Ask And Ye Shall Receive

Another Satisfied Customer

Tuesday, July 14, 2009

The Sheeple have indeed spoken. Next time try reading the fucking posts and thinking for yourself. Instead of ripping on the sidebar, is it too much to ask for a reviewer to actually read the articles linked there? You're the one who sucks for not even being honest enough to admit you made such a harsh conclusion based on a small random sampling of posts. In my opinion, your review failed to make the case why my book reviews, movie reviews, concert reviews, work anecdotes, etc., are synthesizing or regurgitating when they're on my blog, but on your own individual blogs similar musings are praised to the high heavens by the mutual admiration society of your sad little coterie.

Anyway, I'll be carry on just fine, changing absolutely nothing based on your ridiculous assumptions about my soul, or lack thereof. How fucking dare you? Save the psychobabble for someone more likely to listen to your ravings.

Love, The Warden

Looks like we have another butt-hurt Barbie on our hands.


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Better Homes and Bloggers

The other day a friend gave me an impromtu video tour of her lovely home. It was uncluttered and neat and comfortable, with rich colors and personal accents and sentimental corners. Lest you think I've gone all Martha Stewart on you, we were totally drunk, so that may have colored the "aren't we all girly and Suzy Homemaker-ish" vibe. Still, I am a natural voyeur, and I never miss an opportunity to snoop in someone else's home.

My home, on the other hand, is basically decorated by my mother. I realized the other day that almost every single piece of art in the house was given to me or painted by my mother. Much of the furniture has been handed down from Mom, and every time the woman comes to visit she "reorganizes" the joint. I don't personally have much of a mark on my house, which seems to me both perfectly fine and a little concerning at the same time. But Mom is a natural decorator, and I am a natural slob, so it works out ok.

I do, however, love scrolling through design blogs and looking at pretty pictures of other people's homes, other people's ideas, other people's creative, personal, inventive ideas about how to decorate their surroundings. But chances are I'm not going to participate much in the furnishing of my own environment. As much as I might envy those who are able to make their homes unique and personal, lazy trumps everything.

So when I saw that today's reviewee was a collaboratively written design blog, I was both interested and trepidations. Interested because, you know, pretty pictures. But trepidatious because chances are no one here is going to give a rat's squiggly little disease-ridden tail about a design blog. Our tastes generally run to the more word-centric parts of blogging. The more sex-centric, angst-centric, story telling-centric, and pee your pants funny-centric parts, too.

So. Tchochkes. You're design people. Surely you can get a better blog design. I mean, orange and white: blandtastic. But then I hate orange. Three columns? Really? There's way too much clutter here. It's like those, well, tchochkes, my mother gives me that are sweet but that I don't need and they end up piling up on my bookshelves and collecting dust.

Get some tabs, use a two-column design, bump up the font size 'cause my eyes are screamin', and rethink the gadgets and popular posts in your sidebar. I'm not going to harp on the ads because at least they're relevant to your subject matter. But, seriously? "Infolinks" in your text? No. Just, no. Also, your Book Store application doesn't fit within the confines of your blog body. This is where two columns would come in so handy.

For the love of all that's holy get rid of the "Read the rest of the story" links. God, I hate these. Burn in hell, "read the rest of the story" link, you bastard spawn of coding demons. Die, die!

And from an editorial standpoint, consider dropping "such" from your tagline. Doesn't "Because a little decoration is a nice thing" sound better? It does to me.

Otherwise, it's a design site. How good can the writing really be? And how good should I expect it to be? I like looking at pretty things, and I have a boatload of fashion and photography and design blogs in my reader, but my interaction with those blogs is almost entirely restricted to looking at the pretty pictures. And looking at them quickly. I don't spend a lot of time at these sites. They're just eye candy, and I'm not personally invested in them. For example, this post? Looked at the pictures, ignored the text completely. Sorry. I mean, I can get on board with intrusive photos of people's homes because I'm nosey as hell and like to snoop -- not to mention maybe seeing interesting ideas for decorating -- but it's not gripping, evocative, literary, and lyrical stuff.

