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.

Clinical

Several months ago, in this space, I had occasion to review the ramblings of an antipodean young lady who self-described herself as "crazy." Among her other sins, I took a bit of offense to this self label. It was inaccurate and signaled an underlying disregard for the identification of the correct descriptor. I berated her for choosing "crazy" because what she meant was "impulsive" and "impetuous." If I may quote myself, I told that young lady at the time "Real crazy and real insane is actually scary and dangerous. Not fun. Real crazy is hanging off the edge of the Golden Gate Bridge or hearing voices that aren’t there telling you to kill John Lennon."

Jacki, if you are still reading here, today's reviewee is somewhat close to the epitome of who I was talking about in that review. (Also, Jacki, if you are still reading here today, I encourage you to submit for a re-review. You have corrected your egregious sins. You would likely get a much improved review today.)

Pandora has been dealing with mental illness for years, and Confessions of a Serial Insomniac is where she records the trials and tribulations of what goes along with that.

She has a very full About Me section. Pages and pages and pages of orienting material. A glossary of terms and acronyms. A run down of who all the major players are and what her relationship to them is. Full background on what she has been able to identify as the inciting cause behind her initial breakdowns.

And let there be no question -- assuming that this is all honest and true (and there's no reason to doubt that's the case as far as I can tell), whatever mental illness she is experiencing is well earned and owned. Go through what she has and you'd likely be mentally ill as well.

Pandora generally writes clearly, yet very clinically. She conveys the facts of her mental illness very well, but only rarely seems to give real insight into what it feels like. It reads like a bit of a case study in a text book. And if the purpose of this is to serve as a record of a life or as a resource for others who are going through similar trials and tribulations, that may very well be appropriate. It wasn't what I was hoping for when I first saw the topic, and maybe that's just prurient selfishness on my part. Hard to say. But as one who's deepest experience with mental illness is a very occasional bout with Seasonal Affective Disorder and or mild depression, I wasn't able to latch onto this material the way I really wanted to.

The thing is, it seems to be something that she struggles with in her therapy sessions as well:

“OK,” Paul said, “but what did you feel?”

Not an easy question to answer.  I thought about how the way in which I’d described the incident here, but in the moment, that didn’t really seem to ‘get’ it.

So what can I say? That I'd like to see more catharsis? Feh. Easy for me to say from my comfortable house with my complete LACK of mental illness and trauma. Still, what I'm saying would probably make the individual entries a bit more compelling. The fact is, she doesn't glamorize or romanticize any of it -- she factualizes it. And perhaps that's a good thing to do. I'm not qualified to say anything about the illness part. But take a look at this, because this is more like what we're looking for here.

Okay, then. So what can she work on?

1. The entries are too long. If I were hired as her editor, the first thing I would tell her is to cut everything to 1/3 of the currrent length.
2. Lose the goddamned "Read More" links. Yeah, okay, they're probably there because the posts are so long, but I hate (hate, HATE, HATE!!!!) them. I probably didn't read as much of this as I should have partially because of that. (Partially because I have a deadline. Deal with it.)
3. Too much crap in the sidebar. At least the sidebar isn't longer than the page content. But there's still a hell of a lot going on, and the stuff I was looking for (archives) was hard to find in that haystack.
4. Reconsider the white text, black background. Although it doesn't bother me as much this time as usual because it kind of fits the subject matter, white text on a black background is hard on my eyes.

My final word of advise is going to come across as a bit condescending, maybe. I don't mean it to, but will understand why it is interpreted that way. I am trying to figure out why Pandora is writing this blog. What is the goal? Is it simply a diary of her mental illness? Is it to serve as a form of advocacy? And because that goal wasn't clear to me, it was very hard to assess whether she was successfully achieving her goal. Which is one of the key things I try to assess in these reviews. It seemed to me that she may be writing "just because" without a clear goal in mind. If that's the case, I might encourage her to find a goal for this and strive toward it. If it's NOT the case, and she has a goal, I might encourage her to identify that goal for the readers.

And that's that.

For what it's worth, I bet I know several people in real life who could have written this blog, except for the residing in Ireland part, and I like them all. So, in the end, I am willing to bet that if I were to know Pandora in real life, I'd probably consider her a friend.

Pandora's rating: One star.

Not Quite D.O.A.

There's a scene in the 1988 movie D.O.A. in which Dennis Quaid's character regains consciousness after a rowdy night and tries to get his bearings. As he looks around at his surroundings, it becomes increasingly clear that he is not in his own home. Nor his own bed. Going from memory here, as I haven't seen that movie on over a decade (Fortunately. I don't actually recommend it unless you have a serious thing for a young Dennis Quaid or a young Meg Ryan.), it seems to me that he looks around and sees pink fluffy bunnies and shit like that. Shit that starts sending his early warning system into overload. And in his case, that warning is warranted. It seems, he is waking up in the bedroom of a young lady. A very young lady. Fortunately not twisted and sick young, but clearly too young for him.

And for some reason, my first impression of today's blog brought that scene to mind. The template is decorated just like a fourteen year old girl's bedroom. It's cute, and watercolor-y/pastel-ly with big loopy looking sans serif text. So imagine my surprise to find out that this is a blog of a male physician/med-student who describes himself as "Vampire doc" who is "67% evil."

Guess what pal. You aren't fooling anyone.

The template also includes an inane "Wibiya" bar at the bottom that provides no advantage to me, the reader, and instead presents a significant disadvantage in that it slows page loads down. A lot. Annoyingly so.

A template isn't everything. I can forgive a lot of bad decisions in the template if the execution is Very Good or better.

Which in this case, it isn't so much.

