My Subscription to Psychology Today Makes Me an Expert

Readers, have you ever known someone who has some life-changing, emotionally traumatizing experience happen to them, and they never deal with it and get the help they desperately need? In my experience, these people tend to be frozen at whatever age the experience happened and fail to evolve in mental and/or emotional maturity. Does anyone know what I'm talking about?

If not, meet Violet.

Violet watched her mother die two-ish years ago. Her father is gone as well, I assume, given her blog's title. There may be a post dealing with him, but I can't be arsed to read all her posts. She has other family though, because she wrote about them during the holidays. I'm confused about why they don't know how screwed up in the head she really is.

Violet bides her time being unemployed and crashing on people's couches. To support her lifestyle, placate her daddy issues, and distract herself from dealing with her problems, she signs up for Sugar Daddy websites and meets rich, much older men. Currently, Violet has a regular boyfriend closer to her age (early 20's, I assume), who doesn't know about her desire to be a kept woman or about her meeting potential Sugar Daddies/Johns behind his back.

This girl is a fucking trainwreck and has no shame about broadcasting it for the world to see. That's one thing I'll grant her. I don't have to complain about her not opening up. She writes about her boy troubles, albeit in a very Carrie Bradshaw-wannabe fashion. She writes about dreams she's had with her mother in them, ones where she and her mother are the same age. And she does so in an intriguing and image-provoking fashion. I just wish she would write more about what's going on in her head, rather than what shenanigans her latest John has pulled.

Violet writes somewhat coherently, with somewhat correct grammar and spelling, although she avoids the shift key like she thinks she's on par with ee cummings. Any mishaps can be chalked up to typos and not editing before posting. However, there is an abundance of caps and bold and ellipses and too many youtube videos and pictures for my liking. An indication of her age, I suppose.

The feminist in me, the woman who's witnessed male friends and relatives get put through the ringer by manipulative women, the woman who's been treated like shit herself because dudes think all women are users . . .wants to hate this girl. Desperately.

But I'm here to review a blog, not put on a German accent and have my reviewees lay down on my couch so I can play Armchair Psychiatrist, even if it comes naturally to me.

Which is why I'm generously awarding Violet one star:



For actually being able to write and for laying it all out there. Sometimes.




I'll let the commenters rip into you all they like. Shagnasty Freud has some advice for you though. Your mental health is just as important as your physical health, and way more important than frivolities. Maybe consider forgoing your gym membership and weekly salon appointments and find a therapist.

Fuck.

There are people in the world who have time to write like, every f__ing day.  I have barely enough time on my hands to scratch up one post a month, having chosen a career that makes data entry look like the f___ing Superbowl.  Also, how can I expect other reviewers to finish their posts when I don't even have time to pretend I'm going to write one?

The main reason it took me so f___ing long to write this f___ing review was this: JennyMac is a mommyblogger (she would probably write a response to this that says, "NO, I am a MOM who BLOGS) who likes "cocktails" and has well over a million bajillion entries.  She also has a million bajillion fans, who would probably rush to her aid at the slightest criticism because they don't like being told they have generic taste. 

Mac, when you've been blogging long enough to have over 300 entries:  consider creating a "best of" page. Are you proud you wrote this?  Do you wish more people would read a particular entry?  Because sifting through over 500 of them is no easy task. Your header image almost fits into my screen...ahp, nope.  No it doesn't.  It leaks sideways because it's huge and full of water martinis and thin, chic, casually-leaning models. Fix it.

Whatever, Jenny Mac seems very nice and cute and should probably have her own Chuck Lorre sitcom where hilarity strikes with a stressful moving day or a naive misunderstanding, where taking the Lord's name in vain (so bad!) and covering it up quickly with a well-placed pun results in uproarious laugh tracks and stray giggles, but I'm afraid I just don't have the skill to pretend that I find that s__t funny.  It's too formulaic.  She takes small events with the idea of turning them into something bombasticly hilarious, but it's just set-up, punchline.  Set-up.  Punchline.  Set-up.  Punchline. 

Rarely does the punchline have any relevance to the set up, it's just a little snappy comeback she's proud of slapping on the end of a sentence in a random situation.  These things don't add any human quality to the mix, because she's only showing us her self-approved quirks, not hopes and blood and secrets and fear which becomes hilarious because it has to be, because if it's not funny then it's sad and sad is bad.  Ideally we want all honest knuckles and laughter...but no, that's not what JennyMac is. 

