Breakfast of Champions

My favorite thing to do when I first wake up is to pour myself a cup of freshly ground coffee, go out on my balcony, and read the local paper while enjoying a cigarette.

Yep, that's right. I am a smoker. I've wasted a ton of money, at the end of the day I smell like an ashtray, and I can't even walk quickly without having an asthma attack. Not something I'm proud of, but there it is.

A lot of good things have come out of my dirty, filthy habit though. For instance, I've met people who are now close friends because we were both outside freezing our asses off. One such friend has a theory that smokers are more interesting people, since you have to be pretty emotionally damaged to willingly sacrifice years off your life for a quick fix.

Which is why, given the choice between blogs, I chose to review "Inspired by Caffeine and Nicotine". I figured someone who chooses those particular addictive substances for their blog title has to be interesting.

I wasn't wrong. Robblogger is a sci-fi fan with a twisted sense of humor, who plays fucked up pranks on his very patient live-in girlfriend. He also hates the general public and writes opinionated and snarky posts about popular culture. I like it. He reminds me of my friend with the "Smoker Theory".

However, there are lots of things I don't like. 90% of his posts are rambling, stream-of-consciousness-type monologues. This blog would be much easier and more enjoyable to read if I could follow what the hell Robblogger is saying. Sometimes it's like reading the blog of an ADD-riddled drunken monkey, hyped up on too much coffee and cigarettes.

Oh, wait.

My advice to Robblogger is the same advice we end up giving almost everyone who has potential. Tighten that shit up. Edit, edit, edit. Cut out everything that doesn't move the story along and is just filler to make your posts longer. (Jesus, I have no idea why your posts are so fucking long.) Split them up into individual stories and post them separately. You bitch about people Twittering about their tuna sandwich at lunchtime (agreed), but your blog is filled with similar shit that your readers have to wade through to get to the good stuff.

The other huge faux-pas . . .blogging about blogging. This is coupled with a seeming obsession with getting followers, getting page views, and making money off of blogging. Booooooring.

No one wants to read about blogging. They want to read stories about your life and they want to be entertained. Your blog is only 4 months old. You have more followers and readers than you really should at this point. And this obsession makes me wonder if you only submitted here to get page views/money from clicks. (P.S. That's why there are no links to specific posts in this review. I don't like being used, ass.)

And making money off of blogging? We all wish. I know it's hard to pay the bills when you're unemployed (believe me, I do), but begging for money from strangers on the internet, while posting about how you just bought a new digital camera? Sorry, Charlie, but fuck off.

I'm really pissed right now. This guy is enough of an asshole, I think he'd fit in around here. Maybe even be capable of doing a couple guest posts if he got his writing act together. But the obsession with clicks and page views and making money off of this kind of make me hate him.

For that, you get a:







And for being an amusing asshole:

That's why her hair is so big: it's full of secrets.

As any regular readers can tell, I don't shy away from swearing. Identifying myself as a person who clutters her speech with extravagant curses is like working for the Department of Redundancy Department. You people can deduce my fondness for profanity on your own because you aren't fucking goldfish.

Of course, some bloggers, like One Crazy Brunette Chick, find it necessary to shock and tug us in specified direction by grabbing our ears and thrusting obscenities down our throats. No regard for foreplay or discipline, it's just, "I SAY FUCK A LOT!!! FUCKINDEALWITHIT!! LIFE SUCKS, CUNTS!!!" as if we'll recoil at the impiety or something.

CB, lady, that shit is tired. Everyone says fuck a lot. It's not shocking, it's not revolutionary, it's the way a million bajillion people speak all the time, and the fact that a grown woman is shilling it as some sort of slutty rebellion is a bit fatigued. We get it. You're so bad. You wear stilettos and swear. The dichotomy is mind-blowing. Fuckin' hooray.

Honestly, I find the whole thing quite boring.

Cursing and exclamation points and a faux sociopathic surface don't make bloggers more interesting, just more widespread and demanding. You wanna fucking prove you're a fucking bad ass by fucking having a verbal fucking fuckathon? BRING IT.

See, I can throw sporadic fucks around too, but that doesn't make my writing any better. Too much vulgarity is one-dimensional and boring, unless it compliments the story. I feel like you're blogging just to remind everyone you know how to run your fucking mouth. Apparently your life is full of internet drama that I don't understand, since I run in a different pack of bloggers - you know, the ones that write because they have to write, not because they want to shit-talk. Which is odd to think about, since I write here.

You claim to have a number of enhancing characteristics:

...it takes a considerable amount of FABulous to be a crazy ass, eccentric, dramatic, charming, and classy lady like myself.

but you've got the charm of a condom, and let's be honest here: condoms are the least sexy thing about doin' it. No one fantasizes about dirty, sultry prophylactic-time (well now they do, Rule 34). We want it passionate and urgently momentous in its raw, honest, unprotected glory.

And what do we get? Fucking latex, a protective sheath. You're better than that, and I know it. Your tattoos say more about you than your blog. You're mixing a shot of impulsiveness and youth, beauty, love and regret, then choking it down, smashing the glass and dancing in its shards, with a flippant "I'm a dumb bitch" dismissal and a change of subject.

I want to hear about Ryan and Justin. I want to hear about the hasty girl of your past that morphed into this eyebrowless, very hot mother of two who chainsmokes and clouds herself in blasphemy and kitten rage. Prove you're eccentric by giving me ideas and perspectives I've never heard before. As of right now, after rummaging through all the "skanks" and "cunts," it's crystal to me: you're afraid of having no personality, and you cover it up by littering your posts with insults and curses.

