No, THIS is tellin' like it is

You know what we haven't had around here for awhile? A mommy blog.

Fan-fucking-tastic. Am I not the perfect person to review this blog? The single, childless, 30-year-old. Woot woot.

Anyway, why the hell did this chick submit here? While we have people who happen to be parents affiliated with this site, I really don't think we're the audience she's looking for.

For instance, look at her word cloud:


Are you kidding me? The only time I willingly read shit like this is when I'm in the waiting room of a doctor's office and my only other option is Sports Illustrated.

I mean, this lady took the time to write a post about the evolution of her hair. And uploaded pictures at each stage. Who gives a shit about that? Other mommy bloggers and the ladies from her birthing class.

(Check out the results from the poll in the link above. It should give you an idea of her readership.)

She uploads tons of boring pictures of her kid. The only people who want to see pics like that are grandmas. Not just any grandmas, but the grandmas of the child in question.

About a month ago, she gave a play by play update on her kid's illness. Ended up being just a fucking COLD. Again, grandmas only care about that shit.

Now, one could claim I have nothing in common with this blogger, therefore her blog is not my cuppa and to just move on.

Fuck that.

I have plenty of mommy and a few daddy bloggers in my reader. There's a huge difference between those blogs and the blog up for review today. The bloggers I read haven't let their children completely define their existence. Their blogs aren't about being parents; they're about their real lives, which just happen to include parenting. They don't try to portray their lives as idyllic and Stepford-esque. The bloggers make me care about them and about their kids. They actually make me want to be a parent myself, even when they write about the kid getting into his own diaper and smearing poop on the walls.

Polka Dot Hippo makes me want to go out and get a hysterectomy. If parenthood equals zombies with no personality, who have no life and nothing to talk about besides their kid, I'll pass, thank you very much.

Fuck.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Fuck.




and

because I am awesome at irony.


Also?  Sorry about the wait.

Did the vibrating universe tell you this shit ball was coming your way?

I'll admit it, I worry about my karma sometimes. I worry that this nasty little endeavor may somehow putrefy my already gangrenous, skid marked soul with each review I write. I know that sometimes the energy I'm putting forth into the universe is riddled with negativity and I know that this energy will somehow find its way back to me and probably wreck anal havoc on me with a giant spiked dildo when I least expect it.

I know the world doesn't need more assholes. I get that. Really, I do.

But El,there are certain things I can't read, walk away from calmly, and not want to set your minivan on fire, I'm sorry.

Reading your blog is like having someone try to convince me to sign up for a seminar on the power of positive real estate when all I want to do is bury my dead cat that I've been keeping in my freezer. Does that make sense?

Listen, I'm not going to any fucking seminar, so you can forget about it. And I don't want to buy any of the shit you have in the back of your van. You can keep your insight about crystals and your tips on how to connect with hummingbirds.

Oh, what? You're not selling anything? Then why does every one of your posts read like a mix between a condescending infomercial and a scaremongering headline read aloud in baby talk?

Why does reading your blog remind me of all that I hate about our consumerist media culture because the only way you can think to frame your writing is in the context of a cheesy, poorly executed sales pitch? I cannot for the life of me figure out why you want to sell me on your perfectly green spiritually vibrating ohmified life of oneness as if it were an erectile dysfunction medication or a box of cereal.

When you aren't selling me on your perfect life, you're telling me about the problems you have already overcome, your posts being akin to self-contained sitcoms where everything resolves itself before the 30 minutes are up. No cliffhangers, no character development that I can even remotely identify with, no compromised heroes, no layers of emotion. Just a big ass pile of happy perfection wrapped up in a moldy tortilla of tired, greener-than-thou proselytizing.

This is all interspersed with your being salted and pummeled by your own mental shit show, confirming to the reader that you are far from having your shit together like you're constantly reminding your readers with the graceful subtlety of an ice pick to the head.

I wanted to give you a MEH, really I did, just to not filth up the universe and all. But you earned yourself a MEH based on exclamation point abuse alone and so once I added everything else I hated about your blog, I could only give you this:

The Real Housewives of Mumbai

I was utterly tempted to insert into my review some Bollywood Greatest hits on autoplay, however, after a long week spent lashing the masses, I am just too tired to hurt the ones I love. Today Miss Missives is charged with being your interpreter of maladies and a quick look at The Mad Momma tells me that boring has gone global, tedium has been outsourced. My dear readers, would it be better if I didn't absolutely insist on giving the ending away right out the chute? My apologies.

It would seem that Indian mommybloggers have much in common with Western mommybloggers. Of course there are the exceptions to the stereotypical, often vilified mommyblogger, but Mad Momma is not one of them. She hits all of the important milestones for mediocre mommyblogging.

Mediocre Mommy blog checklist:

Uses one of the following words in the blog title:
crazy
insane
wacky
mad
rants
musings

Check.

Take out of focus pictures of food or children or furniture. Make sure photos have zero emphasis on composition.

Check.

Refers to self frequently and fervently as a mommyblogger.

Check.

Have a generous space devoted to badges and awards.

Check.

Fill your space with boring, meandering content.

Check.



Mad Momma, your header image is fuzzy and boring. I cannot read the header text unless I highlight it. Your header

“...is missing her home of five years. BADLY”

is grammatically incorrect. I could say that you use grammar badly. Your About Me doesn't actually tell me about you beyond some basic demographics. You have an entire tab devoted to Our Cesarean Stories. The graphics on your "Badges" page show up in neither Mozilla Firefox nor Internet Explorer. Your sidebar is, okay. Your template is about as visually exciting as a pile of dirt which would fail to matter if the writing compensated. The writing does not compensate for the template.

