Ask And Ye Shall Receive

Drugmonkey on My Back

2009-10-28T00:16:00.012-04:00

You know when you finally get around to visiting your grandmother and you have to sit for what feels like a millenia on a plastic covered couch sucking on the 10 year old piece of candy she squeezed into your hand when you came in the door, in a room that's about as hot as the inside of a volcano and all she does is drone on and on and on and on about her arthritic knee and her high blood pressure and her faulty pacemaker? Very valid complaints, those. And you know that you're supposed to deeply care about all of it, that it matters, and that she has every right to bitch and moan because getting old and decrepit is just total suck. But fuck it all, you can't wait for it to be over because it's just so incessant and upsetting and why the fuck is it so god damn hot in here? Well today's blogger is your grandma, except instead of complaining about goiters and osteoporosis he rails against those that are supposed to help treat those things, namely "Big Pharma" and those who are fundamentally (and, in his opinion, stupidly) opposed to a government run health care system. There's a lot of negativity to take in, but just like that visit to your grandma, in the end it's kind of worth it.

Drugmonkey is a pharmacist and he has acquired a lot of knowledge about the important topics he bitches about in his 20 year career. He comes off as somewhat condescending and is highly dismissive of those who hold opposing opinions. I'm not saying that he's wrong. In fact, I agree with his stance on a lot of these issues. I'm one of the few relatively young people I know that has needed to use my health insurance quite a bit. And it saddens me to think that there are millions of people who don't have the same option to get their healthcare needs met easily and affordably. But that doesn't mean I want to spend my time reading post after post espousing government run healthcare and exposing the deceptive tactics of pharmaceutical companies.

Luckily, Drugmonkey can write well and his angry tirades are infused with a healthy dose of humor (Oh sweet Jesus, that was an unintentional pun. I fucking hate puns but I hate rewriting sentences even more sometimes. I'm so lazy). His "Pill Counting" posts are particularly funny. For some reason those "day in the life" of your sometimes friendly, neighborhood pharmacist stories were more compelling and interesting to me than the more heavy "sick teenage girl denied a liver transplant" fare. Honestly, I thought this was hilarious. There really are so many morons roving about. Drugmonkey and I have this in common: we are both simultaneously disgusted and fascinated by stupid people.

I'm not usually one to care so much about the way a blog looks as long as the content is interesting and the writing is kick ass. But this blog template is so unbelievably boring that it bears mentioning. The white text on black background makes me feel like I'm being schooled. The only thing that's missing is a green alphabet header image. In fact, it currently has no header image, so anything would be an improvement.

This blog's subject matter is very important. It makes me ashamed of my own blog's content, which is so petty in comparison. Drugmonkey's anger about the health care crisis is fueled by his compassion and his desire to help people. He cares enough about health care reform to devote a lot of effort to educating people about it and also to incite others to action. So for his quality writing and admirable cause I dispense

Newsflash: If you tell me you're funny, you already suck

2009-10-21T15:36:00.006-04:00

Imagine a friend sets you up with some dude. When you ask what he looks like, your friend can't even remember, probably because there is absolutely nothing about his colorless appearance that distinguishes him in any way from the 6 billion other people walking around. He's blander than cardboard dipped in liquefied brown rice.

But you can get beyond looks and so you agree to a phone conversation that could potentially turn into a date if he dazzles you with his personality.

The dude calls you up and for a few seconds seems normal, even coherent, besides the fact that he speaks about himself in third person and goes on and on about his childhood for the first 20 seconds of your conversation, and has a terrible habit of repeating stupid shit he's already said. You decide to let it slide assuming maybe he's a poor planner and didn't know what the fuck to say.

Before you have even had a full minute to decide how this person comes across, he informs you that he is funny, and lets on that he has Humor Bloggers Disease, the bloggers' STD of self-flattery usually based on the number of morons they can get to click on a banner in their ugly-ass sidebar. In mere seconds, his lexical frying pan just killjoyed your disappointed face.

Now that he has prematurely publicized his funniness, thereby insulting you by assuming you lack the wherewithal to decide what funny consists of, every single thing that now comes out of his unmemorable pie hole is examined with unmitigated scrutiny. This then renders whatever would have been even remotely funny no longer fucking funny at all.

Three fat jokes, one Muslim joke, one Mexican joke, and one retard joke later and you tell him:

You know what?

And you hang up the phone.

I Kissed a Girl and I Liked It

2009-10-16T13:16:00.011-04:00

When I saw the title of today's blog, Lessons from the Kissing Booth, I was filled with anticipation. I mean kissing usually leads to sex, and who doesn't want to read about sex? Alas, the title was a big tease as there was little kissing to be found and I was left scratching my head wondering how the blog title was at all relevant to the content of the blog. Considering Samantha was an English major maybe it's a reference to some great work of literature or something completely symbolic that's gone right over my simple little head.

There were 6 years worth of posts to peruse so I could only read a sampling of them. At first I found the blog to be a bit tedious, but after a while I began to appreciate that Samantha is a skilled writer. I found myself melting into her blog, hypnotized by her pretty, pretty words and lulled by the musical quality of her work. Though quite beautiful, her writing has an aloof quality that has the tendency to distance the reader. I get the sense that, at times, she is more interested in flexing her verbal muscles than in sharing a part of herself with us. There are moments when I feel she is being purposely vague about something important, while still managing to artfully capture minor details of an experience. I find it frustrating. Sometimes people are too poetic for their own good. I did find a few posts that elaborated on some rather personal and painful history, so there may be a reason why she tends to skirt around some significant details of her experiences. Not everything can be faced head on.

Samantha is a well-rounded, well-read, well-educated and well-traveled single woman. From what I can tell she has dealt with a lot of tragedy in her 26 years. Despite all that she has endured, she still seems to be enamored with life and all it’s small miracles, beauties and possibilities. It’s an outlook I admire. I wish I could see the world through her lens, in such sharp and illuminated detail. I kind of love her, actually. How could you not?

So. Hello there. I'm samantha. I like dirty jokes and cursing like a sailor, red shoes and argyle, potato chips, puppies, beer, and the word "pulchritudinous." I like to spend weekday evenings in bars or at home with my tambourie and the Northwest's finest indie pop. I do not like people who cheat, telephones, doing the dishes, lettuce, or the look I get when the bartender doesn't think I'm old enough to be in there. My doctor has confirmed that I am finally 5'1" tall. I weigh less than three numbers but no you cannot lift me up to see.

I like daisies, most of all. Daisies and hugs that last just a little too long.

I suggest that Samantha use the preceding paragraph as her "About Me" because it is far superior to what is currently there. In fact, when I read the About Me, saw the butterfly header image and the dismal grey background, I wasn't too excited about reading the blog. Which is a shame because it really should be read. The one complaint I do have is that her archived posts are not titled. She does, however, apply titles to her posts in the “Sometimes Worth Remembering” and “Traveling” sections. The lack of titles in her archives made it impossible for me to link to some of them here.

I don’t think “Lessons from the Kissing Booth” is a blog for everyone. If you want funny, down to earth posts then this blog is not for you. But if you want artfully crafted introspection, give Samantha a read. I have bestowed upon her:

Land of wonder, spices, mystery, and incredibly dull bloggers

2009-10-12T13:46:00.014-04:00

India has attacked us again. I blame Crowley, who I'm certain is somehow responsible for the fact that all of the blogs up for review in the queue right now are from India.

Fuck me sideways with a pickle. One of these pieces of refuse is clearly dead, so I'm discarding it. One has opted out on being reviewed. The other two aren't enough, singularly, to deserve an entire post.

First, Summer Diary. Ugly black & white template, and I have no idea what this person is doing. I like teenagers, I had a house full of them on Saturday, but this blog is like attempting to decipher meaningless gibberish posted on random coconuts and tossed into the ocean to arrive willy nilly on the shores of our brains.

I feel dumber for having spent 20 minutes on the site.

Fuck you for submitting to us, you stupid twat.

Secondly, this one. God save us from the unrelenting angst of teenagers. Were we all this inwardtwisted awkwardness? But some of it holds drops of promise. To that promise, I say...use good grammar. Choose your words more carefully. If you write dialogue, make it cleaner and more clearly identify who is speaking. Keep writing. Clean up your sidebar, and find a better place for the quote under your header bar. Don't try so hard to be unique, but instead focus on distilling your words until they are really and truly yours.

I give you a single star, work upwards to the rest.

