Drivel for Nice People

So I have this friend, Blubbering Vlad, who's the type of guy who you want to be around when there's trouble brewing. Not that he's all that handy, or good with his fists, or even all that smart; he's just a hell of a lot of fun. And he's likely to help keep the heat off your trail acting as a distraction to any authorities who may be inclined to give you a second glance.

Needless to say, when I go on the prowl, his place is one of the first stops I make on my way out of town.

But when the phone rings and the miracle of modern caller ID tells me that it's Blub, I will not ever pick up. Never. Because, fun and useful as he is out running through the swamps, trying to have an actual conversation with him on a phone is excruciatingly dull, dull, dull. The guy simply has nothing to say and uses way too many syllables to get that nothing conveyed.

Reading today's blog (A Hundred Indecisions) reminded me of my dear friend.

The author, who reveals her name very reluctantly and tells us virtually nothing at all about herself directly, is 24 year old Gini from Delhi, an architecture student, and .... Well, shit, that's kind of it. She writes in complete sentences. Complains about poor spelling in text messages. Seems to grouse regularly about the life she has laid out before her, as though she is powerless to effect a change. Hell for all I know, she is. But it seems pretty fucked up that she seems to have virtually nothing positive to say about becoming an architect for all the time she seems to devote to it.

What does that leave me with? I am left with another iteration of the same old question -- what the hell are you writing this for? You do not seem possessed of literary demons that must be unleashed, lest they eat you up inside. If anything, you seem to have literary kittens that occasionally need a ball of yarn to play with or to have their bellies scratched. I am not transported within your words, I am instead driven to fits of ADD. The remotest shiny bauble captures my attention over your words.

So. What the hell can you do about this? Is it so awful? No, not awful. Just dreadfully mundane. And I suspect that this is a direct result of Gini writing this blog before she has experienced anything.

No, that's not true. She has. As a newly hatched from the nest High School grad she traveled alone from her home in Delhi to Chennai, over two thousand km distant, and took up at school there, trying to fit into a culture very different from what she was used to. A writer would have wrested an entire novel from that setup alone.

So, let me leave you with a question and then a rating. First the question: Gini, when you sleep at night, what do you dream of?

And now for the rating.



Meh. Meh. Meh.

Figure out why you're doing this, and if you aren't doing it because your muse will fucking kill you in your sleep if you don't, don't submit for a review from a bunch of clove cigarette smoking, beret wearing, edgy, aging hipsters like us. We'll all be that much happier. I promise.

Oh! The Places That Are There That You Will Point Towards!

I have a favorite coffee shop.  It's pretty standard, as far as coffee shops go. The owner/barista has a tattoo of a fox curling around his ear, with the tail tracing underneath his jaw and I am in love with him.  He eyes me with pleasured surprise, tickles my palm with the tips of his fingers when he hands me my change, brushes eyes with me at the exact moment of contact and grins wickedly.  I hold my breath, blushing like a proper whore.  He is the most charming man I've ever met.  No force can shatter our lusty, caffeinated kinship.  That shit is spiritual.  I turn shyly to catch the next customer getting the same treasured gaze, and it smells like cinnamon and desire and I'm sure he douses his carrot cake with aphrodisiacs and I'm proud to be a part of his business, because that dude is sexy as hell.

Caryn also has a favorite coffee shop, but I don't really understand why.  It just sounds like another coffee shop.  She's a Jewish ESFJ who likes a tidy little Sunday, having a boyfriend, and reading her Kindle and eating giant tins of popcorn, but who doesn't like Holiday popcorn? Fucking everybody likes Holiday popcorn.  Except for the haters, who can suck it. 

But you see, Balance Overload is not really so much about the story of Caryn as it is about stuff, and stuff that is very safe, and her advice about stuff that is safe.  Since she's a college career counselor, this is unsurprising.  But as we all know: the information a blogger chooses to omit says just as much about them as what they include.  Her mom reads her blog, poor thing.  Caryn, honestly, what the fuck were you thinking?

Yeah, I know, your mom is your best friend and you tell her like everything, you fucking liar. You write with bland assurance and mechanical perfection, you give us at least one adorable aside per post and you end with questions intended to illicit small discussion.  Clockwork.  It's the sort of masked dynamic that makes me angry and then very, very sad, as if you want to articulate something important about yourself, but you don't want to reveal too much so you say it about the fucking Bachelor instead.