I had high hopes, based on a quick scan of a few posts. Certainly that vampire/67% evil thing had me intrigued, but then I started reading. And I learned that, while Ramanathan Kannan does have some amusing stories or insights on occasion, he frequently doesn't seem very clear on what is amusing to an outside reader as opposed to someone who was in on the joke.

And like many Saturday Night Live skits, his posts continue much longer than the content warrants. (In this example, I very much wanted to get to the heart of the matter with him, but the frequent detailed tangents derailed me. I still don't know if that was even a good story or not.)

I mean, a list of 49 things that are different from going to school back home and going to school away from home? Forty nine? This would have been significantly better had you chosen ten or fifteen and focused only on the best ones.

Too often I found myself in the middle of a post asking myself how much longer this was going to go on. And, I confess, I almost always skipped to the next, having exhausted my patience with the post at hand.

Don't get me wrong. It's not all bad. There are a few like this that I came across. And there were some that were interesting to me personally that I wished were written better so I could reach the end before getting an embolism.

In the end, I have to conclude that I like this Ramanathan guy, but I really wish his writing would be more focused and concentrated. Not this rambling on and on. I am reminded of a quote I heard once, I think attributable to Churchill. After spending an evening at a dinner party next to a rather loquacious woman, he apparently quipped something to the effect of "She talks a lot, but doesn't say anything."

Ramanathan, my advice to you: Trim the fat and say something.

That said, your potential gets one star. Live up to it, and come back to get more. If you can.

Lazy McLifelesspants

I really, really don't want to review this fucking blog.  That whole muted polka dot blogger template thing is easily my least favorite pre-made template. I am a big fan of polka dots but automatically antagonistic towards things that fade away, and all I want to do is draw lit fuses coming out of each dot, like a spread of Martha Stewart's sage round bomb collection, and wait for the fireworks.

Specator Speaks is run by Chandu, a journalist in India.  He...okay, so his grammar is impeccable.  His sentence structure is very safe, trained, and reined in from controversy and excitement, with vocab words of the month splattered appropriately and deliberately throughout his posts.  You remember when you were in college and you walked around asking random students about the easiest major on campus, and it was almost unanimously "Communications" so that's what you chose for your major, and all of your textbooks were like five editions behind because you couldn't afford the newest one?  His blog reads like that.

I hate that I cannot click on the title of a post and have it open as an isolated entry, and I have to click on the comments, and then click the link at the top of the comments page to view the blog, and I just realized that this very thing is also my biggest problem with the AAYSR site, and I should probably fucking remedy that instead of being a goddamn hypocrite.  Crap.  

On the plus side, you titled your blog well.  I can't imagine you doing anything but watching from the sidelines.

I hate that he tells the story of his friend and her willingness to stand up for herself, and instead of being left with a sense of justice, I'm exhausted.  I hate that he uses "clever" name ploys to trick the reader into subconsciously assuming unimportant traits about uninteresting characters.  This isn't Tango and Cash, and you know why?  Because Tango and Cash is a riveting, action-packed cinematic masterpiece* and I can tell:  even you are bored by your blog.  If you weren't, you would feed it regular meals instead of throwing it grizzle and apple cores whenever you remember it's there.

Speaking of Ray Tango, this is the worst tribute to Stallone I've ever read. I'm almost impressed. Stallone is the stuff of steroid nightmares: just a giant, hard, veiny penis with buckled flamingo legs and fucking rocket-launcher arms, how the hell do you make a man like that sound so dull and useless?  You couldn't even pay tribute with your own dull words, you had to steal them from someone else.   If you admire someone so much, do them fucking justice, don't just tell us over and over again that your obsession is eccentric, because I don't believe you.  There's no passion in your words, no opinion, no punch. Lazy McLifelesspants, that's what you are.

See this?  I don't even know what this means.

I'm very angry with you. If this was just the blog of a bystander, I'd give you a Meh, but you're a fucking professional journalist. I never want to read your articles. Ever.







* I will fight anyone who says otherwise.  With my fists.

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!

All the News That's Fit to Ignore

See, I enjoyed Bitterly Books' writing way more than his blog. There is a difference, you know. What's funny, other than Bitterly's wit and deadpan detail, is this blurb he wrote about his blog: Bitterly Books takes caustic, uncomplimentary tours through ill-advised and poorly executed nonfiction. Hey, Bitterly? Put that shit in your "About" section. Feel me? Holla.


Dear The Editor,

Your blog, "Complaints on a Plate," is either the bare minimum of lashing something together for Adsense banner ads, or you need to seriously re-examine some of the life choices you've made. I've got no idea what you're trying to do here.

The "about" page promises "Interviews, reviews, views and musings on people, places, events, times and things." This may be the first in series of cultural misunderstandings between us, but here on the good side of the Atlantic, you don't talk about "musings" unless you're a pre-teen girl on myspace—or possibly a married man pretending to be a pre-teen girl so he can troll for cybersex.

I'm getting a sense that you're taking the "ironic news for laughs" angle, probably because your March 8 post uses the word "ironic" four times in two sentences. Looking elsewhere, I see a telling quote in your July 1 post. "The problem is that the UK churns out media graduates at the rate of thirty thousand a year into a job market that is quite frankly in its death throes". You wouldn't happen to be one of those media graduates, would you? I'm just asking because setting up a site posting fake news articles seems like an unusual choice for, say, a doctor or a car salesman.

