High Speed Dirt

Greetings flesh bags. It's been a while, and I can't say I've missed you. Since my last review, I've gained a few hundred pounds, broken an opposable digit, and have lost all interest in blogging - reading, writing, and reviewing. The good lady hid my PS3 controller to accelerate my healing, and I haven't hunted a dim-witted herbivore in the last month. I am PISSED off and sure as hell hope I'm reviewing fuckin' Wodehouse today.

No? Fuck me and my broken claw then. "My Tumbling Thoughts to the World ...beware, here I come" (fuck, fuck, fuck) treats visitors with a list of "Amazing people who make me go on n on n on:)". I had flashbacks of karaoke nights in a basement bar, peanut shells, the overwhelming smell of urine, and asshole frats "ironically" singing Journey. And they ask me why I hate people.

When I visit a new blog, I usually page down to the bottom to get a quick look at the sidebar, template and general design. Not that I care about aesthetics, but historically speaking - crappier the sidebar, worse the content. But hey, if she has so many awards, she must be AWESOME right?

Sure, English is not your first language Suruchi, but must you make it so hard? You're a teacher, and your profile reads

I think I am wise, which makes me the unwisest of all theoretically...but rest assured, I can be what I wanna be and there's so much in me that I wanna share

If this were the first class of the course, I'd be getting ready to drop it right about now.

So what does a harebrained teacher write about? There's advice on kissing, new-age bullshit, and random thoughts no one deserves to be subjected to. It's one part emo, two part mommy blog - but complete bullshit whichever way you slice it. You yack about how you're different and how wise you are. But your writing simply can't shake off the unmistakable smell of bullshit.

I had a lot of trouble getting through your writing, and a small part of it was due to your frequent switching to Indianese. There's nothing wrong in using other languages in passing if they're translated (or obvious) and used in the proper context. But "writing" like you're "talking", and all the time at that is utter tripe. Also, you do know that writing like *this* is to *emphasize* something, and that the helpful duo (parentheses) are used to interject sentences? Right? Right? *RIGHT*? And, why in the name of Vishnu do Indians use so many ellipses? You have a full sized keyboard, and presumably a normal sized brain, what's the deal with the chat acronyms?

You don't seem to check yourself in light of your identity for all to see, but is this the best you can do? We get people who can't reach their full potential because their mothers and cube neighbors are frequent visitors, and we advise them to go anonymous just to explore their boundaries. I'd suggest the same for you, but only to spare your loved ones from the trash you churn out.

This showcases almost everything that's wrong with your writing. When you aren't stabbing grammar in the balls with a corkscrew, you get all cutesy, mix up tenses, styles of speech, overuse ellipses, use languages I don't understand. Even if I were to ignore fuckin' ALL of that, there's absolute no substance in a page long post. And for God's sake SAY FUCK WHEN YOU MEAN FUCK.

An hour at her blog, and I was down three glasses of my cigar malt but got nowhere close to finding something redeeming. To entertain myself, I began scrolling wildly, and came up with a composite post from a page of Suruchi's manure farm.

Presenting... the best post ever.

And suddenly I hear moans...
She put her fingers lovingly against the flaccid face of Sushant, the deepest of peaceful sleep spreading across his pallor.
Where men get ready to fist a loafer’s face blue if he raises so much as an eyelid at the girl on his arm...
What maximum can happen?
Come out...say as you feel...be as you are...

That got boring quick, so I substituted words in her posts to keep me going.

Between the duration when a vibrator would reach from the ground floor to his doorstep through the elevator, he said he would have written an article.

I was having an interesting conversation with a dear friend the other day when a kind of penis appeared quite conspicuously to the fore!

Fuck this shit. As bad as the writing is, there are several dozen "readers" to keep her going, and I think that's a tragedy nearly as big as this blog is.

Suruchi, get on the bus. And here's another for your "followers".



Also, since you like awards, here's one. You know where to stick it. *Your sidebar is an option*

Jidhu What Jighotta Do

PREFACE: Part of me loves posting on Fridays because it's a great way to wrap up a week, but part of me wonders if Friday is a bad day of the week for getting the community involved. I mean, my last review only got 8 comments, and we all know that the only way to determine the value of a blog entry is the number of comments that are on it, right? I just wonder if I am getting an accurate reading on my worth and value as a person?

Thank you for sitting through that with me. Now on to today's review.

Before offering up a review of today’s blog, I wanted to make sure I was clear on what it was that the author thought he was doing, so I asked Shiner to forward to me the content of the review request.

This is what he had to say for himself:

Name of Your Blog: Jidhu's Reflecton
Your Blog's URL: http://www.jidhu.blogspot.com/
A Brief Description of My Blog: Its my reflection

Well, if this is true, than Jidhu must look something like this when he ganders at his own appearance in the mirror each day:



Because I swear, this guy has never met a blog gadget he didn’t like.

I can usually overlook something like that, as long as I can find the links to the archives, but today, I can’t. All those gadgets take forever to load, and they really get in the way. That's one really big demerit right there, son.

