I Wanna Take You to a Gay Bar

Whenever I write on my own blog I try to tell true stories.  Sometimes I'm the main character, sometimes I'm trying to properly convey the character of someone I know or someone I met standing in line at the auto pound.  Sometimes I succeed.  Sometimes I fail.   But my biggest concern, whenever I post anything--here or elsewhere--is can I prove to the internet that this person is flesh with feelings? 

It's obvious that Cal, a glib little British puppy who's nearly 21, is also trying to creep into the world of storytellers.  Reading his blog is like window shopping at Christmas.  It's all snapshots of silliness and droll, nimble conversations lightly peppered with some distancing snark and I usually finished each post feeling glad but a bit lonely.  There's very little scandal going on, unless you count being in a healthy homosexual relationship a scandal, like those assholes up in Wisconsin. I like him.  I really, really like him.  I even like his template, except for the centered column. 

Cal's writing is calm and honest, conversational and hopeful, all about having good friends and goofy parents, and just...being twenty.  Being twenty was awesome, wasn't it?  The world is just spread out there for you, all shiny and rippled and just waiting to be fucked, and you haven't screwed anything up yet by falling into unflattering light.

The (Not So) Fabulous Life of Cal never really dives into raw emotion, but love is lingering in the alcoves.  The main difference between Cal's writing and other blogs that focus on light daily life stories is the fact that he's not trying to impress readers with individuality and sassy banter.  Of course there is sassy banter, but it's just friends dicking around.  It comes across as more of a tribute to the people he loves. That's fucking valid.

The last couple of months on the blog are stretched like a chore.  And that's my main criticism of Cal's blog: I was hoping his storytelling and characters would grow and develop, I was hoping to read about new jobs and uncharted waters and becoming an adult.

But he hasn't written on the blog since February, which is a big fat bummer.  I want to know what he's up to.  I want to introduce him to my friend's little brother, so Cal can show him a young, positive role model. 

   

I don't know what's going on.  I like everyone lately.  Maybe I'm growing.  

Why I Am Not A Poet

For awhile I hated poetry because I didn't understand it.  All poetry was sensitive glitter, reserved for smug, self-important assholes, who were haughty and deep.  Like Linda Lovelace.  Or dungeons.  Or secret dungeons.  Or French people.  French people who locked their souls in secret metaphorical dungeons, where their poetry was chained and whipped daily because it plundered baguettes, tongue-kissed Madame Dupont, and took the road less traveled by, but someday we will have jaunty berets (je ne sais pas) and be free from le tyrannical aristocracy, oui?  Tres bien!  Louis!  Richelieu!  VIVA LA REVOLUTION!

So...that's what I think about when someone says "poetry."

One day, I discovered what became my favorite poem.  Another day I went to France. You know what? I like smug and glittery when the constituent is sardonically aware of its own narcissism (this is more prevalent in poetry than in France). 

And about half the time, that's what it's like over at From Quiet Thoughts.  Brown is a poet from San Francisco with dreamy bedroom eyes, thoughtfully propped up against a pillow in his profile picture looking pensive and bored, as if porn just doesn't get him off anymore since the internet made it all socially acceptable to jerk it all the time. He could so be French, especially with all the cigarettes and wine.

Honestly, I fucking love about a third of his poems, I want to edit the hell out of another third, and the rest?  Fucking dungeon, like he's trying to be a poet instead of just being poetic.

Because sometimes, this happens:

About Me:  Increments of time, attach themselves to light, creating impassioned pixels of reality. We are what we see, feel and hope.

which sounds like lyrics to low-fi-electro-indie-rock and other things that are trucked with hyphens and pictures of mustaches that lack any real hair. What does this say about Brown, as a person?  We're just particles fueled by our perception of reality, who can really know anyone, and if you can't figure it out then you don't deserve to know and all that priggish bullshit and SHUT THE HELL UP.

Which means Brown is a cheater.  Fuck that distant, vague crap.  He should do it better because I know he can, even though sometimes he could benefit from an editor, a little more self-awareness,

and a little less of that thing, you

know.