From a technical standpoint, JennyMac is nonpareil. Her spelling is impeccable, her grammar has improved greatly since the beginning of the blog (there were so many unsatisfying run-on sentences I almost quit reading it and flame-fingered her a__), she uses good words and gets her point across.  Sometimes she's super cheese, but I like that.  Sometimes.  When it works. 

For the most part, though, it reads like cartoon bubbles between disembodied Jennifer Aniston and Kate Hudson, adorable and relatable because of they are "real women" with "flaws" just like "you and me."  She tries to describe awkward and embarassing situations, but I'm never embarrassed for her.  I never get that, "Oh s__t, no f____ing way, dude.  No.  F___ing.  Way." And sometimes I feel awful. I feel awful because this made me feel nothing.  I feel awful because she doesn't want to share her fears and desires, or she has no fears and desires and I can't tell which, and I feel awful because I don't give a s__t about her fears and desires because she doesn't seem like a real person. 

But it's fine, right?  It's all fine.  JennyMac, your blog is fine, moderately enjoyable, and you seem like a nice, genuine person.  Genuinely nice people are hard to review.  Like most nice people, you claim to have a bitchy side every once in awhile but I honestly don't think you do, and that pisses me off, too, because it means you're either a liar (not nice) or delusional (most likely) and that is always frustrating.

Maybe it's because in the grand scheme of crazy and ridiculous, you aren't.  I just can't get all giggly over a walk of shame, because bitch?  I did that last night.  The only good part about that story was the note from Action Jackson, and that's just because I've put bike locks around drunk people before and it's hilarious.  Once I duct-taped two people together in a lawn chair and threw them in a river.

Don't get all butt-hurt, it wasn't a very deep river.

But one of my biggest pet peeves is getting cheated out of a good, well-deserved fuck.  What the fuck?  Just fucking say fuck, you fuck. Not saying fuck is fucking annoying as fuck.  Either you mean fuck or you mean something else, and if you mean something else THEN FUCKING SAY SOMETHING ELSE.

Fuck.




and

because I am awesome at irony.


Also?  Sorry about the wait.

All About the Bling*

A couple years ago I befriended a co-worker, a 21-year-old "woman" who was married to a 40-year-old "man". The quotes are an implication about their maturity levels, rather than their genders.

After I picked the wife up from the side of the road at 3am one night, she asked me to drive her to the hospital. She felt like the only way to get away from her physically and mentally abusive husband was by killing herself. She wanted to be admitted to the hospital to be put on suicide watch. I stayed with her there until her husband figured out where she was and texted that he was coming to get her. At that point, she told me to leave, "so he won't get angry that I'm spreading our business all over the place".

This was the start of my involvement in their dysfunctional relationship. She'd call me crying about once a week, stoned out of her gourd on opiates, to bitch about some new shit he'd pulled. I'd tell her to leave his ass and move back home to her parents. But she wouldn't leave him. "It's different when you're married," she told me. "You wouldn't know what that's like."

Several weeks later she called me in tears, because her husband had stolen the inheritance money she'd received from her late uncle for her education. She didn't know what he'd spent it on until several weeks after that, when he ended up in jail for possession of crack cocaine and solicitation of a prostitute. She still didn't leave him.

After the crack and whores bit (possibly crackwhores), I was done. I couldn't invest any more of myself in the situation without wanting to smack her around myself. I avoided her calls and avoided talking to her at work. In the end, she showed up to work (with a black eye) to tell the managers that she was finally moving back to her parents.

Am I a bad friend because I refused to enable her dysfunction and self-destruction? Am I hyper-judgmental and overly opinionated, to the detriment of most of my friendships?

Possibly yes, but that's also probably why I was asked to review for this site.

The Blog O' the Day is "Long Distance Love Affair". Do not click this link if your computer is more than a year old -OR- you're using internet that is slower than fiber optic. It's not worth crashing your computer.

I say that because I counted no less than 13 widgets and doodads. It's like accidentally stumbling onto someone's Myspace profile circa 2004, complete with that fucking music player smack dab in the middle of the blog, those awful flashing blingy things people used to leave as comments and an extensive use of text and chat speak, with different font colors and sizes.