That's the big problem for me because as we have noted before, when someone writes well, the minutiae of "proper" blogging matters far less. Your writing isn't terrible but it isn't a bit compelling. Your posts are far too long and they meander all over the place rather than have a central idea from which the subsequent branch offs flow. You write about salient topics like feminism and politics but you lack the ability to express your opinion authoritatively or pull in personal experience to draw the reader in. Of course I bring to this review my own cultural bias but truly good writing is universal.

A journalist, I am never short of words or ideas!!

Perhaps the medium you write for is a tome allowing for lengthy verbosity, but I can hardly imagine the editor is your friend. You use words like my five year old uses toilet paper, with no regard for economy. Your pieces, even the more serious among them, devolve into written diarrhea, the prattled chatter inside your head. This is sweet but it goes on so long that the sentiment becomes watered down and tired. This is nearly 2500 words. It goes on forever to make a point which could have been much more concise and interesting at 500 or fewer. Madmomma, organize your thoughts, make a goddamn outline if you have to, edit your words, cull them down to what's necessary.

Until then, I really just cannot be bothered. Yawn.

Mama loves parentheses

Guest review by jen’lltellya.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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



You get a meh for your template.



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

Spawn of the Dead

Hey peeps. I'm back from the undead, and ready to rumble.

Lucky Scary Mommy is taking a spin at Pacific Playland today.

I should start by saying, ever so sarcastically, that I love a mommyblog. I especially have big love for a mommy blog that includes all of my personal pet peeves.

For instance:

Cash for posts? Check.

Boring, substandard content? Check.

Pictures of children I don't know and in whom I'm uninterested, in lieu of content? Check.

Pretending to be hyperbadassfoulmouthedcoolmom? Check (and god, I am thoroughly sick of this one...)

This is formaldehyde-scented death wrapped up in a shiny red & white package. The posts are stiff, the content feels posed, and there isn't a single uncontrived sentence on this blog. Oh, goodie. I've encountered the undead Kate Gosselin of the blogosphere.

Up front, a quick list of the things I hate:

I hate the three-column template with 1 main post and additional posts shown as snippets underneath that require additional clicks. I particularly hate that this template makes it difficult to get back to the main page.

I hate the ads that "scary" mom is using to subsidize her blogstyle.

I hate the content.

I don't hate the kids, but I hate that their mom is using them to create a name for herself and build an evil undead mommy blogging empire (muahahhahahaahahah!). Scary Mommy is begging for a nail-studded baseball bat and a sharp pair of hedge trimmers.

Scary Mommy is never real. For the record, real bleeds. Real sweats, real cries, real poops. This is what real looks like:

...no words I put down can fully capture the aching emptiness I feel at giving birth to babies and coming home from the hospital without them. What we endure to bring our babies into the world is easily forgotten when we cuddle the thing so hard won. When we smell its soft head, trace our fingers down a chubby, pink body, whisper silliness and love into its ears. But I don't have that now. I sit alone in rooms and wonder about the new lives I just ushered too early into the world. I carry guilt heavy in my chest. Why wasn't I strong enough to carry them to term? What defect brought on labor at 33 weeks?

...read more

Real moms agonize. They blame themselves, they address their fears of not being good enough, they bitch, they moan, they show their asses. They say, "This shit ain't easy, and it ain't for suckas, yo?"

Scary Mommy is not real in any sense of the word that is meaningful, at least to imperfect mothers like me. She's glib, heartless, and flippant. She died a while ago, but no one has noticed since she plods along in exactly the same happy dead way.

My objective system of blog rating goes like this. If the blog so fascinates me that I'd drive 60 miles out of my way on a business trip to meet the blogger, it's a damn good blog. If I'd drive 10 miles, it's decent. If I'd consider running the blogger down in the grocery store parking lot, it's going to get a flaming finger. If I need to put the double tap into effect, it needs to fuck off and die already, because it's already 78% dead. It's pretty scientific, when you think about it.

So...I would never sit down for cheap margaritas in some chain restaurant in the wilds of New Jersey with Scary Mommy. I do not read her blog and think, "I'd like to meet this fascinating woman." Instead, I think: "She has no soul. She is a zombie who might eat my brains for an appetizer instead of the Mexican eggrolls. Where the hell is my sawed off shotgun?"

There are good mommy blogs out there written by women with heart, courage, humor, passion, and zeal.

Scary Mommy isn't one of 'em.

What rating do I give this fake/dead blog? I felt the need to create something new:










And for making me waste my time...

The Subtle Art of Blogging

Dear sweet lady from the UK or Australia,

Why on earth did you submit your blog to us? You have to know that we are not fond of mommy-blogs, as a genre, and we're very, very bitchy and demanding. We are not your target audience, and you are definitely not going to be happy with anything I have to say to you today.

You write:

I started this blog in January 2008 with the following aims:

1. To improve my photography
2. To learn a new skill (the subtle art of blogging)
3. To have a pictorial record to look back on at the end of the year.
4. To prove to myself that once I’ve started something I can jolly well finish it!!

You've accomplished your goals, at least to your own satisfaction, so you really don't need us. And, I have a feeling that honest criticism is going to cut you like a knife. So, here's a backpat for keeping a chronicle of your kids' growing up years, and taking plenty of pictures, and it appears, being a very good mommy.

If you can't handle sharp feedback, STOP READING NOW. This warning is for your own good.

Okay, here comes the rending.

Goal 1 - Pictures: Your photos are poorly focused and have zero emphasis on composition. You need to do your homework. There is more to photography than point and shoot. Do some research, read up on how to properly frame a subject, and really WORK at it. These times will pass quite quickly and at this point, all you have to show for your efforts are some blurry, smeary, not very interesting shots.

Here's a good place to start.

Goal 2 - The Subtle Art of Blogging: You've put words on a page, on a regular basis, that much is true, but you haven't learned to blog. Blogging, at its essence, is telling stories. It isn't keeping a journal. It's writing, FOR AN AUDIENCE. Even if that audience is only family members (only), they do not deserve to want a bullet in their head after reading something like this.

