Dirty Tricks

There are blogs I read whose authors inspire me, whose words throb with meaning, whose nuanced and elegant writings resonate with me on a cerebral-emotional level so that I'm rendered thoughtful, introspective, moved.

This is not one of those blogs. It's scattered, rambling, clumsy, rude, vulgar, and visceral.

And I love it.

The design leaves a lot to be desired. There's no functionality besides the archives, and when you go to read them you're given each month's posts on one page, which gets super long. The font jumps from light blue to dark blue to red (Christ, my eyes) to pink to holy fuck it's purple, which I can't even read. Give us a break, please: dark text on a light background, or my eyes will fall out of my freaking head. Or, if you must stay with a dark background, use a more reader-friendly text color in a larger font.

I love the header image, but it's ginormous and requires extensive scrolling. The reading space is way too narrow -- too narrow is better than too wide (mostly, except in terms of penises and TV screens), but this makes for awkward reading. Set up an about page; I hate diving right in and trying to figure someone out from the backlog of archives. Give us a cast of characters, a few sentences about you, something to go on.

Now, to the writing. There are some rambly, boring, and pointless posts. There's a lot of weekend wrap-up, I did this then this. But you know what? I don't really give a good god damn because Lauren is raucous and inappropriate and unfailingly, brutally honest. I mean, naked in a wheel barrow? How can I not love that? She drinks a lot and posts pictures of her butt and has a funny kid. She tells interesting and naughty stories, if not particularly well written. She's fucked 80s rock stars, and I'm really ashamed by how impressed I am.

Lauren is really good with a one (or two) liner: "So I let down God and a bunch of babies so that I could have a one night stand. Nice work." And she says things like, "Ryan Reynolds... I would kill him, stuff him and hang him on my wall just to be able to fuck him for the rest of my life" which I can totally relate to. She's kind of fascinating, really, and there is no shortage of twisted little walks down memory lane. Her writing is unapologetic, balls to the wall, this is me, this is real, and I don't really give a damn what you think about it. It's refreshing and dirty at the same time.

What I really love about this blog is that there's no agenda, there's no front, there's no tidy little cubby hole you can shove her in -- it's just, flat out, the Dirty Pirate Hooker, with all her mishaps and narcissism (which is oddly endearing) and boozing and mothering her little punk and forgetting her underwear and making the best of things. There's a real life happening here, and it's not spiffed up and polished and twisted into a crowd-pleasing family friendly bit of entertainment. Lauren is completely original and an intriguing individual, and I'm adding her to my reader right now.

My own worst nightmare

It's the luck of the draw around here. The often imitated but never duplicated Love Bites reaches into her bag of tricks, shoves aside the tubes of lube, lipstick, and Lifesavers, and pulls out the blogs for us to review. It's completely random.

But this time, I think the Flying Spaghetti Monster had something to do with it. Because my hapless little reviewee got me -- a pro-choice agnostic with pagan tendencies who is a queer friendly, pro-gay marriage, anti-religious establishment, foul-mouthed sex fiend feminist liberal elitist.

Angi from Sleep for Dreaming, on the other hand, is not. Way not.

Let me just get the design critique out of the way, as it's about the only part of this site that didn't make me want to spit nails. It's actually very easy on the eyes. I can dig the gray and red. It's uncluttered and well-organized. There is, however, a section for Who's Who with nothing in it and you could stand to beef up your About page with more details.

Now, for the rest of the blog: I have absolutely nothing in common with this person. Nada. She is the antithesis of me, and it was often physically painful for me to read her blog. She's religious in the "first and foremost" sense. There's a lot of God talk, which I get enough of from my mother the priest, thank you very much. She's a conservative cat person; I'm a liberal dog person. And fuck me sideways she links to Ann Coulter.

There are a glut of posts of the pointless, interesting to no one variety, like this. And this. And, holy lord, this. Otherwise, she's got issues. There are acres and acres of angsty, self-discovery posts that really should be relegated to her bedside devotional journal. She thinks that lesbians are icky, women over 5o should pack it in, and red lipstick is from the devil (ok, I made that last part up). Oh, and side note? Scaramouche is a character, not a thing. Angie doesn't like swearing, which makes me wonder (for the zillionth time since beginning this review) why she decided to submit her site to a bunch of foul-mouthed little bastards like us.