Bypassing the template issues for now, then, how well is Jidhu doing with making his blog “his reflection?”

Well, shit.

I don’t know.

I’m just going to come right out and say it. The writing needs a lot of work. Ignoring the mechanics of his English (which needs the most work, but I'm allowing for cultural differences here – “Just expecting something and nothing do for the expectations is a wastage for us.”), the written content is almost completely and totally uninspiring. Which is really sad, because I think he’s shooting for profound and insightful. He seems to be doing a ton of copying and pasting from other sources, or posting things other people have written. But the end product comes across as trite and clumsy.

Let me give you a f’rinstance. He has this topic series in which he shows pictures of Life Lessons on post-it notes. One in particular was “Stop and smell the roses.” After which he provides a full paragraph on what it means to “stop” and another on what it means to “smell the roses.”

Maybe it’s just me, but I didn’t need that explained to me. I've been stopping and smelling the roses for a long time.

Okay – here’s another f’rinstance: He published a post laying out ten things he wishes to learn in the future. As I read it, I couldn’t help but wonder why he set his sights so low. I mean, he had “ironing” and “to wear a tie” on this list. If I made a list like this, I don’t know what I’d put on it, but I am pretty sure that I wouldn’t include things I could learn tomorrow from a “how-to” video or a Tech book.

And what the hell am I supposed to make of this little gem? I mean, I can't even get worked up about Jidhu being all emo and shit, because he never gets to that level of navel gazing.

In fact, the only time that Jidhu’s writing stops coming across as very self conscious and pseudo-profound and fake is when he’s talking about the subject he seems to have the most passion for – computers and technology. Sure the subject matter is not always my cuppa, but out of the blue, the writing sounds and feels free and original and possibly, dare I say it, even a more accurate reflection of the author.

Of all the posts I read, the one about how to revert to a Windows XP installation after upgrading to Windows 7 was my favorite. Really. And I happen to LIKE Windows 7. (When I went to get you a link to it here, I didn’t think I was going to be able to find it again. All of those gadgets and not a single fucking way to do a simple text search?)

Now that I think about it, I can't be 100% sure that Jidhu didn't just crib this from another source.

The non written content – the photos – range from thought provoking and intriguing to “why-the-hell-did-you-post-this?”

Fine. I don’t like it. I won't be coming back. I don't think I know anyone who would like it. I can’t recommend it to anyone. I wonder what the point of it is. So, given that, what can Jidhu do to improve?

• Identify something that you care passionately about. Politics, food, the color orange – I don’t care – and write 500 words on why it is so important to you. Not, why it should be important to someone else. Why it is important to you.
• Find your own voice. Stop trying to be someone else.
• Find clarity of thought first. Then write.
• If you have nothing to say, then say nothing. Don’t write just to boost output.
• For the love of all that is sacred to you in this world, get rid of all of those blog gadgets and get real, son!

Good luck.

Oh, wait. You wanted a rating. Didn't you? I'm finding it hard to invest in you emotionally long enough to do this, but what the hell.

Here you go:

I'll keep your resume on file should something more fitting become available

Dear Ms. Adarkcomedycalledlife,

Thank you for your interest in the position available for New Blogger In My Reader. I am pleased to inform you that we have finally had the chance to consider your application and I do apologize for the delay, but we have been absolutely inundated with applications for this post. Furthermore, as you may know, school funds have been recently cut and, with the teacher layoffs and the cutbacks and all, well, I've fallen a little behind despite all the overtime I'm pulling, knee deep in copyright infringement, xeroxing workbooks 'til the wee hours.

You may be aware that the New Blogger In My Reader position is highly sought after, considering that I am one busy ass motherfucker that doesn't have time to read things that put me to sleep and there are literally millions of applicants to consider. To be quite frank, while you possess many positive skills and traits, I just don't think you're a suitable fit for the position. But in all fairness, I'm willing to keep your resume in the applicant pool for other positions if I can get some clarification on the lingering doubts I have regarding your, uh, material:

Why? Why? Why? Why? Why?

Come on now, focus. Why the fuck?

Let me pose another question for you to percolate over: Do you find that when you are reading those books you are always tiresomely blogging about that the authors give page after page of mind-numbing lists where the reader is required to piece together the tattered scraps of an almost-narrative because the author is too lazy to do it for them? Do you think you would want to read a book like that? I didn't think so.

Regarding your blog title, how severe do you think my funny bone blue balls were upon realization that your blog does not actually contain one smidgeon of dark humor? You showed up for the interview at least looking like you'd showered, a neat enough sidebar without overwidgetification, and you weren't wearing a pink polka dot suit or anything. I had such hopes that this would go well, but then why did you have to go and open your suck hole?