Stop cocking around. Every once in awhile you show us a smidge of wisdom, a speck of uniqueness, but this bawdy, brash brat routine is old. As a society we've been watching ignorant, self-obsessed TV mutants get drunk and swear and slap each other over shitty lovers. Please don't add another lamewad to the mix. I get it though, because you're in it for the clicks. The internet is obviously a popularity contest for you and nothing else.

Those rare times you seem intelligent and hilariously creative, I smile in satisfaction. See, details are good, like calling your daughter 'Ladybug' in a line of dialogue instead of braying, "I call my daughter 'Ladybug!' I fucking rock!" You show that you have quirkish stories to tell. But then? Then you purposely cover it up with a spree of exclamations and pointless asides, which turns your writing into just about the most boringest thing ever.

As far as the template is concerned, I definitely like this header better than the mudflaps girl you sported a month ago, but I think you should minimize it and destroy the "click here to share" links. They're a trashy, whorish distraction, they take lightyears to load, and I have important cartoons to watch. And I can't deal with that crawling, epileptic banner circus, could you please do something about that?

Don't center the text of your posts. They're far easier to read earlier on in your blog when it's all flush left. Remember, some people are old. Of course I'm not, I'm an angry twenty-something who loves deadpan satire, loathes Nickelback (CB, you have the shittiest music taste ever - luvyabetch!) and slacks off at work to review blogs that want it from me and want it bad, but your sidebar hurts behind my eyes, like the entire eyeball and all the stringy nerves behind it are throbbing because there is so much fucking widgetty bannery stuff.

I gotta say though, I love how the 'Click Your Heels' button sends you home. Brilliant. Hopefully someday the other links will lead to relevant entries and maybe a personal profile instead of noxious self-promotion.

Awesome Sauce: Now With Less Awesome

Dear LiLu,

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

I started at the beginning.

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

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

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

Oh, but you, like, stopped being cool.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Regards,

Shinerpunch




For the early years.







For losing it.

red rocket, red rocket

Once, when I was about 10 years old, my mom and I walked over to the home of the lady who cut my mom's hair (she was a neighbor, and had a "beauty shop" in her basement). I was allowed to amuse myself by playing with her middle-aged poodle outside on the front stoop. I thought we might play a nice game of fetch, but the dog had other plans. I saw him as cute small and fluffy, he saw me as a sex object. Out of his groin, he sprouted a lipstick shaped erection and began humping my leg. I shook him off. He circled like an airplane coming in for a landing and hit me from a different approach, gyrating furiously on my calf. I ran. He pursued. I dodged. He weaved. No matter what i did, there it was, there the red rocket was, searching for some point of entry, looking for satisfaction.

You can imagine the trauma.

I sat at my desk this morning trying to think what today's blog reminded me of, and this childhood story was the closest parallel I could find.

You show up, there's a red-pantsed rock star looking dude on the header. Then, oddly, this statement:

If this blog helps send just one deserving kid to camp, it will all be worth it.

Umm, okay. That makes no sense, but fine. Then, the author's e-mail address. Again, makes no sense, but whatevers.

As always, my first stop was on the about me, where i learned that the author was "I was born at a young age…" Helpful.

I'll be honest, I spent 45 minutes reading posts, all of it with that damn poodle of a blog trying way too hard to rub his penis on me.

I couldn't do it. The content TRIES TOO HARD. There's too much. For every hit, there are 10 misses.

Consider this post, for instance. It illustrates really well that Bschooled is doing it wrong.

It's too much, B. You don't need 3 mediocre sponsors. You need ONE GOOD SPONSOR. You don't need 10 crappy humor bits that try too hard and miss. You need ONE GOOD HUMOR BIT that hits the mark.

You need to learn to edit yourself. Your natural impulse is to go all red rocket crazy, throw some shit on a page, and hump us all to death. Take a valium, FFS.

If you aren't spending time on /b/, go there and absorb some juicy goodness that isn't dated as fuck. Just mind the splooge puddles over there. If you are spending time on /b/, get the fuck off the computer and get a damn life. If you don't know what /b/ is, that explains a lot.

Your blog could be funny, your charicature of the Iron Chef commentators was dead on. You have a great ear for dialogue. But you're ruining it all with your fucking red rocket.

In honor of you, I present a new rating: Doing it wrong.

Behind the Beige Door

I unbuttoned his pants and tugged them down exposing the beginning of his pelvis. Just below his navel was a moon-shaped scar, long since healed it was lighter and smoother than the rest of his skin. I knelt before him, my knees bare on the hard wooden floor. I brushed my lips over the scar and looked up at him. He pulled me up as he stood and I pushed his pants the rest of the way down and he stepped out of them. I lay down on my side and he came to rest beside me. I used my hands to familiarize myself with the rest of him, the curve of his spine, the hardness of his back breaking into the soft flesh of his buttocks. He was still for awhile, just letting me touch him, watching me with curiosity and gratitude. I took his hand and pressed it into the soft flesh of my sex, I whispered, “I want you inside me.” He moved on top of me and pushed my legs apart with his own and pressed himself against me. Bliss, that moment just before, when you know something is inevitable but has not yet begun. Remember this, I thought to myself, remember how this feels. He entered me and my body gave. He let out a deep exhalation and moved against me with an unhurried rhythm. I wrapped my legs around him loosely. We watched each other for a long time, following the sighs and soft murmurs where they took us, the commands of pleasure. He ran his fingers over my cheeks, past my lips and down my neck as he kept pushing into me, hastening the momentum between us. I could feel it starting, the beginning of a wave, feeling every muscle on alert, at attention until relief came over me. I cried out and used my legs to hold him deep inside of me. He looked at me satisfied and increased his rhythm, pushing into me more forcefully as his breathing sped up. I watched his face change from serene to almost pained. I moved my hips with his, Meeting his movements with my own. I climaxed again, more vocal as the last of my self-consciousness fell away. A quiet moan escaped his lips as he pushed as far inside me as our bodies would allow. I could feel small pulses of movement, warmth and then he relaxed.