These are my missives to India, sent in a digital bottle.

p.s. More importantly, if you were going to be an ironic, made-up superhero, who would you be?

Catcher in the Why, God, Why?

2009-10-07T18:10:00.013-04:00

Indian bloggers tend to fare poorly on review around these parts. So when I received my assignment and saw that it was, in fact, a young Indian blogger I'd be reviewing, I was understandably apprehensive. But I'm an open-minded gal so I delved right in, determined to form an unbiased opinion. One thing became perfectly clear to me right from the start: The author of Slow Tumbling Life is afflicted with that naval-gazing disease which renders him overly fascinated with every little thought in his head. I empathize; I too have suffered from this same affliction. But he has an exaggerated case of this particular illness. This guy is so fascinated by his own mind that he expressed a desire to buy some techno device that would enable him to have a conversation with himself.

It's difficult for me to describe what exactly this blog is about. There are posts about time travel, boring, overly detailed descriptions of mundane events, and fictional conversations with his dog, Cookie (which are, in essence, conversations with himself). This blogger can write very well, actually, but the problem is that you have to dig through a lot of boring shit to find the good stuff. His blog about being sent to boarding school at the age of 6 was one such treasure. But then he gives us this, which is quite frankly the most boring combination of words I have ever had the misfortune to lay my eyes upon.

He likens himself to Holden Caulfield, which is really annoying to me. Instead of an actual profile we get a quote from Catcher in the Rye. Great. I liked the book as much as anyone, but I feel as if Holden is such a typical hero for angsty teenagers and young adults. They need to get a new fucking hero already. The blogger is of the opinion that "you are branded super intelligent almost as soon as you feel, or rather you convince others that you feel, alienated and that angst runs through your arteries." And this couldn't be further from the truth as far as I'm concerned.

He has an aggravating way of jumping around to different topics on the same post. Sometimes the beginning part of a post will be excellent and funny and then the end will suck. Such as on this post which starts off about his confusion at bathrooms that are gender identified by elephants' asses and ends up about some boring movie or something. I don't know.

Some of the descriptions of events in this blog are downright baffling to me. Take this for instance (as he describes how he is crazy like Holden Caulfield):
I really do some of the same crazy things, though. Honest to God. Like I remember a few months ago our family (my parents, my brother and sister in law, and me) got into this terrific war. It must have lasted for about 6 hours. Me against all of them. All of us fell sick after the fight I remember, it was so ferocious! But I remember at one point I left everybody to go to the loo; and inside I stood in front of the giant mirror and smiled and made crazy faces for quite a while. I wasn't upset at all. Then I went back and rejoined the ruckus. I was laughing silently and all in the loo. This and other such insanities are an integral part of my daily existence...

What the fuck is that about? Am I the only person who finds this family interaction slightly creepy?

The template is pretty standard and non-offensive. The site is easily navigated. I actually like the header image and it seems appropriate considering that this blog is basically a virtual explosion of its author's brain. The blogger readily acknowledges that fact. Personally, I prefer more heart in my blogs. The bloodier, the better. And this blog is desperately lacking in heart. I wish this blogger would take his own advice:

I think one should write if they have something interesting to say; not try and say anything in an interesting manner.

And stop thinking things like this: "things might change around me but slowtumblinglife’s life will forever be inherently tragic." You went to a fancy boarding school, have a good job, come from a nice family, employ a cook, a maid and someone to iron your damn clothes for you. I'm having a hard time seeing the tragedy.

Maybe this blog is great and I'm just not intellectual enough to grasp its utter brilliance. Maybe I can't enjoy it completely because of the cultural differences that exist between this blogger and me. As I said above, this blogger can write well and I found some parts that I really enjoyed reading. They were just too few and far between.

So, it's a .

Paint me some water colors

2009-10-07T13:13:00.006-04:00

I haven't always been a rod wielding, pain inflicting pedagogue, you know.

Not so many years ago (okay, it was 1995, shut up), I had the rod pointed in my own face, was accused of having no direction, no attention span, no motivation, and no ability to sit still and shut the fuck up long enough to allow some knowledge to seep into the bored-looking thing that sat between my shoulders with all the stupid piercings hanging off of it. I was a budding 18 year old whose sole outlet for creativity and brain power was to find a way to convince a certain bass player to take my virginity or to bribe anyone of age into buying me some Boones at 7-11. I spent my time in smoke shops wishing I could afford another cool glass blown pipe and more meaningless bumper stickers for my beat up Chrysler. I loitered around coffee shops pretending I was studying and not scoping out anything that looked like it might have had a penis attached to it. Happiness, for me, was a Jimmy Eat World show, a new Jerky Boys tape, ditching Chemistry class, and scheming a way to sneak to California for the weekend to take acid.

I didn't write, I didn't sing, I didn't play music, I didn't dance, I didn't paint. I sure as shit didn't study.

My only motivation for going to college was to locomote after my beloved bass player like a pathetic caboose and it was no surprise that he soon realized I had nothing whatsoever to contribute to any conversation or creative process and duly told me to go play in traffic.

If I were to look back on journals written during that time, I would likely find the flying brain chunks that were the residuals of a self-conscious, immature pre-adult obsessed with any boy that would make eye contact with her for longer than five seconds. The entries would have no point to them, no overarching theme and they would likely have the literary value of the wall in the toilet stall of the girls' restroom near the freshman lockers.

When I started reading Tiffany's blog, this is precisely what I expected to find. How on earth was I going to relate to this teen that whines about her braces and how her senior year is coming to an end and how she will have to say goodbye to the drama club?

But Tiffany, unlike my 18 year old counterpart, is a writer, and she knows it.

To be fair, and to bludgeon all of my pupils with the same instructional force independent of age, Tiffany does have some work to do when it comes to her blog, that is not entirely centered around aging ten years. I won't lie-- as far as my interest goes, that does have something to do with my willingness to become an avid reader, and I think it's only fair to tell the readers of ASK what they can expect. Let's face it – the repertoire from which Tiffany draws experiences to post about is limited. She herself admits that the lowest point in her life has been having chicken pox. But I don't believe she can't be a wonderful writer just because she hasn't experienced enough.

The problem with Tiffany is that she sometimes loses sight that her blog should NOT be an online journal. If she's truly in this for the writing, her blog should be a place where a greater proportion of the posts are as well thought out as all of her scholarship application essays and her short stories. On an online journal, it is acceptable to have posts dedicated to updating your readership a la letters to Grandma, and it is also acceptable to write 'LOL' excessively (I guess). On the blog of a writer, it is not acceptable. The blog is the writing outlet, my dear, not the outlet for the writer to post updates about the ho-hum details of her life, whose true writing is located elsewhere. Tiff usually gets this, but I want her to remind herself of this each time she posts.

In general, her entries stick to the point and are decently written (with the exception of a few I/me problems). She's funny, and thoughtful, and willing to accept and talk about her weaknesses which I find thoroughly inspiring. She's naive, but not despicably so. Tiff has some kind of fiery electricity exuding from her personality that I totally dig on which she has managed to transmit through her writing and that has desperately made me wish I could go back to being 18 so that I could be best friends with her and learn from her ability to focus on what will be a source of happiness in her life-- her centered creativity and the development of her voice.

Tiff, it's time to fine tune things. You know how to paint a picture with broad strokes with a synthetic paintbrush in earth tones, and you do it well, essentially telling the reader what happened to you. Now it's time to start going back over your posts before you publish them with tiny, colorful brush strokes and paint in the split ends, the moles on the back of your characters' necks, the rust stains, the subtleties that will make your readers live the moment with you, as opposed to hearing you relay it. It is rarely the actual events described in a piece that strike a reader; it is the writer's capacity to take the reader on a ride somewhere they have never been and see the world through someone else's eyes that really counts.

As to the design, it's alright, although I hate headers on principle that have the word 'blog' in them and I don't get the water bottle thing. Maybe she explained it back when she was doing the font colors and center aligned text thing but since that was making me want to head butt my computer screen in an epileptic fit, I couldn't dig much further in to look for explanations. I'm glad she grew out of that phase, by the way. She desperately needs to create tabs across the top underneath the header to contain all the madness that is currently polluting her sidebar, and to include a complete about me page (the paragraph she has proclaiming herself as a novelist is not enough – which, by the way, I hope she's aware of the kind of literary expectations this creates). I also recommend that she collect some of her best stuff, the material she is the most proud of and create a tab for it, to reel in some potential readers.