That thing that "poets" do, where lines are
separated
for no apparent reason, although
the idea is free verse
and the pauses between phrases can be inconsequential and

the result
is annoying.
(dungeon)

I'm a big fan of Rodin (OMG YOUR PROF PIC MATCHES YOUR HEADER OMG), so the header is fine, but poetry thrives on suggestion, aesthetics, and rhythm. Brown excels at the first, does a good job at the second, and needs to work on the third. Part of aesthetics is not just avid prose, but how the poem looks, and honestly, that template reminds me of fungus.  Stop feeding shit to your template.  Pick a paler, less offensive green for the words - that alone will improve things. Think about flow and meter.  You know how to write.  Do it better. 

I applaud the flows of nonsense because he's practicing his attack.  Sometimes the prose is a bit awkward and clunky, but he's exercising and I respect that, despite the overt naval-gazing, mostly because there isn't a lot of filler.  There's just good and bad practice.  Sometimes his spelling is fucking barbaric, he does the "your/you're" thing and if that shit is intentional to prove a point, like we're too hooked on grammar as a society or something, or if you purposely substituted "poured" with "pored" as a play on words, know this:  that doesn't make any fucking sense, but I'm over it, because I read that one about the snail about 500 times.

I'm a sucker. 


               for effort and skill, but

   because sometimes he sounds like he's trying to be a poet instead of just being himself.

Q Cue Queue Que

BLOG: Que the Lights
AUTHOR: Xavier Burgin a.k.a. Xay B., college student at University of Alabama

The first time I pulled this site up, the first thing that ran through my head was "Oh my god, why the hell is this header image so big?" The second thought was equally critical and went something like this "What the hell is a 'Que'? It's spelled 'Queue' or 'Cue,' depending on your meaning, but I don't think I've ever seen 'Que' before."

Xay never explains why he made his header image so big that it pushes all of his content below the fold on my screen (and I'm at a 1650x1080 resolution -- there's really no excuse for it), but he does address the whole Que thing. I guess. (Sorry, I'm still not okay with it, and I think that you'll see why shortly.) Which leads me into my first substantive concern with the content of this blog. Unless you are involved in or interested in the greek life at the University of Alabama, much of the subject matter on this site is going to fly over your head or under your crotch or around your big fat gut, or somewhere unintended. Even when I was a young man in my late teens and early twenties, the allure of greek life completely eluded me. So, although I get that many young people love to have a place where they belong and all of that, I still felt as though I was standing off to the side observing rituals of a group that I could (and in truth, would) never be a part of.

Frat life aside, Xay is an aspiring filmmaker and photographer. Que the Lights is meant to serve as his online portfolio. This is an area I was hoping to find some commonality of experience. I've never studied, but I have been dabbling in the visual arts, photography, and aspects of film for years, primarily as a screenwriter, but also in the realm of some light directorial work. I was actually looking forward to reviewing this site, big ass header aside. I love short artistic student films. Generally.

So, my next biggest complaint is that there aren't more of these films. Instead, he spends an inordinate amount of time talking about what he's working on, or what he's interested in and why, but this writing comes off like a required school assignment. So, I want to go back to the films now...

I like watching the technical growth. Sure, not all were to my liking. The advertisements for frat events weren't really meant for me. Nor were the rap duels. But the films that told a story showed promise. And I would be very interested in seeing where this goes.

His photography is pretty amazing too. He does a lot of photographing people, something that I am not very good at. I feel that in order to photograph a person, really capture the essence of that person, you have to establish a very intimate bond with him/her. That intimacy is clearly on display in his photographs of people. My only quibble with the photography content is that his photography posts had way too many photos. They swiftly became overwhelming, diluting their individual impact. A lightbox style gallery that shows just one image at a time would be a much more suitable showcase for this work.

To tell the truth, the best part of Xay's filmmaking is the visual aspect. Sound sometimes was lacking, story sometimes vague or obtuse, could have used a bit less generosity in the editing process, but the visuals were almost always striking. Xay, if you were to ask me, I'd say focus on cinematography. I really think you have a gift there.

So, about the blog. What could you be doing better?

