Carrying Your Emotional Shit Is Hard

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 It's called The Semi-Sane Life of The Demigoddess, a title that belongs on the cover of an unpublished novel next to the anonymous slim, starved figure of a woman in scarlet, seen from the shoulders down, crossed arms and manicured nails suggesting "beautiful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

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

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

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

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

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

That sentence is not real. It's processed.

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

Sprinkled throughout, though, is THIS:

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

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

The first half of her blog was a fucking chore.







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



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

What would people think, when they hear that I'm a Jesus Freak?*

I'm pretty sure Shiner saved this one special, just for me. To hope for an unbiased, issue-free review is a futile effort.

I grew up going to church every Sunday. I was heavily involved in my youth group in junior high and high school. The first two years of my adulthood were spent at a small, private Christian college. Yes, shockingly enough, I was one of those kids.

However, I never quite fit in. Even at the age of 13, I felt like an outsider. And I was viewed as a bad Christian, simply because I rebelled against Christian culture*. I refused to live in the bubble*, and they didn't like it.

But Halee is someone they would like. She's so steeped in Christian culture, Tyndale House* could publish books from her used Kleenex. She's set up shop so far in her bubble, I really believe she thought this was a Christian blog review site because our name quotes John 16:24*. Obviously, she didn't read the URL.

Nevertheless, this is my assignment, and I've never been one for shirking my duties.

Halee's blog template is cute, her title is cliched and banal ("My Life and Thoughts"), and she has too much distracting and meaningless crap in her sidebar.

Halee's writing comes across as uneducated. It's filled with incorrect spelling, grammar, spacing, and capitalization, and rife with run-on sentences and paragraphs. Also, an abundance of dreaded exclamation points, making the blog come across as one written by a middle school girl, instead of a married, college-educated woman.

Most of the blog is written like a journal, for her friends to catch up on her life. Completely boring for a stranger. She also seems mildly obsessed with weddings and babies, which is par for the course with most Christian girls. It was also one of the reasons why I only spent 2 years at the Christian college, before transferring to a state school. I didn't go to school to get my MRS. degree, thank you very much.

In the rest of her blog, she spews Conservative Christian propaganda, which only appeals to people who have those same beliefs. I get the feeling that Halee is just regurgitating what her parents and her church have told her, without thinking for herself. I also get the feeling she's trying to witness to the world*, from her blog. But again, no one's going to read this blog unless they come from the same background as Halee, so it's pointless.

I was all set to give her a "Meh" and an "Abercrombie", and tell her to start an anonymous blog, where she can write about real things, without feeling like everyone in her bubble is watching. . . until I got to these posts:

1) Here, she talks about how she's annoyed with being asked to give money for Haiti relief, because our government spends our tax money irresponsibly.
2) Here, she talks about how she has a hard time feeling sympathy for the homeless, because the ONE TIME she has seen a homeless person, he was rude to her.

Let's see what Jesus has to say about this, shall we Halee?

Matthew 22:37-39* - The "love your neighbor as yourself" verse.

Luke 6:30-31* - The Golden Rule, AKA the "do unto others" verse.

Matthew 25:31-36* - The Parable of the Sheep and Goats, AKA the "whatever you did for the least of these" verse.

Did you notice how I didn't need to explain what the verses were, other than their nicknames? That's because people with limited knowledge of the Bible have heard of them. And when Christians fail miserably at those basic commandments, it makes them look really bad. That's why people say, "All Christians are hypocrites", Halee.

Also readers, have you noticed how clean my language has been in this post? That's because I've been saving it for this:

How the FUCK have you only seen one homeless person in your life?

I grew up in a small backwater town too, but I spent time with my church family, sorting clothes and serving food at the local homeless shelter WHEN I WAS 10.

In high school, I spent the springtime running fundraisers to earn money to travel to Mexico, the Arizona Navajo reservation, and inner-city LA. You know what I did there? I built houses for the homeless, worked in missions, and delivered food to AIDS shut-ins. I also ran camps for Mexican and Navajo street children, as well as the younger siblings of the Grape Street Crips in Watts.

Jesus didn't go to VBS* or Awanas*, Halee. He spent his time with the poor, the crippled, and the sick. He even hung out with prostitutes. Get off your High Jesus Horse, please.

NOW, I award you:


from the Father





from the Son





from the Holy Ghost.




May God have mercy on my soul.

*links for the unchurched heathens

Rip Rip Woodchip

There are two television shows that I absolutely adore but I am not the target audience for; Spicks and Specks and Top Gear. But that doesn't matter - I find the shows so pants-wettingly amusing that I don’t care if I don’t know much about cars or music.

I like my blogs like I like my shows. I don't have to be the intended audience but I insist that the blog is written in a way that is either, witty, insightful, engaging, informative, thought-provoking or God forbid, all of those combined.

