Wasted Words

Tits. Tits. TITS. See, television is a great spectacle even if the people on it seem to take themselves way too seriously. In fact, the world is filled with people without a sense of humor, and that's never fun when you're trying to make a balloon animal out of someone's guts. "Oh human cruelty" this, "mother of five" that - party tricks aren't what they used to be. But on TV land, there's a show that simply doesn't give a fuck about this human concept of "reality" and is an orgy of tits, guts, blood and more tits. Yes, I'm plugging Spartacus, go watch it - it'll be a lot more entertaining than anything you'll see today. That dull pain I'm feeling is the sensation of a hot poker up my arse, a gentle reminder from Shiner that there's a review upon us.

So Astrodominie, welcome to fantasy island. I'm not sure Astrodominie means, and my gut tells me not to investigate. So let's pick a random letter and go with it - how's J? So J blogs on "The Thick Plottens", and aw shucks, ain't that clever? Says J - "I’m a 23-year-old girl living it up in India. That’s all you probably need to know". I'd be happy to cut my losses and move on, but she tells us more about herself anyway - in style reminiscent of a piss poor dating website from the past. Not that I would know, I was simply checking to see what the fuss was all about SHUT UP.

Just about every post on the blog is a list of some sort, and I hate lists. Lists are bad for a blog. They're an easy way out churn out words, add no cohesive thought and make the reader care very little about the post in its entirety. Take this and this. Cut the posts into half and mix them up. Does anything seem out of order? Will it hold a reader's attention? Will it make him/her care about the random shit that happened in your life last month?

I must admit, I liked the idea of using a line from a song as the title. I found myself scrolling down to catch the name of the song owing to the dim sounds of bells ringing in my head. But in doing so, I ended up skipping most of your generic posts one after another.

Now J, it might seem I'm sick of you and want to phone it in by tossing in a finger or two. But the thing is, I do like you. A little. Kinda. See, you're a 90s child and think much like I would. We're in the same age group, and of similar backgrounds. When I visit a blog I want to see something I can identify with but see it in a way I hadn't thought of before. Even though you cop out with your lists, you're clearly capable of sustaining a thought and writing about something that matters to you.

But you lose focus too soon. Going back in time through your blog, I see a clear pattern. There's a thought, an idea that leads to a post. Then there's another thought, a vague mashup of words that probably mean something to you, but really, waste a reader's time. Then there's silence on the radio, and you comeback with a stupid list.

J, when you finish writing, how about reading your post once more and guessing what a first time reader's reaction might be? If its "hmmm, so?", then don't hesitate to hit the delete button. Say nothing if you don't have anything worthwhile to write about. You clearly read more than I do, and that's always a positive when you're trying to flirt with writing. In fact, its when you talk about books you seem to hold your own and have something meaningful to say. Its not terribly original but I can see evidence of something I'd bother revisiting your blog for.

When I visit a blog, while I do appreciate familiarity with the subject, I want to read a different take on it. From this list, I actually chuckled at the idea of a single girl with a Harry Potter bawling her eyes out on a plane. Why couldn't this have been a single post? If you don't mind vague posts under 100 words, why not write something meaningful even if sacrifices word count?

There's a constant subplot about moving to Hyderabad for what I imagine was your first job, and then back(?) to Chennai for hmm, I don't know. so why not explore that in better detail? Instead of itemizing what you miss and what you don't, how about picking one and bitching the shit out of that motherfucker?

Too many questions J, and I'm not sure if taking it easy just to post on your blog will answer any of them.

For the occasional blip in the radar, you get a meh







For boring the shit out of me with juvenile lists

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.

Carrying Your Emotional Shit Is Hard

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

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

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

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

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

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

That sentence is not real. It's processed.

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

Sprinkled throughout, though, is THIS:

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

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

The first half of her blog was a fucking chore.







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



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

Clown Wars

We’re going to dive straight in this time, my loves. We have a lot to discuss and the air here is curdling. A storm is coming and I must send Fanny out for emergency supplies. We are all out of Ovaltine and the goose fat dwindles. So.

This week’s lucky sausage calls himself the Counter Culture Clown (his name is Bob) and promises us ‘Seltzer Water, Flying Pies, and Social Resentment’. He’s a cheeky stripling from Minneapolis who would dearly like to become a stand-up comedian. His shtick is something called ‘Rant Therapy’, a reasonably self-explanatory pastime that involves what in my neck of the woods we would call ‘going off on one’ about various gripes in an ostensibly hilarious manner. He has a photo of himself sporting beard and cap and wry half-smile. So far, so eminently punchable.

