How Dare You?

Dearest Mongolian Girl, would you write a review for us? Because there's all this sex I've been having, and I forgot how to read. Thank you kindly, you are the tele to my vision. LYLAS.

In 1976 I was in 5th grade and my teacher, Mrs. Lowrey, took time to explain how the election of a US President happens. She then broke us up into ‘Camp Carter’ and ‘Camp Ford’ and explained how to campaign for our candidate. I was the ‘Camp Ford’ campaign manager. I organized my team, created posters, talked about the benefits of Candidate Gerald Ford to any elementary school kid who would listen, and did my best to inspire ‘Camp Ford’ to generate a Ford voting frenzy on the day of the election.

Everyone should vote! It’s your right to do so! Exercise your power by casting your vote! I won’t understand it if you don’t vote! I once had a fight with one of my Aunts because she doesn’t vote! Who doesn’t vote!? It’s crazy!

The end!!! (I think this little blurb was confusing, but am posting it anyway. Hope you don’t mind. Sorry about that.)

See how that works? See how I did that?

1. I’ve got a little story I want to tell you
2. The way I write this little story wouldn’t know depth if depth back handed it in the face with a crow bar
3. Since I know the way I’m presenting my story has no depth, I’m going to get all lazy and try to make my point by highlighting the shit out of my point with bold-ness and italic-ness
4. Also, I’m going to highlight my point even more by telling you I’m willing to fight with my Aunt about it
5. And then I’m going to let myself off the hook for posting my little depth-free story by saying I’m confused, saying I’m sorry, and asking for your forgiveness
   

Whatever happened to writing that tells the truth - gets down into the guts of it? The truth is that my 5th grade teacher, Mrs. Lowrey, was a tyrant that often had scotch for breakfast and had exactly 10 polyester pant suits that smelled so deeply of cat piss, scotch and cigarette smoke that, to this day, I can close my eyes and catch a whiff of it. It is also the truth that my rise to campaign manager of ‘Camp Ford’ was one of the first times in my young life that I was fully aware I was degrading myself by doing well at something I did not believe in. The fact is that I was a huge fan of Jimmy Carter but was afraid to say it after having done so once and getting a quick slap in the face from my mother as she yelled the word ‘stupid’ in a way that seemed to stab the four walls of the living room we were standing in.

Cee Kay is the author of “My Two Cents: Take it….. Or Leave It!!”. Even her description of herself leaves me wanting. She calls herself an optimist and opportunist and tries to back her claims by describing life handing her lemons and not only making lemonade, but also selling the lemonade and making air freshener from the lemon peels. Color me utterly unimpressed, uninspired, uniformed about who she is and bored silly.

Throughout her blog I found myself consistently thinking, “How dare you?” Honestly, Cee Kay, how dare you? How dare you bring to the fore such intricate, important, deep, and even bewildering topics and then lambast us with some kind of exercise in your ability to use the bold and italic features of your word processor.

From what I can gather (though it’s nearly impossible to be sure), Cee Kay and her husband and two daughters are from India but live in the US. She manages to make it clear that she is consistently negotiating and considering the fact that she is straddling two cultures, two generations and two realities. She describes the worthlessness afforded Indian women here and here, but then dissolves into some sort of finger wagging bravado that carries no weight. She doesn’t even bother to tell us how painful it must have been to realize the seriousness of what she is dealing with; how mind numbing and crushing it must have been when she first realized she was in disagreement with an entire culture.

Did you read that, Cee Kay?

Let me put it into language you seem to understand:

You tell us you are in disagreement with an entire culture, but the way you write about it DOES NOT inspire, inform or impress.

Let’s get to that letter you wrote to your daughters as a place to start – to see if we can’t rattle your cage a little bit. I actually kind of like that letter. It has some good points, but reads like one of those little books of inspiring quotes I pick up at the corner convenience store when I need a birthday present on the quick for someone I don’t know very well. (I swear, by the time I’m 70 I hope I’ve lost enough of this proper shit I go through on birthdays and spend one year buying everyone I know a giant dildo and some lube as a present.)