Today’s reviewee writes for therapy. It would seem incongruous for someone in that situation to ask for a blog review from us. But nevertheless we steam ahead. Is it like kicking puppies to say someone who is showing the world their therapy journals and emails to therapist is needy? Admittedly my radar started peeping like a chick when she said she had worked through all the therapists in her home town. I know she didn’t mean to be funny here, but really? She wants to give her therapist the third degree and then pay them $20 a week?

Even so Marie seems affable and honest. She is able to articulate her thoughts well enough but it doesn't really feel like the heart-wrenching, scary process that would usually accompany such a subject. It feels no more sensitive than a woman on a mission to find a man.

As a writer I know that getting your thoughts out on paper is a cathartic, de-cluttering process. However blogging is a different animal. A blog has a real audience. That means you have to write for them, not you. Therefore, let them be in the stories, the flashbacks, the emotions. Keep the journal under your mattress, not open next to your PC.

Let’s face it, as a person with some issues, you probably have more material than most but when you tell rather than show, you lose all of the power of your experiences and words. Could you rewrite the story about the autistic boy in thispost? Your experiences with him sound fascinating. But instead of telling us that he made you cry, make us cry too. You say that you like this guy’s work, so try and take a tab out of his blog. He seems to be doing it right, in the ‘genre’ you blog in as well as enough out of it that I am curious if not enthralled. Things get a bit more raw here but it just seems a little calculated. Hindsight is a wonderful thing I guess.

To put it bluntly Marie, we of the internet do not want to be your confession booth or your therapist's couch. Sure, it is shallow, tawdry and all that is wrong with this world, but we demand that you entertain us. Whether that is with laughter, titillation or tears – we don’t care, as long as we feel what you feel too. Until then, stick to the journal.

Although you asked, you won’t receive a rating. I give you a:













For the review title reference, go here. At least listen until the chorus. You can thank me later.

I brush my teeth everyday, therefore I blog

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

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

They will marry.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

I want more.

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

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

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

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

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




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


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

There's no sex in your violence

I have rules for myself but lately I've been breaking a lot of them. Normally, I take my blog from the queue in order. I don't skip around, and I don't pick and choose. I review good blogs and bad blogs, whatever is next on the list.

But lately, I've stopped caring so much about rules. I'm tired of reviewing crappy blogs, and I've started deleting some of the crappiest ones from our queue. I figure that if I don't even want to go to the trouble of reaming them a new asshole, because they're THAT bad, you probably don't want to read them. I also am tired of traffic mongering blogwhores who want us to send them hundreds of possible readers without actually doing the goddamn work of having a decent blog.

Fuck them. So, click, click, click. I deleted a half dozen blogs that I wasn't interested in having anyone review, including me, from the list this week.

This wasn't one of them. I briefly debated between this blog and a sex blog, called optimistically, "My OMFG Sex Blog," before deciding I just really wasn't up to reading about middle aged poon.

Instead, I opted for Textual Intercourse. Kevin's plan for this blog was, "I Write. You Read. You Respond. I Read." That hasn't happened exactly as he probably envisioned.

And that's a shame, because this is a really good blog. People should be reading this blog, and responding to it. Kevin needs comments and dialogue so he doesn't give up and stop writing.

I have no critiques of the posts, none at all. Some of them are provocative. Some, oddly enough, make me want to know more about the man who shit himself. Like, what happened the next night? Some leave me feeling wistful and sad, and remind me how easily childhood is broken. Some ask questions that probably should be asked, and aren't, like why men start out with a negative character reference when it comes to child abuse.

Some are meh, and I skipped over them pretty rapidly, but they might appeal to you.

This dude can write. He needs to do it more often. He needs to purge some of the dead wood on this blog. But, he can write. Really, when it's all said and done, that's all I require.

Kevin: Delete all the crap under "Other" in your sidebar. Look over some of your posts and decide if they're really finished. Write more.

Readers: Go do what you do.

I give him 3 stars.

Mother and Child Reunion

In Mother and Child Reunion, a tune penned by Paul Simon, lyrics mention "a strange and mournful day" and "I can't for the life of me remember a sadder day". This was all fans needed to speculate as to possible meanings. Perhaps the song referenced a child given up for adoption about to meet his or her mother. Maybe the mother or child had passed and now the one was joining the other in death.

When asked about the song, Paul Simon related that the title, Mother and Child Reunion, was lifted straight off a New York Chinese restaurant menu where it was used to reference a chicken and egg dish. Get it? Mother and child reunion? I thought it was clever because rather than be deep, the title referred to something that couldn't be more fleeting, Chinese food.

Anyhow, I'll allow you a brief peek into the twisted thought processes of Miss Missives. Thoughts of Mother and Child Reunion led me to thoughts of the chicken and the egg which led me to the classic dilemma of which came first. This in turn made me think of the Chinese dish, which made me think again of the Paul Simon song, which led me to ponder, which came first, the mother or the child? In this case it is clearly the mother which very circuitously leads me to my main point(yes there is one). The mother came first and with or without the child, the mother is still a woman, or a chicken or something.