Not only is it a design site that I can't get excited about, it's a design site for people in Israel. So they've just completely dropped off my radar. I mean, what do I care about buying sheets in Tel Aviv or the predominance of poufs? I don't, that's what. I couldn't give two shits.

Look, the bloggers are no doubt nice people with good and informative things to say about decorating your home in Israel. I can see where your site would be useful to, you know, people decorating heir homes in Tel Aviv. But to me it's just another blog in a sea of them I won't read. Likely the folks who read them love them, and that's as it should be. But you won't be adding me to their numbers, especially with your current design.

Labels: Calamity, can I go outside and play now?, coma-inducing snoozefests, meh-diocre

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All Animals Are Equal

Monday, July 13, 2009

...But some are more equal than others.

Politics are my crack. I admit it, without shame. The first blogs I ever read, after True Porn Clerk Stories, were political. I read Steve Graham (who used to blog at Hog On Ice, now defunct), Straight White Guy, Velociman, and Ellison, and I read the ubiquitous Acid Man, who passed away in 2006.

Steve Graham was actually the person who inspired me to begin blogging, and when he linked to my first post, ever, put me on the personal blogging map. I still have a not-entirely-platonic level of affection towards him, and the thought of him makes me warm in my furry parts.

These were/are all ostensibly political blogs, but they were also deeply personal blogs. Steve blogged about his inability to find a worthwhile woman, and the woman who screwed him over financially during law school, and smoking the world's most perfect piece of pork. And, Ellison blogged about his wife, and what he'd been cooking/eating/listening to recently, and his kids. Rob, the notorious Acid Man, well, he was a fucking train wreck that never ended, in addition to his political blogging. You never knew what Acid Man would be up to, and every day when I clicked in, I halfway expected that he'd have taken his ex-wife hostage with a sawed off shotgun below her chin.

Those were the wild, irreverent heydays of political blogging. You never knew who was going to get fired while working as a political intern and lifting her skirt for political bigwigs, though you could guess. You never knew who was going to get sued by someone they blogged about, though you could guess. You never knew who would die young, though you could guess. You never knew who would make it big, though you could guess.

It was wild, wooly, and a blast.

Political blogs these days are nothing too exciting anymore, particularly in comparison to those days. I still read Andrew Sullivan, of course, and I love him, especially for his ground-breaking coverage of the green revolution in Iran, but most political blogs have become decidedly mainstream, and in doing so, lost what made them fun to read in the first place, and that wasn't the politics, for hell's sake.

This blog, in particular, started off on such a promising note.

I was fired last August after over 17 years at the Transcript. Downsized, as the saying goes. Was I bitter? No, not right away. Now am I bitter? Yes. Add pissed off, panicky, directionless and you get an idea of my mental state. At first I was just relieved, because I thought I had some options work-wise. Now I kind of miss my old job, if not all the people.

(This first post is gonna suck, I can feel it, you can feel it, we all can feel it. It will get better, I promise.)

Now I am down to five stinking unemployment checks left. Five. I owe more money, to credit card companies, etc., than most Third World nations. Some of them, let's face it, are not going to get paid any time soon. And I say this to most of them: too fucking bad.

...Eventually, this blog will be a veritable cornucopia of pop culture insight, political wisdom and overall gems of greatness. Maybe as soon as tomorrow. One never know, do one? But as it stands now, I wake up every day bemoaning my situation, awash in a sea of self-pity, with the clock ticking down on my unemployment checks. Tick, tick, tick...

This is a freaking great post, a promising start. I can see why he was fired, as a copy editor, but the voice is real, and there is some train wreck here that engages me.

