Waitress, I need two more boat drinks

I'm a native Floridian and as such I love the beach. Not the ones you see on TV with condos and high rise hotels and flashing lights and fine dining. No. I like the ones that haven't been taken over by tourists, the ones tucked away and still obscure (though rarer and rarer), with weathered houses and sand on the floor and dive bars and sticker burrs and restaurants with plastic tablecloths and fried mullet.

I come from a long line of boat and beach people. We've had a place at one of those out-of-the-way redneck beaches since I was little, and my fondest memories of childhood are there, pulling the net and learning to waterski and building drip sand castles on the beach for hours and digging up sand dollars with my toes in the Gulf and paying toothless shrimpers to buy us beer when I was 13. My father and all my uncles spent summers as hands on boats, and one of them, the craziest of them, has spent most of his life on a boat, running from and just "running." He's down there now somewhere south, surfing and telling fish tales and going crazier every day.

So, inherently, I appreciate the inclination to go native, to go tropical. Which is why I was eager to review Lindi's Ideas, bland name and all. Because Lindi has done just that -- gone native -- and she's done it for a while now. And I admire that so very much. She's been all over, working on boats and scuba diving and teaching and, I imagine, having every kind of adventure. She's lost and found and has found herself in the Yucatan with a young Latin lover (I assume he's her lover; she doesn't quite say) and a house in Merida and a life of serenity and observation.

The template, like the name, leaves a lot to be desired. It's your standard blue blogger template. Blah. Flavorless. Soulless. Find something with flavor, something with a little kick. Linda, I know you don't know much about this whole blogging thing, but figure it out. Ask for help. Or go here.

There's no blogroll, or anything else for that matter, which does make it entirely uncluttered. But there's little in the design or in the "extras" to tell us who you are. And for some reason you contribute to your blog twice. How does that work?

The posts are loooong. Like this one, which I'm sure is interesting, but I can't be bothered because it goes on forever without paragraph breaks. Pick a topic and write about it. If the topic is expansive, narrow it down. Break it up. Especially if it's a "we went here and did this and here are the pictures" kind of post. Yawn. People won't care unless you make them care, and dragging on ad nauseum with no break isn't going to do it.

The writing is serene, almost formal. And it tends tends to plod. I wonder if it has to do with switching between English and Spanish (and Mayan!) in her day-to-day life. I have a friend who's lived in Korea for 10 years, and his English writing is now a bit... stilted. Without a voice.

The blog description uses the dreaded word "ramble," and it fits. There's no knowledge of where to end, of when enough is enough. I had a friend like this who couldn't for the life of her end a voicemail message. It's like she had no off switch. She didn't want to sit there rambling forever, awkwardly saying things like, "So, yeah, either call or whatever, you know? Um.... So. Did I say it's me? It is. And it's six o'clock. And we'll be here until whenever, so just, um... Yeah. Oh! Calamity says hi! And... um..." but she couldn't help herself. Hang up the phone already! Have a point! Even in your blog submission form, where you tell us about yourself, the form cut you off. I'm serious! You wrote so much the form said, nope, you're done, we're gonna stop you right there.

And when I say "have a point," I don't mean cat stuff. I like animals, too, mostly of the canine variety, but I don't know anyone who wants monthly updates on my furry friends. They wouldn't want updates if they were my actual children, either, so find something else. You're living in the dang-diddly Yucatan! There has got to be all sorts of junk to write about other than cats.

Linda, you are a fascinating, bold, and brave woman, who no doubt has reams of stories to tell... but you're not telling them. In your submission form you said, "I thought maybe I would sit my ass down to write every day instead of smokin too much dope and staring at teh computer..." Girl, do I ever know the feeling. Trust me, I'm all over that. You also say, "and although I know you will crucify me, fuck it, I am in the mood today. I must be a masochist because I have not shown my real self on that page, in fear of offending my family with my f..." (that's where the form said buh-bye). Awesome. You know there's a problem, you know you're muzzling yourself. And this is never a recipe for good blogging.

This is where it got interesting to me. The calm, peaceful, la-la-la of it all came crumbling down and we see some personality, some frustration, some life. Do more of this! Stop worrying if you offend people. This is the problem with non-anonymous blogs -- people get all wrapped up in what they're saying instead of just saying it. You have, I'm sure, lived one of the most interesting lives being blogged about, but we wouldn't know it because your posts are sanitized and travelogged and shuttered to hell and back. Take the ball gag out and give it back to Love Bites.

Also, in that bit up there from your submission form that I posted? There we get to see how you might talk, what you might sound like. It's more natural, less forced, less "I'm writing so I better write like I'm writing and take it seriously and inject it all with formality and all due decorum." Fuck that. Get real. Tell us the truth, tell us who you are, or don't bother.