Your kids are cute as the dickens. And I know you love them and want to do well as a mother. But what is that letter going to actually do for them? What is it doing for you? I propose it does nothing in either case. It’s a bunch of empty, albeit well intentioned, gibberish about ‘Stand up for yourself’ and ‘Don’t take any shit’ and ‘Respect yourself’ that includes nothing about what it’s like to actually do those things when it’s the hardest thing in the world.

What would it be like if you revisited that letter and wrote about each of those things from the perspective of making them happen even when you’ve been alone, filled with rage, just been betrayed by someone you love and want to give up? What if you wrote about respecting and standing up for yourself even when you’re in the middle of an entire culture that completely disagrees with you? And please, if you intend to respond with some more of that tripe about making lemonade out of lemons, don’t bother. Just keep writing in capital letters and practicing being able to use your word processor’s bold and italic features.

I suppose this is a dare, but I’m not sure if I care to really make it. So many bloggers submit to AAYSR and then thank us for encouraging them to dig deeper; making grand statements of turning over a new leaf and then go on blogging with their half-witted, uninspiring drivel as if the whole thing never happened.

Maybe, Cee Kay, you will be different. Goodness knows you have enough grist for the mill.

Whether you do it or not, I promise I will be contemplating being 70 and buying everyone I know a dildo and lube on their birthday.



for knowing what you're dealing with.





for not having the guts to really write about it.

I LOVE MY SANDALS!!! THANK YOU SANDALS!!!

Hi Kaylyn! It's me, Mongoliangirl. Thank you for submitting your blog for review here at Ask. It's always a pleasure to have the opportunity to review a thing or ten from the blogosphere.

And now for your review...

...oh wait! I've got something else I'd like to share first!

My head exploded because I lost my glasses and my cell phone in the same week and then I got BIG NEWS! Yesterday I thought I was going to fall asleep in this meeting I was in because I sat in the most comfortable chair in the room and I was thinking I had to stay awake or it would make me a very, VERY rude person. I would like to have one of those chairs in my living room. I HATE THE MALL!!!!! Sorry for yelling. Did you know writing in ALL CAPS means someone is YELLING??? My friend James taught me that a few years ago when I sent him an email in ALL CAPS. He thought I was yelling at him and I didn't know why until he told me typing in ALL CAPS is technospeak for, "I'M YELLING!!!" In other words, I just yelled, "ALL CAPS" twice!!! Thanks James! You're the best friend I ever had!!! You teach me about life!!!!

OK...um...tahtah for now, Kaylyn! Thanks for reading! Rock out, sister!!! Thank you to everyone who has made my life good! Yay! You!! : ) Yay!

See? See how that works, Kaylyn? Just when you got geared up to read the review of your blog, you had to deal with a bunch of tidbits, trivia and surface tripe about my life.

That's what your blog does. Your 'About' page describes dealing with an event that caused you and your husband to realize you were on a path that was going to take you nowhere. And then...

You claim a photographer not showing up caused your head to explode, while right in front of you is a graffiti covered building about which I wish you would write a story.

You actually post about the number 9. I learn that a nonagon is a polygon with nine angles and nine sides.

You tell us you discover the true identity of your father by way of finding a letter in your mother's things after she has died, and then...

Post after post after post about a rafting trip? Really? Kaylyn?

Look, I get it Kaylyn, I really do. I have family members and friends that I like to communicate with as well. OK, wait, let me rephrase that. Most of my family members would like to stab me in the fuckin' face. Whatever. My point is that day to day frustrations and events are best served by the likes of facebook, email, twitter, skype and various and sundry other communication tools. (Yeah, I know you posted about hating facebook and twitter. Get over it.)

In other words, why the hell are you blogging? If it's to say, "I LOVE YOU EVERYBODY!!!" or "I LOVE MY SANDALS!!!"; get a facebook account.

If it's to fully tell your story, then it's time to get busy.