Barbara, congrats. You've turned the miracle of birth into a scientific manual slash middle school girl's diary. Holy fuck. No one wants to read this. It's painfully dull.

A story is not "I went here." "I did this." "I saw this."

Go here. This is blogging. It takes more time than just regurgitating, "and then we bounced on trampolines" onto a page, but it's also clearly BETTER. It's something that people actually WANT to read, even though it involves sucking a bird's guts into a vacuum cleaner (and the word protein is misspelled). That's the SUBTLE ART part. And, that's what your blog is lacking at present. A good blogger can make getting blood drawn interesting. A bad blogger can make childbirth dull.

It's good to write, but it's better to be a writer, and actually THINK about the words you are writing.

Your blog at present:

This isn’t a great picture (I still haven’t got around to reading the manual on photography in low light) but the girl saw it and immediately said “I look great in a smile and a pink plait, don’t I”.

(note grammatical errors and boring introductory sentence)

What your blog COULD BE, if you worked at it:

I didn’t see it at first. I was talking to husband about his day and was walking from the living room to the kitchen.

There it was. A pile of feathers on the carpet–all that was left of the cat’s lunch.

Crap.

“Your cat did that,” he said. I just sighed and went to find the vacuum cleaner.

Do you see the difference, how the first few sentences suck you in, and make you WANT to read the story? How it's clear that this IS a story? Even this example could use more editing, but the beginning is GREAT. It takes work, that. But you COULD do it, if you tried.

Here's an example of how the pink plait could be reframed:

When she saw the photograph, the girl said “I look great in a smile and a pink plait, don’t I?”

I agree, she does.

Do you see the difference? You could then go on and talk about how the photo could be improved, how use of the manual might allow you to properly focus the lens, how you wish you were improving faster. But the focus is on the PHOTOGRAPH and the girl, not you.

Obviously, your voice is going to be different than Franklin's or mine. But, primarily, the subtle art of blogging consists of GETTING OUT OF THE WAY of your story and telling it in a way that is visual, stimulating, and engaging.

Also, you selfish cow. Why, oh why, would you tell us about making a Christmas cake (nut-free, no less), and not provide a recipe? That's just evil and wrong. You did the same damn thing with your mincemeat post, which means you are not only selfish, but you have selfish tendencies. You should share. That's all I'm saying.

So, move. Get out of the way. Tell the story. Focus on the subjects of the story. Make it come to life. Use interesting words. Think about whose eyes are seeing the story happen, and how THEY would tell the story. Use their perspective, not just yours.

That's blogging.

And you, my dear, are not yet a blogger.

But you could be.

I give you

Fear and Loathing in Upstate Washington

Mommybloggers love us. Is it wrong that I can't reciprocate their affection?

Let me just say it up front: I don't get it.

Today was my daughter's 16th birthday. I surrepticiously snuck off last night and planted a half dozen signs touting her birthday all along the road leading to her high school. She was embarrassed/thrilled.

Today, my son took a nosedive in the school cafeteria, beating the crap out of his face and permalocked his bike to a bike rack at school. I have to run to my boyfriend's house after work to borrow a bolt-cutter so I can rescue the bike tonight when I get home from my job, in between cooking dinner for four teens and celebrating a birthday.

This is basically a standard-issue day for Love Bites, Single Mom Extraordinaire.

But I don't blog about my kids very much. My blog is MY space. Most of my life is filled with kid activities (I do not exaggerate here, not even a little bit), but my blog is for me. That's not true of The Gonzo Mama, whose blog is primarily about her identity as a mother, interspersed with a few politically conservative posts.

Like I said, I don't get it. I love my kids, but I don't particularly want to read/write about them. So, when other moms spend all a significant percentage of their lives focusing on their mommyness, I find it...not annoying, not frustrating, but just fucking boring.

Also, there is something indefinable (for me, at least) about this blogger that just bugs me. I'm trying not to hold that against her, but still, the skin on the back of my neck spent the entire time I was reading Gonzo's blog trying to crawl its way up and over my head.

And, that's coming from the blog's resident conservamommy former Southern Baptist Sunday School teacher*. I snickered whilst imagining how some of you pinko commie heathens are going to recoil in horror, like vampires confronted by a garlic farm, from her defense of Glen Beck, complete with smarmy fat facial photo.

Gonzo Mama fancies herself a writer, and she's not bad. She's just not my thing. I don't believe there is anything she could do differently to make me care about her blog. We just move in different circles, and have different interests. VERY DIFFERENT.

The blog design is, frankly, hideous. The header color is pepto bismal pink and reminds me of my last horrid hangover. The background image looks like what I puked into the toilet during said alcoholic debacle. I can't help but think that perhaps that wasn't what Gonzo Mommy was shooting for, design wise, but since she named herself after Hunter Thompson, who the hell knows. At the least, she's confused.

I also find it difficult to muster the required enthusiasm for her politics, but I don't hate her. I just don't care. It's great that she's adopted all these children, but the fact that she then spends time online bitching about their mother's failure to pay for their back to school shopping, and that SHE TELLS THEM WHEN MOM FUCKS UP takes the shine off of her halo, for me at least.

My prescription to Gonzo Mommy is this: Girl, you need to watch a little Chris Rock. I want you to watch this entire episode. Taking care of children DOES NOT MAKE YOU SPECIAL. It makes you average.

You have this idea that you're St. Gonzo of the Rural Northwest, surrounded by evildoers, but you're AVERAGE. I am weary of self-righteous bible-thumping mommies parading themselves around rural and middle America these days, tea-bagging it up and patting themselves on the back as if they are the last residue of salt & light in this heathen world.

Goddamn. What WOULD Jesus do?

Would Jesus tell a kid that his/her mom didn't deliver on the back-to-school shopping money? Or would he just handle it?