Received wisdom has it that blogs purporting to be humorous seldom are, in much the same way as a man wearing a T-shirt proclaiming himself to be the ‘World’s Greatest Lover’ will be a let-down between the sheets and a ‘Family Fun Night’ will be as much fun as an impacted bowel. The statement of intent inherent in a blog title such as ‘Funny in Shadows’ gets my hackles up straight away. You should never say you are funny, just as you should never say you are pretty. It is tacky.

Normally, when I review a blog, I start at the first post and read backwards until either it ends or Fanny has to fetch the defibrillator. With Bob, I took a different approach and started with what he terms his ‘best of’. I read on and on and I am afraid to say that I did not laugh. This kind of comedy is not for me. It is observational humour of the ‘hey, have you ever noticed that microwave dinners are kind of gross?’ variety, with lots of smutty language and sixth-form iconoclasm and very little in the way of original ideas.

But comedy is subjective, to spank a tired donkey. And Bob has an audience who, although small, are appreciative. And he came in the top 25 in the ‘Funniest People in the Twin Cities’ competition. And he is only twenty-two (just as well – if he were thirty-two, I may well have wept, and my tear ducts have lain dormant for several decades now). He is just practising, picking topics seemingly at random and ‘riffing’ on them, usually at great and trying length. I have no doubt that he will get better and that he will get his own ideas and that my opinion matters not a jot to the tastemakers of Minneapolis. I still found him to be an objectionable little bugger, though.

Now, my usual rule of thumb here is to review the blog that was submitted and ignore all subsidiary works. However, I could not help but notice that Mr Bob keeps another blog, called ‘Disassemble the Universe’, on which he posts his poems and short stories. I couldn’t resist taking a quick squizz. I wish he had submitted that blog instead of the comedy one. Not that I think he is Saki reincarnate or anything, but he can tell a tale. If Bob were here with me now, tucked up on the love seat with a gin-and-Bovril in hand and my Fanny curled about his feet, I might give him some highly presumptuous advice. I might say Bob, why not combine your ranty style of comedy, your scatological surrealism and your talent for story-telling and push things as far as you can to write some truly deranged stories? I believe there is a genre called Bizarro that you might find quite droll. Fiction could be the key to transforming your comedy, injecting it with some much-needed originality. Everyone has already observed your observations. I think it might also be larks to explore the clown motif a little more. A spot of research into sacred and ceremonial clowning might prove particularly fruitful. Your blog hints at something dark, but to me you are as sinister as a bright May morn.

Now the sky sounds like my stomach after a night on the clams and it is time to go. In summation I would suggest that Bob is a far better story-teller than he is a gag-man, and I would dearly love to see him striving for bleeding-edge ideas. I would like to go back to Bob’s blog in a year and find him with a list of publishing credits as long as Fanny’s arm (she does have preternaturally long arms. We always thought the rest of her would catch up, but we were so very wrong) and a reputation for clever as clogs live shows that leave his audience in stitches both metaphorical and not.

Overall, however, I’m afraid it’s a finger.

Dick Move, Jargon Juggler.

I am an American. For the most part we are an English speaking country, but there is no amendment or law that explicitly states, “We speak English here, take your other worthless language and go suck on a dead dog’s nose.” Of course, this is a good thing, because other languages aren’t worthless at all, especially not to the people who speak them.

Similarly, there’s no official language of AAYSR. It’s not like we called together a reviewers gin rally and debated the semantics of our FAQ over bucks and Tom Collinses (Tom Collinseses?). Since the FAQ is written in English, we arrogantly assumed like the vainglorious dicks we are that all submissions would subsequently be in English.

Obviously, some asshole out there decided that he was entitled to a review, even with having less an a third of his posts written in a language I understand, as if he's testing me. You sonofabitch, I got a 34 on my ACT because I test so good. Pop quiz, jargon juggler: who's got two fists full of round bombs with fuses of scorn for bilingual bloggers testing my lexical patience? This girl. Dick move, jargon juggler. Dick move.

But I thought, you know, hey--this guy’s got to have some reason for doing this. Hopefully he'll reveal himself as some kind of pretentious fuck, and then we can set him on fire with leftover bottle rockets from this past weekend's patriotic debauchery. Maybe he'll be counterfeit and full of shit. Maybe he'll nearly plagiarize but not quite, and circumvent any accusations of plagiarism because of the nature of the concept he's addressing, thus brilliantly demonstrating the idea he's floating--but did he know that I've read that book? Does it matter?

Fine, so I didn't necessarily predict he would do that last bit, but motherfucker did itnonetheless.

And by golly, I fucking like him. He turned out to be feisty and hilarious and obnoxiously ostentatious because he is totally a Bombay hipster (which he would adamantly deny, true to hipster code), and I love that kind of unapologetic bastardization of self. Sure, some of this poetry crap is just nonsense, but I assure you: although it doesn't look like a standard poem, this blog is all poetry, even if a little wordy and rugged (the entry at the bottom), even if sometimes he comes across as a kind of drunken swan, where you can see how elegant he could be if he weren't such a flashy fuckdunce.