So you've set up your own funny blog on your own terms because the news outlets won't pay you and the Onion won't publish you as is. A lone wolf pointing out the foibles and absurdity of news media, free from censorship. Well, are you familiar with that quote about fighting monsters? When you mock the tedious, you run the risk of becoming monstrously tedious yourself.¹ Your entry about George Smedge is so believable that it's boring; I'm not sure what joke you were trying to make. Similarly, I assume that the entry "inspired by Alan Shearer" was mocking sloppy journalism and opinion pieces devoid of fact, but it comes across as sloppy and meandering itself. Both of them take a joke and stretch it too far.

Let's look at the fake excerpt from Targets. You're using more than 1100 words to make three jokes:

• Pick Up Artists (PUAs) have a disturbingly predatory attitude towards women.


• PUAs are supposed to dominate women and control the situation, but the book's author dominates and controls would-be PUAs


• PUAs are pro-abortion²

Look at that. Just as (un)funny, but only 35 words—96% shorter! You're welcome.

Brevity, wit. Coming up with enough short jokes to make something of a decent length is a pain in the ass, but try editing, The Editor. (I had a longer "physician, heal thyself" joke here, BUT I EDITED IT OUT. See how that works?) The Framley Examiner is a great example for making more out of less.

In your Penge O'Clock piece, look at how your jokes ("everyone in this neighborhood studies 'new media'," "reporter gets excited and uses exclamation points when talking about money!" and "all the sources need to mention that they feel safe") get lost in the huge crush of words. Try inserting paragraph breaks to make them stand out more:

I met up with some of the new hip locals to see what exactly it is that makes Penge so amazing.

Annanana Karickiszi is heiress to a Russian oil fortune and studies Media and Godknowswhat at Lewisham College, she is a fan of Sartre and hopes to one day become a poet or fashion editor. She is wealthy! “I love the area.” She says while gazing out the window of her £700 a month bedsit. “There is always somewhere new to go, something new to do. It is cool but not pretentious. There is a community. People are friendly. I feel safe”

Calvin works in New Media, he emigrated from America two years ago. He is financially sound! “There is a lot of history here and it’s quirky, very British.” He owns a small studio above an Icelands. “It’s a friendly area. People say hello. I feel safe.”

James works in New Media and rents a flat in a converted pub. He is solvent! “It’s fun and exciting. There’s lot’s of night life and culture. There are supermarkets but also small independent stores. I love it. People talk to each other. I feel safe”

I also caught up with Gregg, a Railway Station Toilet Professional who has lived in Penge all his life. “Things are definitely changing.” He tells me. “It’s all gastro this and Starbucks that. Just give me a good old cuppa tea” he quips. The old Petrol Station opposite Gregg’s house is now the smoking area for a late night gay club called Fatigué, I ask him what he makes of the many provocatively dressed gentlemen that now reside in the area. “Well, at least they are driving out the nignogs” he quips.

That gives the reader a fighting chance to find it funny. And this time around, I noticed the dig at media graduates! BURN! So, keep your pieces short and break up your paragraphs more. Now let's talk about your screen name, The Editor.

If any competent editor saw Complaints on a Plate, they'd seize your title and leave your broken husk in a dumpster dripping with red ink. Putting aside your callous disregard for comma placement, other missing punctuation, and my assorted style quibbles, there are some major fuck-ups on your watch:

• Writing "cliental" (having to do with a client) for "clientele" (the people who patronize an establishment)


• Writing "physic" (a medicine, or the practice of medicine) for "physique" (the physical structure of a person)


• Writing "manger" (think of baby Jesus) for "manager" (the person in charge)


• Writing "anti-percipient" (percipient means either the ability to perceive or one who perceives) for "antiperspirant" (dumbass)


• Writing "you no nothing about" for "you know nothing about" (ironic, no?)


• Writing "cacogenic" (causing defects in offspring) for "carcinogenic" (cancer-causing)


• Writing "cloistral" (secluded, sheltered, like a cloister) for "cholesterol" (the lipoprotein associated with cardiovascular disease)


• Writing "wacaday" (a television show) for "workaday" (mundane or commonplace)


• And many more!³

These might be intentional problems that you introduced for laughs, in which case congratulations are in order. You have annoyed the only person who will ever give a fuck.

You also need to work on your packaging. Could you have done a worse job with your title graphic? I guess you want to use the cake-holding housewife image as a brand logo or something (it's also on your blogger profile page and your facebook page), but a title graphic should do better than the mangled results of Norman Rockwell's fight with a taffy pulling machine. Even plain text on a colored background would be better.

The best I can say about your layout is that it's simple and uncluttered. But for what you're trying to do here, it may be too simple. You aren't putting your entries in any sort of context, and the jumble of fake news, reviews, and opinion pieces leaves me baffled as to your ultimate purpose.

I give people the benefit of a doubt when it looks like they're trying to be a smartass as long as there's some style to it, but this whole blog feels unfinished. I'd give work like this a solid "meh," but it tries so hard to wrap it all up in a "fake news for comedy" package—and fails so spectactularly at it—that I'm giving "Complaints on a Plate" the short bus.








_{1) This entry being exhibit A.
2)Actually, one of the main justifications of PUA behavior is that your evolutionary imperative drives you to get out there and distribute your seed, so routine hook-ups are just practice. Unwanted pregnancies are proof that you can successfully distribute your genes, and not your problem.
3) Other problems:
"Perpetually transmogrify villages," in that context, should be "perpetually transmogrifying villages"
"Bright young thing" should be plural "things"
For "sciencesque-like" I recognize that you're reaching to make a joke about your study's validity, but either "sciencesque" or "science-like" get the point across without overkill.
"Scientists long-held theory" should have an apostrophe.
"Vote's green," if used to mean "voting for the green party" shouldn't have an apostrophe.
"Everyday" (adjective meaning "mundane") should be "every day" (occurring each day)
"You maybe wondering" should be "you may be wondering"}

Your Shit Is Bananas

If you don't fucking fix your fucking template, I'm going to bribe one of those twelve-year olds that sells pot down the street to kickstart your labia with his rusty hockey blades.