Would Jesus listen to Glen Beck? Or would he change the channel post-haste on that slimey asshole?

Sometimes, I wish Jesus would hurry his sweet ass up and get back here so he could slap the shit out of some people. To be blunt, I'm not sure you know him like you think you do.

There are ten million snarky Jesus-and Glen-Beck worshipping mamas just like you polluting up the 'sphere right now, and most of us just don't care. In fact, I'd prefer it if y'all started up your own hen parties with warning signs so the rest of us could dodge them, and just clucked at each other incessantly.

Preferably, not online.

Lastly, when a woman who can't even bring herself to use the word "fuck" submits her blog here of all places, I have to assume that she was either dropped on her head at birth and is suffering from a TBI or is terminally stupid. Here's your rating:






*Nobody can deliver a jesus-smackdown like a recovering Southern Baptist.

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.

I'm a bitch, I'm a lover, I'm a child, I'm a mother

My son is sick. He's sitting on the big olive green chair coughing as if to emphasize this fact.

I'm sick. I got sick on Tuesday while working in Orlando this week, and have stayed sick now for a full 7 days. Someone asked me today if it was swine flu. I haven't been tested, but if half of Orlando and another unnamed Florida city come down with h1n1, it may in fact be my fault.

My dog is needy. She's crammed all of her 40 pounds into an 18 inch wide section of couch so she can lay her head against my leg and sleep. I hope we haven't infected her.

My daughter is annoying. She's disappeared right when I needed her to unload the dishwasher and help me fix dinner, so I'm on mom-strike, and writing a blog review.

Today is the worst possible day for me to review a mommy blog, because I'm full up on mommying today. The last thing I want to read about is more mommying. But, here we go.

3 Bedroom Bungalow, written by ex-pat Kat, is an exposition of contemporary military mom life while overseas in England.

Kat, as kindly as possible, you're doing it wrong. Reading your blog was actually painful for me, and I don't think it's because of the cold pills.

Kat has whiny children. Kat, why are you raising whiny children? The world is full up on whiny children, and they are not, in the least, amusing. It's our job, as mothers, to remove the whiny from our kids.

I'm not going to take this job upon myself, and publicly slap your children for misbehaving, but I will say that when people encounter you and your offspring in the grocery store, restaurants, and other public places, their faces assume a look of annoyance and like me, they wish that you would do your damn job as a mom.

Just from reading a couple of blog posts, I certainly wish you would. And you are posting about it, for all the world to read, as if it's cute. It's not cute. It's so not cute.

Kat does a lot of memes. A LOT. In fact, most of Kat's blog consists of meme posts. Kat...you're doing it wrong. That isn't blogging.

This blog is not the foulest piece of excrement ever to pollute the blogosphere. I'm sure some people like it, just like I'm sure that there are lots of people out there who like Kanye West and don't think he's a complete douchebag. I'm sure there are plenty of other moms out there who absolutely adore Kat's blog.

But, in my view, it's poorly (and sloppily written) and improperly punctuated. I have no interest in it. In fact, I have no idea why she submitted to us, or thought we'd like this hot sloppy mess.

I can't even get started on the template and the busy sidebar and all of the unnecessary shit this blog has going on. It's as if Kat submitted here with literally no idea of what we generally think about these kinds of blogs, or any regard, at all, for cleaning up this blog and making it presentable for anyone.

I give her

And this:



Go here. Read. Get better. Stop doing it wrong.

Evidence of what I always suspected

Stay-at-home mommybloggers are the bane of my reviewing existence.

I'm admittedly biased, but I envision the vast majority of these chicks sitting at home on their ever-expanding asses, watching way too much daytime television, ignoring their offspring, and amusing themselves online while their toddler attempts to french kiss the power outlet.

This blog bolsters all of my worst beliefs about full-time mommybloggerdom.

There are no adventures here. Instead, this blog catalogs how this mommy slacker lollygags about on the internet all day, working on blog designs and new photoshopped nonsense and giving away her hubby's hard-earned cash in the form of gift certificates in order to lure in other unsuspecting housewives into reading and sharing her drivel.

Here's the evidence right here:

Personally, I'm glad to have him out of here. Last week I overheard him tell the guy that works the evening shift what we do (blog, eat, t.v) and don't do(cook and clean) all day. Stool Pigeon!

As a working mom, if I found out that my spouse had been pulling this nonsense all day long while ostensibly caring for our children, I'd fire his/her ass pronto from the sweet SAHP gig, and tell him/her to get a job. And, with good cause.

This blog is crap. It's what happens when brainless morons collide with photoshop and too much free time.

Do you really think you'll look back on this time in your life and be glad that you sat on your ass in front of the computer/television, creating this mindless nonsense, instead of playing with your little ones?

There is nothing soulful, sweet, touching, interesting, or worthy of being put online on this blog. It's all cartoon colors and big fonts, and no substance. I tried to find one single stimulating, entertaining, and thoughtful post, and failed, utterly.

This blog is the Fruity Pebbles of the blogosphere, all Red No. 3, artificial flavorings, processed white flour, high sucrose corn syrup, and way too little fiber and protein. It will make your brain rot. As a mom, I advise you to stay clear of it. And, for that matter, actual Fruity Pebbles.

In all fairness, there are a few mommybloggers I don't hate. You mostly know who you are, but mad props to the drunken housewife. She remains my all-time favorite stay-at-home mommy, a woman who has refused to allow her brain to be gelatinized by the bloggy klatsche into tasteless pablum. Look to her as a role model, you silly bitches who keep submitting here in the misguided belief that we will fucking love you.

Now, .

Turn off the computer, go outside, play with your little boys, and do your fucking J-O-B. Read a book. Read one with no swooning virgins on the cover, even. Better yet, read some to your kids. Join a service club. Volunteer. There is more to being a parent than blogging about the fact that you are having a multi-year work vacation. Get a fucking grip, you twit.