For now you get two stars. I was tempted to give you an additional star based on pure cuteness and potential alone, but I want you to earn a better score. I'm adding you to my reader. Because I really think I can fucking love you someday.

P.S. Tiff - I love that you put 'willing to learn' with a smiley face on a job application where it asked for relevant experience. That kicks ass and if I were the one hiring you would get the job.

But we unleashed a lion

2009-10-05T12:22:00.009-04:00

Imagine if Erik Harris and Dylan Klebold had each kept online diaries chronicling the pain and humiliation ticking like a time bomb inside their lives. What if they'd kept an online record of the million persistent snubs, put-downs, and insults that built up and unleashed an atrocity? What would it be like to walk the echoing and messy chambers of their minds, to revisit those scenes of teenage angst that led up to the fateful explosion of rage?

George Sodini did, a chilling and daily cataloguing of the reasons and plans he had for annihilation.

Self Help Center gives you an advanced tasting, possibly fiction, totally true, of terror.

If you've ever pondered questions like:

What is a rapist thinking when he selects a victim?

How did the Craigslist Killer create the ad that snared his victim?

What is the last thing a man writes before spraying his co-workers with hot lead out of the mouth of an AR-15?

Or, in short, what was happening inside the brains of Dylan/Erik/George before they killed?

Then, you should go and read.

But, if you can't stomach envisioning how a sort of sickness creeps into a man's soul and taunts him to do the unthinkable, you should stay away and read a pleasant mommy blog.

As far as those of you--the core Ask readers--who remember, with some degree of enthusiasm, when we directed a really crappy Indian blogger to kill his roommate to spice things up, this blog will totally be your cuppa.

What's really disturbing, and what makes for compelling reading, is that you're never really sure if Romius T is writing fiction or prose. This is truth spilled in black and white on a computer monitor, truth that plays itself out in America day in and day out.

Whether you can handle this much truth is another story, entirely.

Now, this is where I'd generally tell Romius to spruce up his rather ugly online habitat, clean up his sidebar, and choose a less generic template. But, by doing so, he might undermine the "realness" of the blog.

So, don't change. Keep writing, stay creepy, and let us know when you've finished the next American Psycho.

I am at home with the me, I am rooted in the me who is on this adventure.

2009-10-01T09:53:00.004-04:00

I knew a girl in college who wore long, flowing skirts and no makeup. Her hair looked how it looked with no product or styling or coercing. If she felt like dancing she danced, if she thought something was funny she laughed loud and long (I remember that laugh still: "ha, ha, HAH!" with her head thrust back), and if she wanted to touch you she would. She'd lean in close when she talked, in your space, looking you directly in the eye. Rebecca liked people, liked getting to know them, finding out what made them tick, figuring out how their minds worked, why they did what they did. She hated shoes and clothes and artifice. She liked boys and girls in equal measure, and typically they liked her, too. They couldn't help it. She was light and direct and earthy. And she was the most present and carefree person I think I've ever know.

Rebecca made me uncomfortable while she was making me interested. She just didn't hide. She'd loop her arm through mine and snug her chin on my shoulder, smelling like patchouli and sunshine. She confronted and questioned and she just was so very much her own person. You could take her or leave her and she wouldn't mind either way.

In some ways, Hope's blog Hopenminded reminds me of Rebecca. She has that same carefree directness, that same hippy-dippy, woo-woo peace and love mentality, where they just delve and ask and explore and analyze.

Hope has, by her own admission, a darker experience. There's an edge to her lightness. Her hopefulness is hard-gained and bruised. She is honest (if maybe a little defensive?) about who she is and where she's been. She really is open and hopeful, and based on the glimpses she's given of the life she's lived, it's really a wonderful thing to see. She's chosen -- and probably has to make that choice over and over -- to live simply, peacefully, and joyfully. And for someone like me, who tends to piss and moan about every little inconvenience in her my-god-I've-had-it-damned-easy life, this mentality is really rather instructive.

Now that I've admired the hell out of Hope and appreciated her for drawing out the memory of someone admirable and slightly complicated from my past, let's move on to the nuts and bolts of blogging, shall we? Good. Because Hope needs some help.

Getting the design stuff out of the way, there are three empty tabs. Hey how about taking them down until they're actually useful? You have way too much shit in the sidebars, and you don't need two of them. Get rid of the random posts and recent comments and either stick with the tag cloud OR the categories (categories, please), not both. And your blogroll? It's not really a blogroll. Take it down until it has something in it, or better yet move it to a tab. The design is fine, but consider bumping up the size of your font -- it's way too small.

Now, the writing, which is what Hope and I (and you) care most about. She faces some marked challenges in her writing, with (apparently) little training or education. It shows. But that's ok. You hear me, Hope? That's ok. You keep at it, dammit. You love it, and there's no reason you can't do this if you work hard enough.

But yes, to be honest because that's what we do here and that's what you expect and you can take it, your writing needs some work. You don't need me to tell you there are considerable spelling and grammar and construction mistakes, but I'll do it anyway: there are. You show your rookie roots with rambling, unedited, uncrafted writing. You write because you love it, because it's cathartic for you, because you have to. That impetus is fantastic and can't be taught. What you need -- and what can be taught -- is polish. You need to keep reading good writing that speaks to you, you need to sign up for a local writing group where you can learn from more experienced writers, you need to challenge yourself with writing exercises, and you need to edit the hell out of yourself.

This post here, where you're watching people and recording? That was good (and so was this). Keep observing. Keep figuring out what makes people tick. Write often and always go back and clean up your writing, find the good bits, prune the unnecessary bits, and get to the heart, the poetry, the art of your writing. Your passion is there -- now practice.

P.S. You have a category called "I'm Fingering it all out." I kind of hope that's on purpose. You finger the hell out of life.

In lieu of a review...a game

2009-09-30T15:44:00.003-04:00

Current movies, re-imagined as zombie porn.

Fear and Loathing in Upstate Washington

2009-09-28T14:12:00.014-04:00

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.

Introduction to Arithmetic

2009-09-24T16:43:00.025-04:00

Okay kids. Instead of sitting at your desks with me at the front of the class and you looking at me with blank, depressing stares waiting for me to enlighten you, let's do something different. Let's move our desks out of the way and all sit around in a circle, mkay?

As you can see, I am an open minded educator and I like to think outside the box and apply unorthodox learning models in an effort to steer my pupils away from douchebagification. I'm an envelope pushing maverick. And, based on some inspiration from our latest reviewee, Maggie, I've decided to do things a bit differently today.

My source of inspiration was the following sentence she wrote here:

"Whatever--everyone knows bloggers are so busy furiously expressing themselves that they can't be bothered with editing or proofing."

When I saw this sentence, I hadn't even had the chance to finish lacing up my asshole-annihilating boots and was caught off guard. Remembering my non-traditional approach to instruction, I decided to take a deep breath, count to ten and come up with an alternative to telling Maggie to go get fingerbanged without further ado. So I decided to give her an a priori grade on fucking principle, dammit, for explicitly condoning everything that is wrong about the blogging world.

So here you go, Maggie; you're initial score:

At that point, I made a deal in my mind with our Maggie for the prolongation of my reading -- which may be very short-lived if she sucks as bad as she promises to. The deal is that for every post she gives me that doesn't in some way make me want to shove my TI-84 calculator forcibly into the first puckered brown eye I see, a flaming finger will be subtracted from the score; and we will go from there. It was up to Maggie to solve this word problem and work her shitty rating off before I cried for mercy.

So let's see her progress at contesting her initial suckedness.

First of all, this lifeless, pea green, failure of a template is more overused than the school custodian's right hand when he thinks about me handcuffing him to the monkey bars. Her sidebar is unnecessarily crammed full of crap. As to the content, my findings indicate that there are some main themes visited throughout the blog and they include the following:

1). Posts about not blogging; a metric shit ton of them, infecting her entire blog with the disease of superfluity.

2). Repeated statements on her lack of inspiration, general boredom, and inability to think of anything to say. Her blog is corroded with this shit. She actually titles her posts things like "Tired", "Not feeling it" and "Not feeling it" (Yes, she has two posts titled that way).

3). Mention of her other blog, which according to her, is more interesting than this blog. I cannot see how that's possible since a) it is written by the same person and b) on her other blog she ONLY writes about Twitter and Facebook. (I didn't check out the other blog because I only have time for one trainwreck at a time, and frankly, I can only handle so much WTFuckery in one day).