It's shit like that that brings me to my next point, which is integral: it is more important to me to defend the honor of Cottonelle over Charmin than it is to hear about your "religious odyssey", and my reasons are twofold:

1. Cottonelle is like wiping my ass with rainbows after shitting gold.
2.  You give me no explanation as to why you and JB were conflicted in your interfaith relationship.  I sense no tension in your words, I can find no reason for wasting your time on counseling.  You are speaking in generalities.  If I want to read generalities on interfaith relationships I will buy a book written by a fucking expert. But I want to hear about YOU, nancy-girl.

Your most telling entry, and your best, is this, and I like it so much I will link it twice.  This is who you are.  You are energized by simple pleasures and conclusions, and I dig that because it's personal and it fits you. It also tells me you're concerned with the destination rather than the journey.  Yes, you are.  YES YOU ARE.  Don't argue with me, I'm right.  Your blog is about general conclusions you make about stuff, with nothing detailing how you got there.

Unfortunately, that's not at all what I care about. 

Here Comes Another One, Just Like.....

Happiness is an Internal Pursuit is the name of the blog being reviewed today. That sounds pretty deep and meaningful and shit. But you know what else is an internal pursuit? A pap smear. However, you don’t see women putting that one in their blog readers to be revisited at weekly intervals. From what I have heard, it is a once in every two years experience that is akin to having fingernails scraped down a blackboard. Except in your vagina.

So already this review has taken a review south. But I knew that when Shiner gave me my next mission, which I chose to accept. It unfortunately did not blow up in a delicate-ball-of-paper-sized explosion when I had finished with it.

Here is the bit where you realise I am a grouchy old dinosaur. Not to be confused with the hip young thang we know as Johnny Raptor. He is all up with where it is happening and whatnot. Not so much me. I still like to think of blogs in ‘book’ terms. Number one: it has to grab me on the first page. Usually someone in the book publishing process, least of all the author, will make sure that this will occur with a decent percentage of the people who have picked up the book. Unfortunately for the blog world, there is no editor to tell the blogger, ‘You know, I just think it needs a little more boom, pow, pizzazz? You picking up what I am putting down?’

Sufficed to say, the writerly stylings of Bipasha did not lure me willingly into her world. And here we come to number two on Redpen’s Good Blog list. Use correct punctuation. I am not a nitpicker – I won’t get all up in your grill if you try, and fail, to use a colon or semi-colon properly, but a capital letter at the beginning of a sentence will work wonders if you would like people other than baggy-assed jean wearing tweens with cell phones surgically attached to their fingers to read what you have to say. The ellipse, contrary to the belief of those under 18, it NOT an acceptable fill-in for any other form of punctuation; nor does it make it seem like you are soooo deep and there are so many other ideas peering out from within those little dots; ideas which your awesome intellect could not be bothered elucidating upon. But like the good Indian kid she is, having listened thoroughly to her teachers, Bipasha does manage to give the exclamation mark a good airing. Good girl!

Look, Bipasha is a compassionate woman who lives in a fascinating country. At times she tries to highlight it and I get a little bit intrigued. The problem in that scenario is that it ends being me that does all the imagination leg-work while trying desperately to ignore the abominable teen email/text speak…and FUCK ME. I really thought this chick was young. Like early 20s at the most. I seem to have been proven otherwise which disturbs me on all manners of levels. I really don’t think I can continue on. Thirty-one? Is that a typo?

I really don’t know what else to say Bipasha. You are an intelligent lady who lives in a scary and cool place. You are sweet and idealistic and I am a little bit in love with your dog Dexter. And I like you well enough. You are thoughtful and observant but fuck me if you write (in English at least, the only language in which I am fluent) like a fifteen year old - all grand ideas, a little bit of heart and terrible techno short hand.

This rating isn’t really for you. I mean, just for you, you would get a:




But for the culmination of Indian blogs with the same bloody issues I give you a:










And finally, for Shiner;









I am sorry I made you post my last four reviews. You can tell why by the bloody lay-out of this one. I also did try to think of something more 'hip' to give you but meh. I am nothing if not unoriginal and mother-lovin' lazy.

If All Your Friends Jumped Off a Bridge, Would You Do It Too?

I know that none of you care about my troubles, but I have to tell you the truth. The thought of writing a review for today's blog just makes me feel exhausted all of a sudden. It's not that it's a particularly bad blog. Indeed, if that were the case, I would have something to sink my fangs into. And it isn't that the reviewee is particularly problematic or annoying or anything. In fact, based on the very little I know about her, I actually think that I'd really like her. She has a great optimistic way of looking at life that I can only imagine is infectious in person.

I am exhausted because her execution is just another in a seeming endless series of blogs that are in essence the equivalent of Cheech and Chong's "How I Spent My Summer Vacation."