Oh, hello there. Miss Missives was just reliving last night. Just wait a second, let me get zipped back up. Sorry about that. Oh, a tissue, thank you, how kind. You came here for a review, not to witness the Miss in a moment of masturbatory mischief. Sorry, some things just get me all hot and bothered.

And some things don't.

I was excited to find I would be reviewing a sex blog but a little concerned when I read the title, OMFG Sex!!!. A sex blog begs an answer to the question of why. Why do we blog? Some of us blog to write to an audience, some of us blog to express a part of ourselves that might be hidden in plain day, some of us blog to present a carefully crafted image to the world, Perfect Mom, Clever Hipster, Train Wreck, Angsty Poet and so on. Some of us blog to connect based on common interests. I would think that one would be a big one for the sex blogs. Oh you like Naughty British girls getting spanked for their disobedience? Me too!!

Lolita Vida, the purveyor of OMFG Sex!!! gives her reason to blog about sex as,

To me what matters most besides D. and I being in love, is the fact that sexually, we are a perfect match. He has a higher sex drive than I do (and I’m blogging mainly to change that

I can think of a lot of things I would do to get myself amped up for a night of ass smackery but blogging isn't one of them. OMFG Sex!!! was nominated for freakiest blog, Blogger's Choice awards-- probably self-nominated because really, freakiest? Have you visited the internet lately? Talking about the sex you're having with your husband doesn't even get runner-up status. Now if you are talking about having sex with your neighbor's husband who is a pre-op transsexual who likes to be diapered while you re-enact Two Girls and a Cup and crush bugs with your heels, whilst dressed up like giant stuffed animals, you might qualify but you still wouldn't win. My goodness, I even found this hotter.

I like this mostly, probably because this is the most real thing Lolita wrote. It feels like her and not the pretend her she thinks she should be. I like some of her rules but take exception with this one:

If your partner enjoys being constantly groped while she cleans, changes diapers and slaves over a hot stove, more power to her and by all means, grope away. But we all know that your woman ain’t one of those gems. So, refrain from the hand assaults as much as you can. Instead, caress her leg and smile at her, Massage her shoulders and ask if she is okay or just brush her hair back with your finger and gaze into the eyes you fell in love with.

Mister Missives is a handsy guy and knows there's nothing like a playful smack on the ass, neck nibble or tittie grab to keep the home fires stoked. Not every woman wants to be gazed at deeply and please, don't ask me if I'm ok. If I'm not ok, you'll know. Now as much as I like being groped or even setting up playful power plays, being held down and yes, even being told what a bad girl I am, I have a huge problem with this. If this is a fantasy Lolita is entertaining, fair enough, however, if you are pleading no and haven't agreed beforehand that no means yes and Persimmon means no then yes, it's rape.

Lolita Vida is also an acknowledged squirter. To each their own however, I found far too many references to Lolita's lady liquid than anyone needs.

my orgasm will gush out of me like a faulty faucet, sink deep into my favorite chair and down the tiles

and

My seat is soaking wet from the numerous orgasms my body’s gifted me with and the car is permeated with the sweet stench of freshly produced...

Lolita dear, remind me to never sit down anywhere in your house.


There are many problems with this blog. There are the distracting errors like using costumer for customer. There are the cheesecake pictures which feel like the equivalent of crappy clip art. The About Me is absent and archives are all the way at the bottom. But the biggest problem I found with OMFG Sex!!! is that it reads like nothing more than one big pep talk to get this woman to want to have sex with her husband.

I give OMFG Sex!!

For being a giant turnoff, and basically being to sex blogs what Humor Blogs are to funny.



And these are so you can plug up that leaky hole of yours.

Mundane in Manhattan

One of the reasons that I’m not so good at this gig, and thus only turn up every few months, is that I hate being mean. I’m the nice professor here at the University of Colon. Bright eyed students flock to my course in Introductory Bootology because they know that with a vaguely plausible sob story they can earn an easy A.

So if you are Mandinka, author of Motherhood in NYC, you would have to be pretty happy about your luck. You got ‘The Nice Guy’ at Ask. Easy 4 Star review. Woo hoo!

But.

But, you got The Nice Guy on the wrong day. It’s been a long semester and I’ve given far too many A’s to far too many sub par aspiring bootologists. I’m in a bad mood.

Here’s the thing. I love Mummy/Daddy bloggers. I kind of am one. I respect the genre. I have a high tolerance for cute kids stories and the moaning of the stay-at-home Mum. I can relate to the trials and tribulations, dull as they are, of a parent. Hell, I’ll go out on a limb and say that I love parent blogging.

When it’s done well.

Mandinka, my dear, you don’t do it that well. Or you do it as well as the legion of Mummy and Daddy bloggers around the world. I have a handful of specific issues that I would like to discuss with you:

1. The Bloggess. I like The Bloggess. Her brand of neurotic/obscene humour is pretty original and fairly entertaining. But, there is a disturbing trend among a certain type of Mummy Blogger to try and be The NEW Bloggess. Stop it. She’s funny because it’s kind of her schtick. You aren’t because you come off as a try-hard wannabe. That goes for the rest of you that are pulling this crap. You know who you are.