It stays bitter, too, and this bitter is a good thing when it renders up tasty morsels like this:

The rest of the paper includes the requisite celebrity worship and mindless designer brand name consumerism. On the cover is a picture of Eva Longoria. Why is this overexposed, talentless bimbo newsworthy today? Well, because she was seen kissing another overexposed celebrity at some L.A. club. That's what passes for news these days at metro. God help us.

Or this:

That's two strikes against Air America in my book, getting rid of Marc Maron and now, at least temporarily, no more Mike Malloy raving against Bush & Company. That's substantial fucking with stuff I grew to like. It's kind of like when Au Bon Pan discontinued their chicken pot pies and, ultimately, their spinach and cheese croissant, but obviously on a deeper, more gut-wrenching level. You don't miss your water till your well runs dry. I think Shakespeare said that. Or maybe Hank Williams.

I liked this blog in 2006. However, by early 2007, the Warden starts getting on my last good nerve by doing nothing more than synthesizing news articles and regurgitating them. He also begins to play with his fonts in unattractive ways, so a blog post starts out in a nice normal 11 pt arial type, and then morphs into 10 pt Times New Roman, and then segways into 14 pt blue Arial Bold, and then changes back into 11 pt Arial. Din't yer mama teach you not to play with your fonts, particularly in PUBLIC?

WTF?

Knock that shit off, you typeographical tool. It's fucking annoying.

And, your blog design is crap. From the over-populated sidebar to occasionally posting in centered or left-sided text, to whateverthefuck you have going on with your undersized header bar and the intelligible type below it, this shit needs work. I'd like to encourage you to trash this design, permanently, and go with something standard. If you don't want one of the generic blogger designs, how about something simple like this? Just try not to fuck it up with a bunch of pictures in your sidebar that are meaningless to everyone but you.

So, Warden, what are the fucking odds that you could locate the soul that your writing once had? If you did, I would consider reading it. As it is now, though, it isn't anything that isn't being done more professionally and better by the Huffington Post, the Pajamas Media people, or others.

It's the soul that sets these things apart. You had it in 2006, and somewhere, you lost it. And, that's a shame. Maybe it's impossible to blog for 3 years without losing your way. Your blog makes that case, loud and clear.

All I know is that you didn't suck, but now you do, and you've sucked long and hard for years now. Can that level of suck be fixed? I don't know, and frankly, you've given me no reason to care.

Labels: fuck off and die, fugly templates from hell, genital sores, Love Bites

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Guest Reviewers

Friday, July 10, 2009

We need some.

Go here if you're interested, and apply for the job.


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A Litany of Langorous Longings

Wednesday, July 08, 2009

Ah, summer, what power you have to make us suffer and like it. -Russell Baker

Yes I'm back and yes, I am aware you probably didn't even notice I was gone. I cast off the dominatrix gear in favour of the gauzy livery of the season. I traipsed across some of the most bucolic beaches, I savored the most theurgical sunsets, I sipped potent potions until I settled into the halcyon disposition I yearned for. And yes, I took my thesaurus along fuck you very much. The summer has just begun in earnest and here I sit, ready to review a blog whilst I down my umpteenth Arnold Palmer and try not to wilt.

Susan, in an entry dated back in April, contemplates whether the malefeasants here at Ask actually read the blogs they have been punished, uh, I mean assigned. Sadly Susan and not entirely lucky for you, we do. Our personal quest to bring readers read-worthy blogs like this and this and this means we have to slog through blogs that are as feculent as the end of the state fair's overfilled port-o-pottys.

Susan also considers the crew here when she tells us,

they fucking scare me. Yikes. I mean, how about that guy with the big eyebrow? Holy Mother of God. Of course, one lucky blog submitter landed herself a "guest reviewer", who was actually kind of nice. Well, she only tore up about half an ass that day. I would take half an ass tearing anyday from this group.

Susan punctuates that with a nice little graphic at the end.