The writing is often naive, unfocused, bland, and frankly boring but at least well-punctuated and generally grammatically correct. For me, it lacked humor, style, an engaging voice, and, of course, an author I could relate to. This post about sums it up for me: "I’ve dabbled and chicken-scratched a bit since then, but haven’t really written anything of any significance." Nothing in this blog resonated with me. But that's probably my liberal elitism showing. I always forget to tuck that in like a nice girl.

Look, I try to be objective. I try to find common ground, and I look for the magic mushrooms in the piles of dung. I tried not to let my politics -- nor the influx of my family's right wing propaganda in my inbox -- cloud my reviewing sensibilities. I am, after all, the "nice one." But this blog? Sigh. She's probably a nice person. I bet she helps little old ladies down the street and lets people cut in front of her in line if they have just one thing to buy. It's just, nothing on her blog makes me want to sit next to her on a long road trip while we hash out our differences or engage in philosophical debate. I pretty much just want to close the window and walk away. And that's probably ok with Angi, because I'm decidedly not her audience.

Finally, because I try to give constructive criticism even when my dander is up and I'm all kinds of huffy, some tips:

1. Angi, you imply some knowledge of hard times and difficulties and challenges surmounted but you never share that information. If it's too personal, I understand, but that was where you got me a little interested in your story. It might help readers get to know you (and not knee-jerk react to your politics, like me) if you give us more insight into who you are. Other than your politics and religious views and your love for song lyrics and photography, I feel like I don't know that much about you. Even though I cringed at your reasons, the Why I Could Never Be Friends With... posts revealed more about you than many others.

2. Lay off the "I did this, then I did this" weekend roundups. Unless something interesting happened, leave it out.

3. Generate discussion in your comments. Ask questions. Generate feedback and conversation.

4. There are no revelations about relationships with anyone, romantic or otherwise. Who are the people in your life? Write about them.

And I'm spent.

My first inclination is to give you about eleventy-nine million of these.






But, in retrospect, that might be letting the terrorists win.

Instead you get this, because I suspect I might be a little biased:

Alright, you little freshman bitches, air raid!*

This is going to sound all kinds of hypocritical, considering I post sometimes scathing reviews on a site with a URL of "Iwillfuckingtearyouapart," but I'm not really a fan of the whole "I'm a bitch, ask me how" genre of blogs. I know. Pot, meet kettle.

The trend for a lot of women bloggers these days seems to be marketing themselves as foul-mouthed, stiletto-wearing bitches with bad attitudes, alcoholic tendencies, and fierce clothing choices. Either that or tawdry sex kittens who are reclaiming the words "whore" or "slut." And frankly, it almost never rings true. They put on the persona, trot out their quickly and carelessly written diatribes against whoever is pissing them off that day, and wrap it up in an "I'm just bitchy that way, bite me" bow. But it's vacant, self-aggrandizing, escapist, and ultimately untrue.

I get it. The internet allows a delicious anonymity, a seductive arena for self-expression that allows us to be whoever the hell we want. It allows me to masquerade as someone who knows what the hell she's talking about, and I get to do the very things I dis in the preceding paragraph. My hypocrisy knows no bounds, but it's my review and I'll be judgmental if I want to. Bite me? Shit, I did it again.

This little exercise in futility was fueled by The Shoewhore Who Cooks: Bow Down Bitches, which is not to say that the Shoewhore is either a whore or a bitch, thus proving my point. There's very little cooking and not a lot of shoes, either, so the title is a bit of a misnomer. I expected something along the lines of this. What I got was a rather nice, sexy-seeming, moderately funny woman from the Midwest who likes to cook.

I like the design. It's uncluttered and easy to read. There's no about page, though, so I don't have any back story. I need back story, people. The blog has been around just since May, but she moved from elsewhere, so there's not a lot here.