My gripe is that so many women become mothers at the loss of nearly everything else. Jesus, no wonder so many women go through empty nest syndrome(see another chicken reference), because they all too frequently define themselves by motherhood alone. If I hear one more person(because yes, we are still people) refer to herself as a mommy to anyone other than her children, I will take needles and shove them in my eyeballs.

This is not exclusively directed at today's reviewee. Lolly, I get it, you're in the first year. That first year is very difficult and balance can be nonexistent. I know it can be hard to define yourself by much else when you are enmeshed in new babydom, but I know plenty of women with babies who still talk about other things.

Mommy Is Rock 'N Roll is your garden variety snoozefest, the quintessential mommyblog where the new baby is all encompassing. I can't sugarcoat it, there is very little here. Lolly has the same excitement of most new moms, figure woes, internal debates, sleep deprivation but her writing skills are not enough to lift this common experience up to a place where others can relate to it.

Lolly, like so many other moms, you are a thoughtful mother with a beautiful baby and almost nothing to say. If you want people to read what you write, you have to vary it a little. It's not that you cannot write about your daughter, or breastfeeding or slings or the things prolonged sleep deprivation does to a person. You can, but you need to pick out anecdotes, funny stories, unexpected things and throw in some stuff completely unrelated to Lolly the mom.

My best piece of advice? Go read great mom blogs and figure out why you like them. Are they funny, confessional, snarky, all out crazy? Figure out what they are doing right and emulate. I'm not saying copy or try to be them but it's okay to use these engaging blogs as a lesson on how to make yours more engaging.

As for the specifics, the template hurts my eyes. I don't like faux animal print. I didn't like it when Dolce and Gabbana used it, I certainly don't like it when it's splashed up on a page I am expected to read. I don't like pink font on black background but thank you for a font large enough to read without inciting some kind of violent head pounding. The sidebar could be cleaned up but it's not out of control. Get the Google ads off your site, the seventeen cents you are making a week isn't worth it. Pare down your blogroll or move it off the main page. If your blogroll is in excess of fifty blogs, it no longer means anything.

Lolly, Ask is a site that will definitely pants* you with no remorse. The reviewers here write and read and I'm not talking about Christmas newsletters or thank-you notes. While we complain about clutter and design and even grammar, you'll notice that people who can really tell a story generally get a pass. The reality, however, is that most people cannot tell a good story. Even if Princess Di and Michael Jackson came from beyond the grave to take them out to lunch, they'd still find a way to screw it up. So to turn around and write about the naturally mundane, like motherhood, is the equivalent of five Ambien and a Gin and Tonic.

Still, don't despair because the good thing about children and motherhood is everyone's baby is beautiful to them and your blog is your baby. So if Mommy Is Rock 'N Roll is what you want it to be, and you can look back over your old posts excited to read how you felt or where the baby was at that moment, then I suggest you pull your pants up and don't look back.














*d.Verb. American. To overpower someone and remove his trousers by force as a humiliation. Equivalent to the British debag. Usually only done to males as removal of the pants, the traditional male garment, is a symbolic emasculation. Pantsing in this sense may be used as an initiation rite, a punishment, or just done for fun.

Don't be so optimistic

You say you will not die, I think you're kidding yourself.



Our most recent volunteer writes, about himself, and his blog:

I haven’t summoned the guts to write with my full intellect...but instead, I often succumb to the subtle fear of marginalizing my audience by saying things that I know aren’t popularly read enough to support my own blogging ambitions.

Tell the truth: you hate him already, don't you?

This blog is an excruciating read, exacerbated by advertisements imbedded in every post, and in both sidebars. Jesus Christ on a buttermilk biscuit, I hate this blog. It's smarmy. That's the word for it. Clearly, this dude thinks he's Dave Eggers. And, maybe he is.

But I already struggled through Dave's book, and hence, I'm not at all inclined to brave the blinky ads and self-congratulatory prose you've thrown online like feces on a wall.

So, let's see:

Growing up sucked for you. Join the club. I bet if you put 50 bloggers in a room, you'd find that 40 of them dealt with major shit growing up, and we're still working out our issues online, or we're still in the midst of dealing with serious life issues. You aren't doing anything that other writers haven't done more of, and better.

You have a high IQ. Wow. Color me impressed. If mine weren't similarly high, and if so many of my blogging peers weren't of the same caliber, I'd perhaps think you were something. But, high IQs on the blogosphere are like Abercrombie attire in your local high school...they're everywhere. And, frankly, they don't impress me much.

So, here are some of your issues:

1. You have a fucked up self-perception. You write:

Even so, there is, as there is with many men, a second me. There is a me who wants to run off and conquer lands and pretend I’m king, even if for just a day or two. In other words, I want to make something of myself. I want be somebody. For a long time now, I have been a nobody.

This week though, I am somebody again.

Wrong, Einstein. You were ALWAYS somebody, and you always will be somebody, even if your self-loathing for that person you once were poisons everything you write insidiously. And until you OWN that person you were, and are, and always will be, your blog will always suck. In fact, I bet you were a better person in elementary school than you are today.

Education and a job title don't make you somebody. They are simply what the shallow people use to quantify folks into little boxes of worthy and not worthy.