For the purpose of brevity and to not overwhelm you with too many questions to reflect on, I have one remaining issue that needs clarifying: What in the hell is the point of continuously blogging about blogging? If blogging is really all you think about, why not consider focusing on the actual writing and storytelling aspect so that your blog will grow its own wings and not need you whimpering in the background about the tedium of the activity of blogging itself which no doubt dizzies your readers in a circular cycle of redundant redundancy? Hint: endless meme-type posts where you tag a bunch of people is not storytelling, it's lazy ass blogging. And well, given the workload, I just don't think I can add a lazy blogger to my team at this time.

While you're thinking these things through, I will give you an initial score so you can know how you fared for this particular position and more or less where you stand with our firm. But I hope you do not get discouraged and are willing to consider other positions that may become available in the near future such as Rambling Lady On My Street Corner or Forgettable Person At The Bus Stop.








Otherwise, best of luck with your continued search for a position in people's readers.


Yours sincerely,

MadameB
Director of the Hiring Committee for My Fucking Reader

All the News That's Fit to Ignore

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


Dear The Editor,

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

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

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

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

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

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


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


• PUAs are pro-abortion²

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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


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


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


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


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


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


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


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


• And many more!³

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

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

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

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








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

Patsy Cline is Waiting to Kick Your Ass in Three Acts

Act I:

Folks, I do believe that it is time to bust out the razor studded cluebat, as today’s lucky contestant is in desperate need of some (ahem) correction.

For starters, Jacki Trew’s delightful little blog is titled "Insanity Now Has a Website" and the URL is JackiIsCrazy.blogspot.com. When you are 15 years old, calling yourself CRAZY or INSANE feels like a logical choice. You feel like you don’t fit in. You feel weird all the time. Maybe you’re moody. Maybe you’re filled with rage. Maybe you are really unpredictable. And yeah, that feels pretty crazy at the time.

But then months pass and soon you realize that this is normal – everyone feels this way – and you are no more crazy than the next very average student treading the halls of your school. And by the time you’re 16 or so, you no longer think it’s cool to call yourself Crazy or Insane.

Insanity Now Has a Website? I don't fucking think so.

You see, Insanity already has had tons of websites: the APA, CharlieManson.com, theflatearthsociety.org, scientology.org, peta.org, etc. What you bring to the table is not insanity. It is impulsiveness. It is occasionally inappropriateness. It is a disregard for some of society's norms. It is an obsession with reality television. But it is not insanity or craziness.

And by the time you are 21, you should know better.

Real crazy and real insane is actually scary and dangerous. Not fun. Real crazy is hanging off the edge of the Golden Gate Bridge or hearing voices that aren’t there telling you to kill John Lennon. And calling yourself crazy when you actually aren't isn't actually cute.

Act II:

Allow me to read aloud from the Hard and Fast Rules section of the Book of AAYSR:

"5. NO AUTOPLAY MUSIC. NEVER, EVER, EVER. UGH."

Jacki – did you read the FAQ before you submitted? Did it occur to you at all that THIS:

just might have been what the fuck we were talking about? I mean, autoplay music is never good, but Kylie Minogue? Really? What fucking decade is this anyway?

So right now, based on what I have seen, you are getting one big fat assed You’re Doing It Wrong from me.

As soon as you have finished reading this sentence, go to your blog and remove the autoplay music. Did you do it? If I go and check right now, will I see autoplay music in your sidebar? I am not above hopping a flight to Sydney and tracking you down and kicking the teeth right out of your head if I have to. Sure, it’ll cost me a fortune and I’ll probably be arrested for assault, but I will have done humanity a favor.

As for the crazy thing – child, please. Be your own person. Stop writing in this extended Facebook status update and start fresh and new in a new blog that doesn’t have crazy or insane in the title or URL. Or in the content, unless you actually go on anti-depressants or something. Mmmkay?

Act III:

Alrighty then. Now that my pet peeves have been dispatched, let’s roll up our sleeves on what we actually do have here.

Jacki has been doing this a long time. And, as I alluded to above, she started this in 2004, when I assume that she was 14 or 15 years old. So, it is reasonable to assume that there would be a lot of shit in the beginning and in the middle that’s all: “So and so is a big poopyhead” and “I hate my school” and all of that teen angst bullshit. And you would be right. Don’t bother with that. Especially since early on, she was doing the whole experimenting with multiple colored text thing. And for a while settled on gray text, which probably would have worked well, if her background color weren’t black. But it is, and so it doesn’t.

At some point along the way she found a voice. Sure, that voice talks way too much about things I don’t give a rat’s ass about – reality TV, actors over whom she is swooning, being a semi-responsible adult, etc. – but it is still an amusing voice at times. A slightly skewed perspective on her life, which is pretty normal and ordinary, and that skewed perspective takes the boring and mundane and makes it somewhat worth reading about.

If only she would drop the immature adolescent references to “crazy”. So, for the autoplay music and the near constant references to crazy and insane:



But because I am not a complete dick, I give you this for making me smile on occasion:

Your Shit Is Bananas

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Stitch this, Bitch

Hello. This is Shagnasty. I didn't get any sort of awesome italicized introduction when my first review was posted. Fucking lame, Shiner. LAME. Anyway . . .