I read the entire blog, and I didn't want to gouge my eyes out with the heel of one of her stilettos. There are some marginally funny pictures from other places, some memes, and lots of ellipses. Shoewhore makes some grammatical snafus of the apostrophe variety, along with neglecting to capitalize consistently. She does post about shoes (just twice -- not much whorage there, eh?), but I don't like any of them. She went 38 years without a driver's license and doesn't go anywhere alone, which kind of boggles my mind. But she likes Eric Balfour, who is in one of the sexiest movies ever and I'd lick him from head to toe, steamy little devil that he is, so I can't hate on her too much.

She writes some amusing (and disgusting) stories. Some could be downright hilarious if polished up a little bit. But for me the writing just kind of sat there on the screen, lolling about sloppily as I am wont to do on weekends. Or always. It didn't grab me, I didn't laugh out loud, and there wasn't any finesse or flair. I like the Shoewhore -- she seems like a fun lady with a sexy relationship and a healthy sense of humor. But some of the writing, for me, was a bit of a snooze.

I don't know your background, Shoewhore, so I don't know why you blog. It doesn't seem like you're serious about writing, but if you are, tighten up, edit, reread, and polish. Dig deeper, give us more heart and soul and sex. These posts seem flung up on the screen without much care.

If this is just an exercise in community, in relationship building, in saying whatever is on your mind, that's fine, too. But take a little more care with your craft, and don't be afraid to go deeper. You don't have to be funny all the time, and honestly sometimes the funny just didn't work for me. There's more to you than bitchy avarice -- a lot more, in fact, because I saw very little meanness or greed on your blog. Consider a rename of your blog, or live up to the title more, if that's who you want to be. But I hope you don't -- I hope you toss out the surface veneer and show us who you really are.

Today I give you





because I like you and you seem like a fun lady and I feel like you have potential. Keep blogging, edit your writing but not yourself. Let us see more of who you are, what matters to you. You read some excellent bloggers: let them influence you.



*Darla (Parker Posey), from Dazed and Confused

Geek Love

What I remember most about math in high school is my pre-algebra class, which was held in one of those trailers way out the back of beyond where the maladjusted black leather-clad types hung out (in Florida, with 147% humidity). I remember it because I failed miserably and had to repeat it, but also because a friend and I kept a notebook with our desperate, loopy-scrawled, heart-strewn scribblings that we passed to each other between classes. Except this one time, where I forgot the fucking thing under my desk and someone in the next class found it and tacked up the extremely embarrassing contents of my 13-year-old heart, which focused around a Luke Perry-esque upperclassman with penetrating eyes and this great spiky blond hair who was my first kiss. It was this whole big thing.

So, reading the blog of a high school algebra teacher brought that all rushing back in excruciating detail (including the conversation I had with said dreamy older boy, which ended in no more kisses for me but a friend for life, so there's a trade off). I expected to hate this blog with as much searing fury as I hate math, with its stupid numbers and never adding up right and I still don't know how to leave a tip, but apparently I can like the teacher and hate the subject.

And anyway, there's not a whole lot of math going on, except for the inexplicable math-related craft projects, so I can put away my calculator.

The template is nice. I like the dark background and the purple and it has readable black text on a white background. The banner is from the Sookie Stackhouse books, which seems odd, but I love those books, so whatever. There is way too much going on in the sidebar, of course. Move the bling and the awards to another page and roll up the archives. I don't know what the point is of the whole humor blogs pimpage. Do you get a free toaster?

Alice has been a little sporadic with her posting recently. She peaked in March with 41 posts but it's steadily gone downhill in the post frequency department. But Alice interests me (that whole math thing aside). She taught in Kenya with the Peace Corps. More of that, please. She plays poker, and chicks who play poker get instant cool points from me because my card-playing aptitude includes Go Fish, Solitaire (if I cheat), and Asshole.