But, viewing life in that way is inherently wrong. And, if you do become a teacher, you will be an utter dickhead if you continue to hold to that perspective, and you will seriously mind-fuck your students. Frankly, I've read blogs of homeless people that were more substantive and interesting than yours.

2. You need therapy. BADLY. And in your case, no, your blog is NOT enough to compensate for your major issues. You're carrying around your past like a huge trainload of baggage. Guess what? Your life at this point should not be defined by the taped up glasses you wore in elementary school or how much weight you could lift in college. The fact that these things play such a major role in the person you are today is not only uninteresting to read, it's actually disturbing. Your autobiography makes my skin crawl. You remind me of a guy I once dated that had serious mental health issues, verging on narcissistic psychosis.

3. You're still really pissed at your dad, and wow...how long has it been since he died? Ten years or more? When do you think you might, I dunno, make an attempt at getting the fuck over it?

4. We aren't here for self-promoters who don't give us anything. Your "blog" is about getting a book deal or feeding your tremendously hungry ego, but it sure does nothing for me. So, I'd like to tell you as politely as possible to fuck off, because I really am peevish that you submitted this to us.

I like a train wreck as much as the next girl, but I do not like your blog. Maybe some folks will, more power to them. But for me, I find it disturbing, and uncomfortable, and fucking sad as hell. You define yourself by what other people have done to you, and the size of your intellect, and papers you can put in frames on a wall.

I define people by the size of their hearts. The end. And yours, in spite of your determination not to "settle," is strangely shrunken and broken and twisted and dark.

And seriously, fucked up.

I give you this:



If only you had a heart...then you might have a real blog. Also, for being an ad whore who is using our blog for your own filthy lucre without delivering up some substantive goods:

Fine I'm Meditating Now What

Miss Missives started January on a quest to usher 2009 in as the year of Zen. Rather than go around with her red pen and rule book, Miss Missives longed to let her tightly-wound bun down, slip on a pair of soft, spangled Indian slippers, read over the collective of AAYSR-submitted blogs and mutter phrases like let it be, all you need is love and gettin' better all the time. Yes, she had been listening to an anthology of Beatles while she constructed the plan, so? In her mind, gone would be the irritated directives, the smarmy admonitions, and the marginally soothing salve of tepid praise to make up for the true and real criticism. 2009 would come to show Miss Missives as friend to the people, nurturer to the tortured writer's souls that litter the internet.

Alas, this recuperative plan failed right out the gate. Maybe it was ill-advised for me to think that a peacock could change it's feathers. Maybe the AAYSR gods sent me onknees to test my mettle, challenge my commitment. Whatever the case, I've failed because I can't join hands with my fellow bloggers and sing kumbaya, let's all just do our own thing and heap praise on each other. Miss Missives is already starting to feel like blogging is becoming one giant daisy chain and I won't add to the masturbatory milieu.

Why does everyone and their uncle want to write? Why is everyone looking to get published or syndicated. Just because you slap some paint on a wall doesn't make you a painter, and just because you have a blog doesn't make you a writer. However, if you can expel gas from your rectum at will, I think you should be allowed to call yourself a f'artiste. All these would-be writers run around dreaming about book deals like it's the next great home-based biz, sit in your jammies and collect a fat paycheck. Like books just write themselves or all you need to do is type out nine-hundred random words and there will be staggering lines of editors just waiting to lap it up. Can I just ask these people, are there trees in your world? Writing is work and one of those industries that even if you have talent oozing out of your pores you may still never make it happen.

At first glance, Onknees sounds like it has potential. There is the part about being on one's knees which struck Miss Missives as appropriately submissive. Then there is the heavily glossed lips that festoon the header. The first post makes an apt comparison between Amy Winehouse and Jerry Seinfeld. Still, a dive into the content proves disheartening. There is one post where Annette regales us with the intel that she goes commando but without further details, this is just an uncomfortable non sequitur. The second part of that post is great but sadly, written by someone else. There is other good material but alas, penned by another. There are prime examples of the daisy chain I speak of. There are posts that challenge you to read through them without experiencing vertigo from all the bits and bobs going on. There is a book review that screams 8th grade homework and a post about female bosses that is a confusing mix of other's opinions that actually perpetuates the negative stereotypes about women in lead positions that it seems to criticize. There is even one post so boring I fell asleep reading it. I'm not speaking figuratively or metaphorically, I actually fell asleep.

I don't mind as a matter of democratization that every Tom, Dick and Mary has his or her dirty, little corner of the web. One of the great things about blogging is anyone can do it even those that patently shouldn't. What irks me is the utter lack of self-awareness and real critical understanding of one's talents and skills that seems to pervade the blogosphere. It's like watching the b-roll of American Idol auditions, not that Miss Missives watches that sort of thing. For every blogger who accurately measures their own ability there are ten more who think they are what they are in fact not, be it introspective, funny, poignant, snarky, you name it. Good writers can make waiting in line at the bank a good story. Good writers can make regular people seem larger than life through the way they uncover the details. There are good writers out there, there are, but the better part of the blogosphere is being populated by a bunch of sh'artistes.

