The Weblog Review

Its been a little over a month since The Illusion of Safety was first reviewed. Having read the original review back when it was written, I had some expectations going into this site. Hopefully there have been some improvements to the site since then.

Nope. No improvements. Well wait, I take that back. The author did get rid of the bouncing titles. Other than that, the site looks exactly the same. Same black background, same white text, same red links, same parental advisory above every single post.

Ok, so the author didn’t change the design, maybe the content improved. Nope it didn’t improve much either. The weblog is still about what is going on in the author’s life, as told to his brain. He writes what he thinks, but the thoughts are on what has happened during that day, week, month, or however long it has been since his last post. Topics vary from school to friends to video games to movies. One good thing is that the author can write well. With a little better direction I bet it will be much improved.

One thing that really annoyed me was the fact that the author spoke as if he was the coolest blogger out there. Um sorry to break your bubble, but no. You are not God, you are not all knowing, you are a teenager! In one of his posts recently he states that he has been single for a while, and asks females to answer his little survey. Well when you have a question of the form “Have you posted your picture on Hot or Not? – If yes, send me your picture and proceed, otherwise stop cause you will be rejected” or something along those lines. Um let’s think about this one for a second. On second thought lets, not.

One of the features that is supposed to be funny, but really isn’t is his Hot Or Not captions. This is where he takes pictures from Hot or Not and then comments on them. This had potential to be good, but unfortunately all of the comments are predictable and kind of mesh together. Nothing too original there.

One last note I would like to make about this site is the lack of updating in the past couple of months. For someone who has written about wanting more comments, emails, and traffic, he doesn’t fulfill his end of the bargain. Granted, the way the posts are written, I am glad there are only a few a week instead of a few a day as it made my job easier.

Overall this site is targeted at two types of people: friends of the author and teenage males. Anyone not fitting into either category is more than likely not going to enjoy their time spent. I understood the goal of the site, and I have to say that the author does achieve it, but unfortunately the goal just isn’t what I am looking for in a weblog. The author can write well and is funny when he is not trying to be. I think after a couple more years of living, he will mature, and his blog will be something to read then. I hope the author takes these words seriously because he really is not testing his talents.
The Illusion of Safety

The first and absolute thing I noticed when I came upon this blog was the green in the eyes. I couldn’t help it. I have a strange attraction to green eyes in general and the image is black and white, with the green color showing through. The blog seems so simply and yet, I have high hopes.

The first place I stopped was the “about” page. I try to avoid doing this, but I love to learn about the author before delving into their often intimate words and writings. How glad I am that I did. You’ll read that this author doesn’t have comments, for all of the reason I wish I didn’t have comments but am too much an attention whore to avoid. She’s writing for writing, and I give a lot of credit to her for this. Her first entry states that she may not continue to write for too long. As with most blogs, they start full force, and eventually die away, becoming less of a priority for the writer and thus the reader. Obviously, this blog continues. I’m hooked on this blog. I can’t help but find the entries completely enthralling. I keep thinking that this blog is the blog I meant to write, but never got around to being creative enough to do it.

The author tells about how women work and their mentalities, at least in the beginning. Soon after it becomes much more personal. The entry about her daughter is beautiful, for anyone who’s a mother or has been the “teen girl.” The writings are quite easily small short stories leaving the reader (at least this reader) wanting more. There are a lot of archives to read through, but for the most part, if you’re looking for quality, you’ll want to read through the majority of them.

The design is beautiful and simple. Like I mentioned above, the eyes of the image at the title leaves you wondering… Do these eyes belong to the author? The author’s daughter? Someone else entirely?? It doesn’t matter, because the blog speaks for itself. I continue to read, even as I tie this review up and bring it to an end. The blog is readable, and the archives work (with permalinks). It’s simply, but functional.

I’ve said it before in reviews, you can’t judge it based on the design. While the design is simply and functional, people might find themselves wondering why they’re even at this blog. Simply… content. This blog is filled with interesting stories about murderers and other such stuff. What makes this blog more interesting and fun is that they’re true and real stories. The author has a way with words, and I commend her on her ability to share, with the rest of us, her little take on life. Go and read. You won’t regret it. And if you’re like me, you’ll find yourself wishing you had more hours to spend starting at a stark white screen with little black words, and finding yourself completely enthralled. Completely.Broad At Bat

Now, normally to start a review off I’d write about my initial instincts about a site. This time I’m going to go back, before I’ve even seen the site. When I saw the title, “Lifes Rich Pageant” my first instinct was to think of Denise Richards and Kirsten Dunst. Thus causing me to think that this blog was going to be a female blog. Until, of course, I went to the site and saw that it belongs to a male blogger. Ah, the perfect example of “don’t judge a book by it’s cover.”



This blog is what I consider a “junior” blog. Not because it’s written by a teenager, but because it’s so new. The first entry I read happened to be about painted porta-potties. Something completely different and curiously interesting at the same time. What’s more interesting is to read the entry in which he’s gone in search of these potties. The blog itself reads really well. The topics range greatly from different events that the author is participating in or went to see. I doubt I’ve read a more interesting rundown of the summer as this author’s. You’ll laugh, stare at the screen with a “huh?” expression, and still read because it’s worth it.



The design is light font with darker colors. The Arial is a little hard to read, only because it’s such a skinny font, but otherwise the design works well. It’s functional, readable which makes the blog that much more enjoyable.