2. Twitter screen captures. This is plague on the blogosphere. Don’t ever do it again. If people wanted to follow you on Twitter, they would. If they do, they’ve read these inanities. Most people are not interested in your ‘unfollows’ or what the hell ever you’re blabbering about on Twitter.


3. Advertising. Now, I’m tolerant of advertising. Like you, I run a self-hosted site and I feel justified in using a bit of advertising to recoup my costs. But fully forty percent of your site is dedicated to advertising. I suspect that if you could squeeze more in, you would. Do you really need two Blogher tower ads? Is one not enough? There’s a fine line between classy and trashy, darling. Find it.


4. Be fucking original. I will admit that I didn’t tread too far back into your archives, a few months or so. I got bored. The title of your blog is intriguing. Motherhood in NYC . This gal is going to tell us the gritty truth about raising kids in Gotham. She’ll either make us glad we don’t live there or make us wish we did. You do neither. You may as well be living in Orange County or Highland Park or Darien. I mean, a story about the GAP? Seriously? Do you know how writes a great site about parenting in NYC? This guy. And he lives in fucking New Jersey! You’ve got less urban cred than a suburbanite.
   
   Phew. I’m glad we’ve got that sorted. Look, you have a reasonable following. Good on you. Be grateful for that. You’ll get a bunch of traffic for a couple of days from this review; I’ll expect 10% of your advertising revenue as a finder’s fee. But what did you really think we were going to say about your site? Did you really expect to get an IFLY? You’re a Mummy Blogger and a very slightly better than average one (I mean, you can write in complete sentences). What more did you want?
   
   Because I’m physically incapable of handing out flaming fingers, you will be spared that indignity. So take this
   
   
   
   
   
   and be grateful you got me.

Just the Facts Ma'am

Remember the hey look at my carrots guy with his sum total of twelve posts? Oh how I miss carrot guy. After last week with Michelle and her eight blogs I was really hoping for brevity, you know, that perfect starter blog of less than fifty posts. Instead I got The Bob Files, where Bob has thoughtfully written around five-hundred posts. Sigh.

Alongside a career in computer something or another, Bob writes professionally reporting on sports for a local paper. He has also been relatively prolific writing short fiction, comics and even poetry, but mostly, he reports.

He reports about his job, his hotel accommodations, the state of Chicagoland's icecream and his young son's foray into the newspaper biz. He conveys the facts in a straightforward manner. He covers the who, what, where, when and why. That's what reporting is and writing isn't. As a reporter you can't embellish, leave out details with abandon, condense characters, or create. Just ask Jayson Blair. As a reporter, you are a statistician, a recorder of happenings, not an alchemist.

Bob has a cache of his fiction stored on the blog but most of it is dated and his blog appears to be a repository for his body of work. Miss Missives delved briefly into the fiction but concerned herself mostly with the actual blog entries. That Bob reports rather than creates is my main complaint with the Bob Files. He begins writing about something that could build into a great story, but it never really goes anywhere. And Bob, don't tell Miss Missives nothing good happened, because if you are an observer, a natural storyteller, something interesting always happens. Remember Paul Harvey's The Rest of the Story? That's what kept coming to mind as I made my way through the Bob Files. Where is the rest of the story? Where is the hook, the meat, the twist, the thing that brings it all together?

Every so often, Bob hits the mark, makes the connection, shows his funny side and delves beyond the straight reporting. Still, it happens infrequently enough that I don't think he's going to grab people who happen upon the site.

As far as design goes, the space is clean and uncluttered. The drop down archive is helpful and the categories are manageable, making navigation easier. Bob, I would add a Home button to your tabs and perhaps a Best Of in order to get readers and keep readers. Bob posts regularly and has posts of varying lengths, so he's on track there.

This isn't a case of a blogger that can't write. Bob knows the difference between to and too, he doesn't split his infinitives. He can put words together in a way that is clear and readable, just very little I'd actually care to read. Now I'm not looking for sordid tales or BabyMamaDrama. One doesn't have to slide into the maudlin, dramatic, confessional posting to tell a good story. Is it fair for me to want Bob to spin his class reunion into a tale of boy makes good, or cheerleader got fat? Maybe not but why else will readers come back than for interesting material? Good writers who want readers do not just write for themselves. Good writers don't simply catalogue, rather they selectively add and remove details that make the colors of life a little bit brighter, the heroine a bit more ravishing. That's why we read them.

I will illustrate this with a bright, shiny example. If you look at this post, notice how she left out a slew of the mundane details, the minutiae. Notice that each piece of dialogue is fundamental in pulling together the moment. Notice how she tell you about her grandfather through his habits and actions and words, not a straight head to toe litany. What she writes in very few words builds two characters that you can just see in your mind. Now do you think it happened exactly this way? Probably not, but good writing made it larger than life.

My advice to you Bob is this, read over some of your favorite writers and figure out what makes them good. You can write and you like to write so put some time into making it good for the readers too. Writing is like sex and Old Man Dunphy was right, making sex is like a Chinese dinner, it ain't over 'til you both get your cookies. Because I didn't get my cookie Bob, you get this:

The death of humor

Dear nuts for brains:

Humor is dying, and you're the guilty SOB who is plunging in the blade.

An illustrative example from your sidebar:

Little known facts about the Nut Man

My favorite vowel is Y, sometimes.
Knows dyslexia is no matter laughing.
I like Hall, but not Oates.
Is sure that astroturf confuses earthworms.
When Jimmy cracked corn, I was the only one who cared.
Believes "aquarium" is just a fancy word for fish zoo.
Asian is the new black, but I'm white.

Dude, these might have been funny in 1979. Now? They are so stale that they make saltine crackers at that diner from Seinfeld look fresh.