How many fucking times do we have to bitch about people not reading the FAQ before submitting? Shit.

I'm not even gonna get into the grammar and spelling because "Miss Innocent's" first language is not English. If you've gambled and clicked the link, you can see a blatant affront in the sub-title.

Now onto the content. Miss Innocent is a spoiled Filipina princess, "on vacation" in California because she's followed her boyfriend from Manila. She's still not living in the same town as "her future husband", hence "a long distance love affair".

She spends the majority of her blogging time obsessing about her controlling boyfriend who's most likely cheating on her, and throwing temper tantrums over trivial matters. Randomly interspersed blog entries include her repeated use of her daddy's credit card to go on shopping sprees, and her adoption of desirable American traits, like eating shitty, unhealthy food.

I've already told a story about how I give the fuck up on people who bitch about their dysfunctional and abusive relationships but don't do anything to change the situation. Why the hell would I read a blog about one?

There's only one post in the whole blog where Miss Innocent gets down to the nitty gritty and actually does SOME self-reflection. I don't know if I kind of liked this post because of my current situation and the fact I've been having a quarter-life crisis for the past 5 years, but I did. I would have liked to see more of this.

My suggestion for Miss Innocent is to start a whole new blog, where the main focus ISN'T her fucked up relationship with her boyfriend. She says she's on a mission to find herself. That would be WAY more interesting to her readers than the shit going on now.

But for a co-dependent person, finding oneself sometimes requires one to be single. Unfortunately, I think that's easier said than done for Little Miss Innocent.

For the WORST blog template I've ever seen and the asinine blog subject:







For wanting to be reviewed, even after the site admin asked you if you were being serious:







* Since we'd already traveled back in time to 2004 and all.

Carrying Your Emotional Shit Is Hard

So there's this blog that I'm reviewing right now. Like literally right now. It's called The Semi-Sane Life of The Demigoddess, a title that belongs on the cover of an unpublished novel next to the anonymous slim, starved figure of a woman in scarlet, seen from the shoulders down, crossed arms and manicured nails suggesting "beautiful and successful and looking for love, but stubbornly so!"

Angel is a chronic dater, a 27-year-old divorcee in the Philippines whose boyfriend just up and left for Sweden. And she's...she's growing.

It's always frustrating when someone confuses having a "strong character" with hotheaded arrogance. Strong characters and personalities exercise a great deal of dimensional and emotional weight, and they can be arrogant, of course. But they exist because of that weight, not in spite of it.

With that in mind, I'm debating how to proceed. Angel's blog is a progression of self, and it's not because she's fickle. It's because she's trying very hard to squeeze herself into a Niche, any Niche, but it's not working. She doesn't feel it. At least she hasn't felt it, she hasn't really given us an inkling of actual awareness of self. Not until like last week.

She blogs bullshit for a full year, kind of end-of-the-week-reflect-on-your-reading-assignment essays, and these posts are just completely lame. It's forced, strained, obnoxious self-help liturgy, composed completely in formal cliches, and I hate it.

I discovered my interest and love for writing when I was very young. In many ways, writing has helped me cope through the darkest, most painful chapters and preserved the most beautiful memories of my life.

That sentence is not real. It's processed.

And then she shifts, as if she found some drunken, slutty muse that she wishes she could be, but writes with that faux sassy malarkey that we love so much around here. Suddenly everything is loose and slang and there are all these fucking acronyms and dildo talks. It's better than before, but it still feels contrived.

Sprinkled throughout, though, is THIS:

On my wedding day, while I cried in my daddy's arms, all he ever said to me was, "We never practiced this dance. I'm sorry if I step on your toes."

When she loosens up and stops writing the crap that she thinks people want to hear she's on fire. When she's honest, it's hopelessly compelling. And that's not because there are sexy lesbian stories, it's because she's out of hiding. Her writing becomes bold and true because it feels that way, not because she's telling us about how bold and true she is. I'm a big fan of that.

The first half of her blog was a fucking chore.







The second half was a little cheap, written well enough, and slightly annoying. It lived up to that hypothetical cover of a book about a "strong woman" that I would never want to read.



But for the tasty, shameful spiral she pulls the reader through, I'm giving her more. She made me curious, she made me interested in her story, she made me feel. It just took her awhile to get there, probably because of all that emotional weight she's carrying with her and trying to hide.