Because I do absolutely find you fascinating, and because there's the potential for some great storytelling, I'm giving you





But if you don't step it up, if you don't start editing your writing so that it sounds like you and start telling us the good stuff and start revealing who you are and what you think and where you've been, well. You've been warned. Those flaming fingers singe something fierce.

Tears of a clown

This is going to sound hypocritical coming from a girl who calls herself Calamity and writes for a blog with vulgarity and threatened violence in the URL. But honestly? I don't like haters. Blogs that exist for the sole purpose of tearing others down and spewing bile and basically hating on everyone and everything turn me off.

I know. One could argue that we here at Ask spew our own particularly virulent brand of vitriol and gleefully take people down a notch or two. Or 47. And that's true. BUT! I truly believe we have altruistic intentions. We are merely here to serve, to entertain, and to clean up the blog world, one flaming finger at a time. Sometimes you have to be cruel to be kind. And it's funnier.

So, yes, I'm a hypocrite. I can own that.

Which brings me to my review of Site Insights, which the owner claims is "A site with a few insights into life in the digital age, including pop culture humor, observations and thoughts from a new media douchebag.... As well as satirical and sarcastic commentary on being a middle aged geek in a twenty something world." And to that I say, well, at least he's honest. Except about the humor bit. Also, middle aged? Man. I thought he was 26, tops.

All we're told in his "about" spiel is that this person hates everything. Now, that's not boring in the least, is it? No interests, no personal history, no name, no gender, no background, no insight of any kind into who the author is. "Just Sayin'" is all we get, which, as a phrase, got old at least 3 years ago.

The design is website-y and a little befuddling. And unsettling. I'm not sure where to look. Call me simple-minded, but I need something more straightforward. And I hate this "click to read more" shit. Although, in Just Sayin's case, it does allow me to skip over those posts that don't interest me, which happens kind of a lot.

There's way too much stuff in the sidebar and footer. JS, you've got top posts, recent posts, recent comments, and another top posts. Why? Get rid of all of it and stick with an archive and category list and a blogroll. You're killing me with all that busy shit. This is a blog design for a magazine, or a team blog, not some guy venting about Paris Hilton and why rednecks are stupid.

And I can't deal with the little linky ad shit in the posts. I can't tell when you're sending me somewhere for emphasis to back up your writing, or if you're going to send me to a site about lower interest rates, which, if I wanted to find out about lower interest rates I'd goddamn go to Google, not a post on your blog that relates in no way whatsoever to the sites/ads that are linked. It's infuriating.

Moving on to the content: The "list of eleven" crap appended to every list is kind of pathetic. It doesn't take a real genius to recognize when the funny has left the building. There's some uneven posting, unless I'm missing some navigation option, which is entirely possible as this design overwhelms me. April 2008 has like four billion posts, while July has three. And they're all pop culture-related. And not even the good pop culture, like Buffy or James Bond or Dallas. Also, this guy is more into girly pop culture than any girl I've ever known.

The humor -- and I use that term loosely -- is tired, stereotypical (which he at least admits to), juvenile, and repetitive. And the writing is sophomoric. There aren't a lot of spelling snafus, but the ellipses have taken over the joint. It's a rambling, stream of consciousness mess of misogynism and ba-dum-bum-isms. I just picture this guy chortling to himself, cackling with glee over how funny he is. Thing is, he's just not. At least not to me. I didn't even crack a smile. Now, I remember what happened the last time I said someone with a humor blog was unfunny, don't y'all? Yeah, it wasn't pretty. But it was, ironically, funny.

You want to be a blogging god but aren't sure how? Well, me neither. But I know how you can stop being a blogging douche:

Your most interesting and revealing post didn't try to be funny. And that's what this blog has a lot of -- attempts at humor. Don't try so hard. Stop trying to convince everyone you're funny. The strain has to be killing you. It's a bit like Pollyanna writing a sex blog -- forced and uncomfortable and, ultimately, liable to break you out in hives.

So, ok, maybe some people think you're funny. I'm only one person, after all, and I'm not the arbiter of humor. (Although, dammit, why can't I be?) Anyway, what I'm trying to get at is, maybe you have some amusing insight into pop culture or "new media." But what you're publishing is just the same old crap someone else is publishing, only yours has less forethought, precision, and care. Seriously, the ellipses are your crutch and you've got to cast those things aside and say you're healed, because they aren't helping you at all. It's lazy, and it saves you from having to form complete thoughts, cohesive paragraphs, and polished posts.

I can't tell you how to be funny, but I can tell you how not to suck. Write what you know, take some time crafting your posts, be honest, let us in a little bit, tell us about yourself instead of whatever celebrity every other humor/pop culture/gossip blog in the world is covering, or if you insist on devoting time to celebrity news, try to bring something original, something fresh. And above all, tell us who you are, not who you want us to think you are -- the jaded, hateful cynic with talons to sharpen. Because it doesn't ring true. I sense (barely) a real person under all this contrived snark and false bravado. A person who, I suspect, would be more interesting than the guy you're playing at.