Now dear, if you did indeed get Nutjobber, I'm sure the whole acorn in the arse thing would be right up his alley, pun intended. However, you got Miss Missives, and I am less about ass tearing and acorn shoving and more about spiky boot poking. Hope you're not too tender fleshed.

Your design is okay. I can get behind the header but the small font on the red background gave me a temple-pounding headache. I am biased against the three column design because I never know where to look. I would ditch the three-column and add some tabs for things like your blogroll and awards, as they are better suited off the main page. Things like your About Me and Archives should be at the top.

As far as the writing goes, I think I know what you're going for but you're not quite getting there. The kid stuff is fine, contrary to popular belief, we are not fundamentally anti-mommy blogger around here, but it should be tight and it should be funny. This has potential as does this but they need to be heavily edited and scrap the openers which would have made me quit reading before I had ever got to the good stuff were I not reading in the capacity of reviewer. This is a good example of tight, it's the on-two punch and it's funny.

On a personal note, the reading experience for me was a bit whiny. I know, I know, it's your place to vent as you cautioned in your About Me. Listen, I know how difficult it must be to navigate the waters of divorce and exes and current husband's exes, and ex-exes and currents of exes and new ones and those other ones and well, their kids too. In the realm of divorce, it's rarely about just one parent being the bad guy. When you go on and on about your husband's ex-wife it makes you seem threatened or bitter and I don't think that's you. Seriously, she does not deserve mention on your About Me page. You are so much more than that and I know you have so much more to say. I think you have some good reasons to be angry but I would focus your writing, when you feel compelled to get something off your chest, on what she has done versus your opinion of her. Readers will get the gist based on her actions and you won't appear to have New Wife Syndrome. Or don't, what do I know.

As a whole, this was a little Meh with a side of one wee Star. Most posts went on too long, editing would go a long way to making this far more readable. Susan has snark but she needs to know when to stop writing. There is a lot of potential for great stories like crushing your kid's lemonade stand hopes, but seriously, you need to put a few stitches in that gaping hole because that shit ain't tight.

Labels: 1 star, Close but no cigar, meh-diocre, Miss Missives

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"When you can take the pebble from my hand, it will be time for you to leave"

Tuesday, July 07, 2009

I didn't know how to start this review. For the first paragraph or so of my reviews, I generally like to pull out some piece of the personality or experience of the blogger I'm reviewing to relate to or make fun of. I think of how their lives relate or don't relate to mine, I tell a charming or embarrassing story from my past, I make fun of myself and them, I tell you who I am and who they are: pretty much I find some way to make it about me, too. Because I'm just that self-centered. Also it makes for good story telling. Don't tell me it doesn't because I won't believe you (Remember? Self-centered.).

I feel like over the past year or so of reviewing blogs I've started to know what I'm doing. I've been feeling rather old-hat, really: like I've seen it all now, the good blogs and the terrible blogs and the blogs that are getting by but need some work. There haven't been all that many surprises for me lately, and the reviews come quick and dirty and easily. More often than not, frankly, I feel better than the unwashed blogging masses, which sounds really puffed up and full of myself, and, guess what, I am sometimes. (Both better than the unwashed masses and full of myself, at the same time and independent of the other. I'm also over-explainy and unduly fond of parentheticals.)

But this week I struggled.

First impressions: Nice design, organized, good about page, love the tabs and the FAQs, hate the ads, but in today's economy I'm becoming more lax on that (shill!). The archives are all tidy, but I don't like how they automatically roll back up -- sometimes static wins.

Digging in: The dating chronicles are amusing, although she reveals a slight tendency toward superficiality, which is probably forgivable under the auspices of online dating. Also, she realizes she has issues, and I like people who own their foibles. She wears Black Phoenix Alchemy Lab perfume, which is my absolute fave (I wear their O). But I can't figure out why she sometimes writes "noh" instead of "no."

I want to read the entire thing from the beginning, which is a good sign, although there is a marked gap between 2004 and 2008. Anna, I'd like a bit of a re-introduction when you start blogging again in 2008 -- what happened in the meantime? Now all the sudden there's a kid and a husband.