You reach too far, work too hard, and for naught. Consider that craigslist is a gold mine of inadvertent funny. You can click on Craigslist personals, or for that matter, almost any other category in craigslist, and find a wealth of humor. In less than 2 minutes, I found the following:

Can't wait to meet a real woman

Or how about this winner?

That took virtually no effort, and yet, either of those ads, with very few tweaks or comments, are funnier than your craigslist posts. And, according to you, your craigslist posts are as good as it gets? Help me, hardcore Jesus.

Your first page has 4 lame posts. I click for older posts, and get an entire pageful of links to youtube video clips. I hope for humor involving porn, and get this snoozefest instead.

You can't edit for crap, and reviewing your site was a chore. Beyond that, it's so busy, busy, busy. You've clearly spent the vast majority of your time adding crap to your sidebars and creating a cute (but cheesy) header image, and almost no time honing your writing.

Let me toss out a novel idea for you:

Knock off the shtick, and learn to tell a story without killing it.

Ultimately, blogging is a simple thing. If you write it, they will come. It doesn't have to look good (note: I once gave an ifuckingloveyou to a blog on myspace). You don't have to promote it. You don't have to get on everyone's blogroll. You don't have to join humorblogs.com and ten million other blog promotional pyramid schemes to promote your blog.

You just have to do one thing, and do it well:

Write.

You don't write for shit, so I can't give a shit. Frankly, you're fucking retarded for submitting here with your blog in its present form of cluster fuckage.



Love,

Love Bites

p.s. As someone told you recently on craigslist, you REALLY need to get laid. But, i bet you suck at it.

Good On Paper Guy

So you meet this guy online and after reading his profile and checking out his pictures, you decide to give him the time of day. You email a little, talk on the phone and he texts you clever little snippets until you finally relent and agree to go on a date with him. It starts really well, he picks an appropriately nice restaurant, not too fancy but not el cheapo either. The conversation is relatively smooth and you take turns telling each other about yourselves. He tells a few funny, self deprecating stories and you start to warm up to this guy. You try to remember if you picked up your apartment before you left and whether you have on granny panties or your black lacy knickers. Just when you're thinking about what he's going to look like naked underneath you he starts telling you a hundred random things about himself. He recounts for you a few more yarns about his life but they are getting positively protracted, languishingly long. He then starts going on about a bunch of awards he's received. It's then you start thinking that maybe it's best not to put out on the first date. Right about the time he starts talking about cats, you're sure this guy is never going to see you naked. You wish you could tell him what he needs to do to cross the finish line, what he's doing wrong, when exactly he lost you. Instead, you do the hug and pat at the end of the night and spend the next two weeks avoiding his calls.

Irregularly Periodic Ruminations is the Good on Paper Guy. Jim is not a bad guy, he's not a total snoozefest, he's just never going to get past second base with you, and that's if you're feeling generous. Right out of the gate, Jim informs us that he's a writer of speculative fiction. Science fiction and the other 'fantasy based' genres have never been Miss Missives cup of tea. Much of what I have read tends to be unnecessarily verbose, fixated on too much detail, not enough narrative. Such is the case with Irregular Periodic Ruminations.

Jim goes through words like this guy goes through lube. Seriously Jim, you are one wordy fuck. The second major issue is that in an attempt to stay connected with his community, he writes when he has nothing to say. There are far too many posts that feel churned out. This dilutes some really good work because the gems are buried in a shit pile of memes and rounds and other things that are the antithesis of real writing. What Jim does an expert job of is networking. Between communities, Twitter, blogs he follows, blogs that follow him, Jim manages to rake in the comments on even the most mundane posts. It's a party over there and everyone's invited.

Again, the difficult thing for me here is do I review the handful of very well-written, thoughtful posts, the well-timed, funny material or do I review the blog on the overall melange of it's content? When Jim is good, he is very good. This is heartfelt and raw, and a perfect example that less is more.

This is a sliver of hilarity buried in too many words and paragraphs:

There was another thing that bothered the crap out of me about the church music. They did those songs. The ones where they pick a psalm, throw some organ in the background, and slap some arbitrary notes to the words. Seriously? It sounds like someone is reading the newspaper to song. It's stupid. Stop butchering the last movement of Beethoven's 9th like that. It's criminal. God should make you weep nothing but grapefruit juice for perpetrating that on us.

Jim, you need to edit. And then edit some more. Then put the material away, go have a cup of coffee and a biscotti and come back to it and edit some more. Additionally, posts are replete with usage, spelling, and grammatical errors. Miss Missives gets positively snitty when people misuse words like course and coarse.

You don't have to forsake your friends, but if you want your writing to be the focus and not your social networking, you need to get tabs. Use those tabs to house the blogroll, awards, and the rest of the ticky tacky badgetry that is cluttering your three column monstrosity.

Overall, there's a great deal of crap here with a few shiny gems buried deep within. You have plenty of readers but if you want to be better, you need to edit your work and write when you have something to say.

There are a couple of posts that get a shiny gold star.

However, 75% of what I read gets a giant flaming finger.

Since neither is entirely representative, I'm going to award you a sort of hybrid if you will, and we all know you loves your awards.

I'm Just Not that into You

Dear Catherinette,

We need to talk. Do you remember last week when you asked me if everything was okay and I said it was? I wasn't being honest with you and the truth is I can't do this anymore. Listen, it's been good getting to know you but I think we need some space. Maybe we should take a break, you know, see other people. It's just not going to work out between us and I really want what's best for you, for us. You deserve someone better, you know, someone who can love you the way you need to be loved, someone who can treat you right. I still care about you, but I don't feel the same way you do. I love you but I'm not in love with you. And let's face it, we're both so young, I just can't think about forever. Plus, work has been so busy, I really need to focus on my career right now—I just don't have time for a relationship. You understand don't you? It's me, it's not you. Really. We can still be friends right?

