More Like A Quarter Pound of Splenda

First of all, I am fucking pissed off that this review got deleted and now I have to write another, and I've forgotten most of my jokes and links, which are now probably hovering nervously over one of the gimpier, glibbier internet sectors that probably has pictures of cats speaking like twits, and my words are all, "O Shiner, why have you forsaken me" and I'm all "if you love something set it free" blah blah "come back here."  Everyone gets that quote wrong anyway.

Everyone including Tinker Belle (in a post I linked before but totally don't feel like finding), our young author of Confessions of a Twenty-Something Drama Queen, the most redundant blog title ever, who rightly admits in her blog-blurb-beneath-the-title-thinger that her blog is about "Nothing, really. Just a walk through the world I exist in and observations of the people around. All with a little pinch of salt." I'm not sure if the salt was a late addition to the description, but it's definitely a late addition to the blog.

It's as if she wrote for two years with saccharine, chemically-sweet sentiments, actually read her own damp writing, realized she sounded like a fucking fifteen-year-old Twihard, started to try hard, and just salted the shit out of everything, instantly making things a little more delicious.

The best thing about this blog, by far, is watching Tinker Belle grow up. In the beginning, she's just another girl who uses too many exclamation points, wants a boyfriend, like, really bad, and everything is I'm-so-different-and-special, fanfic-styled stories, I'm-so-deep-because-you're-so-shallow, posts with nothing but soft-focus romancey pictures and horrible song lyrics, bad poetry, and emo heavily detailed updates about cleaning supplies. 

But Tinker Belle's growth as a writer and a person becomes obvious as she slowly evolves from a boring, whiny, insecure, hopeless romantic to a layered, confident, honest, hopeless romantic.  She turns her feelings into a story.  Sometimes it can come across as cheeseball drama, but it works.  She's trying new things with her writing, some good and some bad, but interesting. 

Although I really fucking hate the posts that are just bad music videos and lyrics, one eye-rolling line about Tinker feeling sorry for herself, and her ONE HUNDRED AND FORTY EIGHT LABELS.  I would lose those lame posts because they're awful and stupid, but I know she likes them, and if I were her I would tell me to fuck off. 

Seriously, though.  How many labels does one need?  I can understand having a great deal of labels if you're like, using them ironically instead of tagging posts with a new celebrity whenever you drop a name, which is the blog equivalent of a Tiger Beat locker collage.  Don't put them on your blog at all.  Get fucking rid of them.  I'm not a big fan of the orange-on-rainy-window template - but just using a color other than orange would fix that.  Try to let readers view more than one post at a time.  Create an "About" page.  And please, please, please change the title.  Maybe "The Confessional" or "Emotional Salt" or something. Because yes, she does confess things.  Yes, she's in her twenties.  But she ain't no drama queen. 


   

Helicopter Mom

I want to get this out of the way:  I avoid advice columns, and I avoid blogs that read like advice columns.  Blogs, to me, and to most of the reviewers on this site - are about people sharing their lives creatively, with the semblance of honesty and a penchant for story.  This means, you semantic bastards, that even a manufactured personality writes with honest vision, a fictional persona is written to feel real. 

To most of the world (I AM LOOKING AT YOU, APRIL!) blogging is about...you know what? I don't know.  I don't fucking know at all.  It's about book expose's on single parents, or being angry that you're bored, or sad that teachers don't try hard enough or impressed with your daughter's ability to feel things.  All things that are probably worth discussing, but couldn't you find some way to do this with a little more pizazz?

It's about irrelevant updates and opinion pieces, it's about pushing your transcendence into the internet because you must share what you have learned because no one has ever fucking learned it before ever.  It's step-by-step summaries that are about as interesting as filing cabinets (I went to a hotel and there was good food I met people and they were good My hotel room was good because it had stuff Lunch was good because it was food I went for a walk and it was good). It's all very straightforward and unimaginative, but I get the sense that she's just systematic hovering over everything in an effort to appear balanced.  I get it.  You are balancing your blog topics because "It's All About Balance." Very clever. 

Balance is delicate and shifting, it's a feat. I don't think it can be scheduled.  That's a regiment, not a balance. 


Right now April's writing suggests that she is the type of person who glances down and takes things at face value, and someone who is struggling to overcome her previous role as a victim by writing aggressive essays opining everything she sees without really taking the time to see things from another's perspective.  It makes sense, wanting to take control of her future without being in control for so long.  On the whole though, except for very few pieces, I'm not the biggest fan. 