That the details vary from blog to blog matters little. This one lives in Chicago. That one in Bangalore. This one's in IT. That one's a nurse. That one over there's a teacher. Ho hum. She has a dog. He has a two year old son. Whatever.

I think that it is very telling that the only reason Prathima even has a blog was because other people she knows have them. And that it was pretty much dormant until she spent a certain amount of time unemployed, when it seemed to give her something to do to while away the hours when she would have rather been working. Even now, it seems that the only thing driving her to write at all is so that she is not strictly a consumer on the blogosphere.

As much as I admire those who want to give back to the community, I do want to let everyone know -- you don't necessarily have to give back in kind. Not everyone needs a blog. Especially if you're not necessarily all that enthused to say anything.

I realize that this is overly critical and possibly even harsh, but the fact is, you seem to derive more pleasure from reading others' blogs. And that's okay. Maybe I am reading this wrong. Maybe you do get jazzed up writing about a day in the life of an H4 visa holding individual residing in the US of A, but if so, that excitement just didn't come across.

My advice to you. If I am reading you wrong, and you really are really excited to be writing these blog entries, try to find a way to convey that excitement to your reader. Convince us of something. Tell us what you love and why. Tell us what you fear most and why. In other words, challenge yourself and us. Expand our minds through what you uniquely bring to the world.

I'm not going to tell you the versa to that vice I set up up there. That is to say, I will not suggest that if you are writing out of obligation, perhaps that is energy best spent elsewhere. Far be it from me to tell you what to do with your energy, and if you think that this is making the world a better place, I won't ask you to stop. But I haven't found anything in here to keep me coming back if you keep on with what you're doing.

As it is, I am feeling compelled to introduce a whole new rating. You don't deserve anything negative. You didn't even earn a "Meh." I am taking ths opportunity to introduce the brand new "No Stars" rating. Again, you seem like a really great person, so it really isn't personal.

Now pardon me while I go take a nap.

One Lump or Two?

Time and time again, I am presented with a fresh victim. And rather than relish the delightful treat I am about to excoriate, I ask myself “Why would this seemingly normal human being request a review from us?”

"For validation," seems to be a frequent response, and all I can do is wonder whether these poor creatures know how to read. Or if they have an inkling what “I Will Fucking Tear You Apart” means. They clearly have picked the wrong review site. They certainly have happened upon the wrong reviewer. Unlike some reviewers here who can be seduced by a certain quaint charm, I cannot. If you wish to curry my favor, it comes down to a simple rubric. 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? Or are you trite? Do you overwhelm with clichés and small-talk?

I hate trite, clichés and small-talk. Okay, hate’s an awfully strong word. I understand these things have their place, but I would probably rather remove my own spleen with a rusty fishhook than sit through too much small-talk. I bet that sounds like I’m using hyperbole to make a point, but to tell the truth, the fact that I would get such an amazing story out of removing my own spleen with a rusty fishhook has me contemplating just how many hours of small-talk would push me to that extreme. And it is not as high a number as you might think.

People frequently write for very different reasons than they have for reading, and often what makes for a compelling story that you want to share makes for a chore for a thinking human to read. Especially when the presumed purpose of your writing is merely to make social connections. To share awards. To spread memes. This sort of writing is the literary equivalent of a coffee-clatch, a place where weary mothers can get together to chit-chat about their days, their children or grandkids, and, I dunno, scrapbook or something. And I bet that there are a lot of people who get something out of this. There are likely hundreds of thousands of people (maybe even more) for whom this sort of interaction, whether in person or in the virtual world of Blogger or Wordpress, fills some urgent inner need.

But this is a need I do not have. And so, I cannot relate. I must come to you today to report that Nancy, a mid-thirties mother of two, originally from India, but now living in Dubai, UAE with her husband of 11 years, spends way too much time with online chit-chat for my liking.

I am not completely heartless. Nancy does get a lot of feedback via this chit-chat that really feeds her in ways that she needs, so I would never for the life of me tell her to stop what she’s doing. But I might ask in an extremely pointed manner what in the name of all that is sacred to her was she expecting from a review here? I gather that she is a fairly conservative person, in terms of subject matter that she feels is appropriate. I could be wrong. Still, I was getting the distinct impression that the concept of being FUCKING torn apart would be reprehensible to her. So, again, why? Why here?

As luck would have it, we actually have another quitter on our hands. By my calculations, about a month before requesting a review, Nancy declared that she was going on hiatus for an indeterminate period of time, only breaking away from her self-imposed moratorium to post one more meme. All I can imagine is that she was hoping that she would get some sort of spark from me telling her that, Gosh Awmighty, if she didn’t immediately start writing again, I was going to kill myself. But in fairness to you, to me, and truthfully to her as well, I can’t provide her with that spark.