• Edit your writing. I know, I say that almost every time. But in this case, you have interesting ideas, but too often a word selection is enough off the mark to yank me right out of reader mode and into red-pen wielding editor mode.
• Shrink the header image.  It should be 1/3 the height it is. Or less.
• If you are serious about using this site as your portfolio, remember that a lot of folks who you want to see your work and look on it favorably won't be in your fraternity and so won't know what "Roo to the people" (or "Roo the people" as you say about 1/3 of the time) is supposed to mean. I still don't. I assume that this is not a statement of love for the offspring of Kanga in Winnie-the-Pooh. Correct?
• Your use of tabs is confusing. The top row works, where it serves as an entry point to a page on your blog about that topic, but the second row? I was annoyed that clicking on those took me out of the blog to an external site without really warning me that was going to happen. It would be clearer if you were to use the YouTube logo or something instead of a tab.

Okay, that's enough for today.

Four stars for your photos.



And three stars for your completed videos.



And zero stars for your writing, which should have been two, but my inner editor redacted two. Sorry. It happens.

It is a good divine that follows her own instructions

What the hell is up with all the IFLY's and stars and shit lately? Are you people getting soft in your old age? Feeling the holiday spirit? Suffering from Seasonal Affective Disorder?

Damnit, I want some ass spankings around this joint. I want someone to threaten their asshole reviewee with a back alley lobotomy. Give me some blood and guts and giblets, people.

Later this week? Please?

I say this because you're not gonna get any angry banshee-screeching from my neck of the woods today.

Good for your feed reader. Bad for your entertainment, I'm afraid.

Jayne, the Suburban Soliloquist, is funny and neurotic and just a cool lady. And this bitch can write.


* I don't have kids, but this post made me understand what it might be like.

* She gets sociological and feminist about book reviews on Amazon

* This is exactly how I feel about Twitter.

* This is exactly how I feel about poetry. In fact, Shiner gave me the choice between this blog and a poetry one . . .

* I love this post. It's funny, but is still poetic in its own way.

However . . .

(I feel like a fucking hypocrite for getting on her case about this, because it's MY major blogging flaw.)

Jayne, your posts could do with some major editing. Reorganization, paring down, splitting up posts, etc.

For example, I think this post would flow better if you started with the Halloween costume story, and then worked into the tailor hemming the skirt. The punchline to the story, the kicker if you will, is in the first paragraph ($15). Why would I continue reading the post? Hold onto the "best" part of the story until the end-ish. Make your reader want to find out what happened.

There's also a difference between writing in a casual, conversational manner, and writing out your ADHD train of thought. I tend to be a rambling storyteller in real life, and that inadvertently carries over into rambling story-writing, which does not translate well and bores my readers. I didn't even realize I was doing it until I was reviewed myself.

For instance, the first paragraph of this post, could be completely deleted. It's the rambling storyteller coming out right there.

In that same post, it seems like you're telling two different stories at the same time even though it's ONE outing you're writing about. Different parts of the post evoked different feelings in me and my emotions felt torn all over the place. I understand what you were trying to do, but I think I would have preferred it if it was JUST about you and your son walking around town and your conversation with him about homeless people OR if it was a "you can't go home again" type post.

And I say that, because you are able to write both types of posts. You go back and forth between writing funny little slice of life stories, and writing evocative pieces that allow your reader to imagine what it's like to experience something. That's a good thing. Personally, I wish I could write the latter, but I'm afraid everything I write like that sounds contrived and maudlin.

I'm awarding you:




For being a cool chick and for having serious potential.

Once There Was This Discarded Note I Found...

Once, as a wee bairn of maybe 11 or 12 years of age, while walking along an unfamiliar street with my gang of hoodlums, we spied a discarded scrap of paper along the way. Nine hundred and ninety nine times out of a thousand, I leave the scrap where it lies. But for some reason, on this day, something inside me says "pick it up and read it." Having learned the hard way what happens when I ignore the voices in my head, I picked that scrap up and read it.