You're lucky it's just one finger






Have a lolly dear 'cause you suck hard.

Hardly Cringe* Worthy

The great part about keeping a journal is that you can write anything you want to or need to without fear of censure or hurting someone's feelings. You can put your most closely held desires on paper, acknowledging them without putting them up to the scrutiny of others. You can ease the burdens of painful experiences by letting part of them go in a safe place.

With daily or almost daily journaling, you can date important events in your life for later and get a glimpse of yourself in your younger days. You can see the way you wrote, how you felt about things and because it's you reading words you wrote, you can almost step back in time and remember what that felt like.

But when you keep a Livejournal and you invite others to read it and you submit your journal for review, you lose most of these wonderful things. You also seek attention or validation for things that are never going to be interesting to other people. Unless your life is truly fascinating or you write exceptionally well, someone else's journal is mealy meat loaf, tinny tasting overcooked greenbeans and tuna casserole. It might be food but it's not a meal. It's like the three-recipe repertoire homecook trying to compete along side the Iron Chef, sure it's not in the ballpark, but really it's not even the same game.

Now many writers who keep blogs, chronicle parts of their lives in a way that's akin to journaling but we read them because of their humor or eloquence or ability to perfectly capture something we have felt or experienced. We read them because they have a knack for storytelling and can spin nearly anything into an entertaining tale. There are also some people who use their blogs almost exclusively for journaling and maybe they aren't natural storytellers but they have a highly compelling individual story, no matter how it's told. So what do you have when you have a journal keeper who lacks specific writing talent absent a compelling story? You have Crazy Stuff in My Head.

I won't soften it, I don't like this blog. One reason is Livejournal which just feels to me like a handful of the worst of Myspace and Facebook without their better features. Did you know that Livejournal's mascot is Frank the goat? Well, Miss Missives wants to kick Frank in the teeth. I cannot link to anything specific here because the entries don't have their own page. Frankly, it doesn't matter because none of the entries are written for a larger audience. The topics are mundane and the writing is cursory and thoughtless. There is also very little information about the journal keeper adding another difficulty in connecting with this material in any way.

Now I'm not suggesting that she shouldn't keep a journal or that it lacks any purpose or meaning, only that this particular journal is important to only one person and interesting to maybe seven more. She shouldn't stop writing the mundane, everyday happenings of her life just stop looking for reader's or stranger's approval.

As for the space itself, it needs a header. The whole thing is very nondescript, much like the writing. The font is too small but the space is spare and the sidebar relatively clean. This whole thing feels like your mom's tuna casserole. If she's your mom, yeah, you'll eat it but you would never ask for the recipe, pass it along, order it out and you're definitely not having seconds.

For you, a trifecta.







*Cringe is an open mic reading series where brave souls come forward and read aloud from their teenage diaries, journals, notes, letters, poems, abandoned rock operas, and other general representations of the crushing misery of their humiliating adolescence.

Sex Kitten or Plodding Pussy?

A review by Miss Missives:

When I saw my latest victim, Pitter Patter of Pink Piddy Paws: Tackling life and love with laughter and kitty treats, nestled among the days emails, I threw up in my mouth a little. Kitty is a divorcee' who has named and themed her blog after her cat.

Pretty, pretty please, not another blog filled with picture after picture of some woman's cat dressed like Hermione from Harry Potter. No more lumbering, lengthy, lamenting posts of nights alone forming cobwebs in her underbrush and dulling her senses with the dulcet tones of Deal or No Deal and cheap Thai takeout.

Never one to shirk work without good reason, I gave serious consideration to slamming my fingers in a door so that I'd have a worthy excuse to offer up for having not completed my assignment. Sadly, I couldn't think of how to satisfactorily slam both hands simultaneously so I relented and began my descent into what would no doubt be putrid platitudes, the stinky spatter of kitty spew and a festering filthpot of feline felching.

Right off the bat, Kitty alluded to her upcoming review where she wondered if she'd, "take it up the tailpipe from her reviewer". Now Kitty, Kitty, Kitty, Miss Missives is a lady and the only thing I'll be strapping on for your review are my ass-kicking boots.


Thankfully, Kitty writes very little about her cat and much more about her affinity for girl boobies much like our resident Dirty Pirate Hooker, her boyfriend's inappropriate fascination with little people and her sex life.

Sometimes titles promise titillation, but end up rather neutered upon reading. Some posts are quietly confessional and relateable. Others are a little sexy and sweet.

Kitty dear, you are funny, personal and sometimes snarky but you are one rambling, wordy trollop. Your writing would seriously benefit from a giant, eye-pokingly sharp red pencil. Cut out 30% of what you originally plunk down and you'll be 80% more readable. Your paragraph structure, or lack thereof, starting every sentence on a new line and abundant use of extraneous punctuation is less the interesting meanderings of conversation and more the spastic flailing of someone who should don a padded helmet. When people over thirteen write things like, "This weekend was A..M..A..Z..I..N..G..!!!," it makes Miss Missives want to D..I..S..M..E..M..B..E..R them slowly while they are fully conscious!!!