It's good to be the queen

Love Bites: It's old home week on Ask, and like a case of the clap, the Queen is back, y'all. Here's a review from our long lost Queen Mutha...Didn't you just know she'd miss channeling her inner bitch?


Hi Y’all. It’s yo’ Mutha here. You knew you couldn’t keep me away. Sucks to be you.

My victim today is April, from April’s Little Family. April has a cute little blog with lots of adorable baby pictures and, for the most part, mercifully short text entries.

I can sum this up with the following formula, where ALF = April’s Little Family:



Have you ever rented a movie and found that it was just too inane to even bother watching to see how it ends? This blog is like that movie.

April likes to Twitter. Doesn’t that sound Spring-timey? Yes, here’s her recent twitter talk:

 ...sleepy
 kids and hubs are sleeping... house is quiet :-)
 ...and, it's morning againg :-)
 nighty-night everyone. sleep well :-)
 if you're looking for me, check the couch cushions.
 every time i start to feel good about life, i look at our credit card balances. then i feel like puking. blech.

Now that last entry - I can get into that. Let us into that dark place where credit worries are making you sneak a beer out of the fridge. But she’s not going there, at least not with us. Does April have a hidden secret blog somewhere? Does she have someplace where she writes about her latest shaving mishap, her secret sexual desires, about hiding her secrets from her husband, being so pissed off that she is just about ready to explode?

Nah, she’s perky.

Too bad, I like those dark, bitchy mommy blogs. I’m perpetually in search of the Alfred Hitchcock of mommy bloggers. Still, over 50 people are following her twitteronomy, so there must be something going on. I delve in to her archives to find something substantial:

Hubby stuff
baby stuff – Dear Lord in Heaven, YES! They’re cute already, can you stop now?
stuff about her colds
stuff about her house
car stuff
Some Very Long Posts, which strike me as haikus gone terribly wrong.

I did find one nice post about April hitting a man with her car. Otherwise, I’m getting nothing here.

Who should read April? The 55 people who already follow her on Twitter.

Who should NOT read April? Anyone else on the face of the planet.

How can it sum it up in a rating? One Very Dirty Diaper. This blog stinks and it needs to be changed. That’s your job, April.

Days of Whine and Neuroses

This is going to be quick, but scathing. I'm putting it in a numerical listy format for my own convenience because I have work coming out of my ass and eardrums (and it looks about as attractive as you'd imagine).

Today's victim: Days of Deerledge

Things we learn on this blog:
1. Sheri feels pretty.
2. Sheri has had 40,000 visitors in 4 years.
3. Avoid wearing spurs while squatting.
4. Sheri questions why people would read her blog, and if she should be blogging at all. (good questions)

Template issues:
1. Yellow. Yellow. And, more yellow.
2. Brown text, red titles and green dates. WHY?
3. Links are rollover to standard "link" blue. Which doesn't match the rest of the "design."
4. Weird, off-centered header appropos of nothing.
5. Strange google search bar at the top of the page.
6. Another gadget that appears to rotate random text for unknown reasons.
7. Status of the blogger, with corresponding picture.
8. Sidebar full of random widgety crap - needs to be cleaned up.
9. Drop down archives would be better, and Jesus Christ, when will people stop putting their blogroll in their sidebar for 4 inches worth of nothing?

This blog is far too old to look this crappy and amateurish. My fifteen year old could do a better design. Maybe Sheri should hire her child to do the revamp.

Content issues:
Topics range from the eternally compelling live tree versus fake tree debate to the type of meat eaten at New Year's festivities (ham).

Sheri has an odd habit of striking out text for no apparent reason. If you are going to strike out text, and it can be very funny, there should be some reason for it. I see no reason, whatsoever, to strike out "shooting the breeze" only to replace it with "talking." Clearly, you are using the strike function with NO REAL IDEA OF WHY IT IS USED.

And, the post I've linked here is a good example of what is wrong with your blog. You've taken a funny interaction between your co-workers and suffocated it with a heavy blanket of boring words. EDIT. Write a post, and then go through and take out every unnecessary word. EDIT, EDIT, EDIT. If you are going to put this dreck online, it becomes a reflection of you. You ought at least have sufficient pride to edit your work and take a few minutes to craft your posts into writing.

This blog is boring with a capital b. Maybe you're boring, maybe you aren't. Maybe you THINK you are boring. All of these, however, are curable conditions. Fucking do something about the fact that you are apparently spending the better part of your days living a drab and monotonous existence that bores you (and everyone else) to tears.

Frankly, I have no idea what to do with blogs like this. I don't know why people submit blogs like this to us, knowing what we will dismember them. This blog isn't writing, it is a daily diary, with comments. In that guise, it appears to be working for Sheri, who has made some online pals, and gets 3-5 comments per post.

For me, though, I would rather put a cactus up my ass than read Sheri's blog on a regular basis.

I don't know why people "write" blogs like this (and I use the term loosely, the creative and needful process known as writing is not happening on this blog), other than to connect similarly socially-challenged induhviduals.

I don't want to be mean to Sheri, she seems like a nice enough person, and I'm not going to tell her to quit blogging, because clearly it fills a social void in her life, but Christ With a Pancake on His Head, these blogs annoy the bloody stool right out of me.

I'm not suggesting that everyone or anyone should be blogging about rimjobs and anal sex, but for the sake of all that is unholy, put some thought into the words you put online. Your blog doesn't have to be a leather thong, but does it have to be pristine white cotton granny panties?

Sheri, I'm going to assume that you also realize that your blog is dreadfully dull, and you want help. Your submission is a cry for help, right? Your biggest issue is that you need to learn how to write a meaty, content-filled post. To that end, I've linked some bloggers that have managed to transcend the boring, and write about their lives (some stay at home, some working moms) with verve.