There are some funnies, too. Mostly of the wry kind, which I enjoy. And she has amusing kids. (Do all parents have pics of their kids on the john? Mine do, evil bastards that they are.) It seems she had a similar upbringing, although how she managed to pee near a pool without worrying about the dreaded purple stain they warn you about following her around and branding her a pool-pisser I'll never know. I can relate to her because I, too, am a hypocritical judger. And I love cheesy vampire fic, and we have similar taste in movies and TV characters. And I in fact do have Mediaeval Baebes on my iPod.

There's lots of Pokemon, to which I jeer superiorly. But she mentions Slap Shot, so I like her again (but then I jeer again because of that whole Mmm Bop thing).

For a math chick, the writing is really pretty good, and I enjoy her humor. I'd like a little more back story, but then I always do. And more sex, but her mom reads the blog so that's not likely to happen. She does tend to go on a bit with the rambling, but it didn't bother me. I like her voice kind of a lot and that makes up for any long-windedness in my view. I'd want to hang out with her, and I wish we'd both been blogging when I lived in Maryland.

Also, the yearbook commentary made this review a delight, as did the Vanilla Ice re-enactments.

I'm gonna go out on a limb on this one, knowing I might encounter a fair bit of disagreement, but I fucking loved this one. I'm adding her to my reader, in fact. It could be that I'm biased in favor of geeky chicks with self-deprecating senses of humor and a penchant for vampires and science fiction movies, but it's my damn review.

Is 40 the new 30?

Remember when "middle aged" meant mom jeans and dickies and station wagons and appliances in god-awful colors like mustard and avocado? When it meant Ogilvie home perms and noodle casseroles and Christmas sweaters and truly enormous glasses with decorative gold rims? It was stirrup pants and cat sweatshirts and Jello salad and the easy listening station and Matlock.

Well, not anymore. I'm 33, and a good handful of my friends are edging into middle age and they are savvy and stylish and switched on and Jesus H. Christ I'm going to be middle aged in not too terribly long and I've done approximately nothing with my life. Fuck.

Which brings me to Nanny Goats in Panties, my reviewee for the day, and a self-professed middle ager. She's a working professional with no kids and a dishy (I suspect -- she doesn't talk about him much, but I like to imagine he's twelve kinds of hot) husband, so she's living my dream at least. She's also bi-cityal. Wait. That can't be right. Bi-citurnal? Bi-citified? Either way, she lives in two cities, which seems both excessive and completely awesome. She says, "I'm a non-conformist. Just like everybody else."

The blog is white, white, white with more white for good measure. Now, I'm a fan of simplicity in general, and white space in particular, but it could stand some jazzing up. It's your standard tweaked Blogger template with random changes in font size and barely passable functionality. The banner, though, is nice. But where are the panties?

Her sidebar is way too cluttered. NGIP, you've obviously got the hang of adding pages to your blog, since you have an "About" page, so why not corral those other bits and bobs into separate pages? Pull all your writing links onto one page, especially. Having your blogroll with links to the most recent post by the blogrolled is overkill. And I don't really get why people want to have recent comments emblazoned on their sidebars. Someone explain? Also, roll up your archives. The MyBlogLog rollover crap is tres annoying, just like randomly using French.

NGIP has been blogging for a while, and I've read all of 2008 thus far -- that's got to be a good sign. She's dry and silly and self-deprecating; I can relate and she makes me laugh. Ms. Kendrick could learn a thing or two. Oh, there's some filler, but it's generally funny filler. This is a humor blog, for the most part, but there's some depth here, too. Most of the time I prefer personal blogs that happen to be funny rather than blogs where getting laughs is their raison d'etre (there goes that annoying French again). I like a little more back story, a little more exposure, a little more grit. I want to be entertained, but I also want to feel like I'm snooping. Is that so wrong?

There is quite a bit of shameless self-promotion going on, an open quest for readership and linkage and numbers and rankings, which makes me uncomfortable. Yes, I know, that's kind of the whole point of a blog -- exposure -- and heaven knows I want all that, too. It just seems... tawdry? This from a woman who blew her fiance in a parking lot the night she met him, but I can't blow my own horn. I should speak to a shrink about that, shouldn't I? That and the oral fixation.