When I was 12-years-old, my mother decided it was time for me to learn how to sew. She plopped me down in front of her 20-year-old Kenmore machine to go over the basics. However, before I was allowed to sew anything, she insisted on telling me this story:

"When your aunt was learning how to sew, she wasn't paying attention and sewed clean through her hand. There was so much blood! And she couldn't get her hand out of the sewing machine! She was screaming bloody murder, and the poodles were yipping and yapping all over the place, and your grandma almost had a heart attack!"

Being a neurotic 12-year-old girl with a vivid imagination, in my head I could see the needle piercing my tiny hand over and over again, leaving me looking like some Mary Shelleyesque freak. I burst into tears and refused to continue, despite my mother's desperate apologies.

My traumatic introduction to sewing was comparable to reading this craft "blog".

Lady, I'm not sure how you found us, and I'm wondering if you even read the URL to this site, let alone reading the FAQ. Oh well. Here you go . .

Aesthetically, your site is okay. Fairly simple design, with lots of pictures of the projects. However, there's too much shit in the sidebars and the site isn't very organized. The "About Me" is halfway down the page (just a link to the generic Blogger User Profile). The first thing in the sidebar is a link to your Etsy store. Mucho tacky. Also, there are only two posts per page.

You also have a lot of links to other crafting blogs. If you're trying to have some sort of online quilting bee thing, that would actually be pretty cool. But I kind of suspect you're just doing it to participate in the huge mommy blog circle-jerk though.

To be honest, Shannon, I'm not sure what you're going for with this blog. It's not really a personal site, because I have no clue who you are. Therefore, I don't really care about why you're making these crafts. If it was a personal blog, with an occasional craft twist to it, I could deal with that, but it's not.

By that, I mean that it's not really a professional crafting site either. You call it a crafting guide, but then you only show how to do a couple crafts. When you finally get around to giving directions, they're filled with asinine personal fluff that no one cares about.

Some posts read like an ad for the product. In others, you just give a link to another site, while showing pictures of what you created. Why would someone choose to read your vapid writing, when they can just follow the thousands of blogs that give directions for unique crafts the site owner has created on their own? Maybe your mom cares enough to see your artwork on your cyber-fridge, but the rest of the internet doesn't give a shit because you're an adult.

The rest of your posts are of the "I'm gonna post a real blog soon, I swear!" variety. Don't fucking post ANYTHING unless you're gonna post something real. If you don't have time to do crafts and blog about it, then just do crafts and give up the blog. To quote you, "Easy Peasy!"

That's another thing. You're a grown-ass woman. Using emoticons and excessive exclamation points is juvenile for a personal blog, and unprofessional for a craft blog. Please, for the love of baby Jesus, stop sounding like a teenager.

Anyway, since you refer to Martha Stewart by her first name only (which is just fucking creepy), I'm giving you this awesome picture of Martha dressed like a yeti with sticks on her head:


And because I can't figure out what the hell you're doing, you get a:

Excerpts from my overwhelming emotion

I was reading this blog. Well, actually I was reading the excerpts from the blog! I know! I know! It’s confusing! I assumed this meant that the real blog was somewhere else and what I was reading was just the crème de la crème! Well, let me tell you, I felt a mix of confusion and excitement and kept on reading! My heart was beating out of my chest! And boy oh boy was I glad I persevered!

You see, Nilu is an Indian lady living in America with a swell family and shitloads of words of wisdom! She's a real funny gal! I’m not gonna tell you why. How about you just take my word for it? Because, you see, that’s kinda how she writes. She just tells us something was funny or great without actually transmitting any of the humor or emotion of the situation at all. But you know what? The exclamations points themselves were enough for me to know just how goddamn exciting everything was! Oh man alive! You wouldn’t believe how much!

I know some of you will think some of her posts are downright idiotic, but I don’t care! Some of you may think that the only funny thing she has ever written was the screamingly inappropriate letter that nearly got her fired from her job two hours before her shift ended on her last day of work! Not true! After an hour of perusing her blog, I know the truth! Besides, who needs good storytelling when we have superlative forms of punctuation!?!?








Thank God I only had to read the excerpts.

Mayor of Red Flag Town

Several years ago, I was all about the online dating. At one point, I'd lined up dates with six different dudes in a matter of two weeks. Through all those coffee dates fraught with weirdos in dad jeans and potential kidnappers/rapists/murderers, I started doing something to prevent my time from being wasted by asshats.

As soon as these dudes would contact me, I'd begin mentally tallying their "red flags". Nothing makes me lose my lady-boner faster than a couple red flags. And nothing makes me lose my blog-boner faster either.

But that's exactly what happened when I began reading The Cool Jerks, which was created to help dudes understand how to meet and date women.

BLOODY RED FLAGS ON FIRE. ALL. OVER. THE. PLACE. PEOPLE. "Twiggy" doesn't understand women, and he sure as hell doesn't know how to blog. And since he is inept at both, how the hell does this toolbag expect to give online advice about women?