4). More Twitter and Facebook talk as if dedicating an entire other blog to it weren't enough.

5). Posts about other bloggers, mainly in the form of criticism, leaving a nasty taste in my mouth (I may be one to talk, but she did solicit this criticism, and I consider it community service).

6). Posts recapping books she's reading, rendering completely redundant the bookshelf widgetry bullshit in her sidebar irritating my corneas.

7). Other media she consumes in a dead stare from her colorless couch in the pictureless, windowless living room of her uneventful life.

Before completely giving up, and nearly becoming infected by Maggies' outlook on life (namely that there is nothing to say and that life is boring), I read her most recent post. While hardly poetic, it at least turns one of the flaming fingers into a MEH. If I can even give this blogger a clue as to a starting point to reformulate her conceptual notion of what a blog should be, it would begin with this haphazardly written and moth-eaten post.

Maggie has the toolbox to be able to write. There were no major problems with spelling, punctuation or grammar. She even occasionally throws in some funny one liners. But I reckon that she has never once looked back at her content before hitting publish and asked herself if anyone on god's green earth would give a flying thumb fuck about what she's writing. Indeed she has been "so busy furiously expressing" the square root of sweet blubbering nothing to be "bothered with editing or proofing."

Maggie, if you are not as bored with life as you portray yourself to be, you should ask yourself why you blog like you are. If you are actually that bored, wake the fuck up, cause you only get one shot at life, and contrary to what you may believe, life is hilarious and ironic and agonizing and tender and twisted and fascinating and seductive and everywhere you look there is a tale to be told. And if we don't agree at least on that, you will never, ever capture me as a reader.

Alright, class. Can we help Maggie with some arithmetic?

Class dismissed for recess. Just stay away from the monkey bars please; they're going to be, um, occupied all afternoon.

My skeertuig is vol palings*

2009-09-23T10:47:00.006-04:00

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

*My hovercraft is full of eels. (Afrikaans)

Who needs reasons when you've got heroin?

2009-09-21T16:06:00.003-04:00

A guest review from Gwynna Hurtja.

I remember the first time I experienced the artificial pleasure of opiates. I was 26, laid out in an uncomfortable hospital bed and catheterized after having kidney surgery. The nurse came in and said, "I'm going to give you something for the pain" and then he gave me a shot of Demerol in my (then) very skinny ass. Within seconds, pleasure I can only describe as uber-orgasmic coursed through my entire body. I sunk back in my pillow and said to the people that were at my bedside, "I've never felt so good in my whole life. It's like little pleasure explosions all over my body." And it was really a very accurate description of the experience. To this day, I will readily admit that I love opiates, for easing pain both physical and emotional. I'm lucky enough to have them prescribed to me and I know how to use the medication responsibly. But I realize that opiates have lead many people down some dangerous roads; Occasional enjoyment morphs into addiction and they're shooting heroin at 8 am just to get out of bed. I knew an addict who told me that she kept her stash in her night stand because she literally could not get out of bed without a fix. Yet, I've also known people that have used heroin occasionally on a recreational basis and never became dependent on the drug.

I wonder why it is that some people can use it here and there while others try the drug once and turn into junkies, willing to sacrifice their integrity and dignity over and over to get high? Is it about moral weakness? A lack of willpower? Is it a genetic predisposition? Parental failure? Mental illness? What is it?

The writer of Subdural Flow, who refers to herself as broken-hearted mom, has spent almost a decade trying to answer that. She is a mother watching her 26 year old son, Andrew, struggle with a debilitating and merciless heroin addiction. His addiction has been a decade long roller coaster of short recoveries followed by long relapses, rehabs, incarcerations, promises never kept, hopes ripped to shreds, OD's. Her situation is really quite depressing and it took me a while to read her blog all the way through. It's not that broken-hearted mom is humorless. (I thought this was pretty funny). It's that her pseudonym is apt - she is dealing with a heartbreaking situation. I can't help but feel after reading this blog, that our country's policy of criminalizing drug addiction has driven a deeply embedded knife even further into her heart. That's not to say that Andrew doesn't deserve to serve time for some of the acts he committed to feed his addiction. And it is obvious that being in the prison system is the only way Andrew seems to be able to stay clean for any length of time.

Broken-hearted mom is a competent writer. She tells her story with a beautiful candor, willing to admit she may have made some wrong turns as a mother, while also acknowledging her son's culpability in the mess he's made of his life. The writing itself isn't particularly imaginative or breath-taking. The strength is in its honesty and in the subject matter. It's written with the spirit of a person who has a lot of shit to get off her chest and probably not a lot of people in her personal life willing to listen to it anymore. Also, she's made it clear, especially in her earlier blogs, that having a junkie for a son is a source of shame for herself and her family. This is so sad to me and one of the many reasons I think our society's attitude towards drug addiction is in need of a serious overhaul. Her willingness to share the brutal details of this deep, dark family secret even under the veil of blog anonymity is very brave and I admire her for it. Despite all the grief Andrew has put her through, this woman loves her son. I find it so touching that she is still able to find reasons to be proud of him . It is those anecdotes about Andrew that really break my heart too, because they give glimpses into the really great person Andrew is beneath his addiction.

That being said, after reading blog after blog of essentially the same subject matter (Andrew, heroin addiction, Al-Anon, etc), I felt weary.

I get the impression that this blogger is content with an audience of just recovering/recovered addicts and/or those who love them.

If that is the case, then her blog is perfect as is. But if she wants to expand her audience, she will need to broaden her material. This shouldn't be difficult for her. Broken-hearted mom has led a fascinating life. The few glimpses I got into the lives of the other characters in this drama intrigued me and I longed to read more details about other aspects of their lives. The blog where she talked about trying to find her biological father felt like a breath of fresh air. Broken-Hearted Mom's "48 Things About Me " are pretty amazing and I would love for her to elaborate on some of those.

I won't be adding Subdural Flow blog to my already overflowing reader, but I will check back from time to time to see how Andrew is doing. And if a blogger can get me to care about a junkie I've never met, then I can't give her any less than

P.S. For any road-tripping junkies out there, this is a must read.

I brush my teeth everyday, therefore I blog

2009-09-17T12:38:00.007-04:00

School is back in session, my little pretties, and believe me, I weep for my holidays too. I'm melancholy today as I stand in the corridor amidst the unbearable squealing chatter of the young with my arms folded, mourning the golden silence of summer that has ended. As I settle into the day to day, I'm beginning to wonder what the point of it all is.

The beginning of the school year always provokes déjà vu. A new batch of students arrive, their white tennis shoes like blinding fluorescent light bulbs, their eyes wide and hopeful. Crooked teeth jut out at me forming genuine smiles, but alas, their teeths' days of crooked originality with their charmingly overlapped incisors are numbered; soon they will be aligned with military orthodontic precision inside a shit-talking, ass-kissing mouth whose only language is cliche. Year after year, children unique in their artful ways are painfully shoved through the meat grinder of sameness, excreted out into the world of banality, mixed with all the other fat and protein, never to stand out as bright as they once had the potential to. A very few leave their mark on the world in some way, but most, even bright ones will end up settling for the shallow waters of life, never bothering to take off their stupid floaties to explore the deep end and see if there is anything below the surface that is worth the effort.

They will marry.

They will eat a buttload of junk food while watching T.V.

They will join a gym and lose all the weight they gained.

They will procreate, wherein the fact that they have made full use of their capacities as placental mammals and the fact that they have struggled with weight loss will completely hijack their entire sense of self, and they will think and talk about precious little else. They will start a mommy/exercise blog, and the only guiding principle for their posts will be that they must be made up, almost entirely, of the following words or phrases:

-vlog
-Wordless Wednesday
-mommy
-hubby
-baby
-potty
-contest
-giveaway
-meme
-blog radio
-twitter, tweet grid, tweets, twitter party, twinkling twitching twat (okay I threw that last one in to liven up this god awful list).

They will implode in their own redundancy and disappear from reality into a black hole of anti-art*

Which, now that I think of it, makes it nearly impossible for me to review this blog, because I cannot philosophically distinguish it from all of the trivial meaninglessness I see all around me. It cannot be separated from all the other gristle and tissue of homogenized mediocrity. It is one with the salmonella floating freely through this non-universe.