Ambrosia and its Opposites

When I was a mere dot and home from the School for hols, Nanny used to try and force me to eat rice pudding. Now there are not many things I will not eat. I am a gastronaut of the highest order – William Buckland can’t hold a candle to me (although I will own to never having nibbled the mummified heart of a king, I have eaten a kebab in Cleckheaton). However, I know what I like and I simply cannot bear rice pudding. It’s something to do with the skin. Nanny would cajole and threaten and great Scenes would be caused, but as soon as I saw rice pudding at the table I would clap shut my mouth and fold my arms and that, much to Nanny’s disgust, was that.

When I saw that I had to review a blog entitled ‘Single Mom Says’, written by the fragrant Mindy, my first though was rice pudding. My second thought was ‘Good lord, I had no idea that there were actually real people called Mindy’. My heart sank further when I read her header. It reads ‘A single mom’s thoughts and observations on life as a single parent, dating, relationships, kids & women’s issues’. I can tell you know, Mindy, that they way you mean the term ‘women’s issues’ in no way reflects the lives of any of the women I have ever known. My Fanny’s issues revolve largely around the unclogging of the traps and Mother, when I saw her, was preoccupied with the bejewelling of her vast cast of land crabs.

None of this endeared me to Mindy, and to top it all off, her ridiculous stalker widget thinks I come from Derby! Derby! I haven’t been back to that godforsaken place since the Unpleasantness and do not intend to do so ever again. However, now I am an old clown I must be brave and eat up my rice pudding. As Nanny used to say, if you just try it, you might like it. Poor Nanny. She had to leave us in the end, when all my teeth came in. Anyway, I held my nose and opened my mouth and dug in to our Mindy’s ‘about’ bit, thinking it best to get the skin off first. In this section Mindy provides us with a helpful list of dramatis personae and links to what she considers the pertinent posts. They make for grim reading, my tiny friends. Mindy has fair been through t’mill, as they say around here. Her best friend stole her husband and they are stirring up all kinds of trouble. She is raising four daughters on her own. Neither of the fathers sounds like much cop. She is desperate to find a good man but internet dating is proving unsatisfactory. All in all, poor Mindy has been having a miserable time of it.

I do hate it when reviewees have Sad Stories. It makes me feel as though I should make allowances and then I have to do all kinds of wrestling with myself and I get all flustered and Fanny has to mop up and then she sulks. Besides, sad stories are fun to read for a while, but then the schadenfreude wears thin and it’s just depressing. The problem I have with personal blogs is that they are often far too personal, just a relentless grind of self-obsession. But we must look beyond all this, though, to the real proof of the pudding, the writing. I suppose.

When Mindy started her blog, she wrote long, self-help style essays. They were breezy, relatively well put together pieces that have that ‘Sassy Mom’ tone we have encountered in so many other pink-hued places. Very chummy and reassuring and most helpful, I would imagine, to similar women in similar situations, although they are a touch shiny-eyed, as though she is just enthusiastically regurgitating the last book she read. It’s very much not for me (it’s those around me who need help, not I) but I can see that it has some merits, despite the crashing generalisations and the sneaking suggestion that all men will inevitably turn out to be massive cunts.

However, the recent posts suggest - and I hope this is true – that our Minds has found something better to do than blogging, because they are scanty at best. At times she resorts to the unspeakable crime of just listing things she did, like a child’s back-to-school essay. I did this and then I did this and then and then and then. Look at this, for example;

My weekend was a busy one, marked with a few highs and a few lows. Here’s a peek at some of what’s been going on lately:

I caught a cold. Maybe strep throat. Ow. Throat pain SUCKS.

Got in a minor car accident. No one was hurt but can’t say the same for the cars. Or my insurance premium.

Came to the conclusion that Karma is a slow-ass bitch. Or she’s drinking on the job. Whatever the case, she is obviously VERY confused.

Had date #2 with the single dad from the bowling alley. He needs a name for the blog because he may be mentioned here again. (and it can’t be Bowling Alley Dude or Dad because that would be BAD).

What, pray, is the point of this tripe? Sweet Felicity Kendal, why did you bother? It’s all very well and good if you just want to give your chums a quick update on what you’re up to, but when you submit to this site, you must know we are going to want something more. Your stories aren’t stories, they are merely hints. I know you can do it, you just need to be more consistent in the quality of your output. You could make lovely little pieces out of your dating adventures with a few judicious descriptions, a bit more dialogue and some actual effort, but you seem to have stopped bothering and if you can’t be bothered, Mindy, neither can I.

