The Weblog Review

Every once in a while, while traveling the blog world, I come across a title I wish I could steal and plaster onto my own site. ‘Neurotic Oasis’ is one of those ingenious titles. The site sums up a refreshing and revealing idea – that we’re all crazy. However, the more significant meaning of the title is that the author might be crazy, but in a crazy world, she’s just like any other. As she says, “Since when did neurotic become a bad thing?” Ironically, her clever naming of her blog sets her apart from the other 999 million blogs out there.

When you load up Neurotic Oasis in your browser, you’re presented with a nice, clean design. There aren’t any clashing colors or outrageously large pictures. I found the site easy on the eyes and simple to navigate. There’s the usual ‘archives’ on the navigation section, but I also found two pleasant surprises : a picture of the author (which is often forgotten, despite the fact that it allows the reader to become more personal with the blogger by putting a face to the words) and something called a ’24-hour autobiography’. The ’24-hour autobiography’ is precisely what it says – an hour by hour description of what happened to the author on a specific day. I found it a unique touch to the author’s blog.

As far as the author’s entries, they fall under the same category that the rest of the site gets -unique. I appreciated the author’s candor and fresh writing. She often tells us what’s going on in her life through stories, which are descriptive and revealing. Her writing also spans a large range of emotions – serious to on-the-floor laughing. For example, I couldn’t stop chuckling when I read her March 2, 2003 entry. But I won’t breathe a word. Go make a visit and I’m sure you’ll enjoy browsing through the author’s “neurotic oasis”.

Neurotic Oasis

A multitude of green penguins welcome you to Emptywishes.net. This pretty much sets the tone for the blog.

While the name “Emptywishes” may imply the “woe-is-me” blog that we’re all sick of, this blog is nothing of the sort. Kim, the self-described “misplaced American” (Arizonian-gone-French) and author of Emptywishes.net has created a wonderful read, effortlesley injecting humor, cynicism, and plain ole’ common sense into each and every post.

The layout is fun and and simple, composing of the aforementioned penguins paired with classic black-on-white text. My only complaint is that the blog posts are displayed on the main page by week, and so you must heavily rely on the archives to move around the site.

A great bonus to the site is Kim’s photography. She has captured some really beautiful and really bizarre things in her city, and so the photolog is well worth checking out.

Emptywishes is a great blog to check out for some laughs and some wonderful, tell-it-like-it-is writing. It’s well deserving of repeat visits.emptywishes.net

First impressions count. Really, they do. So it didn’t help that the very first post i read on superabound contained this:

hey.

umm, wow, i love starting things (the type of things you write) without actually having something to write about. it’s the best.

ever.

.

.

.

so hey, how have you guys been? whoever you are. what kind of crazy motherfucker actually reads this? only the craziest of motherfuckers, i hope. i mean, aside from the people who actually know me. all i know is that anyone who accidentally stumbled on this horrible mess of a journal and decided to come back to read more horrible messyness must be a crazy motherfucker of some sort of significant caliber. and if you fit the description of the forementioned crazy motherfucker, seek help, seriously. what’s wrong with you.

Someone once said this: “I like how being fifteen automatically makes you uninteresting to blog reviewers.” Those words suddenly leapt into my mind in the face of overwhelming evidence. Well, honey, sometimes you need to look at it from a perspective other than your own. Look at the Featured Sites – two out of ten of them are teen blogs, so obviously being fifteen does not automatically make you uninteresting to reviewers. You are responsible to appear interesting to your readers.

Coming back to superabound. Just when an ugly opinion was beginning to form in my head after reading that first post, I read some of Taylor’s older posts and changed my mind. Taylor is, in actuality, a pretty good writer who expresses himself well. If only he’d cut down on the names he calls himself (Dork, nerd, dork, weak, dork, bastard, dork), it would make superabound a much more enjoyable and less tiring read. From his blog, I find Taylor to be a sensitive and observant teenager. I especially enjoyed reading his posts about his past, written in a gentle, nostalgic tone.