But back to Nanny Goats in Panties (How much do I love that title? Kind of a lot.), I gotta say I dig it. She's talented and she makes me laugh and she writes well with little humorous interjections and asides. I wish I knew more about her, though. I wish I knew if her husband really is dishy, if she likes reruns of CHiPs or Magnum PI, if she wishes Glen Beck would fall off the face of the earth or contract a virulent strain of laryngitis rendering him permanently mute. I just want to know more. Also, sex please. Come on, people. Do I have to ask all the time? I need you all to endeavor to write about sex at least once a week, k?

Nany Goats in Panties (there, I wrote it again) gets three stars from me. I might fucking love her if she'd clean up her blog, get a better design, stop the pimping, and scratch the surface a little more. That may not be what she wants her blog to be, but it's what I want, and for the purposes of this review what I want is all that matters.

Maybe that's just the way I read it*

Jesus, I missed this place, with it's blood red walls and grim reaper hovering in a corner, and you lot just slavering away, dripping wit and sarcasm and vitriol like the beasts from hell you are. Group hug?

Sorry I had to leave you for a while. The first week of my absence I can blame on hitting the mother fucking wall. The second week was entirely my mother's fault -- she whisked me way out west and we gallivanted around like Thelma and Louise without the sexy hitchhikers or suicide or vigilantism. And now I'm back from outer space and ready to roll up my sleeves and get back into the nitty gritty of reviewing those festering boils on the butt of humanity known as our submitters.

Love'n These Times. I don't get it. What's with the 'n? Is it "Love In These Times"? "Love And These Times"? "Loving These Times"? Whichever, that apostrophe makes me want to drill holes in this blog with a jackhammer and then spit in the cavities. And I'm the "nice one."

The design is innocuous and bland, but not eye-gouging. It is terribly, cloyingly sweet, though, and I like fairies. The archives button doesn't work. Helpful. Crystal is not a frequent blogger. It looks like she moved from a different blog, although there are no archives before May and there are only around 50 posts. Each one more empty than the last.

Look, before I get into the reaming, I just have to preface this with the fact that it seems like Crystal is a nice girl with a nice rack and good intentions. I get where she's coming from, curvy, hopeless romantic that I am. She even kinda looks like me. So, Crystal, just a little pep talk from your pal Calamity: don't stop, don't cave, don't take it personally, and DO listen carefully. Here goes...

First, privacy, people! Take your names off your blog. If you're published or famous or getting paid for it, fine: leave your name. But otherwise? Asking for trouble.

Poetry. Ah fuck. Rhyming poetry. It's amateurish, Hallmark card-y, and without grace. Poetry, to me, is about a love of words and how they twist and tumble together, it's nuance and meter and voice and soul and motion. These are just limp words on a screen, struggling off the page like lepers, leaving noses and bits of skin in their wake, flaccid and empty. Check out Anne Sexton, Dylan Thomas, W.H. Auden, Mary Karr, May Swenson. Step away from the country music lyrics, and start reading the good stuff.

Fiction. "She had many male admirers who admired her for her buttocks and curved breasts." Did they really? Fascinating. And what do admirers do? They admire. Awesome. "Having no family or relatives had made her homeless and being homeless had made her strong." Hi, logic? Have we met? Didn't think so. It's plodding, nonsensical, presumptive, and scattered. You tell, tell, tell, and don't show a darn thing: "Residents lived in tiny houses and cleanliness was not of the utmost importance." Well, thanks for the info, but I can't picture it at all. Not of the utmost importance? Can you vague that up for me a little bit?

Listen. I know. Truly, I do. I've read my share of Anne Rice (and her alter ego, A. N. Roquelaure), Alice Borchardt, Charlaine Harris, Patricia Briggs, Kelley Armstrong, and the rest of the dark/goth/werewolf/vampire/occult/witch/mystery/erotica/shapeshifter/horror bunch and loved it. Really. I can admit it. I also suspect you've delved into that magical, wonderful world of the trashy romance novel, and I'm here to tell you there's nothing wrong with that. Not a goddamn thing. Give me harems and pirates and blue stockings and half-Comanche outlaws and heaving bosoms and moist folds and turgid members and I'm all yours.