His template is horseshit, the navigation is a sterile, complicated hospital nightmare, sometimes the links lead to streams of shrapnel html and most of the writing is in fucking Hindi. Opening each quarter-monthly archive link is like passing around a live fucking hand grenade. There is no profile, no comments, no way to go back to a homepage, no way to click on an individual entry. He hasn't posted in a couple of months, which makes me believe he either joined Facebook or Twitter, where his brevity could be more immediately appreciated by his peers.

This guy is good. This guy is really, really good. And he fucking knows it. I'm guessing he's a professional (apparently he has already written some film scripts). He's above detailing his life or personality for any potential readers, because if they don't get it, if they cannot just deduce his dreams and self from his poetry, which "does not burnish on paper as much as it embers in the mind," why would he want them reading his blog?

So, Manish Fuckwad, you are a cocksucker.

I want you to take your superior word choice, your smooth, jerkface prose, and your aloof, cryptic layout back to Bombay's version of Brooklyn and dump it in a trash bin at the local ditchwater coffee shop.


Then I want you to straighten up your thick-rimmed emo glasses and start over with a simple template with a plain, classic header that's just your title and a drop-down archive. I want you to tag your posts with "English" or "Hindi" so people can just skip to whatever language they understand or feel like reading that day. And I want you to write more often, because I want it.

...and don’t even get me started on the hors d’oeuvres...

As a general rule, my Fanny and I keep ourselves to ourselves. Don’t get me wrong - in my youth I was a prominent frequenter of the most exclusive gaming hells and a member of several highly specialised dining clubs, but these days I prefer a quiet life, largely because I find people en masse rather nauseating. It’s the lack of control that bothers me. I would much prefer to cloister myself with my Fanny and a family-size tub of Germoline than haul my old bones to a cocktail party where I might find myself forced to exchange pleasantries with a man in slip-on shoes, or the kind of woman who touches one’s arm while she talks.

This reviewing lark is rather like a cocktail party. You never know who is going to buttonhole you next, although you can usually tell within a few moments whether or not you are going to enjoy the experience. We all make snap judgements based on our own set of social markers and we are usually right. Personally, I avoid visible swastikas, t-shirts with comedy slogans and readers of the Daily Mail, but it’s different for everyone.

Of course, the most frightening words one can hear from a new acquaintance, the words guaranteed to put the kibosh on any kind of social connection, are any variation on the theme of, “I’m mad, me! Completely insane! All my friends say I’m just totally bonkers!” In my experience, this sentiment usually translates as, “I am a deeply conservative person who, out of the desperate desire for a personality, occasionally wears stripy tights,” and has me edging towards the door every time, no matter how divine the hors d’oeuvres.

Imagine my delight, then, when I saw the title of today’s blog. For a brief moment, I fancied that maybe I was judging too soon and that Mind of a Madwoman was going to be a stunning piece of online outsider art that would forever change the way we understand madness and sanity. For a brief moment, I was a fool. The Madwoman was Maggie, and when I saw her over the metaphorical punchbowl my first thought was that she had better be serving some pretty bloody extraordinary hors d’oeuvres.

This will not be a particularly link-laden review, best beloveds. If you pop over to Maggie’s blog you will soon see that it is a Möbius strip of repeating content. Maggie likes 'memes', you see, Random Thoughts Tuesdays and Self-Obsession Saturdays and all of that sorry business. She seems to have a particular soft-spot for lengthy lists of arse-clenchingly inane questions, real Paxmanesque posers like, “do you recycle?” and “do you prefer coffee or tea?” Maggie and her cronies swap these penetrating puzzlers, think up smart answers and then post them in reel after reel of arrogant banality. For the love of Princess Anne, why would anyone be interested in your favourite ‘BBQ’ food?

This post was the nadir, especially the part where she has the sheer lack of class to beg for corporate sponsorship. It was at this juncture that I was forced to have Fanny break out my emergency poultice and perform the Special Manoeuvres. I suppose it’s the kind of sassy ‘telling it like it is’ malarkey that is so prevalent in the milk-clogged world of ‘mommy’ blogging and I know there’s an audience for it, but I state for the record here and now that if I ever meet a member of that audience face-to-face, I will slap them until we are both weeping.

It’s all just laziness, and although I fully condone sloth as a lifestyle choice, it should have no place in your work. It’s a shame as well, because Maggie has her charms. She has a readable style, she can be funny and irreverent. If I were going to give Maggie any advice, which it would appear I am, I would say Maggie, stop pissing about and submit some articles to some magazines or something. You might not get published, but you’ll have to concentrate and you’ll have to stop relying on borrowed ideas, and that will make you a better writer. I think you can do better. You’re wasting yourself on this froth. If anyone ever asks you again if you prefer a shower or a bath, you just walk away my duck, just walk away.