As for the niceties or lack of when it comes to the overall structure. For the love of Miao-Shan clean up your sidebar, it looks like a twelve year old girl's junk drawer all manner of detritus tumbling about. As for your posts, I prefer 'posted by', 'comments', and 'labels' at the end of the post rather than at the beginning as you have it. When the post begins with the title and date, your site looks much cleaner and easier to navigate.

Kitty, there's good stuff here and you post regularly so you get a big gold star for that but much of it's buried in wordiness and lost in your sometimes nonsensical wandering. You don't have to lose your 'voice' by structuring your writing more carefully, it would actually make your point of view come through more clearly. That along with some relentless editing and you're on your way.

Verbero*

You may not realize it, but I am a mommy-blogger. Oh, I don't blog about my kids that much, unless they say something pretty hilarious, but underneath all of my perceptions about life and other bloggers, I'm a mom.

And, putting my mommy hat squarely on my head, I will tell you up front: today's blogger needs a spanking.

Fortunately, I'm just the person for the job. And, no snickers from you, Calamity.

NeeNee is a blogger who apparently believes that her fuck ups can be fixed by writing about them. I am a great believer in the therapeutic nature of blogging, and I use my other, private blog for that purpose.

But, I will be the first to tell you: blogging is no replacement for real life. Blogging doesn't change the world, and it won't change you. You can't blog your way out of a broken marriage, or unemployment. And while it is non-fattening, it won't help you lose weight. It's one thing to write about what you would like to accomplish. I'm all for visualization as a strategy for change.

But, at some point, you have to actually lift your ass out from in front of the computer, and change whatever it is that you dislike about your life. If you want to lose weight, you have to get off the couch, stop eating so much, and exercise.

If you want a job, you have to get out there and pound the pavement, and at times, you have to be willing to settle for something that will just pay the bills so you don't dig yourself into a financial hole that you will never escape.

So basically, NeeNee, you are a girl who settles for writing about your problems, and thinking about your problems, but not SOLVING your problems. You live in the past, dwelling on an asshole who did you wrong. (not to mince words here) You're fucking an ex-boyfriend from high school who has no intention of having an actual relationship with you.

At what point do you think your life is going to get better if you don't do something about it besides write?

I have a few tips for you that have nothing at all to do with the layout of your blog (meh) or the style of your writing (also meh).

1. Get rid of EVERYTHING from Music Man. EVERY. SINGLE. THING. Every e-mail, every photo, every little residual piece of crap that you are still clinging to that is keeping you from moving forward in your life. It's over. It sucked. The End. I guarantee that he is not wrecking his life, sitting around moaning about you.

I had my own music man, having been around the track more than a few times, and it took me a good year to get over that relationship. I didn't make a lick of progress, though, until I stopped dwelling and mentally let go of the past.

NeeNee...your life is a wreck. You are unemployed, unhappy, overweight, and fucking your ex. You do not have time for this bullshit.

Life is short, and you're missing it.

2. Positive affirmations are great, though I prefer attainable ones.

Let's look at the situation clearly and objectively: you're massively in debt, and every day that you do not work, the hole gets deeper. Just get a damn job. It doesn't have to be THE. PERFECT. JOB. It just has to be a J-O-B that brings in some money so you stop going backwards, financially. Beyond the fact that you need the money, desperately, it is easier to GET a job when you are actually employed. Furthermore, you've already been rejected by one employer for your crappy credit. The only way to fix that shit is to work, earn a paycheck, and start paying down some of your debts. At this point, you are in so deep that I recommend that you work with a credit counseling service to renegotiate what you owe and get you started on a clean sheet. Being unemployed is depressing, and gives you way too much time to think about everything that is wrong. Going to work every day would at least give you something to do with your time, and a reason to get out of bed and get dressed.

3. Start taking care of yourself. You write that your weight is nearing 200 pounds. Wow, yet another thing to feel bad about. Today, not tomorrow or next week, TODAY, take a walk. Walk for at least 15 or 20 minutes. Tomorrow, do the same thing. Work up to 30 minutes a day, then up to an hour a day. Every day, you will feel slightly better. It will cost you nothing, and you will lose weight, guaranteed. I've been there, done that, as well.

You are 20-something years old. Do you think this shit is going to get easier if you wait?

4. Stop fucking your ex-boyfriend. Stop looking to sex with a man who doesn't love you to make you feel better about yourself. It will just leave you feeling worse.

In short, your blog describes your life, and your life looks like Hurricane Ike just swept through it, leaving catastrophe in his wake.

Time to grow up and fix it. You're the only one who can.

How do you fix it? You work on it, a little at a time, until it improves. At this point, you aren't doing that, and blogging about it isn't helping.

I give you

*A latin word, whose meaning you can google, if you're interested

Lizza, Please

Hey kids, Charlotte Sometimes, guest reviewer here. Let’s get started with a little bedtime story.

