Throbert McGee’s blinkin’ blog looks like someone hit it with the cute stick – a lot. It’s an organized layout but really cutesy in a quasi-Hello Kitty kind of way, so I was really expecting the ramblings of a teenage girl in love or something like that. How I love to be wrong about things like this: Throbert McGee’s blinkin’ blog is incredibly well written and entertaining.
According to Rob [author of Throbert McGee’s blinkin’ blog], the site has been reclaimed and abandoned several times. It’s easy to see when that happened. I usually start reading blogs from the beginning, and Rob had me giggling before I even started reading his first entry simply by the hee-larious graphic used, and the religion-themed first entry was amusing. Then there was the part with the weird deformed baby storyline that was just not that entertaining. And now there is the current incarnation, which focuses on world events. It’s news, but it’s delivered with an accompanying commentary that is both unique and funny. Anyone who compares the U.S.’s role in foreign affairs to Adam Baldwin’s role in the 1980 movie The Bodyguard has got my vote.
The writing deserves a better design. It’s not that the design is unattractive, but it does nothing to promote the blog on looks alone. The logo graphics are, as mentioned above, really cutesy and don’t really fit the tone and style of the excellent writing. There are some small problems throughout the blog – font size jumps throughout entries, which is kind of distracting. Alternative incarnations of the design are still posted with some entries.
There are some great aspects to this blog, other than the well-written entries – Rob keeps an excellent and entertaining FAQ page and has some really funny links. Rob also links to a Wallpaper Gallery, which is filled with great photographs that he has taken. Something that is kind of off-putting to me is a writer who pumps his readers for money. This is just a personal preference of mine. If a blog owner want to ask for donations, I would recommend making a separate page for it and putting a link that says “Support me” or “Fund the Writer” or something like that on the template page. It detracts from my reading enjoyment, knowing that there’s someone begging me for spare change every time I visit the blog.
I highly recommend a visit to Throbert McGee’s blinkin’ blog. I enjoyed reading the blog from start to finish, and will be back for another visit!
Throbert McGee’s Blinkin’ Blog