows 7. (When I went to get you a link to it here, I didn’t think I was going to be able to find it again. All of those gadgets and not a single fucking way to do a simple text search?)

Now that I think about it, I can't be 100% sure that Jidhu didn't just crib this from another source.

The non written content – the photos – range from thought provoking and intriguing to “why-the-hell-did-you-post-this?”

Fine. I don’t like it. I won't be coming back. I don't think I know anyone who would like it. I can’t recommend it to anyone. I wonder what the point of it is. So, given that, what can Jidhu do to improve?

• Identify something that you care passionately about. Politics, food, the color orange – I don’t care – and write 500 words on why it is so important to you. Not, why it should be important to someone else. Why it is important to you.
• Find your own voice. Stop trying to be someone else.
• Find clarity of thought first. Then write.
• If you have nothing to say, then say nothing. Don’t write just to boost output.
• For the love of all that is sacred to you in this world, get rid of all of those blog gadgets and get real, son!

Good luck.

Oh, wait. You wanted a rating. Didn't you? I'm finding it hard to invest in you emotionally long enough to do this, but what the hell.

Here you go:

Just an Anomaly

Good afternoon, Askers, and I apologize for all the bojanglement regarding reviews. Today we have a guest reviewer. She likes dogs. You've met her before. I would write reviews myself, but I have this other thing going on right now, one that I get paid to do. Shit's goin' down and I'm throwin' punches. So languid, leisurely Ellie is helping me out, because I love her.

...

Oh, look, one of these slick, new templates with a background image over which the words will roll onto a translucent scroll! And when you page-down, it's like watching a freaky, hallucinogenic 1970s flick. Cool. (Maybe?)

That's my first impression. I think maybe this translucent template feature is cool. Then I'm drawn to the tagline, which is unusual because generally I overlook taglines . . .

usually just daft cliches anyway.

But the opening gambit on this one catches me. "Gus: What's your dental plan?"

This might be good.

But the background image turns a lighter shade of pale grey just where the tagline, with its light-coloured font, would continue. It's impossible to read more without squinting, and I'm too old for this shit. Squinting unnecessarily when you're my age is just asking for trouble.

So, I stop squinting and scroll down.

This is the website I'm going to review.

I have what might be a pang of remorse.

Did I accept this invitation to review too impulsively? It takes so much time to properly review someone's internet baby.

I wonder if I even know what doing it "properly" means. I felt so unseasoned my first go-arounds. I don't think I used my natural voice or developed a new, more interesting one. I just modelled myself off previous reviews. This time I decide to be me, without tricks or sexual innuendo or some seemingly non-related start that ends up somehow being related. I don't know if I know how to do it properly. I do know, though, that it takes time.

Where will I find the time?

I realise I have been scrolling over the first post* which is nothing but a collection of a few pretty photos of leaves. I continue scrolling downwards. The next post is a photo of some gun-selling super mall in the United States of America.

Fuck yeah!

The third post is a grainy photo of of one of "Calcutta's compensations," a lake or wide river in the early morning or early evening. .

The fourth post starts off in the same vein: a photo of a couple of pretty, young girls caught in a charming, candid moment. I get excited by the prospect that I won't have to read any posts.

There aren't any words on this blog! This is a picture blog!

My exuberance is only tempered by a niggle about The Rules.

Are they going to expect me to write something about her blog not having any words? Will I have to make that clear? And if so, is that a bad thing? Will I be expected to do a proper review even though this isn't a proper blog? It's a picture blog! It's like the The Very Hungry Caterpillar of blogs! You can't say anything bad about The Very Hungry Caterpillar!

I switch over to AAYSR.

Surely, they will give me direction.

Even having thought it, I don't quite to expect it: to find a rulebook. But I do find one. I read the rules, all 7 of them. I'm a bit disappointed: the rules are directed at the reviewees. Where's my guidance?

God damn it, this isn't going to help me.

I flip back to the blog in question. I scroll through 3 pages of predominantly pictures. I ignore an experimental poem.

Just an anomaly.

Just as I lose myself in relief that I won't have to read to review this blog (February, 2010) Anandi pulls the rug out from under my feet by posting a word-packed review of Pygmalian.

What the fuck?

Right then and there, in February 2010, I decide what I'm going to give her.