One day I was sitting on top of the world, feeling a little too good about myself so I decided to submit my blog to be reviewed by this very site that you are reading right now. The luck of the draw put my sweet, little, pink blog into the hands of Love Bites to be chewed up and spat out. At the end of the ass-whipping that was my review, I was bruised and bloodied but I limped away knowing one, very important thing. I needed to learn how to edit my shit. I took that criticism to heart and turned that mother out.

Our blogger today needs to learn that same lesson. So with that in mind, let’s turn this mother out and start the spanking.

With the title of ‘I Am Woman, See Me Blog’ dashing all my dreams of awesome things to come, I hesitantly ventured into the ‘About Me’ section and read her profile. What I saw there sent my hopes careening back to me. Excitedly, I read about how she is a beer-loving woman in her mid-30’s living in the Philippines. She loves beer. I love beer. She’s in her 30’s. I’m in my 30’s. She lives in the Philippines. I live in the Mid-West. Well fanfuckingtastic but don’t wet your shorts just yet.

One thing life has taught me is that hope is a fickle bitch. I tried like hell to connect with this woman and I just couldn’t do it. There was absolutely nothing that made my no-no parts tingle here. I have three basic issues with Lizza’s blog: template, title and content. Nothing major, right?

Babe, your template blows. Seriously, I’ve seen this template before. It sucked then and it still sucks now. Ditch it for something cleaner that says something more about you, because frankly, your title doesn’t cut the mustard on that front either. We’re looking at more of a “cuts the cheese” type scenario.

Yeah that’s right. I compared it to a fart.

Darling, surely you are aware that using the word “blog” in the title is a big, “oh no you didn’t” around here. Your title tells your potential reader nothing more than you have a vagina and a keyboard. So do I. No one cares.

Lizza has a writer’s spirit but what she is lacking is an editor’s eye. Her sentences are creatively and artistically woven together with a rhythm that is comfortable. She loves poetry and it shows. What she’s missing is the point and a little soul. Don’t get me wrong - it’s there. It’s just not always there.

Rambly Meanderton does just that. She meanders and rambles on. If I were her, I would be more rad. But more importantly, I would go back after I typed my post and start cutting out the unnecessary fluff and bullshit. You’re wasting your words and your reader’s time. Your posts should be concise with a clear beginning, middle and end.

I’m giving you two stars for your writing because I don’t hate you.



However, I am giving you a flaming finger for making me wade through the fucking meme’s and ‘what kind of fruit are you’ generators.

Less is more

I had to put some Deftones on to steel myself for this review. I wanted to like this blog, really I did.

But first, I'm going to tell you a story. Once upon a time, I dated a man I like to call Single Dad. Single Dad was a very nice man. He had a good job. He was funny and intelligent. But damn. Single dad bugged the crap out of me. He wanted to see me way too often. He called too much. He gave me flowers way too soon. Soon, he lost the moniker "Single Dad," and became known in my head as "the man who tries to hard."

That man has a lot in common with today's blogger, Avitable. I thought my favorite psychotic blogger of all time was enamored with photos of himself, but he has nothing on Avitable when it comes to self-love. There are pics of Avitable smiling. There are pics of Avitable stroking his chin hairs. There are pics of Avitable looking like a nerd. There are pics of Avitable as a small boy.

All of these pictures make me want to stab my own eyes out and stare blankly into comforting nothingness. For the first time in my blogging career, I think I've met a template that makes me wish for clean and boring blogger template.

This blog would look about a million times better if you did the following:

• No Avitable pics on the side of the blog.


• No blinding blue sidebar to make my eyes scream for mercy (black, please, to match the header, with white links. Seriously.)


• No 2" high gray busy thingies under every post.


• No blinky twinkly girly things on the sidebar at all.


• Please use a font size that will not make anyone over 14 go blind.


• Get rid of 90% of the pics, they make your blog load slower than Hillary dodges sniper bullets.

You know how to use tabs, Avi, so put that shit away behind a few more tabs, and clean your blog-room. Make it nice and neat, and focus on your writing.

Okay, so that's covered.

On to the writing.

The writing is fucking exhausting. In fact, the entire blog exhausts me. It makes me want to start hitting the hard liquor on a Thursday night.

When it comes to blogging, more often than not, people fail because they don't realize something simple: less is more. Take this post, for instance. There are funny moments here. But they are buried in way too many words. 18 ways in which you are a control freak? Are you fucking kidding me? You need to be on goddamn OCD meds. NOT for the reasons that you've listed, but because it is apparently impossible for you to make a list shorter than 15 to 20 items. You haven't grasped that clean, elegant writing can kick the shit out of a list of 18 superficially funny items. Especially, Avi, if that writing is about something REAL.

So, I'm fixing to get all serious on you, because I actually want this review to help you.

STOP.

BREATHE, GODDAMMIT.

And, SLOW. THE. FUCK. DOWN.

Your blog leaves me feeling hollow, because in all the effort, the real Avitable has somehow gotten lost.