So, having gagged my way through as much rice pudding as I can handle, all I can say is that I hope Mindy manages to find a way to live, and thereby write, outside her problems. I hope she finds a man (although she would be wise to remember that Buttons is often a better bet than Prince Charming). I also hope that she finds her missing knickers, although I do wonder about the coincidental nature of her fancy frillies going missing just before her daughter goes out to celebrate her sixteenth birthday with her boyfriend. And I hope that she either gives up blogging or decides to do it properly.

Mindy, you get a Meh.

She's Got Two Or Three Dwarves Covered

I know, I know. You wanted Forcemeat to do this review, which is understandable. Meat's the jam, I get it, but you got me.

A. Today's blogger suffers the same slippery ill communications of basically, like, 90 percent of submitters: she claims to be something and offers no supporting evidence.

EVERYONE: To echo nearly every single review ever given on this fucking site, do not make blatant declarations about your character unless you're packing a smoking gun. The only thing that reviewers loathe more than shitty writers is shitty liars. Remember way back when everyone was a fucking Humor Blogger (it is so much easier to critique douchey frat-core humorists than the poor, woebegone idealists of late)? Grumpy, you wanna be a cranky bitch? BE A FUCKING BITCH, THEN. Pussy.

However, "grumpy young lady" is an excellent phrase to describe you, I think. It's perky and familiar, tickled with slight self-derogation and intentional bunglement. Granted, the luvable, socially awkward, clumsy puppy-eyes thing can only take a blogger so far. Everyone's doing it. I blame Helen Fielding. I want you to take that personality and cube it.

And then quablam! Cubed. Honesty is underrated. Too much honesty makes some readers uncomfortable, but it depends on the author's presenting attitude, even when we're talking about a woman's right to bear pubic hair. And I must say, I think your stance is brilliant and your defense is brilliant, although I think you might benefit from thicker skin. And to those who made fun of you: I support looking your "best," but don't snoot all over those who are comfortable with themselves and their natural beauty - it's shallow and uncouth, and reveals your classless insecurity.

Then I read something like this, and I realize: she is "whinging" about being ideally healthy. Shut up. That's just obnoxious. Who did that to her, made her think that her personal weight was a problem? And don't tell me "society" because that's bullshit. Suck it.

Sometimes she delves into topics that I don't relate to: marriage, clothes, chick lit (she's a well-balanced reader, but our book preferences differ). But there's wit in there, making it tolerable.

2. Grumpy? Fucking soften up the background color of your template. I have an aversion to offensive digital yellows. Maybe you think that yellowness represents you, like, as a person or something, because you're bright and sweet and tend to give people migraines, and that's...whatever. You seem very nice, but from over here it smells like moldy fruit and I just want to quickly and politely suggest we go for out for some pistachio gelato and then head back to my place.

D. Here's the thing: You obviously can write. I like how you've started venturing into snapshots and stories instead of your old school chronicling journal stuff.

So here's my advice, from an uneducated reviewer to an established Australian teacher, which seems unfair: Sometimes your writing is a little hurried and overenthusiastic. Breathe. Edit. You often find a rhythm two sentences before your posts end. Start writing each post loose and unrestrained, then cut half of it. Four small paragraphs of introduction and one punchline at the end doesn't do it for me. I want you to write a post that is, itself, a punchline. Not a collection of zingers - that's annoying. What I mean is, take this line you invented:

Music for awakening, rather than cute boys who were all teeth.

and write the shit out of that post.



As an afterthought: I totally should have gone with this like, Seven Dwarves motiff, where I analyzed little grumpypants in seven different categories, and then like...whatever. Too late.

Lessons Learned

Come, my little chitterlings, put your tiny paws in mine. We are going on a journey, and we may be some time.

Now, you know that when it comes to blogs I am a drool-sopped old gourmet, continually ravening for succulent mouthfuls and nourishing treats. I am on a lifelong quest (and have been for some months) to find the ortolan of weblogs, the site so rare and so delectable that I would needs must eat it hooded to hide my pleasure from the gods. You know that each week I am largely thwarted in my search for satiety, albeit with hilarious consequences. But you also know, and I know as well, that I cannot keep dismissing blogs on the grounds that they do not live up to some gilded ideal I have declared master, because that is not what they are for. Most blogs do not intend to be literature, and the sooner I come to terms with that, the less likely I will be to spork out my eyes.