I understand you're a "simple girl whose hair is messy," which insinuates you're above such menial worries as physical appearance. Admirable enough, but you don't need to prove it to us by shitting out a template that looks like a crappy toy from a vending machine, with that fuckjumble of widgetry. You want a conglomerate of widgets? Fine. You don't even have that many, you wannabee widget collector. Some people collect ceramic chickens, but at least they commit and organize their compilations like the respectable foaming obsessives they are.

I cannot focus on your entries because of your failed photobucket background image. Your title is a grammatical tragedy that reminds me of Sheryl Crow, and not throaty, folksy Sheryl Crow that can pass for good music but pitchy, strained, eye-gouge-y Sheryl Crow. Thank god you stopped that whole rainbow of font colors thing, because I was two posts away from John Wayne Gacying your ass.

Listen Sameera, I'm glad you're so thankful for everything in your life, because honest appreciation is a rarity. Keep it up. I sincerely hope you don't change that, I hope the cynics of the world feel shame in the face of your sunshine.

But here is what you are missing: reason. You love nature, you love sandals, you love itineraries, you love putting shit into categories, you love conversations, you love loving things. I would demand you prove it, but I believe you. There are so many goddamn enthusiastic exclamation points, you have to mean fucking business.

But I don't give a shit that you love them, because I don't know why. What's so fucking great about nature? Do you tag your memories with seasons? When you smell the chill of the air, do you imagine your dog shoveling his nose in a snowdrift and plowing his way towards you, sneezing and flinging snow in his wake? He smashes his nose into your knees and barks, demanding you join him on the ground. He spins and ducks under himself, falls and rolls and grabs your pantleg with his teeth, dragging you down to his level because he loves the snow; it reminds him of being alive.

That's what I love about nature: it demands a reaction by always existing and changing every single day. If you have nothing to talk about, there's always the weather. Everyone has an opinion about the weather, and everyone has an opinion about whether the weather is a topic worthy of discussion at all. It is brilliant.

So let's hear it. Tell me why. This is a good start, this is better. But do it, please, without so many exclamation points and ellipses and ill-placed commas. Please, please, please pleasepleasepleaseplease, prettyshiny please, sack those fucking exclamation points. Lose them. Ima gonna string your exclamation points into a noose and fucking strangle you with it if you keep that shit up.

As an aside, just a little gripe, but "Serial killers!!!" is a fucking enthusiastically terrifying title for a post. It conjures visions of a messy-haired girl sitting cross-legged in a room with tree frog corpses tacked to the walls named Bill! and Spot! and Mr. Slimey Face! She's meticulously filing the fingerprints off her collection of severed hands, each one fated for painting and stenciling the outlines of turkeys for nefarious handmade blog award widgets. She raises her head and grins. "I love it when my fellow bloggers lend a helping hand!!!!!" she squeals, giggling into her shadow. That girl, by the way, is you.

Until then you start giving me a reason to give a shit, you fall short of, well, everything except being exceedingly creepy sometimes.

Maybe There Should Be A Consequence?

Folks, here's the deal right now. Completely unrelated to my part-time gig here at AAYSR, this has been a brutal two weeks. Long-nights-and-red-flags brutal. I mean, people have fucking died, man.

So if I come across as a bit curt or abrupt, I mean, more so than usual, don't take it personally.

Not this time.

But it does mean that I just need to cut to the friggin' chase here, and tell you about my friend Roschelle, and her Inconsequential Logic. (Side note: What the hell is that supposed to mean anyway? Are we supposed to dismiss you out of hand, because you're Inconsequential? Or are you being ironic?) Roschelle has been blogging a long time. A looooooong time. Since 2004, if you believe her.

Which you kind of have to. Because there's no way to get back all the way to the beginning to see when she began and what she sounded like way back then. Because she has no archive navigation at all. Other than this little roulette wheel type thingy where you click it and it serves up a random post. First couple days I was reviewing what she had to say, I thought that was kind of fun. But that fun wore off.

And I still couldn't get to the beginning.

As a reviewer, very little chaps my ass more than making getting the big picture a damn puzzle.

I pulled it up in Google Reader. Which took me back to October 11, 2009. In which I learned about splogs. Which I already knew about, I just didn't know they had a name. She then spends a lot of time blogging about blogging and social media. Not so much about content as much as about mechanics. In short, she came off sounding a bit like the back section of Reader's Digest, where they give you little bite sized tid-bits, but not full on articles.

And sure, that's probably someone's cup of treacle. Just not mine.

So, yeah, I skipped ahead, back to the present day. Luckily at some point along the way, she stopped writing exclusively about blogging and started writing about other stuff, but it still seemed like for every post that was what I'm in this whole blogging thing for, there were ten that were genuinely, to me, inconsequential, to use her own word.

Roschelle is pleasant enough. Does, generally, nothing particularly wrong. But I was not engaged. I was not especially amused. It wasn't a chore to read her writing, but it wasn't enrapturing either. I sort of felt like I was being held at arms length, away from the more challenging subject matter, the more humanizing material. And I'd say that's the one thing I'd suggest to Roschelle about her content -- bring more of herself to it.

I mean, seriously, she wrote an entire post about Father's day, doing a twist on it and stuff, without telling me anything about her, her mom, or her dad.

Unless that's not what she's in it for. All the clutter and gadgetry in her template does lead me to believe that she may be in it for the click-throughs and follows and all of that shit. But if she is trying to engage readers more, she should work on that opening up thing a bit more.