Because if that spark comes from outside of you, it does not belong to you at all.

All that aside, I do want to say that I learned some very interesting things from Nancy. About life in the United Arab Emirates, and about what it is like to have an arranged marriage. And for that, I am genuinely grateful that I read the last year’s worth of posts.

I always like to leave my victims with some pointers on how to improve, and Nancy is no exception. I have several ideas. She may not be interested in any of them, and she is certainly free to ignore everything about this review.

• Please stop spelling in shorthand. It hurts my cerebral cortex. “Coz” is wrong. It is spelled “because,” or “’cause” if pressed for time. And “of course” is two words, not one.
• Edit. A lot. Get to the point quicker. Brevity is a virtue. Even your better posts were a chore to read simply owing to unnecessary length and meandering off the point.
• Stop blogging about blogging about blogging. Or blog buddies. Or blog awards. Or memes (or as you call them “tags”).
• The kinds of things that we, the people who don’t know you but who might happen upon your blog, want to know are buried deep. Who you are. Why you blog. What you’re all about. And even then, out of a year’s worth of posts, maybe three were really personal, what’s-Nancy-really-like stuff. The rest were trivia. Trivia is okay, but not very substantial. Bring that stuff out more. Push it to the front on an About Me page. Or give up on people like me.

What would people think, when they hear that I'm a Jesus Freak?*

I'm pretty sure Shiner saved this one special, just for me. To hope for an unbiased, issue-free review is a futile effort.

I grew up going to church every Sunday. I was heavily involved in my youth group in junior high and high school. The first two years of my adulthood were spent at a small, private Christian college. Yes, shockingly enough, I was one of those kids.

However, I never quite fit in. Even at the age of 13, I felt like an outsider. And I was viewed as a bad Christian, simply because I rebelled against Christian culture*. I refused to live in the bubble*, and they didn't like it.

But Halee is someone they would like. She's so steeped in Christian culture, Tyndale House* could publish books from her used Kleenex. She's set up shop so far in her bubble, I really believe she thought this was a Christian blog review site because our name quotes John 16:24*. Obviously, she didn't read the URL.

Nevertheless, this is my assignment, and I've never been one for shirking my duties.

Halee's blog template is cute, her title is cliched and banal ("My Life and Thoughts"), and she has too much distracting and meaningless crap in her sidebar.

Halee's writing comes across as uneducated. It's filled with incorrect spelling, grammar, spacing, and capitalization, and rife with run-on sentences and paragraphs. Also, an abundance of dreaded exclamation points, making the blog come across as one written by a middle school girl, instead of a married, college-educated woman.

Most of the blog is written like a journal, for her friends to catch up on her life. Completely boring for a stranger. She also seems mildly obsessed with weddings and babies, which is par for the course with most Christian girls. It was also one of the reasons why I only spent 2 years at the Christian college, before transferring to a state school. I didn't go to school to get my MRS. degree, thank you very much.

In the rest of her blog, she spews Conservative Christian propaganda, which only appeals to people who have those same beliefs. I get the feeling that Halee is just regurgitating what her parents and her church have told her, without thinking for herself. I also get the feeling she's trying to witness to the world*, from her blog. But again, no one's going to read this blog unless they come from the same background as Halee, so it's pointless.

I was all set to give her a "Meh" and an "Abercrombie", and tell her to start an anonymous blog, where she can write about real things, without feeling like everyone in her bubble is watching. . . until I got to these posts:

1) Here, she talks about how she's annoyed with being asked to give money for Haiti relief, because our government spends our tax money irresponsibly.
2) Here, she talks about how she has a hard time feeling sympathy for the homeless, because the ONE TIME she has seen a homeless person, he was rude to her.

Let's see what Jesus has to say about this, shall we Halee?

Matthew 22:37-39* - The "love your neighbor as yourself" verse.

Luke 6:30-31* - The Golden Rule, AKA the "do unto others" verse.

Matthew 25:31-36* - The Parable of the Sheep and Goats, AKA the "whatever you did for the least of these" verse.

Did you notice how I didn't need to explain what the verses were, other than their nicknames? That's because people with limited knowledge of the Bible have heard of them. And when Christians fail miserably at those basic commandments, it makes them look really bad. That's why people say, "All Christians are hypocrites", Halee.

Also readers, have you noticed how clean my language has been in this post? That's because I've been saving it for this:

How the FUCK have you only seen one homeless person in your life?

I grew up in a small backwater town too, but I spent time with my church family, sorting clothes and serving food at the local homeless shelter WHEN I WAS 10.

