Month: January 1970

As soon as I go to the site, I had to look up one Bernice Clifton. Once I read that this was who Kai, our author, felt he was the illegitimate child of, I was done. I didn’t stop laughing from that point on, and the review took 2 days. thats a lot of laughing.

As for the site itself, it is hosted on Blogdrive, which I am becoming more and more impressed with. The only thing in this case is the placement of the ad distracts from the banner of the site, but I got over it. the layout of the site itself is clean and sleek, and I am really impressed with the use of images for links on the left hand side – something I took away as a tip for making my own site look nicer. It is easy to find everything you are looking for, including an About Me section!!!!!!

The writing within the site is very wry, sarcastic humour. It is some of the funniest stuff I have ever read. Kai is obviously well spoken and doesn’t seem to care what anyone thinks about what he says. From writing new years resolutions for the stars, to telling off women in Wal Mart, he just says whatever pops into his head. I haven’t found anything yet that didn’t make me laugh.

Technically, the site is great. The links are all working, the little features like the message board function and I really didn’t hit any problems. one small annoyance was the fact the page auto refreshes – for the message board i assume. Drove me insane. But that is likely just me.

Overall, this site is fantastic. I haven’t laughed this hard in ages and over the course of the night shared the link with basically everyone I know. The only advice I have for you Kai, is don’t change a thing.Rambling Along

My first impressions of Rambling Along are not quite positive. Just finding out that the weblog is run by BlogDrive took away my high hopes of a good design and/or layout. So loading the page was done. Indeed, it was the typical BlogDrive template, but I see that there was at least a small effort made with the top image.

Later on, I skimmed, not read, his sidebar and his entries. I saw some very uninviting pictures and text which made me worry about making a review and for the first time, giving someone a score below 2.

Fortunately for Kai, the author, I thoroughly read his weblog and the procedure I did was only for the first impressions part of my review. When I finally got reading, I found out that he is as gay as his humor, which is ironic since the last review I made was that of a lesbian’s.

Well, moving on. After the not so positive first impressions implied on me, I actually found myself absorbed reading Kai’s entries. They are generally sarcastic and cynical and can even be offending at times but there’s always a good point in Kai’s realizations. Plus, for a self-confessed homosexual, he doesn’t talk about men as often as other gay people I know. Instead, he’ll blast out humorous opinions about the government, his pet dogs, a number of celebrities and even his grandparents. Most of all, with the way he puts it he enjoys his gayhood more than anything, which is a good thing because it makes his entries more personal, interesting and less sugar-coated.

And so I’ve mentioned, he uses visual aids as well. He uploads pictures and I’m not so sure if I want to know where he got them from. At first glance, you’d say they were very tasteless, but once you see the text that supports the picture, you’ll probably realize that if a picture paints a thousand words, words make them a masterpiece. If I could give the crown for “Caption Queen of the Year”, I’d most definitely hand it down to Kai.

His entry styles vary from long narrative ones, lists of whatnots and cracking one/two-liners. The good thing is that no matter what the length of his entry may be, there’s always ann added spice to it, which makes you want to read on and on and on.

Well, I have been positive for the past few paragraphs. Now let’s deal with the down sides of Rambling Along. I believe that Kai is very street-smart and wise, but I think he lacks knowledge about himself. He is very observant, and he outputs his thoughts with very playful words, but rarely do I hear him speak with more intimacy about what’s really inside. Maybe I’ve missed it but it seems to me that Kai knows more about the world around him than the world inside himself. Sure, he knows he’s gay and he knows what he likes and what he hates and what he thinks is stupid, but somehow he doesn’t push himself beyond the line of personal access or however you may call that.

Also, words, no matter how great their meaning, will not mask out the dullness of the design. Even if he moves to a better weblog provider, with his self-confessed lack of HTML skills, I don’t think he’ll be creating some journal eye-candy any soon.

Another downside is his English skills. I’ve seen lots of mispelled words (even if he says he’s good at spelling) and he has a problem with grammar too, specifically with punctuation (commas are very important, you know). Fortunately, those problems are still at a minor level and it wouldn’t distract you much as it would do with those who sPeLL diZz WaY.

To sum it all up, I’d give the thumbs up for Rambling Along. The author has a great way of sizzling up this dog-eat-dog world with the humor that all gay men, I believe, are blessed with. His lack of depth and the boring template are lapses in his weblog, but if that’s not what your there for, I’d recommend Rambling Along strongly.

(By the way, Kai, I have one of those butt washers at home.)Rambling Along

The title of this site is in white projected on a cherry red background at the top of the page. I had to resize my browser window to view this site. The header just below describes the author in terms that, while intriguing, are relatively vague (anarchist mystic?) This had my attention, and, as I read on, key words like fascism clued me into this site being relatively political in nature. Reading on, I found this assumption to be mostly correct.