Hahn at Home
A Widow for One Year
Drunken Housewife

Don't write another post until you've spent at least 8 hours reading. You need to feed your brain some good writing to improve your output.

For now, I give you a short bus, with sincere hopes that you will improve.

Cribs

I'm back, fully rested, and with a vengeance. And woe to the poser mommyblogger who's volunteered her ass up for reaming today.

Momz, while she's link buddies with our dearly beloved Booms and the Hair Ripper, and Key's dirty slut, isn't really cut from the same cloth, blog-wize. I doubt she has even read our FAQ. If she had, she'd realize we hate messy sidebars, and ads at the top of the blog, and busy pictures/gadgets/shit all over the blog.

The blog design is way cute, but you've ruined it with too much crap. It's like Liam threw up all over your blog. Fix it. Get rid of at least 90% of the bullshit on your sidebars, including the photos. Give the photos a page of their own, and LINK to it from your sidebar. Get rid of the comment tracking gadget, the visitor arrived from gadget, and other similar bullshit that distinguishes you as a wet-behind-the ears newbie blogger. You don't need that shit. You don't need to promote your blog, either. You just need good content. THAT IS ALL.

So, on to the content of the blog: there isn't any.

Can we be any clearer in our FAQ that the point of blogging is TO WRITE?

Jesus Christ on a biscuit, these posts aren't writing. They are journal entries, like the ones kept by a breathless tweener girl..."i saw jimmy in the hall and he looked at me"

So, basically, you're keeping a capitalization and punctuation-free internet record of your son, but you, my dear, are no e.e. cummings. The shift key is your friend. And, apostrophes, commas and periods are important. They help to separate subjects, they make the subjects of your descriptive phrases clear, and they transition from one complete thought to the next. You're a big girl with a kid now, so your writing should reflect that, and it doesn't. I've seen the blogs of 13-year-old myspacers that look more adult than this, and have more depth of content.

Go look at Boomster's blog, and let her be your role model. The bitch FUCKING WRITES. She writes in complete sentences, and each post expresses a clear and complete thought. And, you don't.

If you actually wrote, I'd ream you for writing solely about your son, and posting nothing about YOU, but you don't write. So, at least you saved yourself THAT ass-reaming, by not writing.

Of course, as we all know, that's the difference between a blog, and a not-blog. Your "blog" looks like a blog, and it WANTS to be a blog, but it isn't. And, the cutest design in the world won't fix that problem. A blog means writing. And, you don't write. The. End.

I give you . Get a livejournal, you'll be happier.

So, beauty IS only skin deep

Goody fucking gumdrops.

I had myself a semi when I saw the name of the blog up for review, Tatooed Mama.

I have both tattooed, and I have a mama, so this should be right up my street.

‘Lovely stuff’ I thought, ‘we’ll get some great drunken inking stories from a spunky lady living it up with kid in tow’.

I was wrong. Very wrong.

Credit where it’s due, the blog looks good. Nice and pretty, not laden down with bling.
Also, she does state very clearly what the blog is all about:

“…marriage, tattoos, cupcakes, little one, my love for electronics, and even useful info.. You know, things that I think you need to know or buy.”

Hideously, that is very accurate.

That’s where the credit ends, why anyone other than family or stalkers would be interested is beyond me.

It’s very, very dull.

There are almost zero personal entries in there. So few in fact, I can show you the highlights.
This, as it includes her gorgeous daughter and farting noises, was funny. This, I thought would be the beginning of something interesting as I moved through the archives, but there it ended, and we were promptly back to frosting, or her blackberry, or one of her other sites, or why she’s changed her layout for the 643rd time.

Telling us over and over again that you are not a writer doesn't help matters.

Frustrating to read, especially when she gave a faint glimpse of some of the sarky attitude she has.

Oddly enough, on Monday I visited the blog and none of the navigation worked, everything landed back on the front page. Unfortunately for me, by Tuesday it was back in working order, but I soon found that the whole thing could have been easily summed up by those front page entries.

You seem like an interesting lady but you don’t show us any of it. Cute kid, interesting body art, but a dreadfully boring blog, and frankly I’d rather scrape the tattoo of Freddie Mercury off my scrotum with a rusty spoon than read another entry.

At best, I'm the wrong audience by a country mile, at worst this is so very, very:







(I guess I’ve blown my chances of having a freebie from the husband?)

Some Mommies Need a Punch in Their Uterus

I signed up with Ask and Ye Shall Receive to guest-review mommy blogs. I am a mother, a mommy blogger and I know what I like in a good mommy blog. Easy, huh?

I got cocky on my first gig last month, that one was a real peach. Not so with The Bean, the Brat and Bedlam. Heck, it was hard just to keep from slamming my browser shut after the first five minutes, out of sheer frustration. I wanted to find something great in this blog, but I didn’t find anything that flipped my switches. I sat at my computer for three hours picking this babe apart and came up nearly empty.

See, I am a mom a half dozen times over and even I, The Queen Mutha, got sick to death reading about the Bean and the Brat. I love kids, and yours are cute, but MAN, isn’t there something – anything else in your life but the running dialogue of the cute stuff your children have done/said?

Let the ranting begin:

Did you really say that you left your sleeping children alone to go out to a pot party? Or did I misread, please tell me you had a sitter, please? I bet the kids just loved Mom coming home smelling like pot.

[Note: I read later in the comments that you didn’t leave them alone, you have live-in help. Now, I am so completely envious of any help at all, let alone live-in help that I have to hate you all the more just on behalf of those of us who have to do it all alone.]

About those passive aggressive fights with the father of your kiddos, here’s a hint: the kids know. It’s fucking them up. Stop it now. Yell, scream, cry, but don’t use sarcasm and the silent treatment thinking that the kids are oblivious. They know.