And that's just because April is not my style.  And my style is the best style.  April, you are well-suited for mommyblogging because you write about things that mommybloggers care about and you aren't a bad writer.  I think your no-nonsense approach to writing is good for what you're going for.  But I like nonsense.  I like a lot of nonsense, actually, and I like individuals that light my brain on fire with nonsense and then drunkenly spray more nonsense across the screen with a fire extinguisher.  

What was so fucking delicious about your mini burger? Or is it just that the novelty of tiny food makes you giggle and tastes better because it's quaint?  Did you utilize all that business in your hotel room, or were you just glad it was there?  Details like that can turn posts from one of those End of the Year Bragging Letters (the ones your acquaintances send during the holidays with pictures of their children wearing matching sweaters or Being Spontaneous) to little glimpses of insight into someone's personality. We'll get the sense you were there instead of just hovering, passing through. 

So if I were you, because like my previous reviewee you have well over 500 posts - create a page with direct links to the best things you've written on your blog, or the best things you've written on any other parenting blog.  I would create a page that has a more in-depth profile detailing why you're blogging and what you hope to accomplish.  I am sure you will use the phrases "I hope to accomplish" and "I am blogging because" when you do this.  Move all of your personal template widgets to the left column, and keep the Blogher shit and links in another.  Consider a header image that reflects your blog.  Perhaps a woman sitting at her laptop with a cup of coffee, while two children play in the background.  That would be new.




Because you are good enough at what you want to do.

A "Schneider" Might Have Made It Better

Ladies, Gentlemen, Raptors, and Vermin -- you are getting the Abbreviated Edition of the Woperchild Review this week. It isn't that you aren't worthy of a more insightful, thought provoking set up and review and all of that. I've just spent the last couple of weeks trying to jam ten pounds of shit into a five pound bag, and am just plum tuckered. But I will not disappoint Shiner. I have committed to this, to her, to you, so I am giving you my best effort possible. (No, I am not 'phoning it in.' Stop saying that.)

Notes on a Blog: One Day at a Time, by Tabor.

Template: Clean, unassuming, pleasant. A fairly long list of crap that I don't care about in the sidebar, but most of the unimportant stuff is below the important crap (archives, about me, etc) and didn’t seem to slow down the page load, so it didn’t bother me. Some reviewers here might ask that the blogroll and followers and labels list be moved to a new page, one accessed via tabs or some links in the sidebar, but I’m not one of them. Especially since I appreciate that Blogger isn’t as easy to create new tabs with than Wordpress is. And the tags were pretty helpful in finding samples for linking. All I need is what you've done -- keep the ones I don't want out of my way.

About the Author: Tabor is in her sixties and is documenting transition to retirement, and all that comes with that -- visits with kids and grandkids, filling one's days with hobbies and activities and such.

She comes across as well-educated and intelligent, if occasionally a bit pretentious. Case in point -- her template has been modified to refer to Comments as "Elements of Repartee,"  (Well, lah dee dah.) and she uses a "Zen" label. She seems like a nice person, a helpful person, one who goes with the flow. Generally calm and non-disruptive. Introspective, free-spirited, having a fondness for nature. (Okay, maybe not always.)

But I’m not sure that makes for the most compelling blog fodder to someone who doesn't know you.

Content: Well written and consistent, but based on the subset I read, a bit mundane. It comes across a lot of the time like the opening paragraphs of a novel, but doesn’t really ever get to any of the crisis or inciting incident or rising action or any of that. I suspect that if I knew Tabor in real life and considered her a friend, this would all be much more interesting, as it would probably be pretty enlightening about what goes on inside that head. But I don’t know her. So I found myself getting halfway through a post and wanting to skip ahead to start the next one far too often.

I should clarify -- it wasn’t that she writes poorly or anything. It isn’t even that she’s necessarily boring. It’s just that that slow-paced, ‘today-I-worked-in-my-garden’ approach is just simply not where I am right now, or even anything I can get my head around. Accuse me of having ADD, call me impatient, whatever. The fact is that those things that are fascinating and appealing to a sixty something year old woman with lots of time on her hands do not always appeal to me.