There are posts about things and products and such, which is fine by me. I'm a material girl and I like a review once in a while. And, true to her tag line, there are pop cultural references (I've never watched a single episode of John & Kate, but I don't have to -- the internet tells me all I need to know.) and thoughts about being a mother that in no way step over the line into dreaded cutesy mommy blogger territory.

Here's where my struggle comes in: I feel like I can't really critique her. Anna has got this shit down. She posts often, she writes so very well, she's insightful and charming and she's got a blog design that works and matches her personality. I like her. A lot. If I didn't have all this pesky work to do, I'd have pulled up close and clicked through her entire oeuvre. I no doubt will at some point. She strikes a balance between revealing herself in bits and pieces and just downright entertaining us. She's a smartypants and she knows it but isn't all sneery about it, and I love that. But she's also totally neurotic and acerbic and funny and honest, which I love even more. I find myself in the unenviable position of wishing she'd review my blog instead of the other way around. I figure she can teach me a thing or two.

Labels: Calamity, Cool moms, I fucking love you

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Then come sit here beside me.

Monday, July 06, 2009

July 6, 2:41 p.m., I'm on my ass on the couch, watching America's Next Top Model. Unwashed, sexed up slept in hair, still in a satin babydoll nightie. I haven't even brushed my teeth yet this afternoon. Oh, yeah. You know you want somma this.

So, today's blog is called If You Can't Say Something Nice. You'd think that would be a hit here. But, it's a miss.

Randi was reviewed back in January, and has since moved to wordpress and done some house cleaning (something I haven't gotten around to today). But, her work isn't finished.

Randi, your new blog design LOOKS a lot better, but you've only gone halfway. You've left a lot of shit lying around in your sidebar that should be tucked neatly behind those header tabs: About me, your blogroll, and pictures. You also should consider a drop-down archive list to make things even cleaner.

But, even if you do all of that, you still aren't going to be my afternoon cuppa coffee. Your blog is so much like a girl on ANTM who just doesn't bring it. You're there, you're doing stuff, but there is no life or spark or fierceness to it.

I mean, you're writing about why you WON'T be seeing a movie (and using someone else's words to do it). Do you really think anyone wants to read that?

Your blog is still just a recounting of your day's or weekend's activities, with no spice or focus. One thing that would really help your blog, I think, is to make each post about ONE THING. Just one. Not a list, not a weekend activity regurgitation, but ONE SUBJECT, and ONE SUBJECT ONLY. This post, for instance, is really TWO posts, and should have been broken up into two: The story of your husband's crankiness, and the story about your dogs and the chickens. You spend way too much time on "I was here, I did this," and not enough on fleshing out the event or focus of the story. A blog isn't a chronicle, it's a place to tell the stories of your life. And, unless you tell those stories, you won't suck people in and make them interested in your life.

For instance, you tell us about your 4th of July weekend, and mention that you took the best pictures, ever, but you don't tell us how you did it. You tell us you went to a parade, but you don't make it come alive for us.

I've never been to a 4th of July parade in a little town in Vermont. Your experiences would be novel to me, and yet, you don't share the details that would bring the parade to life...the smells, the sights, the small town fire crew blaring their sirens on their fire truck.

In January, Ginny told you:

The average person who looks at a blog isn't going to slog through hundreds of posts to get back to that one story you told that was worth reading. You've only got a few seconds to catch us lazy-asses.

My advice? Do your blog Kegels, Randi. Tighten that shit up. Only post when you have something to say.

She was right six months ago, and you still haven't followed her advice.

So, let's try this again, in photographer terms. Look at your blog posts as pictures. You only have a few seconds to catch a reader's interest, so you have to say a lot with a little bit. You have to narrow in your focus, find a single item in a large landscape, and go for a piece of the whole.