Answer: He can't.

Red Flag #1 - First impressions actually matter, Twigster, and you don't seem to give a shit about the impression you're making.

• You have two sidebars filled with meaningless shit. It's like you've dowsed yourself in Axe Body Spray. Less is more, dude.
  
• You have redundant tabs and "click to read more" posts. You look messy and lazy, and in desperate need of a makeover, which is just waaaay too much work.
• You're asking for PayPal donations. What the fuck for? You cheap bastard.
• You have tons of paid-to-click advertisements. You're into money more than you're into self-development. Classy.
  

What's pathetic is all of that could have been prevented, but . . .

Red Flag #2 - You never read our online profile before contacting us.

Did you read the FAQ before submitting here? Fuck no, you didn't. Thanks for making it obvious you care more about getting web traffic, than about having respect for our time, asswipe. Really, what you were looking for here is the blog review equivalent of a "wham, bam, thank you, ma'am".

You need to sweet talk the lady, get to know her a bit, and if you're lucky enough to climb her bell tower, you need to make sure you ring her fucking bell. As of now, I feel objectified, used, and completely unsatisfied. Nice job.

Red Flag #3 - Your online profile says nothing about you.

The "About Us" tab just reiterates what's on your home page. I had to trek halfway down your sidebar and click a link to ANOTHER site, before I got a legit "About Me" page. The only reason I took the effort to figure out who the hell you are, is because I'm reviewing your site, not because I actually care.

If you make it too hard for someone to get to know you, they won't bother, genius.

Red Flag #4 - Your writing is incoherent.

Your grasp of the English language is mediocre at best. Which would be fine, since it's not your mother tongue . . .but you're writing for an English-reading audience. Your writing doesn't flow at all, because you use incorrect punctuation, grammar and spelling, on top of repeatedly misusing words. For instance, here you use the word "viscous". I do not think it means what you think it means.

Microsoft Word's grammar and spell check won't cut the mustard, cowboy. To avoid looking completely bush league, you need to actually look up the meaning of the word before you use it. And why would anyone take your advice (or date your lameass), if you can't be bothered to take the time to be professional and coherent?

Red Flag #5 - You're halfass about communication.

You have blog posts dating back to 2008, but you only have 40 posts. WTF. Your last post was a month ago, which is just an embedded video, and the post before that is from March. Maybe try a little harder, and you'd get more of attention from readers. And the ladies. Jesus.

Red Flag #6 - You have no fucking clue who you are at all.

Your posts flip-flop between "be a real man and develop yourself" and "this is how you play asshole head games with the ladies". You say your site is "dedicated to the self development of men" and your tagline is "Redefining Jerks". But then you make repeated references to being a pick-up artist, and advise men to purchase a whole slew of books on "how to play women". So which is it? Are you trying to help men develop themselves as people, or help them get laid? Because they're not even close to being the same thing, bucko.

Have you ever thought that maybe, just maybe, if you ACTUALLY developed yourself as a person for your own sake, cultivated some interests outside of picking up women, got over your obvious issues and got your shit together (meaning become a fucking adult who doesn't drunkenly puke on himself), you might not have to play games with women? Because all those things foster confidence, which is far more attractive than the shit you have going on now.

Red Flag #7 - I have a sneaking suspicion you're one of those "nice guys" who are actually "passive-aggressive douchebags".

These bitches have been blogging about fuckers like you for YEARS. I'll let them have at it.

Red Flag #8 - On the other hand, I'm pretty sure you're really a full-on misogynistic asshole.

Women are innately addicted to dating assholes. Women are only after money and "feeling good". Women should only be cheerleaders, beauty queens or chefs. Women are just walking tits, asses and vaginas, nothing more.

Those stereotypes exist for a reason, because there are girls out there who believe them and do nothing but live up to them. But there's a difference between girls and women, sweetcheeks.

Have you ever heard the phrase, "you attract what you are"? If you go through life believing those fucked up stereotypes, you will only attract girls who live up to them, which is exactly the type of female your site is trying to help men avoid. Do you see the vicious (not viscous) cycle?

I'm gonna let you in on a little secret. The type of WOMAN you and your Cool Jerk buddies are scheming to meet would have abso-fucking-lutely NOTHING to do with you in real life. Hell, you've got a single, intelligent, smoking hot lady in her 20's writing this review. I'm your fucking dream woman, and I'm gonna tell y'all something: I've had an outbreak of vagina dentata after reading this shit.

So, I award you a nice



for using us to get website traffic, a






for not reading the FAQ and wasting my time, and a






for being a misogynistic fucktard. I hate you.

Unless you have four fingers on your right hand, there's no excuse for you

Listen, I don't have much time today, and less to read thick, carcass-like slabs of text which suggest that I am to read without breathing.

Today's lesson will be to the point, omitting the mind-numbingly repetitive part about why I hate fugly ass templates with stupid ads about ulcers and 6 feet long sidebars with no proper About Me page.