The red-and-white polka dotted background takes some getting used to, but once the whole layout loads you get a sense of harmony. The picture of the ‘dork’ (I assume) and the speech bubble containing the blog entries coming out of his mouth matches the overall feel of superabound. No complaints here, although an introduction of the author would be a plus.

In a nutshell, superabound is a decent teen blog with the angst toned down a little and the melancholy pervasive. Just go easy on the self-thrashing. Share more of your unique thoughts and views instead of keeping on reminding your readers about your dorkiness. You have something here.

superabound

Caffeine_Sparks is a very new blog on the block. It’s only been around for about a month, and the author has some major work to do.

One thing going for the blog is the author’s writing style. It’s very introspective writing, but well-written and thought out nonetheless. “Liberty”, as she calls herself, starts out every post with a short, simple sentence and then elaborates. I think this works very well for the subject matter she writes on. As for the actual subject matter? Well, it’s a little choppy. Because the posts are so introspective, it’s very hard to tell what Liberty is talking about sometimes, or it’s just hard for the reader to really care. One constant subject for Liberty is Jerome, who she usually refers to as “HIM”. She has a serious love-hate relationship with HIM, and so spends a lot of words moaning about it.

There’s not much else we can find out about Liberty from Caffeine_Sparks. There is no “About Me” page, no posts explaining any of her persona. She could be 17, or she could be 27. There’s really no way of knowing. Some added content to Caffeine_Sparks would be appreciated.

The layout is from a standard template at Blogskins, a much overused palette of pond-algae green. There’s really no originality, and the pleas of “RATE ME!” on various blog compilation sites at the top of the screen really don’t do much to improve the look of Caffeine_Sparks.

I would say that given more time, Liberty could do some great work with Caffeine_Sparks and transform it into a great blog. Until then, I can’t reccomend it.

Editors Note: Becuase of the infancy of this weblog, the writer was forced to dock a lot of points off of the rating.caffeine_sparks

My initial impression was, “My goodness. Not another wordy what-is-life-about blog.” As I read on, I am glad to say that I was wrong. This is a group blog, where a team of 3 writers – Sam Kleinman, Chris Knittel and Peter McCabe, share their thoughts and individual lives with the readers (though the main contributors are Sam and Chris). The meticulously written entries, though not without the occasional spelling error, could get wordy at times but these entries brought me into the writers’ lives. While information on the writers is barely there, I learnt more about them as I continued to read the blog.

It’s quite a pain trying to find out more about this blog and its authors. The heading of the blog, “TealArt.com: Don’t worry, we don’t know either“, just gave me a bigger headache. However, a description of this site could be found on the sister site, www.collectivearts.net (which I only discovered through the email addresses listed), “TealArt is a site featuring a log of thoughts, reflections, and introspective essays relating to art, literature, writing, books, and the creative aspect of the world around us.”

The very first entry on the archives, Unsung Heroes, is a tribute to unjustified crimes committed on September 11. It’s a very poignant entry, which tells of Victor Jara, a Chilean man who was executed for singing and writing political songs and poems. Not all entries are of such serious content. Perfect Notebook Bliss is a humorous entry on Sam’s search for The Perfect Notebook, while Chris recounts his experience on being a teacher in a public school as part of a community service program in A View From On High.

The design of the blog is functional, practical and user-friendly. If you don’t like the current layout, you can easily change the skin (an extra which the creators added into the site). On the common blog, you usually only get archives for the posts, but on TealArt.com, you get archives to the quotes and links that were ever posted on the site. Another plus point is that, all the entries are categorised into sections, so you can choose what you want to read.

In conclusion, I really like this blog. It’s highly intellectual, professional and yet manages to remain personal. This is a blog that grows on you as you continue reading. I highly recommend it to readers who appreciate writing that has substance.
TealArt