It’s an inanity to say that we all blog for different reasons, but it is something of which I have had cause to remind myself in the course of my reviewing escapades. Some people do it for comments and adverts and the tacky baubles of internet fame. These people are dangerous and should never be approached unarmed. Some people (mentioning no names) appear to be doing it because their neighbour’s dog suggested it might be a good idea. I would imagine that most people do it because telling stories is such jolly good fun. My favourite bloggers, as I am sure you all are now grindingly aware, are the ones who do it to create something beautiful.

'T' does it for another reason. She is on a journey of self-discovery, ‘a quest to find out Who I Really Am amongst the chaos/order and drama/perfection of being a single mom’. T writes about herself and her life in a very frank way. She writes about her children, the long-distance relationship she is having with an old school friend, her divorce, the lives of her friends and family and her general day-to-day existence. She is mostly likeable, readable and friendly. Naturally, I hated it. I can’t help myself. I am a terrible old clown. I was calling for my spork after the first page, but thankfully Fanny had the foresight to hide it in the downstairs cistern, bless her little sacking socks.

First there was the style, instantly recognisable from a hundred thousand other blogs by mommies who describe themselves as ‘a little crazy’ and ‘painfully honest’. Then there was the Bon Jovi video. The merest mention of that ghastly, ghastly man and his dream-defiling bouffant makes me come over all killy. Then there was a sex scene that used the phrase ‘throbbing moistness’. Then there was the ‘spirituality’ business, the belief in something called A Course in Miracles. Very easy to mock, especially for a jaded old beast like my vast and seeping self. I get all my spiritual guidance from my Fanny.

But then I caught myself and I said no, Sir! I decided that with my petty bile I had delighted myself long enough and resolved to look beyond my knee-jerk contempt and embrace T for who she really is. When Fanny had revived me, I read on. I realised that if I were a blogger like T, if I were one of her ethereal peers and in a similar situation to her, I would probably find things like this and this rather helpful. I might take comfort in knowing that someone else had been through it and come out of the other side relatively happy and able to form a nauseatingly demonstrative new relationship. I might be amused, enlightened or inspired to read someone talking so unabashedly about sex. I can see how T could be a great friend to her many readers.

However, I need no emotional succour. Of course I would like to see T brush up on her story-telling skills. Here and here she writes about a school reunion but it feels dead to me, an exercise in self-aggrandizement as opposed to an interesting tale. There are rather a lot of posts like these, in which T says ‘I am very attractive and popular and everybody fancies my boyfriend’, and although T might be aiming for sassy, she veers rather toward the smug. Personally, I find all this boasting and shouting about being ‘awesome’ terribly infra dig, but perhaps that’s just a cultural difference. All I will say is that it is possible to write a story about oneself without writing only about oneself.

And so, as we stagger exhausted towards the finish line, knackered as my Fanny after a night at the bath house, I will try, finally, to sum things up. T is a decent person, a good mother and, by all accounts, a generous and tender lover. She has spent a long time thinking about things, has profited on it and uses that profit to try and help others. There are some clunks and bumps, but I don’t suppose it matters.

I have learned a lesson today. I must be good and fair and look for more than beauty. I do despise learning lessons. Even through I make a habit of forgetting them immediately, they discombobulate me something chronic. To quote T, ‘I don’t know whether to meditate or masturbate’. I don’t know which I will choose, but ye gods, I could murder an ortolan.

I really don’t know how to rate T. She’s rather like the Church of England; I have no personal use for it, but I am sure it serves a purpose. I suppose she can have a star for making an old clown feel chastened, however temporarily, and for being a very brave soldier.




P.S. The winner of last week’s thrilling ‘giveaway’ is Ellie, for ‘Tranny whores are all the rage these days’. That’s what my Fanny keeps trying to tell me, but I still maintain that three at a time is excessive. Why not drop me a line, Ellie, and you can give me your address and claim your ‘prize’. I promise I won’t let Fanny know where you live.

...and don’t even get me started on the hors d’oeuvres...