It wasn't addressed to anyone specific and no individuals were mentioned by name, but this little scrap of paper told a dramatic story of lust, betrayal, greed and larceny. I was transfixed. I clearly knew none of these people, but the anger and hostility leaped off the page in a way that it didn't matter whether I knew them or not. I wanted to know more, what happened next, whether the one "bitch ho" was going to get her due comeuppance for stealing the other "bitch ho"'s boyfriend or not.

Alas, I never did find out, as the note was incomplete.

As I read through Nuts 4 Fruits, I felt some of those same stirrings of having read a lovely story about whom I knew nothing, really. Even after reading hundreds of posts, I still do not really know all that much about our intrepid author. I can infer many things, but these inferences may very well be wrong. I know that the author is female, lives in Toronto, wants to be a hermit, and has had a long-distance relationship for seven years. I suspect that she once lived in Africa, at times lives with or near her mother (referred to in these pages merely as "The Survivor"), and takes vacations with her significant other (referred to in these pages as "The Phantom"). I assume she is in her (early?) thirties. And I believe that she works in statistics or data processing or something.

Oh, and she seems to really like shopping at Ikea. And she's a non-militant vegetarian type. That is, until very recently.

She speaks vaguely of dark times in the past, but aside from mentioning that they were there, and implying somehow that the Survivor is called the Survivor somehow because of the survival of these dark times, she does not speak of them at all. Like 'The One Who Must Not Be Named,' she speaks OF the dark times, but not ABOUT the dark times. (And today I am finding it difficult to locate specific references to these times. Dammit, I should have written this down.)

I am left with merely the impression of a person. A shadow of a human life. And I desperately want to know more. I want to know why she chose to be a vegetarian, or if it was even a choice. I want to know why she lives in Toronto when she clearly despises the cold. I want to know why it makes sense for The Phantom to be living in Texas while she lives in Toronto. I want to know more about the sort of relationship that starts with enough trust that the Phantom allows her to spy on him all the time via a webcam and yet seems to shy away from the label "relationship."

I don't get these answers.

Instead, I get the mundane, day-to-day life of a young woman rendered somewhat sublime through the written word. Many posts, maybe half of them, read like a stream of consciousness William Carlos Williams poem. Accessible, yet perfectly capturing the feelings and essences of a moment. I can almost feel the breezes, smell the scents, taste the foods.

The other half of the posts? Meh. "What I bought at Ikea." Or, "here's the code I used in R to make this graph."

In my last review, I talked about what I look for in the writing that I read. What I said:

Do you expand my mind? Do I find myself longing to read just one more post? Do you turn a phrase in a new and fresh way that causes me to look anew upon the mundane and everyday?

Guess what. This nutty fruit (or should I say fruity nut?) does just that. About half of the time. I started way back at the very beginning, and each post was a short sweet little breath or glimpse of what that particular moment in time felt like and seemed like. She captured the essence artfully. Avoiding cliches. And I just kept reading, more and more, like a good book I just couldn't put down. Until I was done and looking at the most recent post.

And I loved her for it. About half of the time.

This is not to say that she is all that and a bag of crackers. Henry David Thorough once famously stated something about the majority of people living a life of quiet desperation, and it seems at times as though our intrepid hermit is doing just that. And as much as it goes against my grain to suggest that my review of a blog should be taken as a review of someone's life, reading posts about wistful regrets over choices made (mind you, choices that I can't say for sure I ever really understood, as she never lays out what options were really there), brought to mind a line from The Shawshank Redemption: "Get busy living or get busy dying."

I would love for her to get busy living.

And, as much as I love the way she captures a moment, some semblance of a framework to hang those moments on would be useful and helpful as well. I mean, crap, she's even blocked the viewing of her Blogger profile. I just spent the last 5 years with her, and I still don't know what to call her, what race she is, or why she loves to visually chart data.

So quit being so damn coy.

Okay. That's it.

Now here's the real shocker. The rating. Three stars.



Give me some framework and start chasing those dreams, and leave what you bought at Ikea to your Facebook profile, and you'll shoot right up to four stars or even maybe an "I Fucking Love You." Because, I do. In fits and starts. But not consistently enough to earn that as an overall rating.

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.

Advertising to Your Target Demographic

There's been some discussion on this site lately, regarding reviewers not being in a blog's demographic. This is not the case today.