Anandi, go fuck yourself. For breaking 5 of the 7 rules. For boring me shitless with your review of Pygmalian. For making me read a sampling of very bland posts after you promised so much in just pretty pictures.








*at the time of writing

Even Dead Stops Stinking Eventually

Well hello there. It seems someone left a door open, allowing me to poke around in the entrails of some blogs for a while. No matter, poking around in entrails is something I enjoy, rather a lot.

Now, I know this place has a URL of I will fucking tear you apart. But I'm nice, mostly. I don't do tearing apart - I much prefer to poke you in all your sensitive places with my rapier and leave you looking like a pin cushion. A bleeding, crying pin cushion.

Today's reviewee was picked on a whim of mine. A blog called Nomadic Celebrations? Oh no, Nomadic Cerebrations. I thought yes! There will be some traveling and some writing and it will be interesting.

No.

I've read here long enough that I should have been forewarned that the chaff far outweighs the corn.

Nomadic Celebrations just doesn't deliver, well, anything. There is a total of 8 posts on the entire blog and I read them all. You can't accuse me of not being thorough. Pradeepsinghraghav is the author of the blog and while I can't pronounce his name, it doesn't stop me wanting to throw sharp things at his head, because damn.

First things first: edit your damn posts. You've got capitals where they shouldn't be and simple typos make the whole blog look messy. The ellipses. Oh god, the ellipses. One ellipse is acceptable if you're trailing off a thought. This guy, he uses multiple ellipses at the end of every. single. fucking. sentence. Stop it! Just stop it now.

His last blog post was way back in October, before the blog just fizzled out. There is no About page and nothing to tell me why he started blogging. The sidebar, while it isn't cluttered by Internet standards, still has shit in it he doesn't need.

The actual posts though, once I got past the ellipses and the random capitalisation in the first few posts, they weren't that bad. He talks a bit about the Capitalism of India and a little about corruption, but there is nothing to draw you in and keep you reading. Obviously there wasn't even enough meat to his story to keep him interested enough to write it.

So here is some free advice to all bloggers, if you're not passionate about it, don't fucking write about it. If you don't live it, love it, breathe it, what makes you think you can write about it with enough passion to draw other people in? If you're not loving what you write about, your blog will just trail off, leaving the Internet to deal with yet another dead blog.

And everyone knows that dead blogs are no fun for poking at.

The ellipses and capitalisations made me want to give you this:







But instead I give you a Meh, because just meh. You can't hate a blog that's been dead for over 7 months. Even the stink has disappeared by that point.

One Thing's for Surgeon, Your Blog Sucks

I am seriously considering writing all of my reviews drunk as hell, and I'm nearly there, because sometimes it's the only way I can till some of these blogs. Seriously, I can see the future because I have access to the submission list and there are some goddamn wearisome plebes sitting around waiting for life to happen coming up on the roster.

Of course you know that I am not a wearisome plebe. I am brilliance fucking manifest. Plus I got superior typing skills even when rocked on fucking wheat fermentingations or whatever because I memorized where to find the backspace key.

Long as we're listing things I got, I got medical horror stories up the ass (not like literal probes, although I know you guys are serious buttpokers), but this fucking guy collects eyefuls of peculiar shit daily, and believe me when I tell you: he makes crazy medicinal drama about as fucking interesting as ironing pleated pants. I actually prefer ironing pleated pants. I can do that shit drunk.

Techknowdoc writes with holes and impotence. It's very, "This woman had fat legs. And I said, 'gee, your legs are fat.' Man, some bonky things sure do go down in my wacky surgical ward." Except that quote that I just totally paraphrased is infinitely more interesting than everything on this blog just because I utilized "bonky." Use it, Techknowdoc.

By the way, nice nomenportmanteau. And by "nice" I mean "cancer."

As far as presentation...you know, it is what it is. The header is a menacingly stretched scalpel-hand and a splooge of pointless labels clog up the lower half of the template, and it's all Halloweeny colored and basically lame. But regarding content?

Doc, okay. I get it. It's exciting when patients are up to their elbows in fishbones, and that's some zany fucking hijinx, but your version of "lateral thinking" relates to egg-laying roosters and grave-digging planes, and your sprightly professional medical explanation regarding how foreign objects enter the human body is this:

"the fish decided to do one last heroic act before dying and made the bone fly into his elbow!!"

