The Weblog Review

I read the latest posts of You and Me and Wainbow and noticed, “Hmmm… there’s no punctuation!” (Well, in some places there is and some places there isn’t and the sentences don’t begin with capital letters either) While that is fun to read with oh, let’s say, James Joyce, it’s not so much fun with a blog. Still, I delved deeper, went back into the archives to see whether this was a one-off thing. Nope. Except for the August archives, it pretty much seemed to be the same thing. Which is a shame, because the writing—once you get used to the fact that it’s all one long sentence—is really good: sharp, arcebic and witty. Basically, everything I look for in a well-written blog.

I absolutely loved the picture of a cat streching on the title banner. It sort of made it feel more homely, like, for instance, you were opening someone’s big blue journal, with messy writing and doodles up and down the margins. The “bio” section is a bit intimidating, a picture of a girl’s feet saying,”You don’t deserve to know a thing about me.” Rather menacing, eh? And then she’s got the usual books and music list. I like the movable type design, except, Wainbow, please, get rid of the weather girl box you have becaus eit clashes so much with the rest of the blog.

The writing, as I said before, is very good, and for that, this blog deserves a really high rating. Take this post for instance:

“i like making new friends especially when they are pretty and you have a lot in common and then you start talking and all of a sudden two hours have gone by. i have a new friend who invited me out for brunch it all of a sudden felt so gutsy and like i had just been asked out on a date kind of, people don’t so much ask you out of the blue to do things with them and so it was nice and surprising and then it turned out to also be easy and comfortable too.

also i got a coat with elk antlers on it and it is brown with red stitching and i’m happy with that too”

So often people go overboard in their descriptions so I liked that she kept it to a bare minimum. I could go on copying passages out of her blog to put here, but I really think you should visit it yourself.

You and Me and Wainbows

It’s always an enjoyable experience when a weblog can be read from its beginning to its current state without any desire to stop. The Danz Family blog, however, is one that falls into that category.

As the site finishes loading, which is does quite quickly, readers are met with an image of the American flag. A precursory glance around the site brings up what has become a standard Blog Moxie weblog design. The sidebar gives links a navigation area where readers can peruse the rest of the Danz family website. My personal favorite portion of the sidebar is definitely the random adorable photos that rotate in and out of little Drew, who is a focal point throughout the entire weblog.

The navigation part of the site leads readers into several different aspects of what Don, the author of DanzFamily.com, enjoys and finds interesting. Different portions of the site are filled with video clips and pictures garnered from the internet, clips from speeches Don’s found worthwhile of sharing, and huge collection of links from all over the Internet. It’s a nice collection of add-ons to make this site more than “just a blog”.

Don covers a huge array or topics with the blog portion of DanzFamily.com. He’ll throw out updates on the status of the domain – new updates or new stats he’s found interesting. Pictures – mainly candid shots of Don’s family or of the beautiful flowers in his garden – are a regular feature in the day to day posts of this weblog, and by doing that, it gives readers something light to look at and breaks up the constant text that can sometimes overwhelm a new reader to a site.

Like so many other weblogs this time of year, politics has been a heavy topic of blogging for Don as of late. He’s also very well informed enough to touch on several current events or issues that have been brought up in the media, not only giving readers his own opinion, but relaying specific topics they may be learning about for the first time by visiting his weblog.

There’s not a lot I would change about the Danz Family blog. New visitors just finding this weblog will be able to jump right in without feeling lost. Frequent visitors regularly leave comments on Don’s posts and seem to have found a home with this weblog.

Danz Family

I came to “Jenny Doesn’t Like Bombs Mr. President” expecting some type of pundit blog about Jenny’s dislike for the U.S. President’s destructive policies. Instead I found a confusing weblog that doesn’t have any point, no original content, no binding message nor groupthink.




During my initial perusal I suspected the posting functions were intended to fashion a community. I was wrong. If this was supposed to be a community it wasn’t obvious. There were no threads. All posts were disconnected. There were no categories or any logical groupings of the posts. None of the posts had any themes in common. There wasn’t even a bi-line, catch phrase or weblog description for the blog.

The “JDLBMP” weblog is based on a standard modblog template that includes posts by others, Chatterbox, an indecipherable poll, some usage stats and random links. While I initially saw possibilities for creating a community I couldn’t find any theme or central reason for the blog.

If the theme and goal of the weblog is random thoughts and comments from friends, then the site might be considered successful. I clicked away totally clueless.

Jenny Doesn’t Like Bombs Mr. President

There’s nothing like stumbling onto a blog (well, in this case I had to stumble upon it) where the first post is about a recent night of passionate sex. I felt dirty reading it, but I couldn’t help myself but continue reading thinking that there may possibly be similar posts. Well, I didn’t find any more posts like it, but that’s fine. “This Anchor Song” though did keep my attention through several months of posts, which is a definite plus!

“This Anchor Man,” also known as, Joephet, is a gay, late twenty-something who lives in Manhattan. His blog tends to focus partly on being a law student which to me seems insane, but that’s only because I can’t imagine studying law. He writes about his experiences with school and also the stresses of life, such as relationships, losing someone and so on. He also talks about what’s going on in the news sometimes and interesting conversations or encounters with friends.

His layout is very simple and clean which I like. When you first come to his site, you are greeting with a little caricature of him you click on to enter the rest of his site. Once you enter, at the top of his blog is an image of him (I’m guessing) underwater with part of his face cropped out. His about page is fairly short and to the point, which has his interests, what he likes reading, listening to, etc.

For the most part, I liked “This Anchor Song.” There is something about it that makes me want to continue reading. It might be Joephet’s writing style, his experiences in life, or his free attitude and thoughts about whatever is going on at that moment in his mind. My only request is it would be cool to see more of his photos since he mentioned his interest in photography on his about page. The only downside I really found to be a problem was viewing the archives in FireFox and Mozilla. You’ll have to use Safari or IE to see them.

Needless to say, I think it’s something worth reading at least once.

The Anchor Song

The Sum Total of Me opens with a generic blogger template. While it is not a fantastic template, the template works very well for this blog. Something that few templates can do. This isn’t known until about halfway through all the posts, so please don’t let that get to you.

The Sum Total of Me is about True Willow. It wasn’t until the last post I read (the first post of the blog) that I fully understood the title of this site. TW says Like an irritable child I asked her why, and I will never forget what she said, “Because we are the sum total of everything we have been through in life.” She goes on to dedicate this site to the person who told her this quote and the first post was very moving for me.

The blog is just what it says; the total of the author. The posts range from childhood memories to current events happening within TW’s life. She talks about her children, her friends, and her family. She is a teacher, and her words are well chosen. I was amazed at how quickly I was drawn into this site.

This site is hard to review without just pulling quotes from the site. I read each post and genuinely felt emotion with each. Sometimes I laughed, sometimes I almost cried which is a first for me as a reviewer, and sometimes I was scared for her, just as she was when telling a story. This site reads like a great movie with flashbacks in key points to give us that much more character development. To say that this is a story is kind of misleading, as each piece makes up a different part of the puzzle. I enjoyed my time here, and look forward to spending more here.
The Sum Total Of Me