This blog is one of the many whose sole existence is justified on the basis of community engagement, encouragement (for getting through You-Name-Your-Crisis), and, I suspect, subconscious solace-seeking so as not to drown in the murky waters of nihilism. But I, for one, am annoyed with community engagement absent artful communication, I am discouraged by your empty encouragement that fails to connect with Me The Reader, and I feel depressed when I see how others find solace in your hackneyed anti-narrative.

I want more.

I want painfully beautiful sentences contained within a story that has a point. I want the writer to toy with words until they slither around my head and I savor their every nuance. I want the laugh sucked out of my throat, filling the space between me and my computer screen with audible delight. I want to jealously kick myself wishing it had been me who had thought to string those words together so eloquently. I want my mouth to gape open at talent, or at the bare minimum, effort. But mostly, I want utter generosity of self. I want the unhearthed innards of one's psyche, the best and worst of what is inside their mind. I'm greedy as fuck like that. I don't want the tedium of life regurgitated into my face with ready-made phrases while in the meantime having the shit hypnotized out of me by sidebars of blazing doom which attempt to distract me from the total and absolute lack of meaningful content.

Bookieboo -- I can honestly say that if I met you in real life and heard your amazing weight loss story, I would tell you that you look awesome and high five you for your hard work and congratulate you on your beautiful family. But here, on this turf, I'm going to dare you to take some of the travail that allowed you to give birth, make it through a difficult loss, and wake up everyday and get your ass to gym and put just an ounce of that sweat into crafting your blog posts into stories. I mean, what the shit is this? Tell some of those embarrassing tales from junior high school; don't just blog about how you talked about it on the blog radio. Don't talk to me about sex like I'm your next door neighbor's eight year old daughter; for christsake give me some substance. Knock it the hell off with the skin-deep twitter, radio and video bullshit, roll up your sleeves and get your write on and give me some art or get the fuck out of my face.

And would you please put your sidebar on a cabbage diet? At the moment it is gavaged with junk that stabs my eyeballs like pixelated syringes of poison and makes me hate humanity while simultaneously being thankful for being distracted from your annoying anti-posts.

No, Bookieboo, you don't get an B- on your report card for being a sweet mommy who lost a ton of weight. You made me question the metaphysical existence of your blog, and thus my computer, and thus the apple on my desk, and thus myself, and whether or not any of it has any meaning and I don't need that shit on a weekday in an environment where heavy binge drinking is frowned upon.

Run along to the mall now, I believe there is a sale at Abercrombie.

P.S. Your cartoon header sucks ballz, yo.

*I mean this literally and am not referencing the anti-art art movement, which actually has something to say.

Reluctant Reviewer Desperately Seeking... Anything

2009-09-15T12:13:00.008-04:00

I have been remiss in my blog reviewing duties and for that I apologize, but I'm not going to lie. The conflict and drama involved in this process gets to me. Although the URL clearly shows that this is not a tea party hosted in your grandmother's lovely garden, folks still get all up in arms when a spanking is deservedly served. This is perplexing. Are you confused? Do you not know where it is that you have submitted your blog to be reviewed?

I think you and I both know that, yes, you do know whose hands you've placed your sweet little blog into. Your hope was that we would think that you are as awesome as YOU wholeheartedly believe you are. This causes you to be unjustifiably upset when you and your writing styles are ripped to pieces.

To further push me away, it seems that one of our lovely readers outed me and my identity to someone that I was to review. I hope that this was done with a purpose that was for good and not evil, because I found it disheartening.

So it is with all of this drama in my thoughts that I stepped away from AAYSR. And, it is here today that I step forward again to review, in hopes that the drama will stay within the level that is appropriate and intended. We love the drama, it's just that you all take it so darned personally. You can only imagine my hesitation when I was assigned today's blog. I think we all remember this.

Sigh.

But it is my promise and intention that I will not pull any punches or act as a puss cookie might while conducting this review. Integrity... I have it. Mostly.

So let's get down to business. I'll start with the "new first impression" that I got as I pushed past transgressions out of my mind, clicked onto The Reluctant Housewife and laid my eyes upon the design. Melanie has obviously put a lot into this design and I love the DIY blog designer. There is really good intention behind the design and she has it well organized. I like the look she was going for but somehow feel like it fell short. The font in the header is not going to be getting a fan club organized by little ol' me anytime soon. And while there is an extreme amount of organization in the navigation, the overall feel is still chaotic and cluttered.

I trust that this will fall into "personal preference" and this is mine. It just falls short of what I think you were trying to achieve, but I love the retro feel.

Melanie's writing feels all sorts of proper to me. I felt like I was wearing cardboard panties the entire time I read. Not entirely unpleasant, really, quite functional, but lacking in appeal and zest. However, I don't hate it. She writes well, it's just all very... meh.

You can stop groaning right now. Let me clarify. If Melanie was writing about something, anything that held my interest or that provoked my thoughts, then her style of writing would be fantastic. Her subject matter would do all the "excite me, thrill me" work. However, while I relate to her subject matter, I'm uninterested. Just as her title suggests, she is indeed a housewife and while she hates that title, she has wrapped her blog right around it.

In all honesty how am I supposed to get behind someone who spells out "shit" like this? Or comedic stylings such as this? And, isn't this all sorts of riveting?

What I'm saying here is that we have a perfectly lovely blog. There is nothing exciting, nothing that is going to crinkle up those cardboard panties. And quite honestly, I could have stuck my hand into the big ol' pot that is the internet and pulled out a blog just like this one hundreds, probably thousands of times over.

I guess what I'm saying is that your "meh" is polished is but, good lord, it's still just:

This is all sorts of really, we have to say this again? Because I know that we have told you again and again that you can be a mommy blogger, just be an interesting one, puhlease. Melanie, you've been reading here long enough to know better.

I should throw this in though. If you want to read about other people's kids and every little nuance of their farts and drooling, then Melanie isn't horrible. You know, minus the reviews.

I'm a bitch, I'm a lover, I'm a child, I'm a mother

2009-09-14T17:01:00.005-04:00

My son is sick. He's sitting on the big olive green chair coughing as if to emphasize this fact.

I'm sick. I got sick on Tuesday while working in Orlando this week, and have stayed sick now for a full 7 days. Someone asked me today if it was swine flu. I haven't been tested, but if half of Orlando and another unnamed Florida city come down with h1n1, it may in fact be my fault.

My dog is needy. She's crammed all of her 40 pounds into an 18 inch wide section of couch so she can lay her head against my leg and sleep. I hope we haven't infected her.

My daughter is annoying. She's disappeared right when I needed her to unload the dishwasher and help me fix dinner, so I'm on mom-strike, and writing a blog review.

Today is the worst possible day for me to review a mommy blog, because I'm full up on mommying today. The last thing I want to read about is more mommying. But, here we go.

3 Bedroom Bungalow, written by ex-pat Kat, is an exposition of contemporary military mom life while overseas in England.

Kat, as kindly as possible, you're doing it wrong. Reading your blog was actually painful for me, and I don't think it's because of the cold pills.

Kat has whiny children. Kat, why are you raising whiny children? The world is full up on whiny children, and they are not, in the least, amusing. It's our job, as mothers, to remove the whiny from our kids.

I'm not going to take this job upon myself, and publicly slap your children for misbehaving, but I will say that when people encounter you and your offspring in the grocery store, restaurants, and other public places, their faces assume a look of annoyance and like me, they wish that you would do your damn job as a mom.

Just from reading a couple of blog posts, I certainly wish you would. And you are posting about it, for all the world to read, as if it's cute. It's not cute. It's so not cute.

Kat does a lot of memes. A LOT. In fact, most of Kat's blog consists of meme posts. Kat...you're doing it wrong. That isn't blogging.

This blog is not the foulest piece of excrement ever to pollute the blogosphere. I'm sure some people like it, just like I'm sure that there are lots of people out there who like Kanye West and don't think he's a complete douchebag. I'm sure there are plenty of other moms out there who absolutely adore Kat's blog.

But, in my view, it's poorly (and sloppily written) and improperly punctuated. I have no interest in it. In fact, I have no idea why she submitted to us, or thought we'd like this hot sloppy mess.

I can't even get started on the template and the busy sidebar and all of the unnecessary shit this blog has going on. It's as if Kat submitted here with literally no idea of what we generally think about these kinds of blogs, or any regard, at all, for cleaning up this blog and making it presentable for anyone.

I give her

And this:

Go here. Read. Get better. Stop doing it wrong.