Oh, yeah, and about that template? Normally, I'm the guy who doesn't pay attention to that. As long as I can read the text and can find the navigation, I don't care what your template looks like. But right now, all the doodads and hoohahs all over this thing make it look like a teenage girl's bedroom. In cases like this, Roschelle, less is very much more.

All told, this whole thing adds up to this... One large, full-fledged "MEH."



I think you have it in you to get a star or two, but as the Smiths say, you just haven't earned it yet, baby.

Mama loves parentheses

Guest review by jen’lltellya.

Today it’s all about Warm Chocolate Milk. Yellow makes my brain hurt. The thought of Warm Chocolate milk just makes my stomach churn. Some mommy bloggers drive me crazy. I got lucky this week and got all three.

When you first open Warm Chocolate Milk, you are greeted by a huge blog header surrounded by vast amounts of mustard yellow. You are greeted by Susan who explains in her “About me” that she is a 30-something married whose whole existence is it make warm chocolate milk for her two boys. I’d like to think my own role on this planet is more than being subservient to the chocolate milk demands of the spawn of my loins.

Susan also likes parenthesis. Lots of them. She is prolific in her use of parenthesis. I’ve never seen a blog with so many aside comments. Susan, not everything is an aside. Not every post needs them. Commas can also be your friends. They, like parenthesis, like to be used. See? Commas.

After you get through the yellow, the extra parenthesis, the queasy feeling you get from thinking about hot chocolate milk, Susan isn’t a bad writer. She is honest and open, and even better, you find some funny in her world.

She identifies herself as a mommy blogger. Susan, rip yourself away from that. I think you are selling yourself short, especially when you delve into unexpected places like this. Then sometimes, you whine but then you say hobo baby and I laugh. Hobo baby.

Stop it. I want to be mean. I tried to be horrid and harsh, but I like you. I want to hang out with you, make you mixed drink you’ll like.

You say, “I write this blog because I love to write, and because the connection that is made here to other women is important to me.” Well, you don’t have to be a mommy blogger to connect with other women. You just have to relate to them through your writing, talk about the other things you think about, not just what the kids do.

Change your damn template. Come up with a new blog name besides warm chocolate milk. Warm chocolate milk just screams bottles buried under the back seat of the car in the summer. You are not a milk maid. Your whole existence is NOT to make your boy children chocolate milk three times a day.

I give you two stars because you made me laugh and for your honestly.



You get a meh for your template.



Go find something that’s more about who you are instead of the crap you have on your blog now.

Is That the Lotus Position or Are You Just Happy to See Me?

It is with great trepidation that I, your gentle author of Here in Franklin, dip my toe into the roiling waters of Ask and Ye Shall Receive. When Madame Bellicose beckons, I have no choice but to follow.

Around here, on the buckle of the Bible Belt, we don’t get much exposure to Buddhism. Heck, I’m Episcopalian and even that is viewed as somewhat exotic in the land of Baptists. However, before Thanksgiving, I spent a week in Japan and got a first-hand look at some sacred Buddhist shrines. I saw giant gold Buddhas, little tabletop Buddhas, Buddhas of every shape and size. I think I even drank a Buddha beer.

So when I was asked to review One Zen Mom, I couldn’t help but reflect on my own recent travels. Surely this was meant to be. Buddha=zen, right?

Perhaps.

To begin, I remember a time when I divided the world into people who thought Monty Python was funny and those who didn’t. These days, I tend to divide the world into WordPress vs. Blogger. As a WordPress devotee, I just find almost all Blogger sites cluttered beyond belief. Unlike my office desk or kitchen counter, I like my blogs clutter- free. Give me the basics—an About Me section, a Best Of option and Archives. Please, for the love of Buddha, get rid of the buttons, badges, ads and autoplayers. Unless you’re Dooce, you’re not making enough money to keep me in my daily large Diet Coke with lime from Sonic. Plus, even with my super fast connection, it takes your site ages to load and scrolling is clunky and slow.

Second, learn the difference between a hypen (-) and an em dash (—). They are not interchangeable. If Blogger won’t give you an em dash, at least use two hyphens with NO SPACES between the words on either side. Yes, I realize that this is slightly OCD, but it really distracts from your words.

I did not read every single entry, but Zen Mom gets mad props for blogging regularly. Some fall into the mommyblog realm, some are pleasant enough recountings of weekend activities, (although I must say that “to die for” meals are hardly ever served on paper plates) and some are just really, really good.

And here’s what’s interesting, Zen Mom knows when she’s hit a home run. She has a list of entries she would save if her blog was on fire. Almost every one of them is golden. Especially this and this.

You know when you do it right, Zen Mom. Remember that when you post something like this—you have a nice voice and style, you don’t need gimmicks. Sharpen your focus. Think about your audience. Lose the hyphens.

There’s some really nice writing here that earns you:





But, for your fugly template and badge-orama, I give you:

Minus:





Net result:





And thank you for shopping at AAYSR.

My skeertuig is vol palings*

The other day a friend and I went to see "Julie & Julia," a sweet little film about a culinary giant and some girl who turned her whiny little blog into a book (and then into a movie). During the film, my friend turns to me and says, "Someday I'll say I knew you when you had a blog." I scoffed, "It doesn't happen like that anymore." And it surely won't happen to me and my sorely neglected little exercise in self-indulgence. But the thing is, as Madame pointed out recently, everyone and their mother and sometimes their cat has a blog now. The field is saturated and glutted and just overrun with folks wanting to be heard above the din.