Now I need to issue a caveat -- as I alluded to above, my schedule over the last few weeks has been a bit brutal, so I did not have a chance to read as much of this as maybe I should have, (I read early posts, late posts, and spot-checked in between) so it is very possible that there was a ton of drama that I just plain missed. With six years’ worth of content, anything is possible. So often, when I turn in a review that summarizes the content the way I see it, someone responds "Well, if you’d read the whole thing, you’d have seen a lot of posts that were very different." To which I’d respond -- "I’d have loved to have read the whole thing, but I have this whole ‘life’ experiment going on the side, so I have to just do the best I can with the time I have." This mindset does apply here.

But here's the thing -- I did find some pretty cool shit. I just had to go pretty far before I found it. So, I am willing to bet that there's more of that there. And you sure as hell could do worse than to spend a few hours digging for the odd gem or two here.

What to do to Improve: Sometimes I hate this category because I feel like the only way I would suggest to improve is to write more like me, and I am empathic enough to realize that variety is the spice of life, and some people don't want to read Hunter S. Thompson all the time, and sometimes want a little Eat, Pray, Love or something. The fact is, Tabor's not doing anything wrong, per se. Just because I didn't find it hilarious or cathartic, which is often what I look for in reading material, doesn't mean it's bad or needs improvement. And it's clear that I'm not in her target demographic, so I guess I can't in good conscience tell her to pander more to former Romanian circus trapeze artists or CIA operatives or what have you.

The Verdict: After all of this, I'm going to go with two stars.



For those of you wondering about the title, who might be younger than me, One Day at a Time was a sitcom in the 70's. Schneider was the wise-cracking building super with a heart of gold and a brain of lead.

She's Got Two Or Three Dwarves Covered

I know, I know. You wanted Forcemeat to do this review, which is understandable. Meat's the jam, I get it, but you got me.

A. Today's blogger suffers the same slippery ill communications of basically, like, 90 percent of submitters: she claims to be something and offers no supporting evidence.

EVERYONE: To echo nearly every single review ever given on this fucking site, do not make blatant declarations about your character unless you're packing a smoking gun. The only thing that reviewers loathe more than shitty writers is shitty liars. Remember way back when everyone was a fucking Humor Blogger (it is so much easier to critique douchey frat-core humorists than the poor, woebegone idealists of late)? Grumpy, you wanna be a cranky bitch? BE A FUCKING BITCH, THEN. Pussy.

However, "grumpy young lady" is an excellent phrase to describe you, I think. It's perky and familiar, tickled with slight self-derogation and intentional bunglement. Granted, the luvable, socially awkward, clumsy puppy-eyes thing can only take a blogger so far. Everyone's doing it. I blame Helen Fielding. I want you to take that personality and cube it.

And then quablam! Cubed. Honesty is underrated. Too much honesty makes some readers uncomfortable, but it depends on the author's presenting attitude, even when we're talking about a woman's right to bear pubic hair. And I must say, I think your stance is brilliant and your defense is brilliant, although I think you might benefit from thicker skin. And to those who made fun of you: I support looking your "best," but don't snoot all over those who are comfortable with themselves and their natural beauty - it's shallow and uncouth, and reveals your classless insecurity.

Then I read something like this, and I realize: she is "whinging" about being ideally healthy. Shut up. That's just obnoxious. Who did that to her, made her think that her personal weight was a problem? And don't tell me "society" because that's bullshit. Suck it.

Sometimes she delves into topics that I don't relate to: marriage, clothes, chick lit (she's a well-balanced reader, but our book preferences differ). But there's wit in there, making it tolerable.

2. Grumpy? Fucking soften up the background color of your template. I have an aversion to offensive digital yellows. Maybe you think that yellowness represents you, like, as a person or something, because you're bright and sweet and tend to give people migraines, and that's...whatever. You seem very nice, but from over here it smells like moldy fruit and I just want to quickly and politely suggest we go for out for some pistachio gelato and then head back to my place.

D. Here's the thing: You obviously can write. I like how you've started venturing into snapshots and stories instead of your old school chronicling journal stuff.

So here's my advice, from an uneducated reviewer to an established Australian teacher, which seems unfair: Sometimes your writing is a little hurried and overenthusiastic. Breathe. Edit. You often find a rhythm two sentences before your posts end. Start writing each post loose and unrestrained, then cut half of it. Four small paragraphs of introduction and one punchline at the end doesn't do it for me. I want you to write a post that is, itself, a punchline. Not a collection of zingers - that's annoying. What I mean is, take this line you invented:

Music for awakening, rather than cute boys who were all teeth.

and write the shit out of that post.



