Take Half the Clothes and Twice the Money

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Camping in Heels, YOU FUCKING TEASE.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

I give you a meh.

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

From the frying pan, straight into the fire

Yes, there will be reviews here next week, starting on Monday:

Confessions of a Twenty Something Drama Queen (oh, joy)

Camping in Heels (otherwise known as "improper preparation for adventure")

The Far Queue (always challenging to spell the word queue)

The bitch is back

And, she missed you.

It's time for changes, yet again, at Ask.

You may or may not have noticed, but we need regular reviewers. Apply within.

Caveat: We need reviewers who can be counted on to write ONE REVIEW each week. If you can't, please don't waste my time. I really am not around enough to chase people down who don't really want to write on a regular basis.

Found: One Nutjobber, A Little Brevity-Challenged

As part of my near-constant running monologue, I said “oppositty” out loud this morning and immediately earmarked it for further exploration, as you can well imagine, considering the almost-tactile fabulousness of such a verbal slip. Wildly enthused, I twisted it around on my tongue coolly, jabbing at various pronunciations, at varying volumes, in various locales, refining my plans for its eventual usage; I stroked it, comforted it, mollycoddled it until I had shaped it into “oppocity”, the ingenious foundation for what promised to be an incredibly clever blog-post contrasting cities I don’t live in with the qualities I find most enjoyable within the one I do, culminating in a tournament of oppositional juxtapositions that would eventually reveal the city to which I have the least reason to dwell, or my most “oppocity”, if you will. It turned out, however, that I not only didn’t inherently know very much about my own city, much less any other (thus necessitating research, which, ugh), but also that “oppocity”, as written, looked as though it was meant to rhyme with “atrocity”, which I felt to be contrary to the overall tenor of my proposed post. I also simultaneously came to the conclusion that my idea was actually pretty dumb – really, truly, spectacularly dumb, especially in retrospect – and viewed the decision to abandon the project as less a failure of creative fortitude than it was a triumph of mercy, figuring instead that “oppositty” was of more comedic value if simply used as a replacement of “opposite” in random discussions with soon-to-be aggravated friends.

The truth is that the etymology of “oppositty” is not nearly as interesting as inventing a series of conversational points that would allow me to orchestrate a dialogue heavy with dichotomous blather so that I could ultimately call my girlfriend at work and say, “Hey, honey – did you know that the hypotenuse is the side oppositty to the 90 degree angle in a right triangle?” Phile Not Found is like that: when one feels compelled to explain the joke – less a funny ha-ha, in this case, than an overwrought attempt at cleverness – it probably isn’t very funny, and exponentially less clever than intended. Or, one is talking to idiots who are incapable of understanding anything, much less the contrived inventiveness of a title like Phile Not Found, and judging from the About Me page I’m guessing Ms. Nanobeagletwonames presumes she’s engaged in the latter.

Our intellectually-ambitious blog-author uses a photo of a galaxy as “a constant reminder to be humble” on that About Me page – not because of some capitulation to the majesty of another unfathomably expansive universe extant entirely separate from our own that dwarves her (and everyone else’s) comparatively meager existence, but because she’ll “never be as smart as the folk who devised the instrument that took that photo”, which kind of makes me wonder why she uses said galaxy-photo and not one displaying the camera that took the picture itself... and though I imagine that aesthetic considerations such as these are to be applauded in some cases, despite the fact that, in this case, they seem a mite self-defeating in light of the above-mentioned and spurious justifications invoked in representing oneself as a galaxy, I prefer a more logical progression of symbolic personal-identification in my blogs.

I mean, obviously, right?

So, why this need for reminders of humility, you ask? Well, quoth the brainiac: “Sometimes I feel like I’m the smartest person on the internet”. This, needless to say, is an unfortunate turn of phrase, not only because it opens the door for petty nitpicking, but also because she misspells “suffix” not four sentences later – a pretty catastrophic faux pas when combined with the above assertion, even if made ambivalently, that colours any reading of the blog with the stain of arrogance. For instance, this is a research paper slapped up without regard for context, this is unnecessarily and almost startlingly condescending, and this contains a dialogue that reads

Someone: So, what degree program are you two in?