But what's worse than all those mind-numbing and misspelled and mordant (although I kind of like that bit) forays into blogging, those wastes of space, those narcissistic little microcosms, are the ones who could be so much better but just aren't. Stu strikes me as one such.

He has the ugliest template ever. I wanted to click away immediately. The ads are sucking my will to live. It looks like a spam nest run over by a train wreck with gobbets of banality strewn across the pavement of the blogosphere. I mean, look: He made me use the word "blogosphere." Jesus lord, there are no dates on the posts! Where am I? Also, the whole shebang sometimes gets all wonky with the archives and crap moving under the post.

Just scrap it. It's total crap. It is a hinderance to your writing. It couches your blog in the most off-putting way. Find something simple, roll up your archives, get organized, and for shit's sake put a date on your posts. Stu, you don't need a tab for "blogging." The whole blog should kind of be for that, right? And that header image? That's the header image of a total douchebag.

Stu, your title is so annoying I want to rips its wriggling little guts out. I mean, fuck me sideways, there are ellipses in the title. In the title! I hate it on principle. And merit. And anything else I can hate it on.

But go check out his "About" page, which is really just his Blogger profile (dude -- don't do that). He sounds interesting, right? Ninjas, the word "hogwash," Aston Martins? Well, you never would have guessed from looking at his shit storm of a blog.

Guess what? A "belter" is apparently a hot chick. Just FYI. Learn something new every day. I thought it had to do with people who can really belt out a song, like maybe Babs. But no. Hot chicks. How original. Although I'm pleased to report that the brunettes seem to outstrip (that might have been a poor choice of words -- or a perfect one) the blondes.

Something else I learned? South Africans say "y'all." I can't quite wrap my head around that.

Look, the guy's entertaining enough and he's kind of funny, but do I really need to read another site where a guy drools over hot girls, hot cars, and moderately funny things posted elsewhere on the web? No. No, I don't. And neither does the rest of the world. It's not until about three months into the blog that we get an actual post with more than a paragraph or two from Stu without a picture of a hot car or a bikinied babe or something pilfered from somewhere else. And, you know, aside from some sloppiness and ellipses overkill, it's actually amusing.

Stu, Stu, Stu... cut the crap. You're an amusing guy and your voice is engaging, but you lose me with all the extra nonsense you pepper into your blog. It's useless, overdone, and it completely undermines your genuinely likable writing. You can do better. Strip it down, tune it up, and get real. I stopped reading after about four months because I had to wade through all the flotsam and jetsam of Internet wreckage to get to YOU. And you're lucky I got that far.

You get a flaming finger because you are failing to live up to your potential and your template sucks hind tit. Clean it up, start actually writing, and I might reconsider. You've got something -- you're just hiding it. Stop.






*My hovercraft is full of eels. (Afrikaans)

All Animals Are Equal

...But some are more equal than others.

Politics are my crack. I admit it, without shame. The first blogs I ever read, after True Porn Clerk Stories, were political. I read Steve Graham (who used to blog at Hog On Ice, now defunct), Straight White Guy, Velociman, and Ellison, and I read the ubiquitous Acid Man, who passed away in 2006.

Steve Graham was actually the person who inspired me to begin blogging, and when he linked to my first post, ever, put me on the personal blogging map. I still have a not-entirely-platonic level of affection towards him, and the thought of him makes me warm in my furry parts.

These were/are all ostensibly political blogs, but they were also deeply personal blogs. Steve blogged about his inability to find a worthwhile woman, and the woman who screwed him over financially during law school, and smoking the world's most perfect piece of pork. And, Ellison blogged about his wife, and what he'd been cooking/eating/listening to recently, and his kids. Rob, the notorious Acid Man, well, he was a fucking train wreck that never ended, in addition to his political blogging. You never knew what Acid Man would be up to, and every day when I clicked in, I halfway expected that he'd have taken his ex-wife hostage with a sawed off shotgun below her chin.

Those were the wild, irreverent heydays of political blogging. You never knew who was going to get fired while working as a political intern and lifting her skirt for political bigwigs, though you could guess. You never knew who was going to get sued by someone they blogged about, though you could guess. You never knew who would die young, though you could guess. You never knew who would make it big, though you could guess.

It was wild, wooly, and a blast.

Political blogs these days are nothing too exciting anymore, particularly in comparison to those days. I still read Andrew Sullivan, of course, and I love him, especially for his ground-breaking coverage of the green revolution in Iran, but most political blogs have become decidedly mainstream, and in doing so, lost what made them fun to read in the first place, and that wasn't the politics, for hell's sake.

This blog, in particular, started off on such a promising note.

I was fired last August after over 17 years at the Transcript. Downsized, as the saying goes. Was I bitter? No, not right away. Now am I bitter? Yes. Add pissed off, panicky, directionless and you get an idea of my mental state. At first I was just relieved, because I thought I had some options work-wise. Now I kind of miss my old job, if not all the people.

(This first post is gonna suck, I can feel it, you can feel it, we all can feel it. It will get better, I promise.)

Now I am down to five stinking unemployment checks left. Five. I owe more money, to credit card companies, etc., than most Third World nations. Some of them, let's face it, are not going to get paid any time soon. And I say this to most of them: too fucking bad.

...Eventually, this blog will be a veritable cornucopia of pop culture insight, political wisdom and overall gems of greatness. Maybe as soon as tomorrow. One never know, do one? But as it stands now, I wake up every day bemoaning my situation, awash in a sea of self-pity, with the clock ticking down on my unemployment checks. Tick, tick, tick...

This is a freaking great post, a promising start. I can see why he was fired, as a copy editor, but the voice is real, and there is some train wreck here that engages me.