Oh, by the way, I fucked your sister.

Sincerely,
The Internets
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Catherinette, breaking up is hard to do, no? Let Miss Missives state up front that it is you. We can smell the desperation dear, and in the blogging world as in the dating world, desperation is kryptonite. Posts like this one stink of it and then there's this one from Dec.10 :

"I am this close to pitching a fit, having a cow, and breaking some shit. What the fuck?? Yesterday I was number 5 of Humor Blogs, and now I’m not even listed! What the hell is that about?? Whose dick do you have to suck to stay in the god damned ranks??Seething with rage right now…"

Not being ranked in the Top 5 on Humorblogs really sent you into a tail spin? Really? We've reviewed a bunch of the 'humor blogs' and I can tell you from experience that what you don't have to have to be part of Humorblogs is humor. You link to no fewer than one of three other blogs on nearly every post. Humorblogs? Kizmeet? Twolia? Please don't settle for being mediocre in three places.

There are several things about your blog I don't like but here are the big ones. The first big no-no is having 'click to continue' posts. It would be irritating even if you were Chuck freaking Palahniuk but your intros aren't anywhere near attention grabbing enough to get away with it. This post I was actually inclined to read but the link to another site loaded so slow I gave up. There might have been some really good writing buried in your blog but I couldn't be bothered to link over to another site. The second thing that irked me is it would appear you are so inclined to get an award or be featured on other sites that you spend far too much time driving traffic and campaigning and far too little time writing.

I like that you have a countdown to the last time you had a peen in your vag on your homepage, and you use tabs well, however, your Cast of Characters at thirty, borders on unreadable and you need to pare down your sidebars, dump the calendar and move your Blog Roll to a tab.

There are things I like about you Catherinette. I liked this, while it wasn't exactly finely crafted, showed you have a sense of humor and wit about you. This was definitely TMI but gives me a sense of you. I like your Just the Tip Tuesday feature if for nothing more than a little man candy.

I can see what you're going for but it didn't connect for me. You're spreading yourself far too thin dear. You are not yet a talented or prolific enough writer to cast so many lines. You need to focus on your one blog and let the other ones go. You are both trying too hard and not putting enough effort into your writing.

I don't know if you'll be willing to do the things necessary to make your blog more readable but lucky for all of us, even if you don't, there are still plenty of fish in the sea. And when you get sloppy like this, give us a call and we'll be on you for a quickie hookup like white on rice.

Open Water

The proliferation of so many unfunny, funny blogs must certainly be a sign of the coming blogopolypse. Miss Missives decreed it in her last few reviews and now it's official:

Blogging truth #37- Any blog that has 'humor' in the title will not have humor in the content.

Angry Seafood: An Original Humor Blog, is where Chris goes to get his write on. Contrary to what people might think, Miss Missives doesn't want to be unnecessarily cruel. I'm not here with the intent of crushing Chris's spirit like I'm the pointy stiletto and he's the soft, furry gerbil. Unlike so many of the tools I've come across lately, Chris doesn't blog to blog. It's clear he actually enjoys his blog and tries to be clever, witty, a little offbeat and funny. It's just not hitting the mark.

Here are the things I take issue with:
1.If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed! Vote for me on humor blogs. Want to be on my blogroll? How about a reciprocal link, want to twitter me, twatter me? It's enough to give Miss Missives a gigantic, temple pulsing, sinus ripping, anvil to the back of the head migraine. Guess what, these are gimmicks and if your writing is good, you don't need them. I understand wanting to utilize available tools to get people reading your stuff but how much is too much?

2.An original humor blog? This has been done more times than the Dirty Pirate Hooker, and better. For the joke to work you have to set it up right.
Him: Would you like to dance?
Her: No.
Him: No, what I said was you look fat in those pants.

The crux of the joke is that "want to dance" sounds vaguely like "fat in those pants," one does not work without the other. Plus, she's wearing a skirt in the illustration.

Again, this is just a reworking of something that wasn't that great to begin with. This is okay, but again, it's been done better. There is quite a bit of recycled pilfered jokes here, and really, it's material that isn't even worth lifting.

3.Not to split hairs, but as to this from his About page:

“I am a professional aspiring freelance writer”

You are either a professional freelance writer or an aspiring freelance writer but you are not a professional aspiring freelance writer.

4.The writing is clunky. For example:

"I guess that is like saying there is humor in a funeral or a car crash. But more like a train wreck, these two complete pieces of entertainment crap were what we had for choices to spend our recreational time on this weekend."

"If the Back to the Future franchise, one that is a tenth as valuable as the Star Wars one had the decency to try and maintain some kind of coherent continuity, what does that say about Lucas?"

"The other night I realized why and I have it down to two things: reality television and bad movies late at night."

"I have tried not to see Batman and Robin because of my weakness and my fears were confirmed."

"Polygamists from Little House on the Prairie, Texas headed into the big city where the cement walkers live Friday to face the courts in a child custody case.

You say you're all about the writing but when I started slogging through it, the most recent posts were not at all focused on writing. You have a list of popular television shows that had been published elsewhere with a small amount of static commentary from you. You have an interview where you ask many of the questions you ask in all the interviews. You have an announcement of contest winners. There's more of an interview, then finally a small piece of writing/commentary and the setup for a contest. Snore. I looked through no less than thirty posts and I just couldn't find any winners. The best posts on this site are the interviews with other bloggers . The questions are generally the same from interview to interview but some of the subjects are funny.