Me: I'm in Computer Science, and he is in Computer Engineering.

Someone: Oh, what's the difference?

when it should probably read

Someone: So, what degree program are you two in?

Me: I’m in Computer Science, and he is in Computer Engineering.

Someone: Ah.

Me: You see, the difference is―

Someone: Mm-hm. No, that’s great. I’m super, like, happy for you guys. Oop – gotta run.

This is prefaced with a warning that should be applied much more liberally, and though each one of these is heaving with salient points, they retain the faint but unmistakable sneer of adolescence, as though her personal awakening to the terrible manipulations of culture is one shared by the collective at this precise moment in time. As a fellow Canadian atheist whose worldview leans heavily on iconoclasm, I understand. In fact, I believe that a lot of the irritation I feel when reading this blog is a direct result of recognizing my own predilection for pomposity, for the irrational need to prove my stupendous and otherworldly intellect to the faceless masses of subterranean dolts who plague the interweb like a rotten pastiche of herpes scars, and this realization gives me pause; not enough to retract any of my criticisms, mind you, but enough to allow me to see Nanoo as, perhaps, a younger, more computer-savvy me... minus, of course, the staggering bravado and mind-blowing creativity that is so clearly evident in the construction of ideas such as “oppositty”.

If I, then, am forced by my own logic to use my 34-year-old self as a case-study for this 21-year-old student (which I am – shut up), I would have to conclude that her metamorphosis from self-absorbed youngster to slightly wince-inducing writer to absurd deconstructionist incapable of maintaining any kind of writing routine due to both the prevalence of a nineteen-month-old daughter and the delusion that any sort of prolonged concentration is feasible whilst warding off sippy-cup attacks and an alarming preoccupation with the movie Madagascar is a distinct possibility.

In that Phile Not Found is not horrible, I am awarding it one star:



I would also like to represent myself thusly:



This is not because I regard myself as a much-beloved marvel of form/function synergy, or equate myself with the manifest and intrinsic artistry emblematic of a freely-galloping horse, but because I know I’ll never be involved in anything as fundamentally useful as those ensconced in the horseshoe-manufacturing industry are.

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.

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.

No, THIS is tellin' like it is

You know what we haven't had around here for awhile? A mommy blog.

Fan-fucking-tastic. Am I not the perfect person to review this blog? The single, childless, 30-year-old. Woot woot.

Anyway, why the hell did this chick submit here? While we have people who happen to be parents affiliated with this site, I really don't think we're the audience she's looking for.

For instance, look at her word cloud:


Are you kidding me? The only time I willingly read shit like this is when I'm in the waiting room of a doctor's office and my only other option is Sports Illustrated.

I mean, this lady took the time to write a post about the evolution of her hair. And uploaded pictures at each stage. Who gives a shit about that? Other mommy bloggers and the ladies from her birthing class.

(Check out the results from the poll in the link above. It should give you an idea of her readership.)

She uploads tons of boring pictures of her kid. The only people who want to see pics like that are grandmas. Not just any grandmas, but the grandmas of the child in question.

About a month ago, she gave a play by play update on her kid's illness. Ended up being just a fucking COLD. Again, grandmas only care about that shit.

Now, one could claim I have nothing in common with this blogger, therefore her blog is not my cuppa and to just move on.

Fuck that.

I have plenty of mommy and a few daddy bloggers in my reader. There's a huge difference between those blogs and the blog up for review today. The bloggers I read haven't let their children completely define their existence. Their blogs aren't about being parents; they're about their real lives, which just happen to include parenting. They don't try to portray their lives as idyllic and Stepford-esque. The bloggers make me care about them and about their kids. They actually make me want to be a parent myself, even when they write about the kid getting into his own diaper and smearing poop on the walls.

Polka Dot Hippo makes me want to go out and get a hysterectomy. If parenthood equals zombies with no personality, who have no life and nothing to talk about besides their kid, I'll pass, thank you very much.