A blog post is this:




















Not this:
Does that help you visualize what you are shooting for? In telling a story, it is the small stuff, the little details, that matter, not amount of words. It's a single snapshot, not a novel. It's a door, not a mansion. It's a moment, not a lifetime.

Who am I to say your blog sucks? I'm a mom whose kids are out of town, sitting in all my unwashed glory on a big comfy couch on a Monday afternoon, taking a day off work.

But, your blog bored the bejesus out of me. You aren't stretching, and you aren't ready for this review, yet. But, you are so like 75% of the blogs that submit here weekly that I'm reviewing you anyway, in hopes that they (and you) will learn something.

Labels: coma-inducing snoozefests, Love Bites, meh-diocre

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Don't bother with the new tricks, just shoot him

Thursday, July 02, 2009

I had two choices yesterday evening, sit and watch more Michael Jackson breaking news, or write up this review of a 'Gringo in paradise'.

(Is that one choice, or two?)

Anyway, I went with the gringo, because he has more life in him. Barely.

Gringo doesn't put himself forward very well, he describes himself as 'an average 50 something who has retired early'. If you haven't slid off your chair in excitement, let me add that the blog is visually terrible.

I think Blogger are having a chuckle amongst themselves by offering it as a template, but seriously gringo, do YOU like the too-much-fibre shade of brown your efforts are decked out in?

You live a life of leisure on a Mexican island, why not brighten it up a little?

Onwards and er...upwards. You bored the hell out of me. Really. I went back as far as March and had to stop because from a starting point of just being bored and feeling a little sympathetic towards you, you ended up making me bored and irritated.

You are fixated on the act of blogging (and bloggers), and not any art that may accompany it. You meticulously churn out posts without putting an ounce of effort into crafting them.

You nearly made me cry when I saw you write this:
'Normally I spend Sunday afternoons putting together my five posts for the week. All neat and tidy, ready to go at 6:05 AM every morning.'

Jesus, Mary and Joseph. If you spent that afternoon writing one post with a bit of heart or spirit instead, it would be time much better spent.

Whether you live in Rome, or New Jersey, or Tbilisi, or Mexico, it will never make interesting reading to dedicate a post to how you got some cheap limes.

You wrote the only account of civil disturbance in existence that is FDA approved for treatment of insomnia. Bullet holes do not equate to bullet points.

I lost all hope when I spotted a glaring contradiction when you moan about kids not wearing shirts in town, or 'gasp' a woman's bra strap showing, yet you have no problem in perving on the topless beach and posting individual's pictures on the internet.

Dirty old man. Dirty boring old man.

Labels: adios, Father Gene, fuck off and die

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If You Don't Have a Hobby, You Always Have A Buzzy Buddy

Wednesday, July 01, 2009

Ten years ago, I spent the first year of my daughter's life slowly going insane. Part of it I spent shut in the house with my in-laws, who were suffering through all the ailments that come along with a diagnosis of cancer and the subsequent treatments. Yes, both of them. The other part, I spent feeling alone, in a place where I knew no one, had no friends and the best company I could scrape up was my infant daughter. It wasn't bad company, it just wasn't what I was in desperate need of.

The beauty of the blogosphere is that there is a little something out there for everyone. If I had access to something like Sleepless Nights, I would have been grateful, so very grateful. I might not have gone as crazy as I did, I might not have been as lonely as I was, and I would have had someone who understood. Someone to relate to that could share her experience.

Veronica has been through the wringer. She recently lost someone very close to her because of that beast, cancer. She's dealt with fertility issues and personal ailments. And through it all, she smiles, she laughs and she masturbates.

The girl talks about vibrators... a lot. Don't believe me? Look:

Here
Here
and
Here

She also talks about her boobs... a lot.

Here
Here
and
Here

Living in Tasmania and raising two children, has its share of hilarity and intriguing moments. Veronica is a SAHM who is not afraid to share anything. And, I do mean anything.