I appreciate that I may come across a touch harsh, but I do feel strongly about this (Fanny’s heard it all before. She’s rolling her eye at me). There’s something about a blog that seems to make people think it’s better to post lazy content than nothing at all, and that makes me a sad, sad clown. And now I am a sad clown whose dreams will be haunted by a parade of self-proclaimed ‘madwomen’ waggling their ‘boobs’ at me and shrieking at the top of their lungs about their husbands’ toilet habits and exactly why they prefer foolscap to A4.

So I try to subtly shuffle closer to the cloakroom, pouring my drink in a potted plant and avoiding eye-contact with the hostess, my only comfort the thought that Fanny is waiting outside in the rickshaw. It’s going to take a long time and a lot of unguents for the poor thing to settle me tonight, and so on my Fanny’s behalf I feel I should make an example of Maggie. Consider her a casualty in the war against banality.

Two flaming fingers for you, Meggers. Feel free to return them when you’ve stopped squandering yourself on all this.

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.

Autoplaying tunes? Fuck you. Just...Fuck you.

While you primates were off exploring the world with your opposable thumbs, us lizards decided to take the party underground. Betwixt champagne, caviar and interspecific orgies we surface now and then to host talk shows on Fox news. It's a good life, I tell ya'.

Whiteboy Style. I have been asked, nay tasked, to assess whether I share my premium single malt or have Monty rend your insides with his sharp talons. Given that your species is waking up to the joys of tolerance, I figured this was a blog for the well groomed young Caucasian male.

And by golly was I wrong. Your header image features you (or someone else) in garb reminiscent of a failed reality TV star. Your tagline is "Keeping Midgets As Pets Since 1998". Oh good, midget humor is so edgy and original, how long did it take to come up with that one?

It's been so long since you last wrote, my neighbor Henry has molted twice since. Then again, that was when you picked a fight with a Twilight fan. I lost patience a few seconds into the post, I'd much rather headbutt a concrete wall. Navigating your blog is an impossible task. On my list of priorities, wading through a daily archive is somewhere in between tongue splitting and stuffing mustard up my cloacae.

Putting the jar of French's aside, I delved deeper. Another Twilight post. Senseless updates. More embedded videos. I'll watch Tosh.0 for recycled garbage from the internet, there's no point in posting drivel if you don't have the motivation to write. Every second post seems to be about you restarting your blog. Make up your mind chief, I have a mass extinction to attend at 4.

Look "whiteboy", you show promise. When not regurgitating opinions or fucking up your website with lolcats, you seem to have a voice. It's nothing I haven't seen or read (I am a dinosaur after all), but it shows you're trying. You can even be funny. Why would you take the easy way out and quarrel with hate mail? Think of writing as exercise. It can be brutal and unrewarding at first, but it gets better. Only if you want to, and only when you try.

Your website is clean and minimal, and my monochrome vision appreciates that. You have a few links on the sidebars, which I saved for the last. After having seen my share of genitalia on chat roulette, I steered clear of the webcam link. "Wall scratchings" must be some sort of comment form, I wouldn't know - there's more spam there than in my emergency rations.

In the dark ages of the internet, there was Myspace. It was an elaborate prank teenagers used to get strangers to listen to shit masquerading as music. Autoplaying tunes to me is what a bucket of water is to middle-eastern men in Gitmo. It is a well known fact that dinosaurs are fans of late-80s speed metal, so listening to the drivel on your "Demo CD" page made my ears bleed. I'm not your demographic, but I assume your diehard fans would be capable of simple tasks like clicking a play button. Kill that autoplay option already. Fix your archive, good site design shows you care about your readers - new and old.

When I first saw this blog last week, I found a dead link to "The Crew". It's gone now, and the questions remain. Who are you? What are you up to? You're clearly alive, your homepage changed in the last one week. Where are you now? Why waste my time on a review if you can't be arsed to update your own blog?

For showing promise in 1.5 posts and making me ask for more you get




For submitting a dead blog, filled with junk and autoplaying tunes you get three flaming fingers. James, fetch my slippers, it's time for supper.

One Thing's for Surgeon, Your Blog Sucks

I am seriously considering writing all of my reviews drunk as hell, and I'm nearly there, because sometimes it's the only way I can till some of these blogs. Seriously, I can see the future because I have access to the submission list and there are some goddamn wearisome plebes sitting around waiting for life to happen coming up on the roster.

Of course you know that I am not a wearisome plebe. I am brilliance fucking manifest. Plus I got superior typing skills even when rocked on fucking wheat fermentingations or whatever because I memorized where to find the backspace key.

