Take Half the Clothes and Twice the Money

The other evening, over Thai food, the man looked at me across the table and said, "I wish I were trekking in Nepal right now."

I can't speak for Nepal, but a wave of wanderlust washed over me, and I rebutted with, "Well, I'd like to be hiking in Denali right now." And I would, and did, and still do. The wild open desolation without human in sight, where the land is so big your eyes feel too small to see it all, where cell phones stop working and you can only get where you're going on your own two feet--that place, it sings in my chest.

Plus, truthfully, I'd like to see another bear up close and personal, just for the sheer braggadocio of the thing.

Isn't that why we travel, really? The first why--to open our eyes and souls wide so we can absorb the entirety of new. The second why--for the stories we tell the people we've left behind, and the stories we retell with the companions on our journey. We take pictures along the way, of course, so we can remember what we've seen, tasted, heard, and felt; and so we can share our adventure.

Of course, the more interesting the destination, the grander the tale. So, what if you wrote a travel blog, but you only rarely traveled, and only told a tiny fraction of the tales, and never took any good pictures?

Such a blogger would be like a bloodless Edwardian era virgin who fondles your cock, strokes 10 or 12 times out of spiteful naughtiness, and then turns her attention to embroidery. There are no bears in your pictures, Heels, and no grand tales in your blog.

When I read a travel blog, I want to be swept away to a place of spices and mystery. I want to inhale cumin and cardamom and the clean biting smell of the forest. I want my eyes burnished with the dust from a red road clogged with an infinite variety of humans. I want the flavors of a Michelin 3 star restaurant to engorge my tongue. I want my calves to burn from the western slope of Denali, and my heart to pound from a close encounter with a bear.

Camping in Heels, YOU FUCKING TEASE.

Oh, you travel some. I've seen the pictures.

But, you don't tell the tales and you take terrible pictures. You go to Spain and give us boiled dinner in a British pub and a shopping trip to H&M. You eat the Michelin dinner, but don't describe the flavors. You tell us how to save for the journey, but you never take us with you.

Apparently, you think we want to hear about you. My god, you ninny, we want to hear where you've been. We want to go with you. Or rather, perhaps not you, because you strike me as a terribly dull traveling companion who rarely leaves the beaten path.

You go to the most wild and wonderful parts of the U.S. (Grand Canyon, Yosemite, and the Olympus Peninsula--where I'll be hiking later this summer, on the beach), and you show us the Salt Lake City Airport.

Dude, really? Are you a travel blogger, or aren't you? If you are going to write a damn travel blog, then DO IT. Tell us what you saw, tasted, smelt, and felt, with details that let us experience it with you. Don't fill your blog with pictures of you sitting on a couch drinking a glass of beer, fill it with stories. Who did you meet? What did you see? How did it smell? What near-death experience did you have?

You have the ability to write, but you aren't doing it. You've created an idea, but you think it can be milked for money, without providing substance (or for that matter, sustenance).

Matt, actually, says more, with zero words, about how small and big this world is, how much we share with people a thousand miles away, and how beautiful it all is. There is wonder in that video, and mystery, and stories, and danger, and joy.

That's what a travel blog should be. I watch Matt dancing in a gorge with strangers in a land I can't even spell, and I want to grab my suitcase and go. I read your blog, and I want to take a nap.

I give you a meh.

Fix it. You have the capacity, but do you have the will?

R2G2 and C3POmigod, Why Is There So Fucking Much Clutter?

I have just been face-fucked by the icy cock of winter, and, as such, am both chilly with shame and frigid in want of vengeance. But, truly, is there a better mindset for the act of reviewing than scrolling through some unfortunate soul’s bloggage whilst harbouring the still-crisp memory of Jack Frost raping my face? I think not; in fact, I would go so far as to say that an entirely unpleasant environmental assault is often just the kick in the pants (or fuck in the face) necessary to fully tear someone the fuck apart. That being said, fellow Askers, hear me when I say that I am severely disappointed in 2Gooeysphere (which is not the actual name of the blog, but more entertaining by a pretty substantial margin); it needs neither the kind of evisceration that would help me banish thoughts of my frozen face-fucking to the part of my brain reserved for hazy recollections, nor is it good enough to warm the chill from my cheeks. It sits on the fence, and I daresay I fucking hate fence-sitters.

Now, if given the choice between sucking out loud and writing brilliantly, most would choose the latter, surely; but if you actually want the latter, you need to fucking focus. You, g2, put a remarkable amount of work into your posts and you do so with an enthusiasm that's obvious even without your tiresome excessclamation points… but you can lick my balls sideways if you think I enjoy lurking under the monolithic shadow of that overzealous goddamned sidebar to read your shit. The posts are already little clusterbombs of plenty, what with the photoshopping and written commentary and such - fuck off with that extraneous clutter. Simplify, man; there’s not much to differentiate your header from the rest of your insane-asylum gray background, and it looks like someone threw a handful of cats at a Ouija board to determine the placement of those wholly-unnecessary flourishes that crowd the title. The overall effect of your flare on my concentration is devastating.

There is also the small matter of the 8000 mile cultural divide to reckon with, globalization be damned. When I see "I am going to Hyderabad for Diwali", I read "I am going to [action-verb involving badass eight-headed water beast] for [someone named] Diwali", not "I am going to [location] for [festival of lights]", and that right there isn’t the aforementioned cultural divide’s fault so much as it’s mine for wanting what you’re saying to be exciting. It’s not, mostly, especially when you’re rocking two-part automobile-permit scandal posts that stand outside my frame of reference or comparing Jesus to someone I‘ve never heard of. Oh, I could do some research, as you yourself did in regards to comedy, but, really, am I going to research something I’m not particularly interested in for the purposes of superficially rounding out a free blog review?

Pfft. Please.

So, where does that leave us? Well, I don’t think you should throw yourself off a cliff, but I also don’t want to read your blog anymore than I want to slapped in the genitals with a hammer, so something must be done. I’ve invested far too many intermittent moments over the last month to backhand a "meh" at you, but as much as I enjoyed both The Pigeon Fool Principle and its Implications Of sequel (if for no other reason than the titles), I fucking despised this cloying piece of fluffery, and am thus inventing a new rating:



Smarten up.