Portrait of a Douchebag

2009-09-11T17:23:00.005-04:00

Wow. Now we're getting whines from punk ass bitches that haven't even been reviewed:

Well, I hope that my blog wasn't one of the ones that got passed over, because it'a a shitload better than this boring ass blog you reviewed. Who gives a shit about a fucking German class? Wow, this blog is becoming soft. Fuck it, it's off my blogroll.

I'll just take the word of the readers that send me e-mails every day telling me what a great job I'm doing.

-Chris Mollo

Dude. Who in the fuck are you, and why do you think we give a shit?

Also, what prison were you in when you had that picture taken?

There's no sex in your violence

2009-09-04T09:40:00.003-04:00

I have rules for myself but lately I've been breaking a lot of them. Normally, I take my blog from the queue in order. I don't skip around, and I don't pick and choose. I review good blogs and bad blogs, whatever is next on the list.

But lately, I've stopped caring so much about rules. I'm tired of reviewing crappy blogs, and I've started deleting some of the crappiest ones from our queue. I figure that if I don't even want to go to the trouble of reaming them a new asshole, because they're THAT bad, you probably don't want to read them. I also am tired of traffic mongering blogwhores who want us to send them hundreds of possible readers without actually doing the goddamn work of having a decent blog.

Fuck them. So, click, click, click. I deleted a half dozen blogs that I wasn't interested in having anyone review, including me, from the list this week.

This wasn't one of them. I briefly debated between this blog and a sex blog, called optimistically, "My OMFG Sex Blog," before deciding I just really wasn't up to reading about middle aged poon.

Instead, I opted for Textual Intercourse. Kevin's plan for this blog was, "I Write. You Read. You Respond. I Read." That hasn't happened exactly as he probably envisioned.

And that's a shame, because this is a really good blog. People should be reading this blog, and responding to it. Kevin needs comments and dialogue so he doesn't give up and stop writing.

I have no critiques of the posts, none at all. Some of them are provocative. Some, oddly enough, make me want to know more about the man who shit himself. Like, what happened the next night? Some leave me feeling wistful and sad, and remind me how easily childhood is broken. Some ask questions that probably should be asked, and aren't, like why men start out with a negative character reference when it comes to child abuse.

Some are meh, and I skipped over them pretty rapidly, but they might appeal to you.

This dude can write. He needs to do it more often. He needs to purge some of the dead wood on this blog. But, he can write. Really, when it's all said and done, that's all I require.

Kevin: Delete all the crap under "Other" in your sidebar. Look over some of your posts and decide if they're really finished. Write more.

Readers: Go do what you do.

I give him 3 stars.

I thawt I thaw a puddy tat

2009-09-02T11:39:00.005-04:00

A guest review by Mister Crowley:

Before I launch into this review, I’d like to say that I don’t like cats. I don’t hate ‘em, but I feel that, in their eyes, I’m somewhat like an unwanted mother-in-law. You know she’s there. You know you should respond to her messages and phone calls and emails and her presence in general. But you close your eyes and ears, and secretly wish she’d go away. To Ouagadougou, perhaps. And in times of deep dudgeon, you secretly plot ways to snuff her out.

The fact that I’ve once almost had my eyes clawed out by a psychotic cat, while I was trying to sleep at a friend’s place, may or may not have influenced my apathy towards the feline race.

Our latest guest on the chopping block is Gap, who’s a fairly regular customer at AAYSR’s comments pages. She writes at ‘Barebacking Sanity’. She also has furballs on her mind. This is problematic, because when eight out of every ten posts are about cats, it’s fairly difficult for the non-cat loving reviewer to dig out non-cat posts to review.

So, does this barebacked blog rock?

It does. Completely. Even if you factor in the cats! Gap’s writing is lucid, yet random at the same time. It’s easy to read. Her posts are never overlong, and rarely suffer from bad grammar or an abuse of the English language. Her writing is amusing in the cool, indifferent manner that I really dig. It’s not whiny, it’s not hyperactively happy. It’s just so, which is exactly the way I like it. I’m not going to sit and dissect posts here, but I will leave links to some neat ones. Oh, and these ones too.

But, like all blogs, this one has its problems.

1. The posts, which I’ve linked to above, constitute the bulk of the non-cat posts on this blog. Gap, man, I love your writing, and I’m sure many of us here on Ask do too. BUT, why not try and write on topics other than cats? No offense, but I’m sure that at some level of consciousness, you do relate to things non-feline, so why not write about all of that? It makes your blog less-tedious for us dog lovers, y’see.

2. While a simple black blog template is always a safe bet, you don’t seem like someone who takes the safe and trusted route all the time, so why not spice up that template?

3. Speaking of your template, I spy, with my little eye, a lack of space for people to comment on your posts. Come on Gap, don’t be shy. A comments page is a great way to meet other cat lovers, if nothing else.

4. Another template snafu. Your archives open up as new tabs. That’s bloody irritating, y’hear? Consider yourself lucky that I read your blog on Chrome, and hence had to suffer new tabs as opposed to little Internet Explorer icons crowding my taskbar.

5. It’s ‘you are’ or ‘your’ or ‘you’re’, and NOT ‘ur’. Please, you seem like a mature, educated person. Ditch the ‘ur’, will you luv?

So, cat scratch fever aside, I give Gap:

3 stars for some interesting writing, of which there wasn’t enough to go around.

AND, for bombarding me with those cat photos:

Eh, tú pedazo de carne con patas! Como te atreves a hacerme esto'!

When the going gets weird, the weird turn pro.

2009-09-01T10:26:00.006-04:00

So, um, hi? Miss me? Yeah, look, sorry about that. I kind of took an unintentional hiatus there. It's just, damn, there's this whole summer winding down thing and my rampant ennui and there was, like, stuff to do where I had to meet deadlines. And then I got this rager of a headache that totally incapacitated me and all. But, you know, sorry. Not your fault, guys. It's all me. Me and my excuses.

But I'm getting back into it, you know? Psyching myself up, getting pumped, giving myself a stern talking to about responsibilities and commitments and follow through and keeping my eye on the ball and strike first, strike hard, no mercy SIR!

And look! It's working. 'Cause here's my review.

Batspit. Bat spit? Bat's pit? Bats pit? I haven't a clue. I don't know what it means. I don't know why. Or how. The about page is short and sweet and doesn't tell me, so I'm left to my own devices, which means I think it's bat spit. But do bats even spit? If they do, is it venomous? Or is it rich in nutrients like their shit? Thoughts to think, stuff to ponder.

Whatever the hell it means, her site has a very minimalist design, and it's image-friendly, which is good because she posts a lot of her own photos. And they're pretty, with an interesting perspective.

The writing is much the same. Lea writes these poetic and nuanced and powerful posts about small things and big things. There are posts I can relate to, and her writing is spare and lovely. She's an anthropology student, which doesn't surprise me as her attention to detail is reverential and her interest in others palpable. Lea is a word nerd, and I have to love anyone who uses the word "skirr." I mean, honestly. Say it. Skirr. You want to roll the R, don't you? Lord knows I do.

I admit, I haven't read the whole thing yet. Yet, mind you. I fully intend to and I'm adding her to my reader. I started at the beginning and have worked my way up toward last November. I'm disappointed that she hasn't posted since August 13, but then who am I to talk, Miss Ennui Notbloggington herself? But Lea has captured the blogging crisis for academia, and for us. And she's so very, oh, what do I want to say... earthy and organic. There's nature and life and joy and detail, such pristine detail in her writing. It's like she's cupped the world in her hands and is examining it piece by piece as it comes along, taking its picture and putting it up close, close, close to her eye so she can see it and write about it and savor it just so.

So, what can I suggest for Lea? Just keep writing. I'll keep reading.

Random is Dead.

2009-08-25T10:03:00.010-04:00

An old nemesis of ours, random, died recently. He was stabbed to death, repeatedly, by the blogosphere. He is survived by his loving wife, miscellaneous, and his children mundane, slapdash, incidental, and indiscriminate. Donations should be sent to thesaurus.com.

Say it together, out loud: RANDOM IS DEAD. You put a knife into random when you put exactly zero thought into your blog. You gave random a kick that fractured his orbital bone when you showed you didn't care. You put random into permanent kidney failure because of your thoughtless, slipshod, disorganized writing.

You, and you, and you, you all killed random. You're all fucking murderers, every single one of you who misused and abused poor random, and made him your bitch.