Long as we're listing things I got, I got medical horror stories up the ass (not like literal probes, although I know you guys are serious buttpokers), but this fucking guy collects eyefuls of peculiar shit daily, and believe me when I tell you: he makes crazy medicinal drama about as fucking interesting as ironing pleated pants. I actually prefer ironing pleated pants. I can do that shit drunk.

Techknowdoc writes with holes and impotence. It's very, "This woman had fat legs. And I said, 'gee, your legs are fat.' Man, some bonky things sure do go down in my wacky surgical ward." Except that quote that I just totally paraphrased is infinitely more interesting than everything on this blog just because I utilized "bonky." Use it, Techknowdoc.

By the way, nice nomenportmanteau. And by "nice" I mean "cancer."

As far as presentation...you know, it is what it is. The header is a menacingly stretched scalpel-hand and a splooge of pointless labels clog up the lower half of the template, and it's all Halloweeny colored and basically lame. But regarding content?

Doc, okay. I get it. It's exciting when patients are up to their elbows in fishbones, and that's some zany fucking hijinx, but your version of "lateral thinking" relates to egg-laying roosters and grave-digging planes, and your sprightly professional medical explanation regarding how foreign objects enter the human body is this:

"the fish decided to do one last heroic act before dying and made the bone fly into his elbow!!"

And you just...I don't even know. Accept it. You just accept a fucking telekinetic fish flinging daggerbones at fisherman as the hilarious breakdown of events in the most banal possible manner. You don't tell us the motivation behind the offense or give us an exciting play-by-play, it's just, the fish "made the bone fly into his elbow!!"

It's all unanswered questions, disgusting-ass pictures of surgeries without fixin' the reader with medical explanations or offering ameliorative advice, and fuck you for wasting my time and my PBR on bullshit like this. Assorted condoms exist. A woman blows her nose. I can't tell if your aim is pompous comedy or pompous revolution. Your blog is an unsanitary succession of narrative pap smears, and fuck you, I'm sober now. And I get things. Believe me. I am very smart.

Look Doc, I'm sure you're like, a good surgeon and stuff, but I'm just burning to give you these.






Also, I am very partial to the "rat poisen" tag that the illustrious Nutjobber added to the AAYSR label list. It's my cheap grammar crack.

On Poetry and Dyspepsia

This morning began badly. I had passed a broken night plagued by sinister intestinal arias and had finally slipped into a lightly-greased coma when I was awoken by a troupe of vulgar children taking a shortcut through the grounds. Nothing is more terrifying to me than children en masse. When they had gone I had my Fanny put down some salt, but I have no doubt they will return.

For breakfast I dealt commendably with a sweetbread bap washed down with small beer, but my mood was low, the Black Dog cocking its leg against the scrappy saplings of my mind. Fanny tried to distract me, bless her cotton socks, but I have seen that trick with the billiards balls so very many times that I could barely raise a smile, let alone anything else. I decided that the only thing to do was to get stuck into this review, so Fanny booted on or whatever you call it, and from the ether we summoned Shadow.

Imagine my delight when I discovered that Shadow is a poet! And I mean that without a trace of sarcasm – poetry is my meat and my cream. I am aware that I am in a minority here. Some people have had such traumatic experiences with poetry that they shut down at the mere mention of the word, the way I do when I hear ‘siphon tubing’. It is such a shame, because a good poem, a really good poem, is like a toothful of gods.

Shadow is a prolific little monster. There are well over a thousand posts here, which is a touch daunting for one who would at least like to eat supper before they die. I decided to start with the most recent post and work backwards. Fanny handed me a large Advocaat-and-brine and in I plunged, hoping to have my maculate soul salved by some beautiful words.

But oh! Unhappy day! Shadow rhymes! Of course, in all fairness, rhyming isn’t always a bad thing. From Shakespeare to Edward Lear, people have pulled it off. But the trouble with rhyming verse is that, in the wrong hands, it quickly dissolves into doggerel. Shadow stuffs her words into forms like Fanny stuffs me into my truss each morning and they, like me, end up uncomfortably strained, viz:

"gone is the spark that would dance in your eyes
silent the words that my heart on relies"

"playful the creatures that dance through the night
carried by angels whose calls them invite"

"a feeling as silent and subtle as mist
is rising up through the air
tentacles curling and winding their way
sensations you don’t much for care"

All of the above are very much sic, of course. And I would hope that they illustrate the problems I had with Shadow’s work. I am all for people having a go - we must never shy away from poetry assuming it is only the pastime of the intellectual elite. I must own to having penned the odd stanza or two myself; mostly romantic verse written during my courting days. Prison is most conducive to romantic thoughts, to which the great Marquis himself would no doubt attest. I think the world would be a much nicer place if more people flirted with the odd haiku. However, there is no escaping the fact that I find this to be excruciatingly awful poetry.