She holds nothing back and puts it all out there with a small nod to the fact that she may be providing too much information or offending the delicate sensibilities of people like...

Well like me.

Veronica's blog may have been my cup of tea ten years ago. Today? Eh, not so much. There were moments I found myself on the verge of gagging and literally cringing. Which is not an entirely bad thing, I'm just not big on the details of breastfeeding. But, there are so many out there that are.

The template is clean and neat. It's well organized, uncluttered and easy to navigate. I have no issues with it, but I'm not thrilled by it either. It's there, it's good. Whatever.

I have the feeling that Veronica is the kind of woman that I could sit and have hours of conversation with, all of it heavily laced with the word 'fuck'. My only real complaint about her writing is that she tends to go on. It's something we've said before and we'll keep saying it. Editing is key. Not just for errors but for content. I love the way she writes, matter of fact, yet conversational. She's funny and entertaining, but just a bit long.

Veronica will make you laugh and let you share in her sadness. She'll also make your belly button tweezle with discomfort. Yes, I'm making up words now. And, through it all, I found myself just loving her. She has a spirit that can't be broken.

Darling, I give you this with a hug and a pat on your back:






Just one more thing though. Who has this much time on their hands?

Labels: Cool moms, not my cuppa, three stars, Vivian Von Doom

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The thing is, Bob, it's not that I'm lazy, it's that I just don't care.

Tuesday, June 30, 2009

The world of business and corporations and networking and conference calls and Six Sigma and Someone Stole My Cheese and marketing-speak and power suits is utterly beyond me. It's all so much nonsense. Which is kind of a shame, really, because I'd probably be making a lot more money if things like "branding," "market share," and "competitive intell" meant anything at all to me.

But Dot Com Mom gets it in spades. And she writes about it. Lucky me.

Blogger has, I'm guessing, something like 10 standard templates available for the 36 million (roughly) bloggers using its platform. Each of them are tired, boring, and barely functional not to mention generally ugly. Do you really identify yourself so much with the sea and nautical life that you'd use their lighthouse template to represent who you are? I know one person who can reasonably get away with this, and you aren't that person.

Look, people: a blog is, if nothing else, an expression of self (or at least it damn well should be). Sure, for us it's about the writing, and good writing is more likely to make me disregard the trappings of your blog. You can wrap a pile of dog shit up in pretty bows and lovely paper, but it's still a pile of dog shit. But if you wrap a pile of gold in used diapers, I'm not going to go digging for the gold. Appearance and accessibility matter.

That said, your blog could be gorgeous and cleverly formatted and easily navigated, but if you don't post consistently you're just taking up space. Allison's got a grand total of 18 posts. Two of them from 2003. And she hasn't written since March. This is a colossal waste of my time.

Not surprisingly there's no About page, and Allison's Blogger profile gives nothing away. So I don't know why I should listen to a thing she has to say, there's no impetus for me to be curious about her because she likes something I like or hates something I like or mentions something personally intriguing. There's nothing personal here. It's a small collection of self-important essays on politics, technology, and lord knows what all else because it's so heavily couched in tech and marketing and management terms that it loses all meaning for me.

Allison makes you work for it, and even the good stuff can be an ungodly chore to get through, with explanatory links and marginally obscure references overshadowing really quite fine writing. I didn't care enough to click on those external links. I mean, do we really need a link to a definition of "smart cookie"? No, no we don't. Those links are distracting instead of helpful; they just direct us away from your writing, which is (or could be) really rather good. I'm not denying the very real intelligence Allison displays, but it's off-puttingly lacquered with excess information while being unsettlingly devoid of heart.

I could go through and list my constructive criticism now, but I honestly can't be bothered to expend the energy for someone who hasn't updated since March and managed to eke out a dozen posts this year. Get back to me when you've decided to be a blogger.

Labels: Calamity, coma-inducing snoozefests, Die in a flaming finger inferno, fugly templates from hell

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