Why not go back to that graffiti covered building and tell its story? When are we going to hear more than a newspaper-like report about when, just eleven months into a marriage, you were told your young husband may die or, at the very least, be paralyzed from the neck down for life? What was it really like discovering the true identity of your biological father by way of a sealed letter after your mom died? I mean, you told the DJ's on the 'Morning Zoo' about it; why not us? I don't know about you, but I'm guessing lots of people would go through a very serious period of, "What the fuck, Mom?" Where is that story?

There's no reason you can't put something together, Kaylyn. Seriously, your writing is clear and straightforward, and you've already avoided some blogging snafus such as a bunch of random clutter in your sidebar or never ending posts.

At this point I'm only inclined to give you a MEH. But I'm going to put you in my reader and see if you can't dig in and give us something a little closer to your core. Otherwise, I'm guessing you'll never exercise the internal muscle it's going to take to be able to write that book. And no, the internal muscle I'm talking about exercising has nothing to do with learning how to do a nice, solid set of kegels.



P.S. I LOVE MY HUSBAND!!!!!
P.P.S. JACKAMO SACKAMO WOW!!!
P.P.P.S. Here are a few places to learn a thing or two about telling your story:
Post Picket Fence
Praying to Darwin
Sometimes I Make Lists
P.P.P.P.S. Let's all have a moment of silent reflection, Askers, to be amazed by how little I used the word fuck, and that I did not once threaten to retrieve my crow bar. ROCK ON!!! I LOVE YOU!!!

Kicking Cripples Ain't So Funny

Guest review today by Mongolian Girl.

When Hellbilly and I were first dating, we hung out at my house a lot. In the beginning I kept many things hidden from him. Mostly the things in my kitchen, pantry and my fridge. No, I don't keep my Black & Decker Power Pecker collection in the kitchen; that is kept in a colorful Easter basket in the bedroom closet. I didn't want Hellbilly to see the way my kitchen items were organized. Spices all faced forward and were in alphabetical order, refrigerated items all faced forward and were kept in like categories, and having more than two kitchen towels in use at the same time was highly disturbing to me.

One night I finally decided to reveal the truth of my kitchen to him, "I want you to see the stuff in my kitchen pantry and the fridge," I said, then led him to the kitchen, opened the doors to the fridge and pantry, and stood back and watched him 'oooh' and 'ahhhh' over the tidily organized, facing forward, alphabetized items.

When he finally pulled his head out of the pantry he turned toward me with a strange look on his face and said...

Don't worry Askers, I'll get to that later.

The first thing I want you to know is that Jay is fucking hilarious. I mean, I've read some funny shit on the internet, but rarely do I come across a writer who is consistently so funny that I wish they had been a life-long friend. I am not kidding when I tell you I wish I met Jay in first grade or something and had been entertained by him ever since.

His humor is not forced or contrived. It seems completely natural when he writes of a giant spider as something "You would beat to death with your mother if that's what it took," or watching Carmen Diaz in the movie 'In Her Shoes' and then writing, "Her portrayal of a functionally illiterate alcoholic whore was shockingly dead on, almost as if she had been preparing for it her whole life."

He made up a 'pink taco' rating system for chick flicks he forced himself to watch during the entire month of May, and takes a boring old 'My best friend barfed in a bar' experience and turns it into something I wish I had been there to witness.

He even gets away with posting about Craigslist (something that normally makes me want to shove a very sharp pencil into the ear canals of bloggers who try it) by recounting a story of having communicated with a photographer about taking pictures of the events of the fictional 'Furry Fandom & Fantasy' club. Read it for yourself. Yes it's long, but Jay carries it off so well that I even found myself wishing he had responded to our ad on Craigslist for free horse manure with some kind of contrived story about needing a trailer full for some kind of feces fetish club meeting.

(No, no you don't have to start going on and on about the fact that Hellbilly and I actually would take a trailer full of horse shit to some fetish club meeting and watch them slather it all over their nekkid bodies.)

Let's get back to that story about my fucked up facing-forward-alphabetized kitchen, shall we?