The author of this blog offers all kinds of fun things to do, even outside of his own blog. There’s a photo gallery that I will admit, I spent a bit of time browsing through. There are cool links to other New York things, which some might find interesting. The archives are completely functional. There’s a small “About Me.” I wish there were a few more tidbits of information available, but you learn a lot about the author through the entries of the blog.

This blog is a personal blog, without a doubt. You’ll find bits and pieces of this author’s life throughout this blog. You don’t have to actually know him to find it worth reading, but you might not be interesting in the same activities. He’s a good writer, but I suppose that someone who is aspiring to be a writer would have to practice each chance he has. I’d recommend this blog as an occasional reader. If you don’t enjoy this blog, you’re bound to find something else through this site that is enjoyable as well.Lifes Rich Pageant

This web site is certainly well titled. It is a rant about the injustices of U.S. (and world)government policy on drugs, or more accurately, to quote from the site:

“There’s a war going on. It destroys lives and families, spawns violence, suspends civil liberties, tramples on the infirm, locks up millions of peaceful citizens, costs billions, and subjugates reason with fear. This blog looks at the front lines of the drug war, and adds an occassional rant to the call for peace.”

Clearly this site has a very narrow focus and thus is likely to appeal to a very select audience. Regardless of your position on drugs however, the articles and information Pete (who is a member of Educators for Sensible Drug Policy, and faculty advisor for Mobilizing Activists and Students for Hemp at Illinois State University) quotes is rather disturbing, such as this example:

“District Attorney Jerry Wilson of Watauga County, North Carolina has come up with some unique charges in the case of the bust of a methamphetamines lab: two counts of manufacturing a nuclear or chemical weapon. That’s right, the drug defendant is being charged under a new Weapons of Mass Destruction law passed after 9/11, which carries a penalty of 12 years to life on each count, which includes “any substance that is designed or has the capability to cause death or serious injury and … is or contains toxic or poisonous chemicals or their immediate precursors.” Philip Morris, watch out! That is pretty creepy…

Another good quote from (Sheriff Bill Masters, author of Drug War Addiction, from an interview with Alternet): “After a while, I saw that we spend more and more money and arrest more and more people and have more and more drugs. It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out that this policy is not working. People need to look at this rationally and ask if this is effective. Do we have a healthier society because of drug prohibition? Drug dealers are certainly wealthy because of it. The reason drugs have expanded so much is there is a profit to be made in drug dealing. We need to eliminate that profit motive. ”

The site looks fine… Nothing new or innovative, just the goods in a clean functional format, and there is nothing wrong with that. Some of the graphics included with the blog entries (whether intentionally or not) I found amusing…Such as a DEA boot stomping a marijuana leaf. -smirk- There are links to other similarly themed sites and you can comment on the blog entries.

If you are interested in how The Man is spending your money in “the war against drugs” then you will likely find this site to be a great resource. All in all the web site accomplishes what it is meant to in a clear format. The articles are well researched and there is usually many links within the blog entries to ‘read more about’ the topic. It is clear to me that some thought and work has gone into this web site. I’ll end with some quotes from my favourite entry:

“Enjoy Better Sex! Legalize and Tax Marijuana

Save our Taxes! Legalize and Tax Marijuana

Protect our Children! Legalize and Tax Marijuana”
Drug WarRant

I had no clue what to expect going into this site since the name is so simple, and the category given was Entertainment. Maybe it would be about movies, tv, music, partying, who knows. So let’s find out.

The page loads and it has a standard 3 column layout. Red left and right columns make up the navigation and other parts of the site, and a big white column in the center for the blog itself. At the top of the white column is a logo of sorts which doesn’t help explain the site at all as it is just a blue face with red hair in the middle of brendoman.com. But let’s have a look around and see what we can find out.

Immediately my eyes were drawn to the About Us page. This let me in on the fact that it was a group blog. This could be a good thing or it could be a bad thing. I am still not sure. So the about us page is just a photo of all the group members. Obviously they know each other outside of the blog which is cool. This can make for some interesting interaction between them on the blog itself.

So onto the blog itself: Yes it is a group blog. And guess what it is about? Movies, music, tv, and stuff they either did or plan on doing. Most of the site is devoted to movies and entertainment which is good to an extent. The problem I had with this is that they all seem to talk about the same thing over and over and over again. For instance, in the month of October there are 5 different posts for the movie Kill Bill. That seems like an awful lot. I am not even going to start on the number of posts about the number of LOTR posts.

Thankfully it isn’t just about movies. There are posts about tv shows, music, video games, daily life as I said. These posts serve as a distraction from the movies almost. This is very similar to that small subplot that just keeps popping up every now and then in a movie. It keeps the site from going down the drain quickly.

My biggest gripe is with the archives. The only page that has an original design is the front page. Every other page has the standard movabletype template. This is annoying. The template makes it very hard to read the archives as there is barely any formatting, and the difference between a headline and tagline and the body of a post are almost interchangeable. This needs to be fixed. Even if they just tweak the layout for the archive so that it is easier to read, that would be a good thing.

The group aspect of the weblog doesn’t really play into the site too much. There isn’t very much interaction between the people who post, which is probably due to the fact that they all know each other outside of the weblog. They all are obviously into the same things because without the taglines I wouldn’t really be able to tell you who posted what.

This site has a lot going for it, but unfortunately a lot needs to be worked on. I enjoyed my time here, but as I said, I would prefer if the design carried over to the archives, and I wish it would be possible to tell who posted what. An expanded about page would be really good to have too, but is not needed. So if you want to know about movies, music, and other entertainment stuff, this is worth the surf.
brendoman