And you just...I don't even know. Accept it. You just accept a fucking telekinetic fish flinging daggerbones at fisherman as the hilarious breakdown of events in the most banal possible manner. You don't tell us the motivation behind the offense or give us an exciting play-by-play, it's just, the fish "made the bone fly into his elbow!!"

It's all unanswered questions, disgusting-ass pictures of surgeries without fixin' the reader with medical explanations or offering ameliorative advice, and fuck you for wasting my time and my PBR on bullshit like this. Assorted condoms exist. A woman blows her nose. I can't tell if your aim is pompous comedy or pompous revolution. Your blog is an unsanitary succession of narrative pap smears, and fuck you, I'm sober now. And I get things. Believe me. I am very smart.

Look Doc, I'm sure you're like, a good surgeon and stuff, but I'm just burning to give you these.






Also, I am very partial to the "rat poisen" tag that the illustrious Nutjobber added to the AAYSR label list. It's my cheap grammar crack.

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.

Introduction to Arithmetic

Okay kids. Instead of sitting at your desks with me at the front of the class and you looking at me with blank, depressing stares waiting for me to enlighten you, let's do something different. Let's move our desks out of the way and all sit around in a circle, mkay?

As you can see, I am an open minded educator and I like to think outside the box and apply unorthodox learning models in an effort to steer my pupils away from douchebagification. I'm an envelope pushing maverick. And, based on some inspiration from our latest reviewee, Maggie, I've decided to do things a bit differently today.

My source of inspiration was the following sentence she wrote here:

"Whatever--everyone knows bloggers are so busy furiously expressing themselves that they can't be bothered with editing or proofing."

When I saw this sentence, I hadn't even had the chance to finish lacing up my asshole-annihilating boots and was caught off guard. Remembering my non-traditional approach to instruction, I decided to take a deep breath, count to ten and come up with an alternative to telling Maggie to go get fingerbanged without further ado. So I decided to give her an a priori grade on fucking principle, dammit, for explicitly condoning everything that is wrong about the blogging world.

So here you go, Maggie; you're initial score:





At that point, I made a deal in my mind with our Maggie for the prolongation of my reading -- which may be very short-lived if she sucks as bad as she promises to. The deal is that for every post she gives me that doesn't in some way make me want to shove my TI-84 calculator forcibly into the first puckered brown eye I see, a flaming finger will be subtracted from the score; and we will go from there. It was up to Maggie to solve this word problem and work her shitty rating off before I cried for mercy.

So let's see her progress at contesting her initial suckedness.

First of all, this lifeless, pea green, failure of a template is more overused than the school custodian's right hand when he thinks about me handcuffing him to the monkey bars. Her sidebar is unnecessarily crammed full of crap. As to the content, my findings indicate that there are some main themes visited throughout the blog and they include the following:

1). Posts about not blogging; a metric shit ton of them, infecting her entire blog with the disease of superfluity.

2). Repeated statements on her lack of inspiration, general boredom, and inability to think of anything to say. Her blog is corroded with this shit. She actually titles her posts things like "Tired", "Not feeling it" and "Not feeling it" (Yes, she has two posts titled that way).

3). Mention of her other blog, which according to her, is more interesting than this blog. I cannot see how that's possible since a) it is written by the same person and b) on her other blog she ONLY writes about Twitter and Facebook. (I didn't check out the other blog because I only have time for one trainwreck at a time, and frankly, I can only handle so much WTFuckery in one day).

4). More Twitter and Facebook talk as if dedicating an entire other blog to it weren't enough.

5). Posts about other bloggers, mainly in the form of criticism, leaving a nasty taste in my mouth (I may be one to talk, but she did solicit this criticism, and I consider it community service).

6). Posts recapping books she's reading, rendering completely redundant the bookshelf widgetry bullshit in her sidebar irritating my corneas.

7). Other media she consumes in a dead stare from her colorless couch in the pictureless, windowless living room of her uneventful life.

Before completely giving up, and nearly becoming infected by Maggies' outlook on life (namely that there is nothing to say and that life is boring), I read her most recent post. While hardly poetic, it at least turns one of the flaming fingers into a MEH. If I can even give this blogger a clue as to a starting point to reformulate her conceptual notion of what a blog should be, it would begin with this haphazardly written and moth-eaten post.