Now that Miss Missives has made chowder out of you, how about the good news? This was okay and Miss Missives knows you're trying. This was pretty funny, though it could be amped up with some additional examples and editing. There was one thing about Angry Seafood I really liked, the template. The colors, design, layout, and font size makes this easy on the eyes if not belly achingly funny. Your header is unique, the blues and greens are nice to look at and you've made good use of tabs. The only thing I would change is add a drop down archive and clean up your sidebar.

I don't want to discourage you because I know you are very serious about trying to develop as a writer. As far as constructive advice, I can offer a little. One, spend less time on quantity and more time on quality. You need to clean up your writing after you get it down. You need to look it over and ask yourself, "how can I make this more clear." If this writing thing is something you really want to do, I would suggest taking a creative writing course. Your writing needs fine-tuning, it needs polish, flow and you need feedback.

Meh-diocre

Nothing to write home about dear.

the best writing on the internet

So says Mr. gingaTao

I don’t like creative writing, and I haven’t rated a poet since Samuel Taylor Coleridge, then again I haven’t read one since so what do I know. Add in the fact this guy is an Aussie who at times claims he has “the best writing on the internet” and we're off to a spanking start.

It’s not your average blog, in fact, it’s not a blog at all, but a collection of creative writings and poems.

Boring stuff first, the template is generally meh, at least it’s white. While I suspect you really couldn’t give a shit, I would suggest you sharpen it a little, dump that trash along the side, no one goes to your site to read the news, and fuck right off with your gingaTao store where I can buy a thong, or credibility, or some other such shit.

Tighten up those categories, structuralism etc, make it accessible for the reader to identify what you’re playing at. Give a newcomer a chance to figure out what you’re doing. That is, if it’s not too uncool for you.

I do find it hard to criticise anything you write because of it’s artistic and therefore subjective nature (although that seems to suggest that other blogs are of less artistic merit… who knows anymore).
Anyway, what you’re getting is my very personal opinion on what you do, while clearly it is something that runs through your veins, it’s not in the form of anything I would normally warm to.

The writing, you write your wee heart out, I love that. I found your best moments to be, surprisingly to me, a few of your short poems. A small boy holding flowers was delightful, to dust was a very good short piece on imagery that could have left you in cliché territory but didn’t, and some things are not ghosts is hushed and vivid.

I didn’t really enjoy your narrative pieces, personally I missed continuity, any real thread. Individually, they were quite good, but not substantial enough to leave me wanting more. Having said that, you did occasionally really hit heights.

Throughout, we read your observation of life around you, your opinion, your condemnation, your approval, but never your heart. You are always at a distance.

Where are your heartaches, your losses, your loves?

The closest you came was a post about your father, which for the life of me I couldn’t find when I returned to get the link.

You take a very clinical view of writing which left me a bit cold:

“my hatred of critics, of genre, of stuffy old grammar grannies, of all the postfacto analysis and name creating, postpostneoclassicism, knows no bounds, the only reason writing exists is to be read, being readable is the only rule”

Where does the emotion come into play?

Without it, you can write twice around the globe and remain dime a dozen.

As talented as you are technically, the only emotion you really stir is indifference.

what's the capital of israel?

Our Lirun is a sensitive boy, but he needs a kick up the arse.

East Med Sea Peace is the stutter-inducing title of the blog which uses the tagline…

“WELCOME TO THE EASTERN CUL DE SAC OF THE MEDITERRANEAN SEA.. IN ITS CENTRE LIE ISRAEL AND LEBANON AND AROUND US WE HAVE EGYPT AND THE PALESTINIAN COAST IN THE SOUTH AS WELL AS SYRIA TURKEY AND CYPRUS FURTHER NORTH AND JORDAN HUGGING FROM THE EAST.. MY DREAM IS FOR US TO ALL LIVE IN PEACE..”

Thanks for frightening everyone off, and the geography lesson, but there’s no need. Scrap it, stick it on an ‘About me’ page, and fine tune it. Come to a conclusion, and tell us what the blog is about.

The layout is a simple template, poorly managed.

The navigation is a nightmare, impossible to navigate through posts in order unless you start at the latest and work your way back. This is an unmerciful pain in the hole if you want to check out something from the middle of last December.

Link your post titles for goodness sake, make it possible for me to link to one of them, without having to copy/paste the bloody title into the search box!

Your archive is a long list, and will just get longer, use a dropdown, or the standard blogger hierarchy to tidy it right up.

The ability to get to your blog's start page would also be kind of useful.

Giving you the benefit of the doubt, I'll say the lack of capitalization and full stops is somewhat intended, but you are a good writer, and you know better than that. That kind of stuff belongs on a t-shirt, not on a well written blog about politics and religion.

Never, ever, ever post entries like this or this. Link to external stories by all means, but at least give us the courtesy of introducing them.

Finally, I can get to the good stuff, content. You have a lovely quiet, whispering and rolling tone, very much in keeping with your belief in peace in the region, and in harmony on earth, and in chimes by your open bedroom window.

Unfortunately, this post sums you up. Lyrical, and soft, just nice, but with no bloody conclusion.

“i must confess that i am really struggling to form a view on this topic.. i have so many thoughts but so few convictions.. “ - Your own words.

All that aside, I really do like your voice. You have written some wonderfully poignant pieces, this being a special one and this opening up a world of a life story that I want to know more about. Touching and beautiful.

In the end, all the irritating things I mentioned about this blog are mostly cosmetic. Do yourself a favour and tidy them up, you’ll reap the benefits, trust me on that.
I wish you’d lose your 'zen' sometimes and roar a little bit, I’m an obvious outsider to the political and religious climate you write about, but overall the writing is thoughtful, always gentle, hushed, and lyrical. At times excellent.