When Hellbilly finally pulled his head out of the pantry he turned to me and said,
"Um, that's just straight up fuckin' scary."

And he was right.

Yeah, finding a kitchen full of alphabetized, facing forward items is fascinating and even funny at first. But it's also scary because it was one of the strange ways I had been compensating for the fact that my life had been completely out of control in the years before I met Hellbilly. I had been in a horrible marriage, moved three times in two years, and had been dealing with a bizarre and vicious legal battle with some of my own family members. Being obsessively organized was a busy, albeit ineffective, way to control something in the middle of a bunch of shit that was out of control.

I kept feeling like something like that was going on with Jay's blog. Yes, I kept admiring his writing, his humor and his made up Craigslist character and pink taco rating system. But I also kept having a gnawing feeling that something was going on. Something was 'off' or 'underneath' or....

...and then I found this, and this, and this.

These posts all contain Jay's great writing and sense of humor, but something was causing him to to use those natural abilities to degrade others. It was a classic case of going for the low hanging fruit. There is a tinge of making fun of victims of domestic violence. Instead of being curious and fascinated by a crazy old story teller on a bus, he turns him into a worthless and smelly waste of space. And *gasp* he makes fun of those of us from the south, which, of course, makes me want to go all southern on his ass by lathering his backside up with an extra special personal lubricant we like to call 'Ass Jack', and then letting a few of our neighbors assist him by helping him become stump broke.

But you know all of this, don't you Jay? You actually state you have a policy of 'non-transparency' on your blog, but then get clear about this.

Throughout your blog you also slide in little one liners about dealing with 'mama drama', alcoholism, having financial stress, something like 42 different jobs, a wife and three children. At first I thought you might be one of those bloggers who doesn't get into things you consider too personal or too 'past', but then I realized you link to your wife's blog, and she says it all.

You have this about wanting to achieve balance, but it is something that makes me think of that thing people say when someone isn't fully in touch with their heart or guts:

"You are living from the neck up."

You even titled your blogroll 'mental crushes' and decided this (www.geniuspending.com/2008/10/your-turn.html) was the only information you really wanted to know about your fellow bloggers.

One of the challenges given to me when my blog was reviewed (by Miss Missives, whose leg I am still planning to dry hump) was to, once a month, choose a topic I was afraid to write about and do it anyway.

Yeah, some of the crap that has come out of that challenge has been painful, but getting rid of it has also lightened the load and, if I do say so myself, made my writing and sense of humor even better.

Maybe that would help, because I would hate to see you keep your policy of 'non-transparency' and keep dipping into that crappy territory of using your talents to, even slightly, degrade another person or class of people. You just don't seem like that kind of guy.

Yes, I read your post about how you think part of the reason people blog is to gain readers. That may be true, but is that really why you are blogging? I don't think so. I think you know you have talent and humor falling out of your ass and it's time to get busy with whatever it is that is getting in the way of it from time to time. Bottom line, I think you will end up more disappointed if you use your natural talent to degrade others than you will if you never end up with a huge amount of readers.

Having an 'About Me' page would also help. Actually, it's a must. Otherwise you don't give us a place to start. I also think your sidebar is crap. So you Tumblelog, Twitter, Facebook, have a reader and a Picasa Album. Whoop-tee. Whatever. It's just too much, especially when it's slapped into the middle of your polls, tags, followers, recent comments, 'seen elsewhere' thingy, and popular post. Jesus Harold Christ on a rubber crutch, Jay? What the hell is going on over there? Get rid of some of that shit or, at the very least, just make a whole page for most of it to get it off of the front of your blog.

Some assignments:
1. Figure out how to make a decent (i.e.. less than 10 fucking minutes and contstantly interesting) vlog here.

2. Examine using a brilliant sense of humor without degrading others here.

Take a lesson in dumping the rough stuff here.

I really do.

But this and this is what I'm going to haunt your comments section with for the rest of my wicked life if you don't get to whatever the hell it is that has that lame ass degrading bullshit seeping out of your system from time to time.