Month: January 1970

Firstly, this blog is clear and crisp in it’s design. With a white background it’s easy on the eyes. Although, the orange and red seem to work as the backgrounds for the text. The title “less than daily” gives the impression that the author doesn’t update every day.

Reading through the rest of the site, you quickly find that the author is either a cartoonist or loves cartoons as there are several references to strips as well as there being imbedded images of cartoon strips.

The actual content of the blog wasn’t very interesting to a reader outside his knowledgeable friends. As a new reader, there is no content in this blog that would keep me coming back for more. Although there are the odd one-liners that got a smile out of me.

There are a few links along the top side of the banner. Most work. The “about me” link doesn’t work, nor is there any little blurb about himself anywhere. The author has links to various other comic strip sites as well as his friends blog links.

Overall this blog is basically about a role playing “geek”, by his own terminology, who likes cartoons as well. The blog doesn’t really catch ones eye, either in written content or imagination, but it is still young and might develop as the author does. Less Than Daily

As a new reviewer, I’m not familiar enough with xanga’s blog templates to know if eeore’s is a standard design, but it is legible and pretty easy to navigate through. This is a very british blog: Jeremy is from the U.K. (his photos indicate a large metropolitan area) and writes with the slang and inside jokes unique to that side of ‘the big ditch’.
Jeremy writes openly and honestly of his vices and attempts to quit them, he’s apparently now giving up cigarettes after claiming to give up marijauna. He has not been blogging at xanga for too long, and there is a definate difference in his writing styles from his first posts to his last. Looks like he either quit smoking pot, or discovered spellcheck… Much of the space in his blog is taken up with ongoing discussions with his friends and readers. There seems to be a great deal of back and forth concerning feuds and other blogsites, which I found mildly interesting at first, then somewhat tedious. He has a close-knit clique, and without being part of it personally, the references and inside jokes were lost on the casual reader.
His sidepanels feature cartoons that I’m guessing he’s drawn, some quite funny. He is a self-proclaimed poet with links to his poetry, some of which is quite well thought out and expressed. The opening page appears a bit ‘busy’ or crowded, but not overly difficult to read.

Overall he seems to fill a niche with his readers, he’s quite prolific and opinionated about a lot of topics, and seems well liked by his peers. He’s listed as an artistic blog, but despite the cartoons and poetry, I considered this much more of a personal blog. It’s a peek into an Englishman’s life, not badly written, but not edge of the seat fascinating either.eeore’s missing tale

This blog is very plain. Which is okay by me. I don’t mind plain. It leaves room for the focal point to be on the words. And believe me, on this blog we are going to need all the room we can get, for I will venture to say that this blogger writes the longest entries I have thus far encountered in the blogosphere.

There is a cursory About page, with little real information about the author. But you might make a note of the fact that on the list of her favorite books, Ulysses is at the top.

The archives go back to May of 2004 and I dove in to get a feel for what is going on with our author. The entries are generally stream of consciousness impressions, and shift from the present to the past with a seamlessness that many times left me scratching my head. There is a liberal smattering of letters or diary entries from as far back as 1997. Most of the writing is rambling, which from time to time borders on the incoherent. Though the images invoked are vivid and beautifully crafted, they often seem disjointed and aloof. The only time I really connected with our author was in an entry from September 18th entitled “Grime”. If you are going to read one sample from this blog, do try that one.

The overall tone of this blog left me feeling bleak. Not that there is anything wrong with that. But I would not call this a personal blog. I think it should be under the creative writing category, which would prepare the reader for what is to come.

If you enjoy atmospheric stream of consciousness writing, this is the blog for you. And I would be remiss if I did not acknowledge the brilliant mind that obviously resides in these pages. But for the same reason I did not enjoy Ulysses, I did not enjoy this blog. Though I admit that I prefer my journeys to have a beginning and an end, for I like the satisfaction of completion. A pedantic’s view perhaps. But you may feel differently when you visit, and will curse me as an insufferable hack with no imagination. My advice is to go there yourself and make up your own mind.

Redemption Blues

At first when I opened up this page, I was struck by the sheer stark simplicity of it. White background, black text & simple graphic line drawing. The only problem was, I couldn’t tell if what I was reading, was an introduction or their latest post.

The second thing that disappoints me is that this first post (as it turns out) was done 2 days ago (not today), and the one before that a whopping 21 days ago. Surely the point of having a blog is to keep it regularly updated so that the regular readers keep coming back, instead of clicking their ‘reload’ or ‘refresh’ buttons in the vain hope that something else, and preferably something colorful will appear. Alas, it does not.

Upon scrolling down, a glimmer of excitement grips me as I see another picture. A monochromatic map of California depting the San Andreas fault line. I find this mildly interesting for a short while, and move on quickly to find out more about this person in their archives…hmmm where are they?

Now I’m starting to feel like a mom who’s kid goes off to college and never calls…The posts are extremely far apart, and when this person does post, it’s not earth-shattering enough to make me want to come back and see more. This blog requires color, a little investment of time, and well, quite frankly a life.Revolution Dove

This blog has a nice clean page with a lilac header powered by Typepad. The white, uncluttered background makes for easy on the eyes reading. Always a plus in my book.

In the About section we are quickly and thoroughly informed that our author is a proud liberal, hence the Dr. Laura reference. We are further directed to an entry that is supposed to explain WHY Grace is the radio talk show host’s worst nightmare. So I checked it out and came away mildly confused. It seems an odd thing to drag Dr. Laura into the picture. You have a liberal outlook on the world? Great. Tell me all about it. But what does Dr. Laura have to do with it……. really?

This blog is nigh on brand spanking new so if it tickles your fancy, you can read the whole thing and get up to speed on what’s going on in the author’s world. But fasten your seat belt because you are in for a bit of a manic ride. The writing style is certainly lucid and intelligent, though a bit frenzied. Grace tells us about weddings, birthdays, and her current activities which include being a student of Bikram Yoga and a disappointing cessation of her jogging training because of broken toes. All this is delivered in a lighthearted if at times slightly edgy style that is fairly appealing.

There is a nice photo section and the usual links to Archives and recent posts, plus a list of sites titled, “Condemned by Dr. Laura”. While I found the actual writing on this blog readable, it struck an off note to me to use someone that one so obviously disagrees with as the defining nexus of the blog. Why bother?

It will be interesting to see how this blog develops. Sometimes it takes a while for a new blog to find itself, and this one is off to a pretty good start.

I Am Dr. Laura’s Worst Nightmare