I will be back to finish the archives if you make them accessible. In the meantime, even though they could have been more, stick these on your surf board.

A Naked Bitch Is Worth 1000 Words

Charlotte Sometimes, guest reviewer here.

First, let's start off with a warning you can all ignore in true badass fashion. The blog I reviewed today is NSFW. Which is Not Safe For Work for those of you playing along at home. Or at work, I guess. Don't view it in front of your kiddos. You will be paying for endless amounts of therapy beyond what is now required for most booger-faced rugrats being raised out there. She has positioned a large disclaimer at the top calling it mild adult content.

I personally have a different definition of mild. Her definition of mild must resemble something along the lines of telling your grandmother to go fuck herself during the Sunday morning pancake feed held in the church gym after the local preacher wraps up the weekly sermon.

With that being said, you don't know me and I don't know you. While that lends a sort of lonely freedom, it certainly doesn't give me any credibility. Trust me you'll get over that and your life will be better for it. I will tell you a co-worker told me I was hateful the other day. Being that he nailed my best quality in one shared observation, my feelings on today’s blog should be no surprise.

When I was initially asked to do a review for Ask I damn near wet myself. It was like being asked to smoke on school property by that dangerous boy that wears eyeliner and sits in the back of the class. I didn't wet myself though, I crossed my legs and managed to maintain a small shred of dignity. That little tiny shred caved in on itself and blew away in the breeze the second I laid my eyes on 1000 Words. I don't think Naked Lara, as I like to call her, has ever crossed her legs.

Ever.

After the shock wore off, I climbed out of the fetal position and got down to business. Lara apparently likes to get down to business too. Hey, you can't hate the girl for it. What I can hate her for is making me repeatedly view shot after shot of her ass that bears not a trace of a stretch mark even though she claims in her About Me that her life mostly consists of carpooling, kid duties and typical housewife 'stuff' among other things. Other things being snapping interesting angles of her holiest of holies.

I'm not a housewife but I'm pretty damn sure it must be a tight schedule with all the personal grooming and excessive shower photo shoots between loads of laundry and cleaning up graham crackers off the floor. The funny thing is Lara isn't a housewife either. She's not bored or lonely. She works nearly full-time on top of all her dirty bird antics like being naked on the stove and the mothering of offspring.

I don't know about you but I'm not eating the mac and cheese at this broad's house.

Maybe that's just me. I have been known to be delusional. My obvious bitterness aside, her template is really just her, all naked and shit. Her header is butt ugly, there is a large and very necessary disclaimer, her side bar is full of your typical stupid shit and flashy, blinky, seizure-inducing things. However, she has impeccable taste in the blogs she chooses to read. At least, according to her blogroll, she does.

Right off the bat, I was entirely confused. The very first post I read was schizophrenic, seemingly dirty and I think you had to be there to understand it. Frankly, I'm glad I wasn't there.

Moving on because I just couldn't wade through that bullshit, her next post held some sort of promise by letting us know her ass hurts. Thanks for the news flash. Naked Lara goes on to say that we're pervs for thinking the obvious.

Right.

We're the pervs.

Self-awareness is more than knowing what your tenderoni looks like. Trust me. And I do know what mine looks like.

To be entirely honest I had a really hard time reading the posts but regardless of what I just said about self-awareness, Lara does have it. There were some almost clever moments. And really she can write. She punctuates better than I do and she can string her sentences together well. She's a responsible parent as witnessed here.

Naked Lara ends each post with a hug. I cringe inside and hope that she is dressed while she's hugging me, but still, the hug is nice. I'm all for naked hugging, just not from other people's mothers.

Thinking about it that sounds like I might like naked hugs from my mother and I don't. Not even that one time.

So let's recap because I have a short attention span that not even mommy smut can keep attentive. She's naked, she's a mother, her template makes me hurl and/or punch myself in my cute little face and she's human.

So what.

My real problem with 1000 Words is that the soft core porn shots and the majority of the content don't jive. They just don't go together. That might be what she's aiming for. I felt like she's saying she's a mom but she's a sex kitten too. Or maybe she just loves her own fur-cookie, I don't know. I don't really care either. I'm not hating on the naked. I just don't like to mix my naked with my momma bloggin' if you know what I mean. Not that she is a mommy blogger. She's a mom, she blogs, whatever. For the most part I was bored and the weird mix of my stomach turning from seeing her shave her love muffin and the yawn inducing slice of life posts left me feeling disoriented. And not the good kind of disoriented that 12-bottles of domestic gives me.

Half the blog appeals to grown men sitting in their mother's basement and the other to people who read kind of boring blogs. I just don't get it. Are you a naughty girl or a housewife? I demand that you choose. I'm not deep enough to think you could be both. I thought for a moment that her husband must be a happy man but then on second thought he probably would just like her to stay naked and shut up.

Anything that's hard for me to read at work doesn't work for me and my slacker tendencies and the posts didn't hold my interest. My best advice here is to clean up your template and think about creating a separate blog for your dirty, dirty ways. Anyone who is interested in what you write about would not be interested in your ill-na-nah.

Just saying.

Lara, you're all flash and no fire.

With that I have officially run out colorful descriptive terms for vaginas, twats and crotches. I don't hate June Cleaver on crack enough to give her the flaming finger and frankly, I think she'd like it. And I really don't fucking love her.

Once the shock value wore off I was left feeling slightly violated and less than entertained. I would give her a star or two for her writing but the weird duality she has going on just makes me say: