Either Gwen gave me a massive headache, or I didn’t even come close to meeting my required dosage of caffeine before I started reading Gwen Alison Wonderland. I’m sure it was the latter, since the pain abated directly after I filled my belly with the enveloping warmth of coffee, but I’m just as certain that being assigned to review this blog didn’t help.

Now, hold on there – take it easy. I like Gwen, really: don’t get me wrong. She’s got a little bit of the kapow, the bang/zoom that I enjoy in my interweb-personalities, and I’ve enjoyed what I recall of her comments here at Ask... but as the little picture at the bottom of her sidebar states, she’s “drowning in a pool of tears”, and after reading her blog, I’m soaked in her anguish. As a rule, I like to keep myself as metaphorically dry as possible, and don’t much care for the feeling of carrying a sodden blanket on my back as I superficially cruise through the interwebs, but here I am, limping along with angst pooling in my boots.

She’s getting it out, Gwen is, just exorcizing the pain from her system, and it’s not like she doesn’t have cause; no, there’s a whole lot she can say about grief that I’ve never considered, and her emotions are very, very real. Too real, in fact, for me and my tiny little black heart.

The cold, hard reality is that I spent the night sighing and clicking away after a couple of posts, only to return to my sighing as I buried my face in my hands. This despite the fact that her writing is clearly improving, her posts this year far and away more evocative than anything she’s written prior. This, though, is longer than a fourth-grade production of Hamlet, and when one of the things she’s proudest of producing is a review of The Bourne Ultimatum, well, to be unrelentingly honest, life is too short. There’s a lot that I’d like to see distilled, boiled down to just essence and then built upon, instead of watching un-encapsulated stories swell up like a cluster of bee stings.

Still, I can’t shake the feeling that having me review this blog is akin to handing a Rubik’s Cube to a sea lion: I don’t have the physical dexterity nor the mental capacity to engage it with any more than an uncomprehending stare, and I am about as familiar with her experiences as a sperm whale is with a howitzer.

We’re of two different worlds, Gwen and I are, two vastly conflicting universes, so, in my mind, this is a pretty hard-won rating:



Hopefully, she'll continue on her current path, resolutely elevating her writing to allow it to transcend her emotions, making them work for her instead of the other way around... and, also hopefully, I'll get to be a lot fucking funnier the next time you see me.

originally posted Apr 22 09

In the spirit of full-disclosure, and fairness, here's SlapDashittery's review from mid-2007 (back when it was called Egomania & Dipshittery - ahem) by a little minx named Love Bites:


This is what your blog would be if Hunter S. Thompson wrote it.

I should say right here that I'm not a huge fan of Mr. Thompson. I get high on life (and an occasional infusion of ska or Jane's Addiction). Drug-addled pop culture observers don't do much for me.

And yet, after a steady diet of mommy bloggers and "dear diary, my dog failed her literacy classes today," Ry's blog was kind of like a breath of a gently pot-laced breeze wafting over my poor wretched nose, a nose that has been breathing too goddamn much sterile corporate air of late.

The template is aight. I can't find much to pick holes in, looks-wise, and I like the title. On the other hand, reading too much of his blog makes me feel like I've been smoking crack. Though, this isn't entirely a bad sensation, I suppose, since crackheads around the world seem to love it.

But he isn't boring. I think he may be nuts. And he really needs to put the thesaurus down and walk away from it. He verges over into "pretensious pseudo-intellectual I haven't been out of literature courses long enough" mode at times.

But he isn't boring.

I rate him:



However, I do think he occasionally believes in his own mythology a little too often, so to keep his ego in check, I'm also passing along this little reminder to keep him out of poseur-dom:

.

And I'd like to extend an invitation to move south and be my boy toy for a month or so. I don't know what he's like in bed (I suspect he has bad ADD), but I don't think he'd be boring.

"Pwn Greenland is an adult humour website featuring satirical news posts and sarcastic opinion. Many of my online posts are works of fiction and any use of real names is accidental and purely coincidental. All content is intended for readers over the age of 18. If you’re too young to buy drugs, you’re not supposed to be here."

You don’t need to read, “He then proceeds to attach the Konami Laser Scope to his head before thrusting his clenched fist in the air, hissing ‘Hell yeah!’, through mayonnaise-stained braces” to know that these guys can piece a sentence together. No, despite the myriad speedbumps of deplorable futility, these three dipshits can actually roll.

To be sure, imagining that apocryphal, mulleted image of Wolfman popping and locking with an epileptic at an old-age home is a hoot, perhaps even a holler, but Fugly Bitches, a section devoted entirely to castigating women from online dating services, is like tripping children with a stick: too easy, and unnecessarily malicious. This is the middle-ground of offensiveness, with the sarcastic use of internet slang, the constant references to drugs, retards, and cum, it’s all, dare I say, kid’s stuff; it’s easy, simplistic, and takes no real effort. You boys want to destroy something? Then fucking destroy it – don’t dick around with itty-bitty posts that peter-out because you’re bored.

It’s like my grandma used to say: if you want to poke someone with a stick, jam that sonofabitch into their eye-socket, and use both hands. This is a woman who used to make egg-salad with one part egg, two parts butter, who stood as a paragon of at least culinary offensiveness, and her apparition hangs like a burning American flag of provocation over you three blokes and your Greenland-pwning. Still, as both a solid contrast to Ms. Foster and as an improvement-project, you guys could do worse.



Get your act together, fellas, and I promise more flaming fingers to come.

originally posted Apr 18 09