It stays bitter, too, and this bitter is a good thing when it renders up tasty morsels like this:

The rest of the paper includes the requisite celebrity worship and mindless designer brand name consumerism. On the cover is a picture of Eva Longoria. Why is this overexposed, talentless bimbo newsworthy today? Well, because she was seen kissing another overexposed celebrity at some L.A. club. That's what passes for news these days at metro. God help us.

Or this:

That's two strikes against Air America in my book, getting rid of Marc Maron and now, at least temporarily, no more Mike Malloy raving against Bush & Company. That's substantial fucking with stuff I grew to like. It's kind of like when Au Bon Pan discontinued their chicken pot pies and, ultimately, their spinach and cheese croissant, but obviously on a deeper, more gut-wrenching level. You don't miss your water till your well runs dry. I think Shakespeare said that. Or maybe Hank Williams.

I liked this blog in 2006. However, by early 2007, the Warden starts getting on my last good nerve by doing nothing more than synthesizing news articles and regurgitating them. He also begins to play with his fonts in unattractive ways, so a blog post starts out in a nice normal 11 pt arial type, and then morphs into 10 pt Times New Roman, and then segways into 14 pt blue Arial Bold, and then changes back into 11 pt Arial. Din't yer mama teach you not to play with your fonts, particularly in PUBLIC?

WTF?

Knock that shit off, you typeographical tool. It's fucking annoying.

And, your blog design is crap. From the over-populated sidebar to occasionally posting in centered or left-sided text, to whateverthefuck you have going on with your undersized header bar and the intelligible type below it, this shit needs work. I'd like to encourage you to trash this design, permanently, and go with something standard. If you don't want one of the generic blogger designs, how about something simple like this? Just try not to fuck it up with a bunch of pictures in your sidebar that are meaningless to everyone but you.

So, Warden, what are the fucking odds that you could locate the soul that your writing once had? If you did, I would consider reading it. As it is now, though, it isn't anything that isn't being done more professionally and better by the Huffington Post, the Pajamas Media people, or others.

It's the soul that sets these things apart. You had it in 2006, and somewhere, you lost it. And, that's a shame. Maybe it's impossible to blog for 3 years without losing your way. Your blog makes that case, loud and clear.

All I know is that you didn't suck, but now you do, and you've sucked long and hard for years now. Can that level of suck be fixed? I don't know, and frankly, you've given me no reason to care.

The thing is, Bob, it's not that I'm lazy, it's that I just don't care.

The world of business and corporations and networking and conference calls and Six Sigma and Someone Stole My Cheese and marketing-speak and power suits is utterly beyond me. It's all so much nonsense. Which is kind of a shame, really, because I'd probably be making a lot more money if things like "branding," "market share," and "competitive intell" meant anything at all to me.

But Dot Com Mom gets it in spades. And she writes about it. Lucky me.

Blogger has, I'm guessing, something like 10 standard templates available for the 36 million (roughly) bloggers using its platform. Each of them are tired, boring, and barely functional not to mention generally ugly. Do you really identify yourself so much with the sea and nautical life that you'd use their lighthouse template to represent who you are? I know one person who can reasonably get away with this, and you aren't that person.

Look, people: a blog is, if nothing else, an expression of self (or at least it damn well should be). Sure, for us it's about the writing, and good writing is more likely to make me disregard the trappings of your blog. You can wrap a pile of dog shit up in pretty bows and lovely paper, but it's still a pile of dog shit. But if you wrap a pile of gold in used diapers, I'm not going to go digging for the gold. Appearance and accessibility matter.

That said, your blog could be gorgeous and cleverly formatted and easily navigated, but if you don't post consistently you're just taking up space. Allison's got a grand total of 18 posts. Two of them from 2003. And she hasn't written since March. This is a colossal waste of my time.

Not surprisingly there's no About page, and Allison's Blogger profile gives nothing away. So I don't know why I should listen to a thing she has to say, there's no impetus for me to be curious about her because she likes something I like or hates something I like or mentions something personally intriguing. There's nothing personal here. It's a small collection of self-important essays on politics, technology, and lord knows what all else because it's so heavily couched in tech and marketing and management terms that it loses all meaning for me.

Allison makes you work for it, and even the good stuff can be an ungodly chore to get through, with explanatory links and marginally obscure references overshadowing really quite fine writing. I didn't care enough to click on those external links. I mean, do we really need a link to a definition of "smart cookie"? No, no we don't. Those links are distracting instead of helpful; they just direct us away from your writing, which is (or could be) really rather good. I'm not denying the very real intelligence Allison displays, but it's off-puttingly lacquered with excess information while being unsettlingly devoid of heart.

I could go through and list my constructive criticism now, but I honestly can't be bothered to expend the energy for someone who hasn't updated since March and managed to eke out a dozen posts this year. Get back to me when you've decided to be a blogger.

Lady Bitchiness

That would be me, of course. Not limited to, but especially, on Mondays.

Today, reviewing Lady Sarcasm, aka Chica.

Lady Sarcasm is a frequent commenter, which will probably make the fanny slapping sting a bit more, for all concerned. In the spirit of fair play, though, I have to call them as I sees them.

Let's start with the homespun template.

Problems:

1. The header image is fucked in IE. Since that's what we are limited to when I'm at work, and I'm not one to blog for this blog on weekends, I have no idea what the header image actually looks like.

2. The navigation buttons: Maybe they work in front of the header image, but as I can't see the header image, they are practically invisible in their existing form, and arrowing over them only slightly improves things.

3. You have the ability to make navigation buttons, so why in the fuck is your sidebar still crowded with recent post titles, recent poster comments, twittery shit, your blog roll, and other assorted skullfuckery? C'mon, Chica. Clean this shit up.