That shit's a given.

Ed, your blog about being a dad and about your son’s ear deformity and partial deafness is an excruciating goddamn test of perseverance that I failed very quickly for one simple reason.

It is not because you can’t write and you’re not funny and you haven’t made me care about your kid; you can write and you are funny and you have made me care about Ethan. You made my hard heart laugh and you even made me happy that your kid can hear better now. You’re foul mouthed and full of attitude and introspective and your self-deprecating nature is the only thing keeping me from wanting to beat you senseless with my keyboard. You can write a decent sentence, I'll give you that.

Your problem is that you offer up solid, unappetizing hunks of visually suffocating, time-annihilating texts where I cannot discern where one mangled thought-juggernaut stops and another begins. Are you missing your right pinkie by chance? Why do you refuse to hit ENTER to help the reader visually? Do you not ever click on "View post" and see that your blog is a slop of grey matter filled with soul sucking skyscrapers of unending words? This, for example, was the blogging equivalent of someone on coke at two in the morning that won't shut up long enough to let the people being aurally trespassed upon make a lick of sense out of the jabbering.

Here's some advice:

Relax. Inhale. Exhale. Come down off of whatever it is you’re on that makes you litter your blog with parenthetical side notes in italics every ten words (which are seemingly arbitrarily thrown all over your posts and due to overuse retain none of their intended effect whatsofuckingever). Slow your hair-trigger thoughts down to a moderate hurricane, finish a thought, and then hit the motherfucking ENTER key before starting a new one.







Buckle in boy, and don't forget your helmet and when you get off you can pick up these for somehow managing to entertain the hell out of me despite your birdbrained way of presenting text:

Not George. Not Dave. Not even Elmer or glue.

Another guest review from Ellie over at the Daily Smoke.

I like to think I’m funny. Not like a comedian funny, but generally jocular in my day-to-day dealings. (Trevor: Please note, instead of ‘day-to-day’ I might have used ‘quotidian’ or ‘diurnal’ or even ‘circadian’, if my thesaurus is to be believed. Sometimes, though, the simplest way of saying something is best.)

I’m living with a dog and working from home these days. Before I chose this life for myself, my Mondays consisted of back-to-back management meetings that frequently overran. I often blurted out a quip or bon mot or wisecrack to lighten up the very important and serious matters that occupied us during our important and serious, overrunning Monday meetings. My sallies were always well received. My colleagues would chuckle or slap their knees; any tension that had resulted from our serious and important discussions would have dissipated. From time to time I would bite my tongue rather than share the wit, because there is a time and a place for everything; and sometimes it’s just not professional to joke in the midst of important and serious dealings. I am, above all, professional.

Maybe in my current isolation, I am losing my sense of humour because I did not find Trevor to be rip-roaring, laugh-out-loud funny.

I make a quick mental inventory of my sense of humour. My assessment reveals that whilst I might not be making as many jokes these days (the dog has no sense of humour), I still enjoy a good gut-busting guffaw or even a mild tee-hee titter. And, I don’t discriminate: whether funny is of a sophomoric caliber or of a more refined palate, I like it. I suppose at this point I should provide examples as proof.

Low brow examples: I love South Park (Has anyone seen the Medicinal Chicken episode?!!!) and American Pie and The Hangover. Oh! And the season of America’s Next Top Model, the one with Jade. She was a hoot!

High brow examples: I get a kick out of Catch-22, and Sheridan’s Mrs. Malaprop from The Rivals and George Bush. That guy is a brilliant comedian.

There we have it: even if I am not myself funny, I do have a sense of humour.

Despite my self-acknowledged sense of humour, I had never visited a self-proclaimed humour blog until I was chosen to review Write in the Kisser. Blogging humourists get a bad rap around these parts. I mulled this over as I mentally limbered up to write this snippet. I asked myself, “Are the folks at AAYSR being fair or are they suffering from having a foreign something up their own asses?”

I negotiated a 2-week deadline and dove into funny with enthusiasm, prepared to prove the naysayers wrong.

Almost immediately after diving in, I scrambled out of the cold, brackish, not-so-funny blog. Over the course of the next ten days, I tried to re-immerse myself. I’d stick my big toe in or my pinky finger, but I couldn’t last in the un-funny. There was always something more fun calling: laundry, filling out expenses, walking the humourless dog, and shaving my legs, to name a few. Reviewing this blog was very much like doing taxes: the dread of the chore hangs over your head for weeks, you tackle the chore in fits and starts, you have to ask for an extension, finally you muster up the energy it will require to do the bare minimum just to get it done and out the door. Trevor drove me to do the bare minimum.

Why didn’t I find Trevor’s blog funny? (BTW Trevor: it’s not a weg, nor will it ever be a weg. Are your repeated references to ‘weg’ your attempt to be funny or have you been misinformed?)

Quick internal aside:

Jesus fucking God when am I going to be done with this review?