Generally, it’s not great to label our kids – even in cyberspace – with titles like "Brat," unless you want them to be a brat. Wasn’t there anything a tad less negative that you could call him – maybe, "Little Shit or "Complete Waste of Sperm"? Do you call him Brat at home, even under your breath? He knows. Brat’s reading at three, Brat knows.

Still, there must be something going on here, she has 300,000 hits on her site and she’s not even showing her sweater puppies or saying naughty words. She’s a self-proclaimed journalist from India. The English is ok, not bad, but I knew from the start that English wasn’t her first language, maybe it was the long strings of Indian words with no translation listed that clued me in on that one. It adds a bit of flavor, but in the end, it wasn’t a flavor that particularly appealed to me. Funny, because I just love Kofta Curry.

Specific Ass Ripping, better known as, "let’s get into her template":

1. The banner was a photo of her kid, and then while I was reviewing it, she changed it to a plate, a red blob of yarn and a bright yellow circle (maybe a beer in a highball glass?). Bring back the kid. This one is meaningless and it sucks.

2. Oh, bloody hell! The posts are so goddamned long! I scrolled down to see what else there was on the front page. Tons of little kid photos, I scrolled and scrolled and scrolled. Then, just so that I could be a smart-ass, I went back up and started scrolling again, this time I counted how many turns of my mouse wheel it took to actually get to the bottom – you know, as in "how many licks it takes to get to the center of a Tootsie Pop" – It took 96 friggin' scrolls!

Come on! This represented 10 posts. My God....diarrhea of the mouth. You may think you’re a journalist, but in the real world of print/blogging, no one has the space or time for what you're writing. Cutting your verbosity would certainly improve this blog. Cut back your front page to about four posts and let the people who don't die of boredom delve into your archives.

3. Roll up your archives - and pick one – the calendar or the archives, we don’t need both. No one's going there anyway, they all died of boredom on the front page. Seriously, you have 300,000 hits and 34 subscribers who want you to punch this thing up.

I give it:
&



Note from Love Bites: If the incredibly nice Mutha ripped this blog a new one, just imagine what the rest of us would have done.

You can't handle the mommy wars

Earlier this week, I spent a couple of hours reading a blog from beginning to end. It's rare for me to do that. Most blogs we review on here, even the best ones, can't keep my interest for more than a couple of dozen posts. The ones that do pull me in are the ones with a compelling story that moves me emotionally beyond just mere interest or a laugh.

The people whose blogs I read daily are people who struggle, who are fully human--warts and all--and are aware of their own frailties. They show me their souls.

So, I was assigned to review this blog. I read for an hour or so, and made several visits. I have yet to see a blog with more words and less substance.

The most striking parallel I can offer is this. Read it. If you can read that goddamn post and not fucking cry like a baby, then you have a black soul-sucking abyss where your heart should be. Then, compare it to this.

So. Your template is like a hideous explosion in a scrapbooking store. Are you sure no one was injured in it's creation? I had awful visions of firefighters walking away from the scene, covered with flowered stickers. For the record, I hate that kitschy brand of faux cute. It's like those Vera Bradley purses that everyone in my neighborhood carries these day, overpriced and hideous. And everyone pretends to like them, and says how cute they are at the bunko party, and inside their heads, if they are sane at all, they are thinking, "Girl, in what world is a puce and hot pink paisley purse gonna match anything?"

Think of me as your crotchety old Aunt Ruby who will stand up in the Chuck-a-Rama and speak truths like: "Why are you wearing that ugly leopard-skin shirt?" The truth is: ugly is ugly. I have nothing to gain by lying to you and kissing your ass.

I would say that you write acceptably, if this were high school and the teacher was counting words on a page for an assigned number. At least, you use correct grammar and punctuation. However, after reading for an hour, I find that I don't give a good goddamn what you have to say because there is no heart. Even when you write about the mommy wars, you write meaningless tripe that doesn't even begin to scratch the surface of the complex issues and emotions involved, and even manages to misunderstand the perspectives involved.

Your blog is the same as millions of other blogs from standard-issue, boring, cookie-cutter, entitled, overpriced-kids'-clothes-shopping, SUV-driving, suburban women with too much time on their hands and an incredibly superficial view of the world and their place in it.

Every single one of your posts is about 3 times as long as it should be, and filled with so many words that reading them brought me within an inch of a fatal head explosion. Take this post. Do you not realize that it really could be said in a single sentence? Maybe two. How about this:

"I need to lose weight."

There's your post...5 words. Now, do the same with the others.

PEOPLE: Writing is more than stringing a bunch of words together on a page. If there is no point, DON'T FUCKING DO IT.

I don't hate you. Frankly, I can't muster enough energy to hate you. Your blog bores me to tears. I'm sure there are other people, just like you, who would read it. I'm not one of them.

Here's a life tip: Get off the damn computer. Go hug your kids. Thank your husband for the fence. Tell him that you don't appreciate him nearly enough. Give him a well-deserved blowjob. Go outside. Sit in the sunshine. Shut the fuck up. You can thank me later for this one, when you're old and wise like me, and have actually been through some shit.

I know you are probably going to think this is a hate-filled and unfair review, but in some tiny part of your soul, you also have to know that what I've written is true. Every post is an apologist treatise for your life.

Before I end, I want to show you some real, compelling blogging:

This.
This.
This.
This.
This.

Please, stop with the posing.

Goodie! More fucking mommybloggers

So, today, I'm reviewing another mommyblogger. Oh, she'll probably protest, and say that just because she drops the f-bomb occasionally or writes a post about her husband once in a while, she isn't one.

But 90% of her posts involve her child. This obsession with the "mommy self" to the exclusion of all else is the EPITOMY of mommy-blogging. Please, can't ya'll just join club mom and leave the rest of us alone? Please, can't you develop a fucking identity outside of your child? Read a fucking book once in a while. Get politically active. At the very least, DRINK MORE ALCOHOLIC BEVERAGES.