I am the same age, gender, race, and sexual orientation as Laurenne. Neither of us are married, nor have babies. We are both from small towns and are college educated. It seems Laurenne's hit the jackpot on the "Ol' Blog Reviewers Roulette Wheel of Death". (of Doom? "The List of Doom" seems to be jinxed. Is it the reference to doom?)

To be honest, I have waited until the last minute to write this review, simply because I know I will be biased. It's easy for me to put myself in her shoes and to be excited there are other women out there who are self-deprecating and neurotic, have a twisted sense of humor, and unashamedly make bad decisions. It's nice to find a blog that's not about husbands/babies, nor about going shopping and drunkenly hooking up with douchebag frat boys. It's nice to find someone who's the shit, but has bad luck with men as well.

She even writes about the death of her father in a candid, poignant, and hilarious way. Some people might think she's being insensitive, but I GET IT. I still tell the story about how I showed up to see my grandmother before she died and witnessed my grandfather and uncle playing poker, taking shots of Black Velvet, and watching "Big Trouble in Little China" on TV. Right fucking next to the bed my grandmother was dying in, completely ignoring her. Sometimes you have to see the humor in things to keep from going crazy.

Oh, and I'm insanely jealous that Laurenne quit her (obviously) high paying advertising job and backpacked (alone) to 12 different countries over the course of 9 months. And her posts while on the road are entertaining and educational, and filled with hilarious and breathtaking images. They may be a bit journally and longwinded, but I can partially forgive that since she's trying to commemorate her journey and I'm sure internet access was hard to come by.

Now, I genuinely like Laurenne and I like her blog. I identify with her. However, I have a few issues . . .

1) I really hate the "You might also like" LinkWithin crap (links to other posts at the end of each post). I understand you're trying to make it easier for people to find similar posts, but it was distracting for me. And I think it's gaudy.

2) The ginormous label cloud on the sidebar HAS GOT TO GO. If someone wants to see other posts with that label, they'll just click the label at the end of your post. And again, gaudy.

3) I know it sucks not having many people read your blog. Believe me, I do. But don't resort to participating in the fake award-giving and being on Twitter only to get readers. I think you're above that. Really.

4) Try to flesh out thoughts like this into more substantial posts. I'm sure you have more to say about your opinions.

5) I want to hear some crazy stories from your life. I know you're trying to live in the moment and not focus on the past or the future, but your past is what's made you who you are today. Let's have it, lady.

My major complaint: This post. You are bitching about not having money, after spending $20,000 on a trip all over the world. This offended me in particular because I happened to be unemployed (not by choice) during the same time period you were traveling. While you were snorkling in the Great Barrier Reef, I was eating ramen noodles while watching whatever TV stations I could get over the antenna. You chose to leave your job and spend that money. I'm jealous that you had the means to do it. But bitching about not having money afterward is offensive. It made me knock a star off.






But I almost added it back on, just because you uploaded this home video of yourself as a kid. And it's on your professional site. Fucking hysterical.

Howzat

And so, my little coddled eggs, we are off to India! It’s all very exciting, especially when certain delicate matters have prevented one leaving the island for longer than one cares to remember. I have taken the liberty of providing you all with a packed lunch, as it’s going to be an interminably long journey. My Fanny has filled the thermos and I believe we are ready to go.

Of course, at the moment one could fly to the barefaced moon and still find someone talking about the football, so I shouldn’t have been surprised that the first post I read on the blog of today’s little chum concerned the World Cup. Bit of a tender topic for an Englishman at the moment. Not that I was particularly invested – more of a petanque man myself – but Fanny was near suicidal. I had to stop her doing herself a mischief with her crocheted Bobby Robson. There’s a lot a cricket talk on this blog as well. I would like to suggest that Rohan just go ahead and marry Sachin Tendulkar. I have always suspected cricket to be a physical version of Mornington Crescent; they make it up as they go along and everybody apart from me is in on the joke. But we’ll ignore the sport and press on.