Let’s just get this over with already: click on ‘Ranked’ in AAYSR's header and scroll down to ‘anti-humour’ you will find a lot has already been written, which sums up my feelings about Trevor’s blog.

For example,

1. “If you tell me you’re funny, you already suck.”

Trevor: it’s a bit audacious to describe yourself as the love child of George Carlin and Dave Barry; and when you fail to deliver, you just come off as pretentious.

2. “Fucking tries too hard and fails miserably”

Trevor: you have a varied vocabulary. Good for you. The way you use it though makes you sound contrived. Here’s a teensy example of how your choice of words pain me.

"Hmmm," you muse.
...

"Yes," I aver, tiring of the conceit.

Sometimes, authenticity in writing requires you put your dog-eared copy of Roget's back on the shelf. Maybe you should try it.

3. Trevor “with your fantastical nonsense, I sense you are sitting there, buttocks clenched, waiting to be told how wonderful you are. So here goes: You're not really. You could be, but we’ll come back to that.”

Trevor, I don’t think you don’t have a sense of humour. I simply think it’s limited to recognising funny, rather than being funny. You find some outlandish, funny-in-its-wackiness stuff out there. If your blog were just a compendium of links to the stuff you find funny, I might like it more.

You, however, feel compelled to add your own narration. You are not a bad writer. You seem to follow grammatical conventions. You use commas and apostrophes and italicised print in all the right places. It's your tone that doesn't sit well with me. My ears hear immaturity trying real hard to be all grown up. Your use of sarcasm is bland and flat. If you're going to be sarcastic, make it wither shit on the vine. Sarcasm needs to be biting as hell, otherwise, it's just a sign of the sad aloofness of someone trying too hard to be cool.

I suspect that if you shed the whole 'humour' blog persona, you would write more freely, perhaps gain some confidence, and maybe even have something interesting to say.

A couple of quick fixes could be made: put something about you in your About page. As it is now it tells us shit all that we can't figure out from a two minute scan of your blog. And as Rassles wrote to another un-funny "I’m like motherfuckin’ Encyclopedia Brown. Give us an “About Me” page ..."

Finally, consider changing the graphic in your banner. Write in the Kisser is a clever(ish)title, but the way the graphic presents it, it reads Write Kisser In The.

I'm giving you the short bus. I wish it hadn't taken me so long.








* Sincere thanks to Madame Bellicose, Love Bites, Father Gene, and Rassles for paving the un-funny road before me.

Land of wonder, spices, mystery, and incredibly dull bloggers

India has attacked us again. I blame Crowley, who I'm certain is somehow responsible for the fact that all of the blogs up for review in the queue right now are from India.

Fuck me sideways with a pickle. One of these pieces of refuse is clearly dead, so I'm discarding it. One has opted out on being reviewed. The other two aren't enough, singularly, to deserve an entire post.

First, Summer Diary. Ugly black & white template, and I have no idea what this person is doing. I like teenagers, I had a house full of them on Saturday, but this blog is like attempting to decipher meaningless gibberish posted on random coconuts and tossed into the ocean to arrive willy nilly on the shores of our brains.

I feel dumber for having spent 20 minutes on the site.

Fuck you for submitting to us, you stupid twat.



Secondly, this one. God save us from the unrelenting angst of teenagers. Were we all this inwardtwisted awkwardness? But some of it holds drops of promise. To that promise, I say...use good grammar. Choose your words more carefully. If you write dialogue, make it cleaner and more clearly identify who is speaking. Keep writing. Clean up your sidebar, and find a better place for the quote under your header bar. Don't try so hard to be unique, but instead focus on distilling your words until they are really and truly yours.

I give you a single star, work upwards to the rest.



These are my missives to India, sent in a digital bottle.

p.s. More importantly, if you were going to be an ironic, made-up superhero, who would you be?

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.

Random is Dead.

An old nemesis of ours, random, died recently. He was stabbed to death, repeatedly, by the blogosphere. He is survived by his loving wife, miscellaneous, and his children mundane, slapdash, incidental, and indiscriminate. Donations should be sent to thesaurus.com.

Say it together, out loud: RANDOM IS DEAD. You put a knife into random when you put exactly zero thought into your blog. You gave random a kick that fractured his orbital bone when you showed you didn't care. You put random into permanent kidney failure because of your thoughtless, slipshod, disorganized writing.

You, and you, and you, you all killed random. You're all fucking murderers, every single one of you who misused and abused poor random, and made him your bitch.

This message particularly applies to today's reviewee. I have ADD and reading this blog is actually painful for me. It bings from one subject to another, zooming headlong from an interview with Nelson Mandela to stories about flatmates.

I don't get it. I don't think you will, either.

At a minimum, this site needs to:

1) Create an about me. Who are you, and why in the fuck are you polluting the blogosphere with your random bullshit? This is how poorly explicated your blog is: I read for 30 minutes and STILL don't know your gender. Are you a he or a she?

2) Get rid of the ugly ads. You don't need 3 columns. You especially don't need a 2-column wide ad. I doubt you have more than 10 readers at this point. Who is buying this ugly shit you're advertising? No one.