It’s not just the rhyme scheme (which is haunting me, forcing all my thoughts and movements into a sing-song rhythm. Diddly-diddly-diddly-dum, I go as I make my way from the daybed to the dressing table. De-diddly-diddly-doo), it’s the repetitiveness of imagery, theme and language. I had Fanny search for posts containing the words dark, darkness, black, pain, sorrow, shadow, moon, kiss, soul, angel, demon, night, but we got bored of counting. I realised when I reached the fortieth post that I had not yet happened across a single arresting image, one startling line. I quite like, "your words are laced with rust," but the poem ends with the plain unforgivable:

"and with the onset of natures death
my soul froze to your plea
cold is the whisper on your breath
i retreat into woods misty"

There are, no doubt, many people who would disagree with me about all this. Shadow has a lot of chums – there are in excess of forty comments on some of her posts, almost all of them extremely supportive. She is a member of a thriving little community, and she’s even got awards! I wish someone would give me an award. They’ve taken all my medals away from me now, and the ones Fanny made from milk bottle tops just don’t have the same je nais se quoi. Anyway, there is clearly a market for this kind of stuff (but this is the internet, where there’s a market for crayoned drawings of ants fucking cardamom pods), and Shadow’s fans have every right to question my authority to judge. I question my judgement all the time. Why, for example, have I just eaten two pounds of whelks? We’ll all come to regret that soon enough.

I must point out that Shadow isn’t all about poetry – a hop back in time reveals diary-style entries about her day-to-day life, her favourite things and so forth. From this and other hints around the place, I came to appreciate that Shadow has seen some tough times. I am not callous enough to make light of anyone’s afflictions, addictions or journeys to recovery, and I tip my cap to Shadow’s strength in making herself well. I’m just here for the poems, as poems are what Shadow has been producing these past many months.

I believe it is customary to give advice at some point during a review, but I am not sure what advice I can give to Shadow. She likes her poetry. Her fans like her poetry. It seems to provide them all with much-needed succour. I would love to see Shadow throw off her ill-fitting forms and frolic naked in free verse, but that’s my personal taste. I could recommend a thesaurus and a big, fat poetry anthology, but they are my panaceas. Everyone should keep a poetry anthology in their bathroom. I can think of no more profound an experience than reciting Yeats during a healthy evacuation.

Eventually, when all Shadow’s poems began to blur into one, I had to desist. I gave it a good shot, but I can’t recommend this blog (unless you like pictures of raven-haired beauties, of which there are many; they look mournfully into the mist, they play the violin against burning skies, they show coquettish shoulders by strange seashores. I prefer blondes myself. Fanny had the most beautiful golden curls, before the accident). There is so much quality stuff out there that I’m damned if I’m going to read any more of this rot. Shadow is a grown woman. She can write what she likes, but I will never return to her site, nor will I ever forgive her. My umbles are protesting and I’m going to need at least an hour on the commode with Dylan Thomas before I can face Fanny’s tripe for tea...

For making me hate poetry, I award Shadow with this brightly flaming finger. Why not write a poem about it?

Are Your Parents Siblings?

Sometimes I have an irritable bowel that acts up. When my irritable bowel doesn’t act up I am a charming little sweet pea. When it does act up, (and I consider acting up three trips to the bathroom in less than thirty minutes because I need to expel huge volumes of diarrhea) I get mighty dehydrated, crampy, and bitchy. But other than that, I am an easy going kind of girl. B-u-b-b-l-e-girl made me feel the same way my irritable bowel makes me feel sometimes—dehydrated, crampy, and bitchy.

When I made my way to Bubblegirl, I saw this title and thought, "oh goody. I love sex and bendy people!" But then I read on and realized it was a colossal let-down. There wasn’t anything really sexy about it.

Bubblegirl has a disease, Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome. Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome is a group of inherited disorders that affect your connective tissues. Some of the more prominent symptoms of Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome include flexible joints that extend beyond the normal range of movement. Oh, and you have skin that is especially stretchy or fragile. Not that you would know any of that from Bubblegirl’s blog.

The title of the blog is Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome: Deal With It. The rest of the title should say, "If you like married hypochondriacs that have absolutely nothing interesting to say."

About Me sections are for giving the reader pertinent info that will help them learn about you and your lame ass blog. All I got from your About Me section is that you are from Canada and you like karaoke. If you want people to deal with the fact that you have this disease that no one has ever heard of, write about something other than this fucking disease. It is very hard for others to not define you by this god-awful affliction if that is all you have to say. And unfortunately for me, this is all you have to say. Over and over and over again.