As an afterthought: I totally should have gone with this like, Seven Dwarves motiff, where I analyzed little grumpypants in seven different categories, and then like...whatever. Too late.

A matter of taste

In my line of work, I have to do a lot of reading. I read strategic educational planning reports, budgetary requests, grant applications, teacher induction guidelines, etc. I spend my day buried in this shit.

I can safely say that 99 per cent of what is piled in manila folder after manila folder on my desk awaiting my signature is well written. Punctuation has been used following stringent style guidelines, proper past participles have been applied and subjects and verbs are in harmony like ebony and goddamn ivory.

That doesn't mean that I want to put on my silk negligee, curl up in my cashmere throw with a hot toddy and pull out a copy of the State Board Standards and Rubrics for School Improvement.

I read that shit because I bloody have to.

I have a similar approach to blogging. You can have a PhD in semiotics and another in 18th century English literature and that doesn't get your ass into my reader. To get into my reader, your funny has to hurt my abs, your sexy has to disintegrate my underwear and your frustration has to stick to my throat long after I've marked your posts as read. In other words, whatever the hell you purport to be, you had better be oozing with it and you'd better make me want to lick it up.

And the licking part is where it gets personal. I like to lick what I like to lick. What can I say?

And because I'm used to seeing so much syntactical and grammatical jackassery around this joint, I'm thrown off a bit when I find someone that can actually write; not just sentences, but entire posts that follow the same line of thought without filibustering my face off with random, disconnected, poorly thought out brain turdlings.

Zen Mama knows how to pull a post together. She thinks about what she writes in advance. Not only that, she can write a series related posts and actually retain my interest. Zen Mama tells her story without holding back: the story of a thrice divorced 46 year old mother and professional. She is brave enough to call a spade a spade and a skeleton in the closet a pile of bones. I respect and admire that in a blogger. Her posts can tend to lean towards too long at times, but in general, they have a good pace and she always tries to reveal things about herself through her writing. She believes she's a writer and she acts like it.

But back to the licking.

Here is where I have to put into words why I don't fucking love Zen Mama and only like her. This is where it gets entirely personal. And I'm finding this discussion near impossible without touching my toes into the tumultuous, I'm-gonna-get-ma-fuckin-foot-electrocuted waters of feminism and what it means to me.

Even thinking about this irritates me because I don't want to be non-solidarity-like. I know that we women need solidarity. I know our salaries are still crap compared to men. I know the number of the hours men spend per week on childcare and housework pales in comparison to ours. They enjoy more money, more prestige, more free time, even most of the egalitarian, self-proclaimed Feminist ones do. I'm right here in the boxing ring, throwing my best punches with the same feelings of betrayal in the realization that I'm not just one of the guys anymore and I am always the one to do the fucking laundry.

It's just that I don't buy into the brand of feminism that is all girl-powery, women unite in a huddled mass of chocolate and tears, singing 'I Will Survive' at the top of our lungs, and rise up against men who are all a series of Mr. Dependables, Mr. Idiots, Mr. Perfections, Mr. Whatever-- random, faceless dudes in random suits who are nothing but the prototype of 'man' that we have in our collective heads. That particular brand of feminism with which I have never been able to identify smacks of oversimplification and leaves a weird flavor in my mouth that tastes a lot like regression. I'm not afraid of femininity. But I find that I like women when their strongest characteristics aren't their overriding girliness in the same way that the men I like are not oozing with masculinity. I like my peeps adrodgynous. There is something that doesn't sit right with me when women pat themselves on the back for doing shit despite being women, and maybe it's just that it pisses me off that things are to a state that we require a back pat for living. I want women and men to see society and their position with respect to the opposite gender as being seamless, homogeneous, even if that's naively idealistic of them. I don't claim that men and women are not by nature different and that their differences shouldn't at times be celebrated. But I think we are a hell of a lot more alike than we are different. The variations between us as individuals are much, much greater than they are between the two gender groups as a whole.

Don't get me wrong, Askers. Zen Mama's blog is not a blog that gets all First Wave on our asses in every post or that even seems to be intentionally about any brand of feminism at all. There is just a tone I perceived throughout her blog, and the fairies in the sidebar continuously reminded me of it. And I feel like that has stopped me from being able to Fucking Love her, because I think we differ philosophically. But I have these same issues with my girlfriends in the real world and argue with them about why I think always having Girl's Night Out every goddamn time we get together is retarded.