3) Figure out who you are and what you are writing. See item #1.

I'm going to repeat myself from a previous review because some of you aren't paying attention:

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

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

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

Write.

I give you a short bus. This blog, in its present state, has all the wit and sparkling charm of a coma patient.

And fucking put Random to rest, in the cemetary, where he belongs. He's starting to smell.

Where's Our Pigeon Camera

Miss Missives has had a very long week flogging perfect and not so perfect strangers for a hefty fee. After all the flagellation and degradation, I found the thought of doing a blog review positively exhausting. The hours spent poring over what would no doubt be a double Meh or angry shaking hand of flaming fingers. Then I got this week's victim and I was elated, beyond elated, I was jubilant. Miss Missives, is it because your eyes feasted upon a blog worthy of praise heaping, you ask? Is it because you've discovered a small gem amidst the detritus? Or is it because your victim has a sum total of twelve posts and they are all, get ready for the kicker here, photos. Ding, ding, ding, bingo!

My Perception of Mother Nature is, judging from the comments and the most recent title, the blog of an Indian person. Beyond that, we know nothing about the person behind the lens. Which is of little consequence really because if this is his opus then it's better that he packed up and went home. Yes, there are a few that don't make my eyes bleed with boredom but given the advances of digital photography and Photoshop, even my languid feline friend can take a pretty decent picture even in the absence of opposable thumbs.

My Perception of Mother Nature is a mess. Boring title, boring nondescript template which wouldn't be so bad on a photo site were it not for the total lack of anything else. There's no information about the picture taker. Perhaps Glen wanted to highlight each(of the twelve) photos, but having one photo per page is overkill, far too much clicking for the measly twelve picture payoff.

I'm not a photo blog aficionado but even I can offer up some suggestions for the Clicky McClickersons who want to wow the world with their "viewpoint".

1. Don't title your blog "My Perception of Mother Nature," this is about as exciting as something titled,"What My Grandma Eats for Lunch on Tuesdays." In fact, that title is far superior.

2. Just because you are snapping photos rather than writing doesn't mean it isn't personal. Tell the viewer a little about you. Give us a frame of reference. Why exactly should we be interested in your viewpoint?

3. Do not litter your photographs with do not copy watermarks and wallpaper. It's distracting and I seriously doubt people are getting in line to steal your picture of carrots.

4. Speaking of carrots, title your pictures carefully. "LOOK AT THE CARROTS!!!" Really? No really? Seriously, look at the fucking carrots? By the way, only twelve year old girls use multiple exclamation marks.

5. Create a 'Best of" to showcase your favorite work. This is really advice for the photobloggers that exceed twelve pictures.

6. Give a little intel on the pictures. I don't need a soliloquy but set it up for us.

7. Post regularly. The people I know who really like to take pictures could post daily without ever running out of good material. You don't have to be that prolific but post a bare minimum of at least once per week.

8. Labels, labels, labels. Again, this is especially helpful if you have more than twelve posts.

The good news is this is the first ever review that not only have I looked at every post on the blog, I have linked every single post. That should be worthy of some kind of award. So for brevity, you get this:

For the rest, you get this:

Death sentence

Sometimes you find a blog called like something like 'Run of the mill' that you TOTALLY like love and stuff because it talks about all the like stuff you love like coke and daddy and I heart daddy and bikes and being able to catch the bus instead of walking when your hair has done that woohoo thing and you want to cry yourself to sleep and stuff but then you like wake up and stuff and TOTALLY realise that salmon pink is HUGELY your favourite colour and that mammy is like TOTALLY the most fashionable mammy this side of Bangalore and if you like SO didn't know better you would think that you were in like an Indian version of the Gilmore Girls and oh my God you've just realised that you haven't taken a breath in like 4 months and you can't do math anymore and you like fall TOTALLY into a deep sleep and you like dream one of those REALLY cool dreams that you like TOTALLY remember the next day and stuff and you tell mammy because she's like TOTALLY the coolest mammy and you tell her how your blog got reviewed by like this gross middle aged man who TOTALLY wanted to cry just like three posts in because you only ever wrote like you were fourteen and very blonde and like rich and spoiled and stuff and even though it was clear that you like TOTALLY had a like really good vocabulary and stuff and seemed like REALLY dedicated to writing regularly and stuff but you wrote about stuff and stuff that would like TOTALLY make fluff seem like intellectual and deep and stuff and that if the people reading the review only read the review and nothing more they would TOTALLY like know what the blog was like like and that the reviewer couldn’t really blame the you for being the way you like TOTALLY are because that was just the way you were and stuff but that the gross reviewer thought that you like TOTALLY needed a ride on the short bus and should go and get like life experience and stuff like maybe having a friend TOTALLY block you on MSN and making you cry yourself to sleep again but then it all TOTALLY didn’t matter anyway because you like hadn’t blogged for like months now and the reviewer is left to assume that you like choked to death on a TOTALLY.