In high school, I spent the springtime running fundraisers to earn money to travel to Mexico, the Arizona Navajo reservation, and inner-city LA. You know what I did there? I built houses for the homeless, worked in missions, and delivered food to AIDS shut-ins. I also ran camps for Mexican and Navajo street children, as well as the younger siblings of the Grape Street Crips in Watts.

Jesus didn't go to VBS* or Awanas*, Halee. He spent his time with the poor, the crippled, and the sick. He even hung out with prostitutes. Get off your High Jesus Horse, please.

NOW, I award you:


from the Father





from the Son





from the Holy Ghost.




May God have mercy on my soul.

*links for the unchurched heathens

Rip Rip Woodchip

There are two television shows that I absolutely adore but I am not the target audience for; Spicks and Specks and Top Gear. But that doesn't matter - I find the shows so pants-wettingly amusing that I don’t care if I don’t know much about cars or music.

I like my blogs like I like my shows. I don't have to be the intended audience but I insist that the blog is written in a way that is either, witty, insightful, engaging, informative, thought-provoking or God forbid, all of those combined.

Today’s reviewee writes for therapy. It would seem incongruous for someone in that situation to ask for a blog review from us. But nevertheless we steam ahead. Is it like kicking puppies to say someone who is showing the world their therapy journals and emails to therapist is needy? Admittedly my radar started peeping like a chick when she said she had worked through all the therapists in her home town. I know she didn’t mean to be funny here, but really? She wants to give her therapist the third degree and then pay them $20 a week?

Even so Marie seems affable and honest. She is able to articulate her thoughts well enough but it doesn't really feel like the heart-wrenching, scary process that would usually accompany such a subject. It feels no more sensitive than a woman on a mission to find a man.

As a writer I know that getting your thoughts out on paper is a cathartic, de-cluttering process. However blogging is a different animal. A blog has a real audience. That means you have to write for them, not you. Therefore, let them be in the stories, the flashbacks, the emotions. Keep the journal under your mattress, not open next to your PC.

Let’s face it, as a person with some issues, you probably have more material than most but when you tell rather than show, you lose all of the power of your experiences and words. Could you rewrite the story about the autistic boy in thispost? Your experiences with him sound fascinating. But instead of telling us that he made you cry, make us cry too. You say that you like this guy’s work, so try and take a tab out of his blog. He seems to be doing it right, in the ‘genre’ you blog in as well as enough out of it that I am curious if not enthralled. Things get a bit more raw here but it just seems a little calculated. Hindsight is a wonderful thing I guess.

To put it bluntly Marie, we of the internet do not want to be your confession booth or your therapist's couch. Sure, it is shallow, tawdry and all that is wrong with this world, but we demand that you entertain us. Whether that is with laughter, titillation or tears – we don’t care, as long as we feel what you feel too. Until then, stick to the journal.

Although you asked, you won’t receive a rating. I give you a:













For the review title reference, go here. At least listen until the chorus. You can thank me later.

Your Shit Is Bananas

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.

Stitch this, Bitch

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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


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

Wandering? I'll Show You Wandering.

I fucking do not understand. Please, explain to me why this poor little girl would submit her blog here. It's not even fair.

It's just...everything is presented so basely, so numb and uncomplicated, and readers are given the impression that she finds these ideas and opinions freshly inspiring...I feel sorry for her. This little fucking goblin makes me feel sorry for her because she has a lame blog about stale observations coupled with the audacity to imply she wants to be a writer and does so without a speck of pretension, and I have to ask: is this blog a joke?

There is no way a trilingual woman with an advanced degree in software engineering could think that something like this served as radical expository when it reminds me of exchanges with my junior high pen pal from Senegal, who was assigned to me in Social Studies and all of our letters were graded essays on "what I learned in class" and "things about my country" and all that bullshit. No one in class really cared; we were a bunch of little racist American brats that wanted to see pictures of bone-necklaced tribespeople riding giant hyenas or ripping roasted zebra meat from the bone. Then one time, between letters, while we were waiting for a picture of school life in Dakar, fucking Nancy Baumgarten asked our teacher if they had cameras in Africa. That, my friends, taught me two significant life-changing lies: I hate blazing ignorance and I am better than other people because of it.

This blog reminds me of that unwarranted superiority. Every word she writes elicits this reaction:

1. I judge her simplicity and unfairly blame it on Mauritania.
2. I remember that she is from Mauritius, not Mauritania, and they are two very different countries.
   