I give three stars to Zen Mama for knowing how to tell a proper story and for being one of the good ones in the blogosphere. I suppose if Zen Mama was able to transmit anything about herself philosophically through writing and to stir the reader to examine themselves in any way, as far as blogging goes, she's got the right idea.






By the way, I love the blog name and wish I had thought of it.

Fear and Loathing in Upstate Washington

Mommybloggers love us. Is it wrong that I can't reciprocate their affection?

Let me just say it up front: I don't get it.

Today was my daughter's 16th birthday. I surrepticiously snuck off last night and planted a half dozen signs touting her birthday all along the road leading to her high school. She was embarrassed/thrilled.

Today, my son took a nosedive in the school cafeteria, beating the crap out of his face and permalocked his bike to a bike rack at school. I have to run to my boyfriend's house after work to borrow a bolt-cutter so I can rescue the bike tonight when I get home from my job, in between cooking dinner for four teens and celebrating a birthday.

This is basically a standard-issue day for Love Bites, Single Mom Extraordinaire.

But I don't blog about my kids very much. My blog is MY space. Most of my life is filled with kid activities (I do not exaggerate here, not even a little bit), but my blog is for me. That's not true of The Gonzo Mama, whose blog is primarily about her identity as a mother, interspersed with a few politically conservative posts.

Like I said, I don't get it. I love my kids, but I don't particularly want to read/write about them. So, when other moms spend all a significant percentage of their lives focusing on their mommyness, I find it...not annoying, not frustrating, but just fucking boring.

Also, there is something indefinable (for me, at least) about this blogger that just bugs me. I'm trying not to hold that against her, but still, the skin on the back of my neck spent the entire time I was reading Gonzo's blog trying to crawl its way up and over my head.

And, that's coming from the blog's resident conservamommy former Southern Baptist Sunday School teacher*. I snickered whilst imagining how some of you pinko commie heathens are going to recoil in horror, like vampires confronted by a garlic farm, from her defense of Glen Beck, complete with smarmy fat facial photo.

Gonzo Mama fancies herself a writer, and she's not bad. She's just not my thing. I don't believe there is anything she could do differently to make me care about her blog. We just move in different circles, and have different interests. VERY DIFFERENT.

The blog design is, frankly, hideous. The header color is pepto bismal pink and reminds me of my last horrid hangover. The background image looks like what I puked into the toilet during said alcoholic debacle. I can't help but think that perhaps that wasn't what Gonzo Mommy was shooting for, design wise, but since she named herself after Hunter Thompson, who the hell knows. At the least, she's confused.

I also find it difficult to muster the required enthusiasm for her politics, but I don't hate her. I just don't care. It's great that she's adopted all these children, but the fact that she then spends time online bitching about their mother's failure to pay for their back to school shopping, and that SHE TELLS THEM WHEN MOM FUCKS UP takes the shine off of her halo, for me at least.

My prescription to Gonzo Mommy is this: Girl, you need to watch a little Chris Rock. I want you to watch this entire episode. Taking care of children DOES NOT MAKE YOU SPECIAL. It makes you average.

You have this idea that you're St. Gonzo of the Rural Northwest, surrounded by evildoers, but you're AVERAGE. I am weary of self-righteous bible-thumping mommies parading themselves around rural and middle America these days, tea-bagging it up and patting themselves on the back as if they are the last residue of salt & light in this heathen world.

Goddamn. What WOULD Jesus do?

Would Jesus tell a kid that his/her mom didn't deliver on the back-to-school shopping money? Or would he just handle it?

Would Jesus listen to Glen Beck? Or would he change the channel post-haste on that slimey asshole?

Sometimes, I wish Jesus would hurry his sweet ass up and get back here so he could slap the shit out of some people. To be blunt, I'm not sure you know him like you think you do.

There are ten million snarky Jesus-and Glen-Beck worshipping mamas just like you polluting up the 'sphere right now, and most of us just don't care. In fact, I'd prefer it if y'all started up your own hen parties with warning signs so the rest of us could dodge them, and just clucked at each other incessantly.

Preferably, not online.

Lastly, when a woman who can't even bring herself to use the word "fuck" submits her blog here of all places, I have to assume that she was either dropped on her head at birth and is suffering from a TBI or is terminally stupid. Here's your rating:






*Nobody can deliver a jesus-smackdown like a recovering Southern Baptist.