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The News Behind the Story Between the Lines of the Meta-Narrative Surrounding the Nonevent

url: http://seanibus.blogspot.com/

In his inaugural post in 2005, blogger and sometimes journalist Sean Scully set the tone for much that was to follow, when he explained "I have realized that it doesn't matter if I have nothing terribly compelling to say. It hasn't stopped anyone else."

Sadly, it did not stop Mr. Scully either, for he has continued to post on and off through the last four years, occasionally tantalizing us with a flash of insight or a brush with actual content, but mostly contenting himself with a meandering series of non sequiturs.

Structurally the blog is quite simple, in both layout and tone, with a non-threatening blue color scheme and modular layout, bracketing Mr. Scully's generally stripped down writing style.

But it the entire effort is hobbled by his seeming inability to decide what his blog is about. Is it a beer blog? He experimented with the format briefly in 2007, but the effort petered out, apparently after he received some adverse comments about some arcane historical points in a review of a beer with an aircraft from the famous Flying Tigers on the label. Is it a music blog? He has several posts related to various bands, including early notices of the Watson Twins and The Avett Brothers, but he seemed disinclined to follow this promising thread. Or is it a blog of political journalism? He seems to rouse himself several times a year to opine on matters political, but he never sustains the efforts for more than a day or two.

At its best, Seanibus is mildly entertaining and occasionally informative. At its worst, it is just a forum for reposting humorous asides that ultimately amount to nothing.

Unless Mr. Scully can find a unifying principle behind his effort, I am afraid this blog is doomed to forever be about nothing.

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contributing reviewer/ee
Sean from Seanibus

How Can You Tell Between A Frog And A Toad? It's In His Kiss

url: http://kissing--frogs.blogspot.com/

The first thing you'll notice while reading kissing frogs is that the blogger has a love, nay, an obsession with cat macros. The second is that she is also unabashedly obsessed with posting the results from image searches.

In regards to the aesthetics - the layout may or may not have been created by one of the blogger's Twitter friends, because she's completely incapable of manipulating code to do anything other than bold or underline.

The basis of the blog was originally to illustrate the author's awful and downright craptastic online dating experiences. However, it's evolved a lot since its birth in February 2009, mostly because even the most unlucky of individuals will eventually run out of material. I would say that the general theme would be embarrassment. Any and all forms of embarrassment. This is usually conveyed through stories about her traumatizing mother, crazy strangers or her incredibly tiny and temperamental bladder.

There's also a lot of irrational anger. But if you get tired of the nonsensical rants about completely useless topics like Christmas music in stores before Thanksgiving, or how she almost lit a FedexKinkos on fire at 3am due to completely incompetent employees, you can read the hilarious guest blogs that are posted (almost) every Tuesday. Thankfully the writer doesn't seem to be lacking friends with their own hilarious stories to tell. And hey, if none of those things seem enjoyable to you - there's always LOLcat Friday, which can make even the most heartless of creatures erupt in a fit of giggles.

The best part of this blog is that the writer has no qualms about embarrassing herself. There's a serious lack of self-respect that generally works to the favor of the reader.

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contributing reviewer/ee
j. from kissing frogs

Generalizations Are Only Made Where They're Funny And Don't Hurt Anyone

url: http://microcows.blogspot.com

With reader-input trivia features such as 'Movie Mania Monday' and the quizzes of 'Random Acts of Thursday', as well as pointed humor pieces such as 'Ask The Nerdy Fat Guy' and 'Fun Fact Friday' (which some lesser critics may cite as being neither fun nor completely factual) intermixed with random rants and observations, all with a heavy dose of sarcasm and ill-gotten images, Cheesehead Displacement Syndrome (http://microcows.blogspot.com) is far more than just a simple Wisconsin Native pining for his days in the great white north. No, this is an ongoing and entertaining web of self-depricating humor and observations on the state of life in this modern age.

Well-read and chock full of trivial knowledge (and riboflavin), Elliott runs the gamut of subjects without the need to pass blind prejudice on to his readers, instead the judgements are well-thought and satirical. Generalizations are only made where they're funny and don't hurt anyone.

'Nerdy' almost feels too simple a description for this blogospheric tome, though the author himself would dismiss it as such. But he's YOUR kind of nerd, a multi-nerder extraordinaire. Classic film, music, food, alcohol, travel and home maintenance are only a few of the many recurring themes throughout this cyber-literary journey.

And he can spell.
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contributing reviewer/ee
Elliott from Cheesehead Displacement Syndrome

Or At The Very Least, Outstandingly Average

url: http://myextraordinarilyordinarylife.blogspot.com/

Extraordinarily Ordinary is a relatively new blog started mid-October of 2009. The author, Amy, strives to make everyday life interesting, by adding a dash of humor while telling it like it is. Not all of the author's posts are humorous, but this is understandable as life is not always amusing.

The author's writing style seems a bit all over the place and at times her attempts at humor fall quite short. One can only hope that as the blog develops, so will it's author. She has a strange obsession with Wawa, which she mentions often, perhaps to her own detriment as only .15% of the world know what Wawa is. Perhaps she should stick more with funny antidotes about her pets.