3. I am comforted by my lofty acceptance of our cultural differences.
4. I imagine people judging her for cultural differences.
5. I realize am better than other people. Because of the lofty acceptance.
6. I realize that acceptance is not the same thing as caring.
7. I feel guilty for my lack of emotional connection with the blog, even when she opens up.
8. I get angry, because that shit's not my fault. It's the fault of the wandering mind (change the title, it's horribly misleading) that never really wanders much farther than the tip of her own fingers.
9. I am such a fucking self-important douchebag for reacting this way.
   

So I feel superior to her as well as all of those hypothetical bullies that I created in my brain, and then I feel like a dick. Basically this blog made me think about me and not at all about the blogger.

Is that still the sign of a good blog? No. No it's not, I've decided.

She made me analyze myself being such a fucking simpleton that I wanted to just give her a piece of my brain to help with mental indigestion. HOW DOES THIS MAKE YOU FEEL? DO YOU FEEL ANYTHING? DO I FEEL ANYTHING? How can we relate as human beings when there are all these insipid fences everywhere that aren't even fun to climb over?








This is extremely frustrating. I hate you because you make me hate myself. And to the readers: I'm sorry you had to sit through this review.

If only I didn't have more in common with the crackheads you write about

Well it has finally happened. This vile little undertaking of which I'm proud to be a part has finally crossed paths with the most wholesome, the most virginal of the internets -- the Bloggernacle.

What we have today is a Mormon blogger, Jill, who I fear may have been misled by our header into thinking she was applying for a temple recommend, rather than applying for a corn-hole hazing of the most unhygienic variety.

Just as I have a strict policy against discrimination with regard to which religions I will blaspheme, so too do I spare not the rod on the virtuous of the blogosphere when I hand out teeth-gnashing butt drubbings.

But call it homesickness for the Jell-O Belt, replete with its happy looking folk in desperate want of tanned skin sharing morally pure fun and scripture around a pitcher of unspiked Purplesaurus Rex Kool-Aid; call it nostalgia for the culinary delights of my youth my Mormon grandmother whipped up from canned goods, thus rotating her year supply of food. Maybe I'm just in a good mood today because someone has brought me back to my youth and home. Whatever the cause, Jill need not get her panties in a bunch (or her temple garments, as it were). I am not here to question her beliefs, however eyebrow-raisingly non-mainstream they may be. And I, of all people, have no need to be cagey. Having been born into an extended Mormon family myself, I pretty much have a get-out-of-hell free card, should the occasion require it. You see, despite my religious rejection of religion, somewhere inside my dark and withered soul, I cling to the hope that I will be baptized Mormon posthumously by proxy with the cooperation of one of my bazillion cousins' offspring and thus ensure my place in at least one of the kingdoms of heaven. Uh, kinda.

While Mormonism may be central to Jill's life, it is actually not a central theme of her blog. She's not constantly talking about it except in passing and there are no conversion efforts that I could see, or any judgment placed on those who have differing beliefs. For me the Mormonism is an aspect of Jill that shines blindingly through the lines, scorching my depraved retina with the sterile glory of the Heavenly Father. I recognize that glaring beam from my childhood and actually, while I probably have more in common morally with the crackheads she encounters or the crazy people on the subway than I do with her according to her church's doctrine, I feel at home culturally when I read her blog and inside her safe, shrink wrapped, prophylactic sense of humor, where even the 'd-word' is off limits.

But for the unfamiliar reader, Jill's Mormonism may come across as a minor detail in the grander scheme of who Jill portrays herself to be through her writing. She's also a 29 year old single and celibate half Mexican inner city high school teacher living out of place in Harlem. So her stories are much more than ideas of how to use up the 25 cases of water packed tuna fish in your pantry or tales of proselytization efforts gone awry. She writes on encounters with other cultures in her job, stories from her time in Honduras, incidents on the subway, and how her experience has had an effect on her political outlook.

Jill is above all a genuinely likeable person who has a serious funny bone, albeit an entirely wholesome, good-natured, and light hearted one. Jill likely won't take that in a negative light but I find it slightly disturbs a tormented mind like mine of ever unfolding perversions. Am I the only one to seek out the persona non grata, the mischief-makers, the guilt-ridden, those that don't have it even remotely figured out, those with the million dissenting voices in their head when I navigate the blogosphere and, well, life? Are there really people out there that are that consistent and pure like Jill? If so and if I can get my cynical mind around that, I have no business fouling up their junk, so I'd best keep my distance anyway.