This message particularly applies to today's reviewee. I have ADD and reading this blog is actually painful for me. It bings from one subject to another, zooming headlong from an interview with Nelson Mandela to stories about flatmates.

I don't get it. I don't think you will, either.

At a minimum, this site needs to:

1) Create an about me. Who are you, and why in the fuck are you polluting the blogosphere with your random bullshit? This is how poorly explicated your blog is: I read for 30 minutes and STILL don't know your gender. Are you a he or a she?

2) Get rid of the ugly ads. You don't need 3 columns. You especially don't need a 2-column wide ad. I doubt you have more than 10 readers at this point. Who is buying this ugly shit you're advertising? No one.

3) Figure out who you are and what you are writing. See item #1.

I'm going to repeat myself from a previous review because some of you aren't paying attention:

Knock off the shtick, and learn to tell a story without killing it.

Ultimately, blogging is a simple thing. If you write it, they will come. It doesn't have to look good (note: I once gave an ifuckingloveyou to a blog on myspace). You don't have to promote it. You don't have to get on everyone's blogroll. You don't have to join humorblogs.com and ten million other blog promotional pyramid schemes to promote your blog.

You just have to do one thing, and do it well:

Write.

I give you a short bus. This blog, in its present state, has all the wit and sparkling charm of a coma patient.

And fucking put Random to rest, in the cemetary, where he belongs. He's starting to smell.

The Slackers Were Onto Something

2009-08-24T11:56:00.004-04:00

A guest review from Allison Chains.
Do you ever get the feeling we’re going to look back on this as the Decade of the Geek? The ten year span in which the little brothers and sisters of the Grungers finally came into their own angst, but without the flannel? And that in another ten years, telling a girl that “I had a hard time in high school – I was a geek” will get you absolutely NO sympathy tail, because everyone was a fucking geek? I gotta level with you here – I may be suffering from geek burn-out.

Today’s reviewee is The Badass Geek. So, this should go well.

The first time I opened this guy’s blog, I fell a little in love. Because if I was basing this review on design alone, oh hells yeah, he’d get an “I Fucking Love You”, and I’d be out back with a ciggie. Clean, black on white, easy to navigate, not too many doodads in the sidebar. Archives, nicely laid out, ready for me to paw my way through. An About page with nearly the perfect amount of information. A “Best Of” list that intrigues. The only design downfall: I’m not a fan of the Twitter feeds that are popping up on everyone’s sidebars. Because if you want me to take you seriously, and I think this dude does, using this symbol ( <3 ) isn’t going to make me want to get to know you any better. (What in the crap is that, anyway? Makes me think of Peter Griffin’s chin. And I don’t want to think about Peter Griffin’s chin.)

Badass Geek, or BAG as he refers to himself, can write. Well. His grammar, punctuation and spelling leave absolutely nada to be desired. Dude should probably teach some lessons. At first, his posts felt a little longish. Like he was using 500 words, where someone else could have used 50. But once I got into the rhythm, let my brain go a little fuzzy, I realized he just really likes language. “Geeks” out over it, if you will. I’d still encourage him to find a middle ground – consider each word: is it essential? If not, sum it up and move along.

BAG writes a lot of humor. But for some reason, I’m not usually laughing. To quote the venerable Nelson Muntz, “It’s funny, but not ha-ha funny.” It’s like BAG’s big ‘ol brain gets in his way. He over thinks the shit out of something, overwrites it, and some of the funny leaks just sort of leaks away. For instance, in this case, do we really need all SEVEN dictionary definitions for awkward? (Answer: No.) This one is a funny story (For the love of god, there’s puke. Right there, insta-comedy.) And yet, by needing to include every single step, doing all the work for the reader, it loses what it could have had. Also, you’re a creative guy. Which is why there is NO REASON ON EARTH to do 7 (seven) separate posts in the space of one year on search terms people used to find your blog. Stop it.

Here’s what I’d like to see you do. The next time you’re getting ready to write a post, tell the story out loud. See what parts make people’s eyes glaze, see which parts make their eyes widen, where they get excited about what’s coming next. Write accordingly.

In the end, I think BAG is a writer. And this blog is a fun place for him, to come and talk about bodily functions, his wife, the day to day, and to build a community. You’re doing some good, solid work, here BAG. Just try not to work so hard. Stop being careful; let the posts happen. Borrow from the previous decade’s ethos, learn how to slack.

I’m giving you two bright, shiny stars. Do with them what you will.

Way Way Bad

2009-08-21T16:55:00.009-04:00

This review courtesy of guest reviewer, Lolita LeBruise.

Okay, kids, I had a kind of popular lesbian/parenting/middle-age miasma blog for a few years and just shut it down. Love Bites, who sadly is not a lesbian, but a slutty little man-magnet, apparently felt I’d have a little time on my hands. So, she handed me my first assignment: The Way Way Up Blog.

Okay, let me put on my best Salmonberries parka and get started. The template is boring blue Blogger. Anyone who has requested a blog review here ought to know better – I mean did you read the rules? Even I knew better when I was reviewed a few years ago. But, I failed miserably. The next day, I got down on my knees before LB offering her anything to look at my blog again only to find she is strictly a slutty little man-magnet and I could continue to kneel to no avail or just rebuild my damn blog. I did.

This blogger is a young man who has made his career teaching in the uppermost reaches of northern Canada in the newest territory, Nunavut, which is the least populated and geographically the largest. Thanks Wikipedia - because even after reading this for quite some time, I had no idea beyond the random ice berg photo, where he might be blogging from. We could chalk it up to my geographic ignorance of an obscure Canadian territory, or we could just blame the blogger who can’t be bothered to draw new readers by letting us know why we’d ever want to know where he is or who he is. I vote blame the blogger.

While reading this blog, I just kept shaking my head saying, “Has he actually met any of the people in his life?” What had the potential to be a poignant “To Sir, With Love” or “Stand and Deliver” kind of blog is merely a litany of questionably studied opinions and the mundane day-to-day tasks that are his life. What could have been an exciting National Geographic adventure is a bunch of lifeless photography. What could have been an adventure in discovering the Inuit people and the descendents of the original European settlers through their stories and lore is post after post of soulless, dry lessons in history and culture with no connection to the people who actually lived it. Even his stories about his family, whom I would assume he knows fairly well, come across with all the flavor of cardboard.

The only times I detected the faintest heartbeat was when he defends seal hunting. His rant against Sarah MacLachlan sure told her. Uh, huh – take that Sarah – and may your musical dry spell continue! Yeah! My personal favorite is his Nazi/seal hunt comparison – um, don’t know if he thought of this, but we might actually formulate the thought that some people might think both are bad. It’s a complicated issue, seal hunting by indigenous peoples, but his trite rants do nothing to advance his case. Logic and reason aren’t his strong suits. Hopefully, he doesn’t teach math.

I finally gratefully tumbled headlong down the iceberg into the hungry polar-bear filled waters after reading the most recent post on the need for social workers in the area. His solution? Parents need to do a better job. He opines that some parents suck and some children might be better off on the street. Alert the media. I wanted to pick him up and slap some emotion into him. We’ve all heard it, but why do you feel this way? What have you seen? Who have you met? Give it some soul to illustrate the point without the banal conclusion.

The Inuit have many sociological and economic challenges and a rich and vibrant history and hearing about them and the European descendants in the area could have made for fascinating reading.

Summary: Blog template sucks, stories have no life, blog has no direction. It’s not a travel blog, a study in culture, a look at education, or a place of personal introspection.

He wants to take his posts and write a book. Heh. Yeah, this is the next Julie & Julia. But, good news; he has a new blog and a new job posting in yet another place that he will totally miss. Oh, and he’s a new dad. It’s got the best of the worst of daddy blogging written all over it with his scintillating post on contemplating the greater unpleasantness of baby poop over baby pee.

I give him a big:

Waxing Scatalogical

2009-08-20T09:33:00.004-04:00

Every time I get a mommy blogger to review I say some variation of this: I'm not a mom; I don't want kids; parenting is beyond me and I just don't get it. And it's true, every time. But I'll be damned if there aren't a lot of you parents out there blogging away. You've snuck right up on me so that here I am at 34, still befuddled by the thought that people try to get pregnant. I know; I'm kind of a late bloomer.