But your writing? It's just not there yet. I don't know your background, and I don't know how much experience you've had, and maybe it doesn't matter. Thing is, I don't want to discourage you from writing because it's obvious you enjoy it and you're cranking out the words and there's something to be said for that. It's just that you need some fire, some focus, some flavor. It's bland, there's no heat, no lyricism, no gotcha! Keep reading, join a writing group, workshop, edit, edit, edit.

Crystal and her blog seem sappy, mushy, young, earnest, hopeful, and sweet. But she doesn't have a lot to say about anything other than her boyfriend, her work, and her poetry/writing. She admits she doesn't put a lot into the blog, and it shows. There's not a lot here, and I think I heard an echo. To me, this stands firmly on the side of personal diary rather than blog. There doesn't seem to be any interaction in the comments, there's no blogroll so I don't know who she reads, and most of the time it seems like she's just scribbling away in a journal, regardless of whether anyone is watching. There's a place for that, and it's a pink fuzzy notebook with pictures of unicorns. At least mine is.

Let me explain. No, there is too much. Let me sum up: get personal, delve more, get involved, commit to the blog or leave it behind. With your writing, do the exact same thing.








*"Workshop," Billy Collins

I don't know how I managed to work Thelma and Louise, Gloria Gaynor, and The Princess Bride references into one post.

You can never have enough hats, gloves, and shoes

I'm kind of obsessed with What Not to Wear. Clinton Kelly is one of my favorite people ever, and I want him to be my new gay best friend and tell me what to wear and that I look chic. And I want Stacy London to do that whole Cher-like face thing she does and tell me to shut up! because I look so fabulous. Sure, it's an embarrassing fantasy and I'm revealing a deeply insecure and superficial (not to mention girly) side of myself, but we're all friends here (except Driz), so I'm willing to let you all laugh at me. Probably because you have this fantasy, too. Don't lie, Nutjobber. You know you do.

So, when I clicked on over to Fashion Paramedic, I was all prepared for a new fashion guru. I was ready to see dramatic transformations with the help of artful makeup and flat-front pants and layered pieces. Possibly a kitten heel or two. Or at the very least some fashion CPR. I was disappointed, however, because this blog really isn't about reviving wardrobes. It's a total misnomer. Hello, fake out.

But I wasn't disappointed long because what the Paramedic lacks in actual fashion bloggage she makes up for with a breezy, conversational, and entertaining blog.

I might actually like the blog design if it weren't for that whole three-column thing. Otherwise, I like the blue and white, and I don't mind the header too terribly much. There's just way too much going on. Get rid of all the excess crap. Or at the very least dial it down to a two-column blog and put all that crap on a different page. Also, who cares what visitor I am? Why is that at the top of the dang page? Kudos, though, for having some nice organization across the top. You have some broken links, though, like this one and this one. And jesus damn hell, that's a lot of categories. You might consider pruning those.

It's kind of a mommy blog, but the good kind, the kind with a healthy dose of snark. She's ballsy, and funny, delightfully inappropriate, and she has some great stories to tell. I am, though, extremely upset that the one post about shoes contains the word "Payless." I forgive her, though, because her husband has fashion nonsense similar to my fiance's. We all have our crosses to bear. Also, she champions the most worthwhile causes.

I liked this blog, misleading as it was. It's fun, unpretentious, and light. There's not a lot of introspection or inner wounds bared or depths explored, but that's ok. It's good, (mostly) clean, rollicking fun, and I enjoyed the ride. The writing is easy and effortless and (mostly) well-constructed, if not particularly literary or lyrical. I am going to dock you, though for pay-for-posts, you naughty, naughty paramedic. Just change that particular tag to "sell out."

Chances are I'll read this blog again. If she promises to tell me which porn stars she met.






*My title is stolen from style icon, Patsy Stone, who might need a paramedic to revive her in a pool of her own sick, but never for fashion advice.