As to the writing, Jill has a lot of potential, and her voice is refreshingly humble and endearing, although many of her posts read like letters home - well written and edited, mind you, but they sound as if they are meant to get a giggle out of Sister Smith from her ward back home more than the people that frequent this joint. FYI: unless I'm on snack duty at Family Home Evening, I don't care about this. Her earlier posts seemed in some cases to lack a rythmic flow to them, but she's improving. As to her writing technique, there could be more in the way of variety of tone. Jill is a mature enough writer to experiment a little in her prose, do some more intensive self-discovery through her writing, unexpected unfolding, narrative flowering. I'd like to see Jill delve more into the emotion or the descriptions behind the events she recounts as opposed to just telling the reader what happened, whatever the effect on how she categorizes herself as a writer (a Mormon humor blogger), and whatever the shock waves it may send to her Mormon audience.

I'd like to see her get her hands dirty a little. Honestly, what the heck did you expect me to say, Jill? This ain't exactly the Relief Society.

So this is what I can muster from the depths of my putrid heart:






Oh yeah, and your template reminds me of a mix of my grandmother's dingy bathroom wallpaper and a shade of denim suggesting high-wasted cinched cameltoe disasters of the early nineties. Oh and make your *cusswords removed* links work, especially the About link, dadgummit.

An Incomplete Education

Hey there fuckers. Long time no see. It was a bit like that movie The Terminal for me. I took a vacation, and when I got back, my country no longer existed and was under a new regime. No matter. I’m an opportunist, so I ingratiated myself with the new Prime Minister, off-ed a few enemies of the state, and, voila, here I am! Back in the spotlight.

So, what do we have here? Today’s entertainment (or should I say edutainment?) comes in the form of one Ms. Friendly, a thirty-something year old public high school teacher from…, I don’t know where, exactly. Somewhere in America. Somewhere near a big city with the problems that go along with overcrowding and poverty. Somewhere that gave her the opportunity to chronicle her experiences teaching in an inner city school with no leadership or resources, and lacking seriously in the student motivation and positive parental involvement department. (And no, she is not running for Governor of California.)

Her entire output consists of 40 posts, dating from 2008 to close to the present, most of which came from that first year. Since then, she has taken a new job at a less resource challenged, less inner city school. But she still has plenty to say.

I read everything, from beginning to end. Didn’t take me too long. The first ten or fifteen items sucked me in. Made me really think about what is going on with the whole public education system. Made me question the value of No Child Left Behind. Made me wonder what sort of system allows such ineffectual school administrators to keep their jobs when they are clearly letting the inmates run the asylum. Had me asking questions like – “What culpability do the unions have in this? Do we need a complete top-to-bottom overhaul of the system? Where are the state education dollars going in these inner city schools?”

If Ms. Friendly had stopped there, this would have been a completely different review. I was provoked. I was challenged. I was outraged. I was about to call my congressperson.

But she didn’t stop there. She kept writing, kept harping on the same issues over and over again. Never offering up any real solutions. Just telling us what she doesn’t like about the situation at hand. And her tendency to refer to the troublemakers in her classes as “garbage pail kids” comes across, not as snarky or even as a form of gallows humor, but as a sort of cruelty. Call someone a turd often enough and they’ll start to believe it. That old self-fulfilling prophecy thing.

And I began to wonder -- who is the intended audience for this blog?

I personally know a lot of educators, in real life. I know college professors. I know secondary school teachers. And I know a whole host of elementary school teachers and administrators. And yeah, most of the educators I know work at private schools, certainly not inner-city environments, but some are at public schools. And when I get together for a cook out or something with them, they pretty much all bitch and moan about the same things that Ms. Friendly bitches and moans about. Interfering parents. Ineffectual administration. Incompetent co-workers. Unmotivated students. They very rarely have anything to say that’s particularly positive about their career choices. (Admittedly, the teachers I know don’t usually fear for their lives with their students. Usually.)

Which makes me wonder – why?

Why did you choose this job when it so clearly makes you miserable? Or, if it doesn't make you miserable, why are you pissing and moaning in a blog about it? Why aren’t you doing something like aspiring to an administration position to, I dunno, make some improvements (unless that’s what your PhD is for)?

If this is just a journal to vent to, why submit it for a review? Here?

Now, all that aside, Ms Friendly, here’s some free advice, should you have gotten this far without deciding that I’m a total fucking dickhead that just don’t get it:

• Edit. Proofread. Spellcheck. You’re an educator. You teach English. You should not be confusing “where” and “were.”
  
  
• Finish what you start. There were, in my opinion, too many times that you said something to the effect of “more on that later” but never gave us the “more.” Sometimes you set up a rant about two or three things, but then only ranted about one. And it seemed you sort of petered out in a few posts without getting to the final denouement.