Bubblegirl doesn’t even post enough to actually warrant a review. At the time of this review she has posted 52 times in 2 years. If this is a way of keeping friends and family informed of the latest round of tests or whatever bullshit is going on with you, I have a brilliant suggestion. Get your family and friend’s e-mails together and send them updates. Please do this so that others who want to write and can’t imagine their existence without words in a row don’t have to share space with you on Blogger (which is the only thing you are doing right at the moment). This is going to hurt, but am saying it anyway. While I was trying to find a morsel of redeeming quality about your blog I found myself popping back over to WebMD and the Mayo Clinic website because their info on your particular disease was way more interesting than the mundane bullshit on your blog.

When I saw this or this, I was constantly screaming, "Tell me why in the blue fuck I should care about this litany of ailments?" If you thought having Ehlers-Danlos was shitty, try having to read about all these boring ass things you go through. It is excruciating.

Here is where you have to make a decision. Tell me why you are using a vibrator, how it really makes you feel that you are the real life inspiration for the movie Unbreakable, and explain just what kind of dumbasses stumble across your path as a secretary or just stop. And by stop, I mean end your blog. But I wonder if you want your blog to be anything more than medical updates. If that is the case, why would you ask to be reviewed? You need to read this review, and this hint and then give your final answer. There are about 37 other things I wanted to tell you to do but until you reconcile the content/writing issue, there really isn’t a point to even bringing those up.

I bet you are a nice girl. I bet you are fun to be around for like the first five minutes until you start complaining about your sprained finger from washing dishes. I bet I would have a beer with you if you didn’t post pics of this.

Having a shitty disease and maybe being nice doesn’t make me be nice. Dame Chisel doesn’t like to waste time. And your blog is a waste of time. A long, boring, mind-numbing waste of time. This review was my first for AAYSR. I am almost pissed that my reviewing cherry was popped on this gigantic turd. But everyone’s first time can’t be perfect. Now I can get back to something really worthwhile, like dealing with my irritable bowel.

I wanted to give you this

But instead I gave you this because you do have this awful disease and it’s obviously the only thing you’ve got going for you.

My skeertuig is vol palings*

The other day a friend and I went to see "Julie & Julia," a sweet little film about a culinary giant and some girl who turned her whiny little blog into a book (and then into a movie). During the film, my friend turns to me and says, "Someday I'll say I knew you when you had a blog." I scoffed, "It doesn't happen like that anymore." And it surely won't happen to me and my sorely neglected little exercise in self-indulgence. But the thing is, as Madame pointed out recently, everyone and their mother and sometimes their cat has a blog now. The field is saturated and glutted and just overrun with folks wanting to be heard above the din.

But what's worse than all those mind-numbing and misspelled and mordant (although I kind of like that bit) forays into blogging, those wastes of space, those narcissistic little microcosms, are the ones who could be so much better but just aren't. Stu strikes me as one such.

He has the ugliest template ever. I wanted to click away immediately. The ads are sucking my will to live. It looks like a spam nest run over by a train wreck with gobbets of banality strewn across the pavement of the blogosphere. I mean, look: He made me use the word "blogosphere." Jesus lord, there are no dates on the posts! Where am I? Also, the whole shebang sometimes gets all wonky with the archives and crap moving under the post.

Just scrap it. It's total crap. It is a hinderance to your writing. It couches your blog in the most off-putting way. Find something simple, roll up your archives, get organized, and for shit's sake put a date on your posts. Stu, you don't need a tab for "blogging." The whole blog should kind of be for that, right? And that header image? That's the header image of a total douchebag.

Stu, your title is so annoying I want to rips its wriggling little guts out. I mean, fuck me sideways, there are ellipses in the title. In the title! I hate it on principle. And merit. And anything else I can hate it on.

But go check out his "About" page, which is really just his Blogger profile (dude -- don't do that). He sounds interesting, right? Ninjas, the word "hogwash," Aston Martins? Well, you never would have guessed from looking at his shit storm of a blog.

Guess what? A "belter" is apparently a hot chick. Just FYI. Learn something new every day. I thought it had to do with people who can really belt out a song, like maybe Babs. But no. Hot chicks. How original. Although I'm pleased to report that the brunettes seem to outstrip (that might have been a poor choice of words -- or a perfect one) the blondes.

Something else I learned? South Africans say "y'all." I can't quite wrap my head around that.

Look, the guy's entertaining enough and he's kind of funny, but do I really need to read another site where a guy drools over hot girls, hot cars, and moderately funny things posted elsewhere on the web? No. No, I don't. And neither does the rest of the world. It's not until about three months into the blog that we get an actual post with more than a paragraph or two from Stu without a picture of a hot car or a bikinied babe or something pilfered from somewhere else. And, you know, aside from some sloppiness and ellipses overkill, it's actually amusing.