Maggie has the toolbox to be able to write. There were no major problems with spelling, punctuation or grammar. She even occasionally throws in some funny one liners. But I reckon that she has never once looked back at her content before hitting publish and asked herself if anyone on god's green earth would give a flying thumb fuck about what she's writing. Indeed she has been "so busy furiously expressing" the square root of sweet blubbering nothing to be "bothered with editing or proofing."

Maggie, if you are not as bored with life as you portray yourself to be, you should ask yourself why you blog like you are. If you are actually that bored, wake the fuck up, cause you only get one shot at life, and contrary to what you may believe, life is hilarious and ironic and agonizing and tender and twisted and fascinating and seductive and everywhere you look there is a tale to be told. And if we don't agree at least on that, you will never, ever capture me as a reader.

Alright, class. Can we help Maggie with some arithmetic?











Class dismissed for recess. Just stay away from the monkey bars please; they're going to be, um, occupied all afternoon.

Rochelle, Rochelle

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

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

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

On her first post she warns us,

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

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

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

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

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

In A Way, I Feel You; In Another Way, Fuck Off

If It Feels Good Do It is a song by Sloan, a group of four white guys from Halifax, Nova Scotia. Some sample lyrics:

If it feels good do it
Even if you shouldn’t
Don’t let people mess you around

Gangsta Gangsta is a song by NWA, a group of four black guys out of Los Angeles, California. Some sample lyrics:

‘Cause I’m the type of nigga that’s built to last
If ya fuck with me I’ll put a foot on yo ass
See I don’t give a fuck ‘cause I keep bailin’
Yo, what the fuck are they sayin’?

Now, all things being equal, which group do you suppose a 30-something white guy would sport on a header atop a blog titled “If It Feels Good Do It”?

Mm-hmm.

Ian Bowman: unless you are straight outta Compton, or a crazy motherfucker named Ice Cube, I’m going to suggest, directly off the top, without reading a single post, that you change your header – not because there’s anything inherently wrong with a white guy listening to 80s-style gangsta-rap, but because it doesn’t make a lick of sense, and even less so after reading your blog. As a man who knows a thing or two about not making sense, believe me when I tell you that there is a bleak, yawning chasm between “dude, you crazy” and “what?”

Sometimes “what?” works; other times it’s like choking a plastic doll with a knife between your teeth while standing in front of a ferris-wheel: nonsense for the sake of nonsense.

Here’s the thing: your first post was great. Truly. You’ve got this straight-ahead style of writing that reeks of sly humour and self-awareness, and this post showed that you could make something out of nothing, and that’s talent. So, what happened? You thought it a better use of skills to write umpteen-Burning Man posts? You got drunk, you got high, it was rad. Right, got it. Who gives a fuck?

[shrug]

Reading your blog is like enduring a tale of self-actualization gone awry. At some point, you stopped trying to entertain and started trying to impress, and tearing up the crowd at karaoke by killing I Started A Joke with a devastating falsetto isn’t the same as belting out Creed songs as if they had meaning. Stop pretending you’re Scott Stapp and get on with it.

Look, Bowman, I understand: I’ve written more than my fair share of self-congratulatory tripe, and I’ve alienated scores of readers with my unapologetic braggadocio. I, however, have not vlogged shirtless, nor have I related text-messages of people wanting to fuck me; why would I? I assume my fuckability is self-evident from what I write alone, and it’s unfortunate that you and I differ in our respective beliefs in that regard.

When you actually write, it’s good, for the most part; when you indulge in what my old writing teacher called “navel-gazing”, it’s an atrocity of masturbatory bullshit, and really, really, incredibly annoying. There’s tongue in cheek, and then there’s taking a picture of your tongue to put it online in the hope that someone will see it and think it’s hot; there’s funny narcissism and pointless narcissism, and far too often it sounds like you’re trying to convince yourself that you’re worthy of either.

You have “absolutely no long-term goals whatsoever”? Fair enough. How about, in the short-term, you put a little more effort into this thing - it could be better, and absolutely, positively should be better than it is.



It's a moose - love it.