• Your template. Too many font changes. White text on a black background is hard on my eyes. And look at things like your bullet lists. When there is stuff in there that says "* ", I can assure you, that is not meant to be there. Kill it quick before it multiplies!


• Move on. You’ve covered the topics I listed above ad nauseum. It is time to branch out, tell us more interesting tidbits about education. Or issue a call to action. Something. Lest you be accused of abusing Roy Rogers’ beloved, yet very stuffed, Trigger. Tell us more about the exceptional students. The courageous ones that make the whole experience worthwhile. If this blog is not just for you to use as a dumping ground for negativity, if it is meant for an external audience, let us into the realm of understanding as to why you chose to be an educator.

Or just keep doing what you’re doing. You write well, you have a vivid voice. I would love to see you use that voice as a positive force.

Now for your final grade this semester. I am awarding you one star for making me aware of the issues of teaching in an inner-city environment so vividly, at first.



But I'm also giving you an "Incomplete", because of the rest and because I feel that there's so much more you could be doing.

Butterflies and Bhaona

It is a cold day in England. Fanny has banked up the fire, made me a pint of hot Cheeky Vimto and rubbed Deep Heat into my extremities, but it is as though the grey sky and the needling rain have got inside my very bones. In this part of the world we have a saying, ‘Ne’er cast a clout ‘til May be out’, which, roughly translated, means “Don’t take your vest off ‘til June”. Or your longjohns, balaclava, earmuffs and mittens. When I discovered that today’s blogger comes all the way from India, I did not know whether the contrast in climate would be a torture or a tonic.

Quirky Mon (which I cannot help but think in a Jamaican accent) is a young medical student from Assam, and I am glad of this – when I first saw the title of her blog I didn’t think I would have the strength to continue. It is called “Quirky Alone....and Happy!” and as I have a pathological hatred of exclamation marks and am highly prejudiced against the word ‘quirky’, this was not a good start. I was terrified that it would be the ‘musings’ of a girl who wears jewellery made of vintage buttons, carries a lunchbox instead of a handbag and has a cat called Baudelaire. However, I bravely soldiered on, and this is what I found.

To rub salt in my frostbitten wounds, the first post describes a blissful April morning quite unlike the crabbed and pinching month we’ve just weathered. There are cuckoos and roses, jewelled feet in the dew, even a meaningful butterfly. I was, of course, spitting with envy, thinking of my daffodils poleaxed by the wind. My first instinct was to take some form of revenge on Quirky Mon, but I found that it is rather hard to hate her.

Quirky is a thoroughly decent young woman. She is hard-working and self-deprecating, she prizes education, and enjoys learning for its own sake. She is thoughtful and serious and she wants to make herself a better person. She loves her family and her friends and wants to make them proud of her, and yet she retains a mischievous streak, and displays an interesting capacity for ruthlessness. She worries about her appearance and she pines for a true love. I hope she finds him soon, she deserves him.

Her posts are often far too long for the casual reader, and I would advise that she go back through her archives and, at the very least, put in some paragraph breaks. I am aware that my criticising long posts is all rather pot and kettle, but I did find my eyes rebelling somewhere around the final third of Quirky’s longer theses. There’s also rather a lot of angst floating about, a lot of convoluted self-analysis. This is fine for a secret diary, but it can be rather tedious for other people to read, a bit like when my Fanny insists on recounting her dreams each morning. Quirky writes reasonably well though, with an eye for detail and character, and with harsher editing she could be much better. I do enjoy reading a blog that teaches me something I didn’t know before, and I found these posts about Bhaona and Bhogali Bihu fascinating.

Quirky does not swear or smoke or drink, and she comes from a culture where courting is rather difficult, and so her writing might not appeal to those of you with a more Bacchic bent. In fact, she does not seem like the kind of girl who would be a particularly devoted fan of this site and its overall tone at all. I did have to wonder what such a nice girl was doing in a place like this, but then I am often surprised at the differences between the blogs that are reviewed here and those that are the work of the commentators and contributors. It is hard to review the nice writings of nice people. Quirky is to me rather like that convenient butterfly. She is so lovely that I am afraid I will crush her in my meaty paws. I fear I may already have marred her with my smut, just by reading her words.

So what can I say in summation? Keep writing, Quirky; as catharsis if nothing else. If you really do harbour dreams of becoming a writer as well as a doctor, practise writing pieces that do not contain the word ‘I’. I won’t be returning to your blog – niceness can be quite draining for those of us who go bump in the night – but I passed a warming afternoon in your company and I am going to have Fanny make aloo chops for tea.

I am going to give you a star, and, as you are such a pleasant young woman, I am going to pretend that I didn’t see the poetry.