As it stands, the blog is a pleasant read but isn't quite hitting the mark yet as to what makes a good blog good. However, we are looking forward to seeing more from Amy in the future to see how she grows as a writer to be more generally appealing and not so mind numbingly dull.

Her tag line is "It's a fine line between mundane and exciting." For right now she's on the wrong side of the line. I'm giving this blog a C-/D+ but definitely see some potential. Keep your eye on this blogger, she may just have what it takes to make it if she does something to make her life more interesting. Like becoming a stripper... or a matador.

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contributing reviewer/ee
Amy from Extraordinarily Ordinary

Not To Be Confused With The Rambling Hussars

url: http://www.ramblinghussies.com/

Upon first glance you will notice three things about the Rambling Hussies blog.

1. It's in DESPERATE need of a redesign. Or actually ANY design would be a good start.
2. There's a picture of a dude with vermin on his shoulder in the side bar.
3. These crazy chicks will use just about anything for a label.

The Rambling Hussies are actually a group of friends who all post on the same blog. You're going to have to scratch that first thought you had that perhaps this site is written by someone with a fairly serious personality disorder. These are actually four very different people. With a flair for the smart-a$$ed and a general lack of punctuation skills these ladies write sporadically about whatever pops into their pretty little heads. And more often than not they actually do manage to find the funny and beat it to death right in front of their 10's of followers.

Lord knows where these girls came up with their names but allow me to introduce you to each of the authors.

Ginger is fond of Wordless Wednesday posts with random pictures and nary a caption among them. She also writes a pretty good music review. A character called Burn Notice continues to appear in her tales as well as Thing One and Thing Two, one can only assume that this is her family.

Mad Dog rarely posts but when she does, it's a doosey. She spins yarn after fascinating yarn with her self-depreciating wit and fondness for the onomatopoeia. Some of her finest stories revolve around her family and someone named Boilermaker who showed up a month or so back in the side bar with a birthday announcement wearing a silly grin and a ridiculous hat.

Chl (seriously, how do you pronounce that? Shell? Chell? Who knows...) has a tendency to use the blog as a forum to rant. Her ravings cover every subject from her family to digitally-enhanced emaciated supermodels. There are also a mattering of posts from her on FarmVille (the vile FaceBook phenomena) and her life as a suddenly single parent of The Kid while Trophy Husband is out of the country on extended military leave.

Last but not least there is the most prolific, Tofurkey who's general observations of the world around swing from the bizarre to the just plain scary. Married to Hot Carl (knowing what that is, the reader is not sure if that is an unfortunate nickname or a peek into their private life) she apparently whiles away her day playing games on FaceBook and driving around looking for the next big Roadside Revelation.

All in all The Rambling Hussies are an interesting read, if only they would post more often. You'd think with four of them going at it they could at least get something fresh up there on a daily basis. I guess their little gems are just too precious to dole out so generously. As the side bar says, you just can't make this stuff up.

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contributing reviewer/ee
Chl from Rambling Hussies

I Keep Clicking and Clicking and I Can't Stop

url: http://angelaandluke.blogspot.com/

So Now You Know is a quirky little blog written by a well intentioned yet mentally unstable individual. Actually the correct terminology would be “mentally ill” with a healthy dose of self pro-claimed irreverence which makes for capricious and ridiculously unpredictable blog topics.

The layout of the blog itself is bathed in dark purples, blacks and grays and inexplicably displays two prominently featured flowers on either side of the 2 column layout. It feels as though these flowers are actually somewhat menacing and are possibly placed in an attempt to hypnotize the reader into never navigating away from the page. Or perhaps to those of us with minds more prone to the “gutter” if you will, they are intended to be pictorial euphemisms for the writer’s robust and undeniable sexuality and animal magnetism.

The subject of this blog is obsessive-compulsive disorder and how to live life as a crazy person. There are amusing anecdotes, medical information from a completely self-taught physician, and inane musings on topics such as the value of spiders, why short people are irritating and the author’s hard-core belief that birds are “creepy” because they “used to be dinosaurs”. Rampant paranoia and self-righteous use of multi-syllabic words underscore the greater intent of this blog which seems to be laughing at mentally ill people under the guise of learning about the disorder. Of course, as the author states, you are “laughing with me, not at me”, but the reader knows that, in fact, the laughter is not always mutual which is always funnier.

The content, albeit occasionally absurd, is all true and indeed humorous. The whimsical, gutsy, and unapologetic tone of the author is only enhanced by her ability to weave together magically descriptive phrases such as “Awesome” “Freaking Awesome” “Seriously, the awesomest crap I have ever seen.” And “Holy Crap the Awesomeness has eaten away my face”

Overall, I strongly recommend this blog even if only to find an answer to the question of whether or not all persons with OCD wash their hands multiple times per day. This blog makes you laugh, cry, occasionally throw up (either from the shameless self promotion or overly detailed personal descriptions) and as fairly warned in the title box “may cause seizures or peeing of your pants.”

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contributing reviewer/ee
Angela from So Now You Know