If comments are the ultimate arbiter of what we do online, then you are kicking my ass, and you can ignore everything I'm saying here. BUT, I left your blog wishing you would just stop trying so damn hard to do everything. And, that you would just do one thing--well.

I think your blog could be so much more. I think it could be brilliant. But, you have to figure out why you are doing this.

I have a couple of assignments for you.

First, go here. I want you to see how unfuckingbelievablyfunny a great writer can be in 2 sentences or less.

I double-dog-dare you not to laugh out loud at that shit. See? Less really IS more. Those two sentences twitters would not have been improved by the addition of even one word.

Second, if you don't own it already, I want you to download the Deftone's song "Be Quiet and Drive." I want you to get in the Avitamobile. I want you to roll down the windows. I want you to turn that song up really loud. And, I want you to fucking be quiet and drive. Then, I want you to listen to a little more. Maybe Minerva, or Change, or Hole in the Earth. You pick.

And, while you're being quiet and driving, I want you to think about the music. How, these songs--in the midst of all the noise--have a sense of quiet realness and palpable emotion. Then, I want you to think about who in the fuck Avitable really is underneath all that effort. And, when you've figured that out, I want you to bring THAT Avitable to your blog.

That is the Avitable I want to read.

For now, you get the short bus (but I'll come and ride with you, if you ask nicely):


p.s. George--if you're still listening, the Deftones could only be an improvement on your musical taste.

I Need An Interpreter...And A Shot

Fireballs here. Happy MLK day, for those of you that celebrate it.

Now, I don't want to get off on a rant, or anything. But, sadly, I'm going to.

Today's submission is Call Center Confidential. I dig the title, so I thought, okay, this could be good. If I understood whatever language this is written in, I might be able to enjoy it. Look, here's the thing. If you're going to submit a blog for review to us, please make sure it's in a language we can understand. Part of our reason for doing this is to review content as well as aesthetic. This content is gibberish to me, not through any fault of the author, I'm sure it's fucking brilliant if you can read it. But be smart about submitting if your blog isn't in English, because you're automatically down a few stars if I can't fucking understand it.

Secondly, this template, if you want to call it such, is an abomination. Left-justified, way too much content on the main page, and blog ads. Seriously? I don't ask for much in life, but for crying out loud, don't submit here if you don't put some type of effort into your work. I don't know whether this is a "traveler's point" template or something you built or borrowed or whatever, but just...

I think this thing has broken me. I need Patron, stat.

I have no recommendations. You don't speak English, or you don't write in it, so I can't rate the content. The template is astoundingly bad. I'm not trying to be a dick here, so I'll just ask the question. Why did you submit?

I Feel So Unsatisfied. Wonder Why...

It seems like forever since I've posted here, and I won't fucking lie-I enjoy having one less thing to worry about in my busy-as-fuck-all life. Before I continue, however, I'd like to take a moment to ask a very important question:

What the fuck is with guys not giving a shit if a chick orgasms? Huh?

Obviously she was kind enough to hop on your dong, so maybe you should put a tad bit more effort into things than "finger, finger..zzzzzzz."

Okay, I just really had to get that off my chest. *cough*

So today I get the pleasure of reviewing Red Hog Diary . I tend to fall hopelessly in love with a blogs that involve a complete train wreck of a human being blogging away the intricate details of their daily debauchery , or doesn't have oodles of introspection oozing from it's every post that sheds light. Basically, I'm a glutton for blogs that portray a human being in all of their wonderful and often times fucked up and twisted glory, but you all know that. So imagine my delight when the blog loads and my conservative, Jewish ass see's a giant democratic donkey at the bottom of the page, and the word "Sunday at church," in the first sentence of the first post.

Let me precursor the rest of this by saying this: I hate politics, I hate tree hugging hippies who don't understand that inequality is inherent to life, and I definately hate people who take it upon themselves to make me feel guilty for being nothing more than white. I don't hate this blog, though.

The template is fairly bare bones and it's fairly well organized, even if the sidebar seems to go on for fucking EVER! Seriously, it's longer than the actual content. I'm also not sure why the archives are at the bottom of the content area, and, while we're talking about things that make you go "zuh?" I'm kind of at a loss for why there's a ton of shit in the content area that isn't content immediately proceeding the oddly placed archives. But take notes, people. Look at the links at the top? You see that? That is orgasmically exemplary. Don't put all your smut on the main page, tuck it away into handy-dandy little links!

The content is much better than the template. I thought it was going to be this flaming fest of "Democrats RULE!" but it's not. Not entirely, at least. I will admit that I didn't read very much of the content on account of being insanely lazy due to my vacation that starts promptly on Thursday morning. What I did read, though, was good. It's not insanely political, and it asks pressing questions like "Why don't little girls fart?" and then answers them with the pure, unadulterated truth-"They don't have assholes until they are married."

A more truthful statement has yet to be made.

The verdict?

I give it for an overall well organized template and pretty good template.

And don't think I'm going to let the randomly placed archive and shitloads of shit after the content ends. For that you get a