Still, every time I get a blog that's demonstrably mommy in nature, I cringe. And this is entirely unfair because, lord, how many people out there have kids? Some of my favorite people are parents. Some of my favorite bloggers are parents. My parents are parents and I love the hell out of them. I am so much in the minority as to be almost freakish. And they're just people, after all. They haven't been infiltrated by evil parent aliens from the planet Annoy the Fuck Out of Me, where their god is The Mighty Scrapbook and their government -- My Offspring Did the Cutest Thing Today -- demands a kid-centric regime. At least not all of them have.

So I renounce my anti-parent blogger bias and promise to no longer sneer and roll my eyes automatically when I see a page devoted almost entirely to progeny. At least I'll refrain until I've determined whether they are, indeed, aliens.

Which brings me to today's reviewee, Creepy at Tiptoeing Through the Tulips. It is, yes, a mommy blog. You can tell right away -- look at the huge honking childish scrawl that takes up your entire browser window. It kind of gives it away. It also kind of drives me insane. There's also the tell-tale collection of darling pictures of children paraded down her sidebar. Initially you might think, as I did, "Oh holy fucking christ, another fucking mommy blog. I bet her kids shit rainbows and fart lollipops."

Well, you and I would be wrong. Because her kids just shit shit. Lots of it. (Be glad I didn't link to this post. Oh, wait. I did.). A lot a lot. If I didn't think the whole tulips thing was very appropriate, I'd suggest she change her blog title to something along the lines of "There's Shit Everywhere," or "Shitastrophes," or "Ew, What's That Smell?"

But don't let the poopapalooza throw you off. Creepy is worth pinching your nose to tread through all that loaf pinching. She's all kinds of upfront about who she is and what this blog is about. Yes, it's a mommy blog. But if a mommy can say these two things, back to back, I'm down: "*I love my kids so fucking much I want to squeeze them 'til their little heads pop off. *My kids drive me so fucking crazy I want to tear their little heads off." Because that's kind of how I think it should be, me with my neverhavingkids self.

There's a lot of "this is what we did and how it went and aren't my kids the cutest little shitpants on the planet" writing, but Creepy is likable and irreverent and honest and twisted and enraged enough to pull it off. Also, we totally share a birthday. Aries holla!

So, it's not the most carefully crafted blog, and maybe the kid stuff can get a little ho-hum for a nonbreeder like me, but she makes up for that by telling a very honest, meaningful, and relatable story about raising a special needs kid. My day job deals with exceptional education, so I know how valuable sharing experiences can be for parents of kids with special needs, and I respect Creepy for wanting to document her experiences. It makes a difference, and I suspect it will make a difference to her son some day.

However, Creepy, I'd still like to encourage you to branch out more. Frankly, I'd like to know more about you now. The blog feels a little like it's outgrown its beginnings, with Graham thriving and growing and little Dottie, too. It feels like it might be time to drop the umbrella of "mom who blogs about her kids" in exchange for one about Creepy, who is a mom and more.

Some suggestions: Your design is innocuous and boring, but not eye-bleedingly horrible. I'd move the archives up above the pictures of the rugrats. Good job on having separate pages for important things, though. In terms of writing, you have an engaging and funny voice that I suspect is very true to life. But there's a slipshod quality to some of your posts. I know you're a busy mom, and you say you're not a writer, but I suspect you are. Or could be. Spend some more time on crafting your posts and editing them. And please, for the love of Daniel Craig's sweet, sweet ass (<--- my version of heaven), lay off the fucking ellipses.

A Dream Academy of His Own

2009-08-19T10:28:00.004-04:00

A guest review from Posol'stvo the Medved:

Have you ever been invited to someone’s house not long after they have taken a vacation to someplace exotic? Inevitably, the conversation turns to the adventures that they had while there. Perhaps, if you are particularly lucky, your hosts might truck out the computer, our generation’s answer to the slide projector, and show you every single digital image snapped on their trip.

Oh joy.

Michael’s Meanderings reads like the transcript of just such an evening. He tells long stories about hiking and biking and traveling and juvenile epilepsy * and First Nations events and he includes lots and lots of pictures that help to show you what he’s talking about.

You know what? Having been through my share of these evenings, both sitting through someone else’s slide show and subjecting my guests to a few of my own, I can assure you that all the stories and pictures are only just so interesting.

Unless you have been there yourself.

Michael’s a good writer. But an extraordinary writer would make you feel like you were there, at those locations, at those events, with him. A good writer tells you what happened; a great writer makes you care.

Michael could be that great writer if he could just grasp the concept that “less is more.” Too often I found myself checking to see how much longer a post was going to go, skipping to the next paragraph, scanning over the details he provides with lavish affection. Too many posts were actually three to five times as long as the ideal length, according to my A.D.D.-ometer. At one point I found myself asking “Holy cow, how much longer is he going to be going on about all these minute details about this camping trip, and how long did this trip actually last?” And that’s when it dawned on me that I had gone to the next post without even realizing it – that this was two separate posts about two separate camping trips – that I had completely missed the transition.

Was I sleep reading? Very possibly. I didn’t get the best night’s sleep last night…

But before you go assuming anything about my state of mind, consider the following paragraph:

“Not too long ago, Joseph, a friend I originally met in Fort Simpson, who is now living in Whitehorse, gave me a call. He asked me if I'd like to join his stick gambling team for the 21st Annual Yukon Stick Gambling Competition held at Twin Lakes, north of Watson Lake, near Junction 37.”

Could we not have maybe said instead:

“Not too long ago, my friend Joseph gave me a call, asking me if I'd like to join his stick gambling team for the 21st Annual Yukon Stick Gambling Competition held at Twin Lakes.”

Did losing that extra detail hurt the meaning? I don’t think so, and it moved it along, getting to the meat and potatoes without making me wade through too much garnish.

I will say this – Michael has some very interesting topics to write about, and I found myself frequently wandering through Wikipedia and Google results looking for the details that I was curious about that were left out of his posts. Details about the ketogenic diet. Details about where exactly Whitehorse, YT is located in relation to Dawson Creek, BC (a very good friend of mine spent a good chunk of his childhood in Dawson Creek, BC). Given all the details that were in his posts, it was mildly amusing to me that I felt as though something had been left out. Maybe he covered these details elsewhere at another time, but as a new reader, I didn’t know that.

What else? Let’s see.

The Issue: His template is boring as hell. Not necessarily a bad thing, but his archives were a drag to navigate, and when in a previous month’s archive, there was no clear cut way to get back to the main page. Things like that piss me off. More than is rational. My Suggestion: Put some character into your template, and provide a link (in your header?) back to the top page. (Note: As I was assembling links for this review, I noticed that a new header graphic has been inserted. Black text on a white background. Given your locale and all your photographs, I know you can do a lot better.)

The Issue: I don’t care that his sidebar is riddled with stuff that I’ll never look at, but I know that there are other people at AAYSR who do care about such things. My Suggestion: Please include just the basics there. All that extra stuff slows down your load time on already egregiously long pages.

The Issue: The site could use an About Me that is useful. I’m usually ambivalent about them, but since this is not really comprised of commentary, instead being a diary of life in a northern town, this is one blog that desperately screams out for one to get the reader who is NOT from the area oriented. My Suggestion: Add an informative About Me page and provide a prominent link to it.

The Issue: Like the writing, the pictures can at times be overwhelming. Pages took too long to load. I experienced visual overload. When one or two pics would do, Michael presents twenty. Oddly, there were a few times when he would describe something that he saw that was so beautiful that I would have loved to see a single picture of, only to have him say something like “I was too busy enjoying it to take a picture of it. Sorry.” My Suggestion: Try to be more selective with your pictures.

The Issue: Too many of his posts assumed that I, as a reader, had some sort of prior knowledge, as though I had been reading what he had been writing from the very beginning. Given how long it took for me to get through the few months that I was able to work through, that was just not happening. I was not going to be able to read everything that he had written and get this review posted on time. The net result? A bit alienating to new readers who have to scramble to catch up. My Suggestion: Consider occasionally that a reminder is in order. Links back to previous posts containing explanations are okay, but including the Cliff's Notes version would help too.

Meandering Michael, I grant you a single, solid “Meh” with a promise to reassess that in a month or two.

* Lest you think I am a total craven dickhead, I have lots of sympathy or empathy (or whatever it is) for Michael and his wife and his daughter over her seizures. I hope they find a way to overcome this challenge in their lives, and that Jade manages to live a full and rich life. I truly do. But I don’t think I fall into the “likes to read all about other peoples’ ailments” demographic.