The Mermaid Tavern’s name is based on a quote by Keats, which she references in the subtitle to the blog page, which is always nice to see.
One of the first things that I also look for is information about the author, links, and icons that display what groups if any the site belongs to. She has a listing of the most recent posts, and an About Me section that includes such tidbits as her Favorite Carpet Color. There are also links to other sites and an archive listing which only dates back to February of 2004 so this would appear to be a recent addition to the blogosphere.
The posting seem pretty regular with a new entry every day or two. I began reading the posts, and they are a bit funny, though her sense of humor does take a period of adjustment. There are no hyper links to the sources of the headlines and jokes, just postings of them. At the end of one such post, which listed various strange headlines along with the authors one-liners inserted there was a reference to the site from which she evidently garnered the headlines, but again there was no hyper link.
She seems to revel in the fact that her sense of humor eludes some if not most of her readers, including herself.
The site is your typical blogspot, simple and clean and slow. When you initially load the site, don’t be surprised if the side panel takes a few moments to display, it did for me and I am on a high-speed connection at work.
There is not a lot of customization that can really be done with blogspot so there are not a lot of unique things on the site. The side panel has been done in center aligned text which to me looks a tad off. The headers for the sections on the side however are right-aligned which seems to add to the disjointed look. A tried and true method is to right-align the entire right column, thereby separating it from the posts and forcing things to line up cleanly no matter how the site is viewed.
The author should link to the sources she uses in her posts, since this is standard “good manners” in the blogosphere and will help net even more hits to her site once she shows up on someone’s referral listing.
I read through approximately a month of posts and while she is funny in her own way, the site is not meant to be read in a long sitting. The jokes and twists of words become a bit tiresome when reading it for long periods of time.
But the site is funny and represents something unique to the sites that I have seen in the past. She does not discuss anything serious on the site or at least does not handle serious issues seriously. The Mermaid Tavern is like a comic strip; it is fun to read once a day as you check out other things, but don’t try to read it like a book.
If you are looking for lighthearted comments on a huge variety of subjects, The Mermaid Tavern would be a nice stop.
I am giving the site 3.5 stars, the writing is good, but there are a few spelling mistakes that I noticed and the design needs to have some more work put into it. Update the design a little and spruce it up and you could easily have a 4.0 site. The Mermaid Tavern