There are as many blogs as there are political slants, and, by definition, most blogs have a political slant. The liberal anti-Bush blog has almost become cliche. However, a few entries into this blog, and the author was already quite dear to me. Often online one finds people who, while very vocal, have no idea what they’re professing. Here is an obviously very educated and knowledgeable guy writing about the issues he cares about. While this is far from being a traditional links-to-news blog, he often responds to articles or posts by other people with intelligence and politeness. The main subject of this blog seems to be the Bush administration’s policies

The blog has apparently only existed for two weeks, but in those two weeks we have a huge volume of posts. If the author can keep up this level of involvement into the future, this blog is sure to be a success. In addition to the blog, the site features a catalogue of the author’s adventures- trips to semi-exotic locations with lots of great pictures, some of glittering stars hanging from the sky. Visit this section for the view. The author is also an anger-management counselor, and his blog links to his professional site.

As mentioned earlier, however, the site design is less than perfect. A defect in IE forced me to resize my browser to view the page properly. The author acknowledges this on the page, stating “IE is busted.” While he may be correct about IE’s flaw, not accommodating for users surfing with it is alienating to potential readers. I recommend he try for inclusive approach to browser differences in order to reach a wider audience. Also, on the larger pages, the right navigational column is shoved to the bottom of the page.

Without a doubt, however, Elderbear has here a more than sturdy politically-charged blog that has dexterously avoided many of the pitfalls of it’s genre. A worthwhile read for inquisitive surfers willing to tolerate a few design errors.Elderbear’s Den

The first thing I did was go to my dictionary and look up the word Abecedarian. Funny that the definition is one who studies the alphabet or one who is just learning, a beginner and I am looking it up. Ok, maybe not that funny that I didn’t know what it was and it said I was a beginner.

Anyways, I wasn’t sure what to expect now that I had a definition for the word. Is this blog going to be about the daily life of someone contemplating the impact of the letter H on our society? Or was this going to be more along the lines of a life’s lessons learned type blog in reference to the second definition? I had so many questions, but no answers, so I went on in.

When the page loads, there is an amazing design for the site. There is a wonderful banner of dried roses that set the mood and the color scheme for the site. I loved the design as it is very original. The only problem I had with the design is that the css loads the links all funky in Mozilla. To make sure it was just a browser thing, I opened up IE and the page looks better in IE. So she needs to fix the css problems and the site will look as good as it reads.

The site is amazing. From the very start I could tell that the author was well read. She has a way with words that just make you want to keep reading. She tells a story within her posts, I felt like I should be wrapped in a blanket next to a fire while reading this blog. To change things up she does have some “standard” blogger posts which are nice and give us yet another view point into her life.

Normally I would give you all kinds of details about the author of a blog. I don’t think I could do her justice by trying to describe her. Sure I could pull random things out of her 100 things, or take certain parts from her posts and describe her to you, but part of the joy of this site was actually reading her and learning stuff about her. The only thing I will mention is that her occupation of a bookstore owner completely shines as I said she is well read.

I really enjoyed my time here. I only had one real problem with the site and it was the design issue I mentioned earlier. I couldn’t justify giving the site a perfect 5 because I would have to put this on my weekly read list instead of my daily read. The reason for this is that she writes so well, it would be a shame to only read one day at a time. Imagine your favorite author only releasing 1-2 pages of a chapter at a time. You would rather enjoy the entire chapter than just a couple of pages. This site is a great read, and I recommend that everyone check it out.
Always the Abecedarian

I wasn’t sure what Always the Abecedarian’s domain, Learning Asigo, meant. It took me a while to realize that it was actually Learning As I Go, which will probably sum up the intentions of the author, whose name I seemed to miss (or maybe she was too busy to say it in her blog).

Scrolling across her sidebar, I realized that she is quite new to the blogging world. Her weblog is only two months old, barely even, but as I continued reading her entries, I realized that how long you’ve spent writing a journal doesn’t measure how well you can, shall we say, intensify the emotions and the thoughts that has coursed in your body for that particular day, or that particular state of mind.

You will realize that the author is lesbian, and that she is very much proud of it. She succeeds in portraying the emotions of a lesbian heart with such grandeur and romance that it seems no different with heterosexual relationships.

Her writing style is very creative. Romantic, even. And if I may add, it’s something only a few straight hearts can express. The author is quite modest proclaiming that she needs improvement when she is already quite good (and her blog is helping her practice writing, so hurray for blogging!).

One unique thing about her blog is that she doesn’t use the first person as frequently as most personal blogs. Instead, she portrays her feelings with other characters, thus, this blog is also a collective of her short stories. These short stories are lesbian in nature, and somehow I’m reminded of Anne Rice’s style of playing with words – and that is by making such good use of the technique of imagery. Access to these stories is made easy by placing links named “Literary Entries” in the sidebar.

Design-wise. This is a well designed Movable Type blog, thanks to her friend who helped her putting it up. It’s simple and well organized, but it’s neither boring or explosive. It’s one of the jewels of Movable Type blogs, if you asked me.

Speaking of organization, it is a very orderly blog, with a clean entry layout and a very handy and suffecient sidebar containing her archive, her links and cliques.

All in all, I’d say this blog is a must-read. You do not need to be lesbian to enjoy the way she delivers her way of thinking. She is a very talented woman and I wish that the blog lives on. I’ve become envious on how vivid she can get with just mere words and some pictures as well. Hopefully this blog will teach other bloggers that you don’t need to have such an exciting experience to have such interesting entries. It’s how to input images on other people’s brains with how you make use of your literary know-how… and that blogging will help you learn as you go.Always the Abecedarian