I would imagine that the first thing most people will think when they click over to Rohan’s blog is, ‘bugger me, these posts are long’. It would be appalling hypocritical of me to criticise verbosity - I have written postscripts that would put Proust to shame – but to the casual reader, Rohan’s vast scads of text might be a trifle off-putting. I would wager that, if polled, eight out of ten cats would as like as not advise Rohan to at least halve the length of his posts.

As I read on, though, I found myself growing increasingly fond of Rohan. I first had a feeling I was in good company when I read this. That tickled me, especially the bit about Grand Guignol violence and torrents of hot blood. It tickled me even further that he sympathises with Salieri and manages to reference Brian de Palma, Kimi Raikkonen and P.G. Wodehouse in the same post. I knew for certain that he was a good egg when I read his description of things he likes in films,

Noir. Mood pieces. Vivid colours and grand camera movements. Humour. Decadence. Amorality. Snappy dialogue. Candles flickering in old mansions. Sex and violence.

And realised it tallied pretty much exactly with what I want in life.

This raises an interesting question. Do we really give two hoots for the casual reader? Should we cut ourselves off mid-flow to satisfy those with such short attention spans that they find anything longer than 200 words intimidating? Do we want to appeal to those who do not find us appealing in our honest, natural state? Admittedly, the last person who saw me in my honest, natural state is still on some serious medication, but it’s only Fanny and so you can’t really tell the difference.

For every clowder of kitties sashaying away from Rohan’s writings with their tails in the air and their little bottoms pursed like disapproving mouths, there will be two throbbing felines eeling round his legs in appreciation. I think I will have to stop this cat metaphor right now. Cats make me uneasy. They have lizard eyes and would kill you in your sleep as soon as look at you.

Anyway, what I am trying to say is should we really give a tinker’s cuss how long his posts are, if he is an interesting man with a wide and eclectic frame of reference who can turn a phrase and likes to have a good old think about things? I have paddled in a lot of pap while wearing my reviewer’s cap (it’s a little feathered number – simply cunning) and I have to say that I would rather read 2,000 words of something that’s at least trying to be thoughtful and entertaining and chunkily nourishing than 200 words of some self-promoting mooncalf mooing about her tits (and I have read enough of that to be referring to nobody specific).

But Rohan has been through all this before. He knows who he is but the ether-flesh is weak and it bothers him that he doesn’t have more readers. Perhaps, Rohan old stick, you should try and vary things a little. I understand that sometimes nothing but a dissertation will do, but the elegant ramble is a tricky thing to pull off and can sometimes err towards the tedious, as I well know. People don’t always want to sit down to a twelve course meal. Sometimes we are equally as satisfied by a small yet perfect mouthful. Actually, that’s a terrible analogy, because if Fanny served me with a mere twelve courses I would send her back to the kitchen with a flea in her ear, or something considerably more uncomfortable, but you get the general idea. Maybe it would be more appropriate, given your love of films, to remind you that a short can be just as powerful as a feature.

You might also consider varying your style a little. You have an amusing, self-deprecating voice, but it can become a little monotonous over extended periods of time – it might be interesting if you stepped back a little, cut down on the gags and really showed me something. Remember, editing is your friend. It is my Moriarty, but it is your friend.

So, now that I have finished clarifying the colour of the kettle, I will leave this place of hot dust and head back to my cool and clammy native climes. If I must be forced to a conclusion, it would be that variety is the spice and conclusions are for the unimaginative.

Three stars, Rohan, and a firm handshake.

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.

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:

An Idiot In Your Inbox

What ho, kiddiwinks! I must own to being in a superlative mood this afternoon. The weather is still absolutely filthy (there has been snow up in the Lakes and Fanny has taken to sporting an old beaver muff she found in the south attic), but I feel in such fine fettle that the sleet just don’t signify. You must forgive my repeated weather reports.

I know it does get tiresome, but I am an Englishman, and I can no more avoid it than I can deny my penchant for Spotted Dick and spanking. I don’t know if it’s down to last night’s productive session on the commode, the fact that Fanny says the traps are filling up or just the reassuring scent of my own inexorable death, but I am fit to burst with friskiness. I woke up in such excellent humour that I was moved to play a little prank on poor Fanny. It involved a rather elaborate system of pulleys and a clandestine trip to the Eel Ponds, but it was worth it to see the look on her funny old face. Most unusual-looking thing, my Fanny. Manages to look like an egg chicken at the same time.