4. The order of your sidebar is buggered. Think about what will make things most easy to navigate through your blog for a user. About you, recent posts, categories, then get rid of everything else.

5. Your share/save button is all bolloxed up.

6. All the gadgets on this page (who's among us, feedburner, twitterfeed, recent viewers) make this page load slower than old ladies drive.

7. Filed under/# of comments - if you put too many labels in, it kicks in a second line of comments that looks odd.

I appreciate that you clearly took a lot of time to work on this design, but it's still functionally impaired. Given that, I'd prefer a ready-made/boring--but functional--template. The color scheme is also hard on the eyes given that you've chosen a lot of very closely related colors (mauve and plum, for instance) on top of one another. That = illegible.

I give you two flaming fingers for your template, Chica. Either fix these problems, or just go with a functional readymade.



Next up...the reaming of the writing.

Chica: EDIT. FFS, please, I beg of you, EDIT.

You fall prey to a number of sloppy tendencies:

Mixing pronouns...

But since I'm such a nice and loving person, one cannot act on such ideas.

Sloppy proofreading and overly complicating things...

This could cause potential boxes matches for the shiny pile of metal and plastic we call a PC.

General slipshodness:

start having a littering party of their toys, animals, and books?

Wtf?

Speaking of littering parties, there is the writing on this blog. The content is hit/miss (mostly miss), and suffers from mostly non-existent editing. There are all-too frequent typos that distract from the content and slow the flow for the reader, who has to self-contort to figure out what is being said. There is also too much emphasis on regular features like "Captioneers."

Lady Sarcasm, we love you, but your blog needs work. There is almost no depth here, and frankly, it bored me to tears.

Is this really all you have to give? I don't buy that for a second.

And, the fact that you can't be bothered to proofread your posts is a fucking insult to anyone who takes the time to read your blog. Furthermore, overly complicating your prose results in a stitled and uncomfortable read.

You need to spend some time, not on the Nintendo DS, but reading good books, learning how to capture dialogue and tell stories. Here are a couple I recommend:

The Messenger - Marcus Zusak
Hey Nostradamus - Douglas Coupland

Both of these writers do a great job of communicating internal and external dialogue, fleshing out characters, and keeping the plot of the story rolling. They also stay out of their own way (a skill you need to develop). Unless you are one of the main plot actors, you need to shut up. Just tell the story. We don't need your extra perspectives. In fact, most of the blogs we read would benefit from something similar. Stop using I. Start using simple, clear language. Describe the scene. Be visual. Let characters tell the story, through dialogue. Focus on the action and conflict between characters, not on yourself.

Right now, I give your content a . You're a fun commenter, but your blog is the internet equivalent of non-flavorful wallpaper paste.

You could be better, though. And I'd like to see your blog when you are.

Make 'em laugh

Dizzblnd, my reviewee of the day, tells us in her profile: "I like having fun. Laughing makes me happy, making other people laugh makes me happy." This is true for, like, 98.9% of the population that isn't misanthropic. I'm not a misanthrope (usually -- Ghost and Thanatos and Love Bites are bad influences), so I might be rounding that number up. Making others laugh is a good portion of why I blog, too, followed shortly thereafter by exorcising my demons (there are only three or four) and talking about sex.

So, however inelegantly she states it, I get why Dizzblnd blogs. Laughter = good.

Her blog design, though, = bad. It's an unnecessary three columns with lots of whozits in the sidebars. And it's bright freaking yellow. The header is ok, if a bit overcheerful. And I like cheerful. There are links to her other blogs in the tabs, along with a shout-out to her blog designer and a link to Humorbloggers (our favorite). Dzz, consolidate into one sidebar and move your archives up toward the top.

I haven't a clue why this blog is called Soggy Doggy Bloggy. Aside from her extraordinarily generic profile page with blogger, there's no "About," so I'm left to just figure this person out on my own. Here's where I go on and on about an about page again. Seriously, folks, I just need one. Please. They help your reader get to know you without having to dive in blind, searching for glimmers of who you are. Just give us a little to go on. It doesn't have to be extensive, just the vitals. I wanna know who you think you are.

Dizz told us when she submitted for review: "I blog to hopefully give my stalkers a laugh or a chuckle every time they come. I am NOT a mommy blogger, although I WILL bitch about my teenagers occasionally." And you know what? She's right. This is exactly what she does. Dzzblnd seems like a fun, playful person who doesn't take herself seriously. She enjoys life, is silly and irreverent, and doesn't cater to her kids. She hates to clean, and she lives in Florida. I like her. I think she'd be good company.

But she frequently posts email forwards and other people's stuff and games and memes and tags and "Mad Lib Monday" and she even reposts her own stuff. Sigh. I scrolled over all these things. They added nothing real or personal or new or fresh. They're just rehashed bits of internet effluvia or exercises in patting herself and other bloggers on the back.

Dzz's writing is rambling, stream of consciousness stuff with no polish. She never claimed to be a writer, after all, but I still want more effort/concentration/finesse in her posts. However charming I might find her as a person, her writing is mediocre. As a "humor blogger" (setting aside for a moment our general contempt for those who label themselves that way), we don't get any meat or depth from Dzz, which is ok for her purposes. But it leaves me a bit unsatisfied. One cannot live on a diet of cotton candy alone. Alas.

Today you get a meh. But make it worth my while -- clean up the design, make it more organized, and tighten up your writing -- and I'd easily give you a star. You really are kinda funny, when you're not going on and on forever and using other people's crap as a crutch. Lay off the reposts and emails. Post when you have something to say, and edit before you do.

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.