As a general rule, my Fanny and I keep ourselves to ourselves. Don’t get me wrong - in my youth I was a prominent frequenter of the most exclusive gaming hells and a member of several highly specialised dining clubs, but these days I prefer a quiet life, largely because I find people en masse rather nauseating. It’s the lack of control that bothers me. I would much prefer to cloister myself with my Fanny and a family-size tub of Germoline than haul my old bones to a cocktail party where I might find myself forced to exchange pleasantries with a man in slip-on shoes, or the kind of woman who touches one’s arm while she talks.

This reviewing lark is rather like a cocktail party. You never know who is going to buttonhole you next, although you can usually tell within a few moments whether or not you are going to enjoy the experience. We all make snap judgements based on our own set of social markers and we are usually right. Personally, I avoid visible swastikas, t-shirts with comedy slogans and readers of the Daily Mail, but it’s different for everyone.

Of course, the most frightening words one can hear from a new acquaintance, the words guaranteed to put the kibosh on any kind of social connection, are any variation on the theme of, “I’m mad, me! Completely insane! All my friends say I’m just totally bonkers!” In my experience, this sentiment usually translates as, “I am a deeply conservative person who, out of the desperate desire for a personality, occasionally wears stripy tights,” and has me edging towards the door every time, no matter how divine the hors d’oeuvres.

Imagine my delight, then, when I saw the title of today’s blog. For a brief moment, I fancied that maybe I was judging too soon and that Mind of a Madwoman was going to be a stunning piece of online outsider art that would forever change the way we understand madness and sanity. For a brief moment, I was a fool. The Madwoman was Maggie, and when I saw her over the metaphorical punchbowl my first thought was that she had better be serving some pretty bloody extraordinary hors d’oeuvres.

This will not be a particularly link-laden review, best beloveds. If you pop over to Maggie’s blog you will soon see that it is a Möbius strip of repeating content. Maggie likes 'memes', you see, Random Thoughts Tuesdays and Self-Obsession Saturdays and all of that sorry business. She seems to have a particular soft-spot for lengthy lists of arse-clenchingly inane questions, real Paxmanesque posers like, “do you recycle?” and “do you prefer coffee or tea?” Maggie and her cronies swap these penetrating puzzlers, think up smart answers and then post them in reel after reel of arrogant banality. For the love of Princess Anne, why would anyone be interested in your favourite ‘BBQ’ food?

This post was the nadir, especially the part where she has the sheer lack of class to beg for corporate sponsorship. It was at this juncture that I was forced to have Fanny break out my emergency poultice and perform the Special Manoeuvres. I suppose it’s the kind of sassy ‘telling it like it is’ malarkey that is so prevalent in the milk-clogged world of ‘mommy’ blogging and I know there’s an audience for it, but I state for the record here and now that if I ever meet a member of that audience face-to-face, I will slap them until we are both weeping.

It’s all just laziness, and although I fully condone sloth as a lifestyle choice, it should have no place in your work. It’s a shame as well, because Maggie has her charms. She has a readable style, she can be funny and irreverent. If I were going to give Maggie any advice, which it would appear I am, I would say Maggie, stop pissing about and submit some articles to some magazines or something. You might not get published, but you’ll have to concentrate and you’ll have to stop relying on borrowed ideas, and that will make you a better writer. I think you can do better. You’re wasting yourself on this froth. If anyone ever asks you again if you prefer a shower or a bath, you just walk away my duck, just walk away.

I appreciate that I may come across a touch harsh, but I do feel strongly about this (Fanny’s heard it all before. She’s rolling her eye at me). There’s something about a blog that seems to make people think it’s better to post lazy content than nothing at all, and that makes me a sad, sad clown. And now I am a sad clown whose dreams will be haunted by a parade of self-proclaimed ‘madwomen’ waggling their ‘boobs’ at me and shrieking at the top of their lungs about their husbands’ toilet habits and exactly why they prefer foolscap to A4.

So I try to subtly shuffle closer to the cloakroom, pouring my drink in a potted plant and avoiding eye-contact with the hostess, my only comfort the thought that Fanny is waiting outside in the rickshaw. It’s going to take a long time and a lot of unguents for the poor thing to settle me tonight, and so on my Fanny’s behalf I feel I should make an example of Maggie. Consider her a casualty in the war against banality.

Two flaming fingers for you, Meggers. Feel free to return them when you’ve stopped squandering yourself on all this.