Okay, so the review...

Contentwise...you lost me at the first post.

I have serious decisions to make this week, i.e., which of the delicious 30-something men who wants to fuck me should become my next sexual bitch. Why on earth would I find your inability to discipline your child interesting?

I've been through the terrible twos with my own kids. It sucked ass. But I didn't fucking spew my misery all over the internet. I sucked it up, disciplined my kids, went to work, cooked dinners, and worked like a fucking mule without whining constantly about it. I didn't fucking have time for this self-indulgent infant navel-gazing.

I'm sure "the poo" is adorable. To you.

But, hearing about your inability to manage your child's behavior, to the point that no one else wants to spend a day with you in Disneyworld...THAT, I don't enjoy hearing about.

A personal note to this blogger:

As one mom to another mom, a word of advice. You have got to start setting boundaries for the poo. She NEEDS those boundaries. She is testing you to determine where those boundaries are. She needs to know that the structure of her life is solid and unmovable and trustworthy. If you don't give her those boundaries, and make them consistent and real for her, you are creating a scenario in which the poo is going to have problems all of her life.

Professionally, i work with the after-effects of no-boundaries toddlers in the teenage years. I highly recommend Cline and Faye's "Parenting With Love and Logic." Buy it. Read it. Live it.

Your child NEEDS you to step up and socialize her properly. Shoving cookies in her face because you don't want to deal with another temper tantrum is teaching her that there is a reward for acting badly. You are creating a hellion who is going to make your life (and her own) miserable. I don't say this to kick you while you are down, but because you need to realize there are serious, longterm ramifications to your failure to set and enforce these boundaries with your child. Reading your blog was literally painful because I know exactly where the poo is headed if you don't grow some cojones and start being the adult in the household who is in control of her life. And trust me...you do not want the poo ending up on my caseload.

Template: WAAAAAYYYY too much stupid busy shit in the sidebar. I do like a white background, but the spacing for the main column is screwed up on IE, pushing the right sidebar down to the bottom of the page.

Mommybloggers of the world...please, for the love of god, stop child-navel-gazing. As a general rule, post about your darling only one post in every 4-5 posts. Force yourself to reach outside the insular world of your child's life, develop some other interests (for the love of god, NOT scrapbooking), and think about something new. Read books that expand your mind, keep up with world events, get involved in something that can make a difference. Believe it or not, your child will actually benefit from learning, at an early age, that she is not the center of the known universe.

That is all. Oh, and a flaming finger for good measure.

p.s. why can't more mommybloggers be like Kristi? (aka: people I would drink with?)

Attack of the boring mommy bloggers

Hello, y'all, it's just cheerful ole me on this rainy spring day. I'm doing a two-some here because, frankly, I suck. And I forgot to do a review last week. But it is the first time...EVER. So there. I stick my tongue out at all the other slacker reviewers whose ranks I've joined.

Okay...first up: Temporarily Me. Oh, goodie. Another mommy blogger. Call me cynical and jaded, but as a mom with two kids, I'm not all that interested in reading about the exploits of a toddler. The new kid smell wore off a while ago. If you must blog about your kid, I have two thoughts: 1) short and pithy--make me pee my pants laughing or, 2) post pictures.

I like some things about this person...she has mommy whine wine nights. I love those. Her musical taste on her profile is decent but girl...HINDER? WTF are you thinking? That is just crap...the musical equivalent of potted meat...overprocessed and totally disgusting.

C'mon now.

The template? dearest, you way overpaid for this. Your template designer did a sloppy job cutting the graphic and putting it on your header. The text she used was practically illegible. There isn't enough contrast between the background colors and the link colors (pale blue on peach? Do you want to make me go blind?) And, she should have created cute text captions for you on the ACTUAL BACKGROUND COLOR. Sloppy, sloppy, sloppy.

In answer to the question of "are you tempted?" by temptation designs, the answer for me at least would have to be HELL NO. Just say no. You can get a way better design for free, truthfully.

And the colors are weird.

I give it one star because she's clearly trying, but this blog needs some help. And...just say NO to "blog explosion" and "rent your blog" too. ugh. Before you start pimping your blog out, why not make sure there is some worthy content there to pimp?



**********************************************************************


Next up...oh good, another Mommy Blog (aka: Who Said That Crap?). (sigh)

The layout? Much, much better. (Temporarily, do you see how her colors contrast so you can read her text and how the cute font matches the background? Now, go kick your lazy template designer's shoddy arse). It could be improved by getting rid of the blogger navbar (which your designer should have done for you). Way too much fucking crap in the sidebar. Consider drop-down boxes for the archives and recent posts. Get rid of everything after "contact me." And don't center your sidebar vertically, for Christ's sake.

The content? Zzzzz. No train wrecks, kinky sex, three-somes, or chick crushes for me here. And I have a few words of advice, straight from one of my blog crushes..."I do wish you would get over your unhealthy reliance upon the caps lock."

I'm sure your friends love it, but there is nothing of interest for me on either of these blogs. I gave blog #2 one star for effort.



And both bloggers should count themselves lucky that I am in a super good mood today, because truthfully, on a Monday, they'd have gotten flaming fingers.

Mommy bloggers, instead of blogging, why not get a nice livejournal or a myspace? Haven't you ever considered one of those? Because really, y'all want to network, not write. And that's what you should do. You won't need to pimp your blogs (and you are both TOO. FUCKING. WHITE. to ever use the term pimp) if you actually learn to write well...

(Brevity is the soul of wit. Read it. Learn it. Live it.)

ahem. Back to my regularly scheduled spring rainshower.

p.s. Make that "Attack of the Whiney Mommy Bloggers." Whoa. They hate me. They really hate me.

Again, people, we don't review the unwilling. Y'all submitted for review. You asked for it, and you got it. Now stop acting like whiney babies or