I am all for japery – back at the School I was crowned Shenanigan King three terms running – and I wholeheartedly believe that a little mischief is good for the soul. I have a soft spot for bizarre and pointless naughtiness and I must confess that my sense of humour can err towards the juvenile. Which brings us to the subject of this week’s review – Ned Wingfield: taxidermist, amateur D.J. and ‘master negotiator’.

The conceit here is that our Nedders trawls the classifieds and responds to the advertisements of innocent people who want nothing more than to sell their iron, rent a room or hire a babysitter. Ned then embroils them in a series of increasingly bizarre emails, ostensibly to practice his ‘negotiation skills’, but really just for shits and giggles.

Now, I have seen this kind of thing done before. If Mr Wingfield doesn’t have a copy of The Timewaster Letters by Robert Popper writing as Robin Cooper, I suggest he invest post haste. Perhaps I was predisposed to find Ned amusing because I enjoyed this book (although Ned never reaches the giddy heights of Robin Cooper). Perhaps I am predisposed to find anything that includes jokes about taxidermy amusing. Perhaps it’s just my chipper mood, but I laughed out loud on several occasions whilst reading this blog.

He informs the woman looking for a babysitter that he has trained himself to lactate and once “raised a clutch of baby otters and then harvested their fur and meat”. He tries to interest one poor man in his new business venture; wolves’ teeth dentures for the elderly. When he responds to the advert of the young man looking for a room to rent, he writes “Do you have any experience with brick laying or tarring? Familiarity with deboning primates would also be a plus. Otherwise you’ll have to learn that the hard way”. However, it is sometimes his victims that get the best lines, as said wannabe-lodger proves when he writes, “Yeah but see the thing is it’s precisely the fact that you claim to have a stuffed koala and a ‘weapons cache’ that makes me not want to live with you."

Of course, we all know that humour is subjective, that one man’s meat is another man’s Linda McCartney vegetarian sausage, as I have no doubt proved with that cheap quip. Ned’s shtick will not suit everybody. There were times when I found his jokes a touch basic, the surrealism obvious, his taste questionable, and these moments were only highlighted by the occasional flashes of maleficent brilliance. I like silliness, but I like sophisticated silliness. Overall, however, I found his willful absurdity most chucklesome, and when he ended an email to a man setting up a prayer group with “Ned’s Bible Quote of the Day: 2 Kings 2:24: Then two bears came out of the woods and mauled forty-two of the youths”, I inhaled a goodly portion of my Gin Rickey, although I have no idea why.

There is, however, an issue of suspension of disbelief. I think this kind of thing works best when the reader cannot quite decide if the person writing the emails is real or not. There are a few lapses in tone, particularly in the introductions and in the fact that Ned has merchandise, which allow a glimpse of the Ned who is writing the Ned who is writing the emails, and I would like to see those disappear. For example, he makes occasional references to himself as a ‘celebrity blogger’ and it might be larks if the ‘Ned Wingfield’ character did consider himself to be a celebrity blogger, but his blog was not the one containing his emails, but another, far more unhinged fiction about his day-to-day life.

Mr Wingfield hasn’t posted anything since January, which is something of a pity – unlike any of the other opuses I have reviewed here, I might consider popping back for more. If old Ned smartened himself up and tightened his conceit, I could see this being published as the kind of book one receives multiple copies of at Christmas, because it was on sale at the counter in the book shop and because one’s aunts have no imagination.

So, despite the baying wind and the hoar frost on the windows, I find my mood is gay. My Fanny has recovered from her eel encounter and I have decided that if Ned gets to have merchandise, I should have merchandise too. So far I’ve managed to confect a little something out of a snorkel and a rubber glove filled with Swarfega, but I haven’t tested it out yet. Fanny is looking worried, and rightly so.

Ned Wingfield, for keeping me amused with your gleeful nonsense I am going to give you three stars, and to encourage you to refine and expand on your particular brand of buffoonery, I refer you to Deuteronomy 23:1.