Stu, Stu, Stu... cut the crap. You're an amusing guy and your voice is engaging, but you lose me with all the extra nonsense you pepper into your blog. It's useless, overdone, and it completely undermines your genuinely likable writing. You can do better. Strip it down, tune it up, and get real. I stopped reading after about four months because I had to wade through all the flotsam and jetsam of Internet wreckage to get to YOU. And you're lucky I got that far.

You get a flaming finger because you are failing to live up to your potential and your template sucks hind tit. Clean it up, start actually writing, and I might reconsider. You've got something -- you're just hiding it. Stop.






*My hovercraft is full of eels. (Afrikaans)

Less Crap, More Writing

Today's reviewee has been "blogging" since 2007. However, Kris Nair has not posted anything in exactly one month.

Which is mostly a relief.

I like to start things off pretty and with kind words, so let's do that first. Your title, less humans, more robots, fan-fucking-tastic my friend. I would just like to see a capital letter or four in there. Your template is clean and well organized, I love it and your archives? Eye candy, archive porn right there. I wanted to lick the screen, you know, had it loaded quickly for me. It didn't, but I'll forgive you.

Now for the bad. Kris is another in our long line of Indian blogging friends. He's not emo, cutting himself or crying out for universal understanding. Thank the heavens for that. However? He is a 'Mentor Capitalist' out of New Delhi. I'll let you click over to his blog to find out just what a mentor capitalist is, while I cough "bullshit" into my hand. I'll try not to let the fact that I was abused for years by a man from India, that was in a business very much like this, stand in the way of objectivity.

Ahem.

No, you know what? Fuck that. Let's stop right here. If your blog mostly consists of:

YouTube videos

Quotes from other people

Clever pictures and cartoons

Cut and pasted articles

Then stop asking us to review your shit. You are wasting our fucking time!







and








Suck it, Kris Nair, Suck it.

Blogorrhea

A guest review by regular commenter Posol'stvo the Medved, Executive Supreme Vice Chancellor of the Independent Republic of Posol'stvia .

Blogorrhea. It isn’t a word, but it should be. And if it were elevated to the pantheon of word-dom, it would certainly be applied to today’s recipient of abject scrutiny: Reflections in the Snow-Covered Hills. For in just under three years, Megan has racked up one thousand seven hundred and fifty one posts. That’s an average of 54.72 posts per month.

Wait.

Make that one thousand seven hundred and fifty two. Yup, she just published again.

I would love to sit here and tell you that I had just finished reading every single word that she had ever written, but honestly, I didn’t have that kind of time. So I had to make use of the shortcuts she makes available. Most of her posts are categorized into one of the following categories: grammar, journalism, her family, Canada, religion, David Hasselhoff, Fleetwood Mac, responses to reader submitted questions or complaints, and being a know-it-all. She provides her readers with a FAQ that I was expecting to be annoyed by, on principle, but it turned out to be helpful, entertaining, and informative. The rare proper use of a FAQ section indeed.

Based on her sheer volume and self-declaration of being a know-it-all, in all candor, I was prepared to dislike her, and to dislike everything that she had ever written. But you know what they say – never judge a book by how far apart its covers are.

As it happens, she is pretty damn smart. And funny. And makes some excellent points without sounding condescending or preachy. In general, I enjoyed reading those posts I was able to get to and through. If I had to criticize her content in any way, I would perhaps suggest that she not rely so heavily on posting multimedia items, especially when that is all the post consists of. Occasionally, this blog seems to suffer from multiple personality dissociative disorder, as one post would be a lucid commentary on journalistic ethics and the next would be about what it’s like to be a mommy. It was at times like reading a mashup of The Atlantic and Parenting. Her regular readers (and she seems to have a great many of those) don’t seem terribly jarred by that, so perhaps I’ll let that slide, and just skip over the posts that don’t cater to my interests.

Where I do see room for improvement is in the template and navigation. To begin with, the header of her template, while very pleasant, visually, takes up enough vertical space that it pushed everything but the title of her first post off my screen. On some devices (ahem, iPhone), in landscape mode, I didn’t even get that. I definitely suggest compressing that vertical space some. The rest of the layout was clean and easy to read, and didn’t feel overly cluttered.

Navigation is this blog’s fatal flaw. When viewing a previous month’s archive or a category listing, I was never able to view all of the items in the view. I kept having to click to see more posts. I didn’t want to. I wanted to skim it all. I realize that the page load might take a while, but I have been warned that October 2006 contains 126 posts. I am prepared to wait.

Once in a category or month view, I could not find a way to return to the top of the site. I kept looking for it. It never showed up. I suggest modifying the header so that the logo image always links to the home.

So for the content, being as this is my first review and I don’t want to completely blow my load the first time out, I’m awarding Megan three stars.


The template header and navigation issues however earn her a big ass flaming finger. I don’t know that WordPress will let her fix these issues, but it should. And blaming it on the platform is a lame excuse – there’s always a way around it.