Bad poetry finds homes in Blogland

Jungles and malaria are typically linked together.  Unfortunately, blogs also have their malaria, namely bad poetry.

If bloggers occasionally posted their bad poems they might go unnoticed, sort of like a small beer belch in a noisy bar.  But no, that’s not the way it happens.  Instead, bad poetry comes in wave upon wave, a veritable chorus of belches, farts and off-key saloon karaoke. In Blogland, the worse the poems, the more frequently they appear. 

When I began composing this criticism I considered editing (ripping to pieces) a typical bad poem.  I decided against doing that simply because I don’t want to encourage bad poets with the notion their work is salvageable.

Good poems can be spontaneously written and they can be labored over for hours and days.  But there’s one requirement for either style of writing - the writer needs talent.  In the case of blogs, and using a music metaphor, most blog poets have tin ears and are devoid of rhythm and composition.

Blog poets write labored pieces with layers of cuteness, hackneyed symbolisms, unnecessary connective words and they use too many worn-out clichés.  Blog poets don’t paint with words - they smear, hammer and shoot saccharin directly into one’s cortex.  Generally, blog poets are not tortured souls - they are the torturers, the carriers of plague, the dull knife - the standard bearers of literary ineptness and incompetence.

I’ve considered listing a few blogs as representative of bad poetry but that would be the same as singling out several ugly pebbles on a beach where the entire beach is composed of horrid, misshapen rocks. 

Blogs are often written in a diary fashion and aren’t intended for critical review or professional publication, I know that.  The problem is, too many hack poets actually believe they’re good, so good in fact they self-publish their crimes against literature and then they pat themselves on their backs and sell their blog-crap as if it came off a Gutenberg press. 

What's also pathetic are the comments regarding these terrible poems.  It seems anything on a bad poetry blog is praised.  Are these followers that ignorant of good poetry?  It seems so because they leave insipid comments, dripping with oohs and aahs, sounding like rubes at a county fair after seeing a three legged chicken.

To those with the urge to write poetry about their hot cocoa, long dead 3rd cousin, their garden and their kitchen ... please, don't do it.  But if you must write your grade school drivel, don't blog them.  Instead, keep a private notebook which has a message on the cover stating, "Warning: Gag reflex poetry".

Blogs of Note

I'm certain everyone who blogs wants to expand their Followers list and to also add themselves to new and interesting blogs. Trouble is, it's not that simple. Much of blog hunting is rather like speed dating or dropping into a singles bar in your own neighborhood. In other words, you either find new blogs instantly dismissible or the blogs are so interconnected to one another they feel like you’re at one more family and neighbor barbecue.

That’s were Blogs of Note comes in ... Blogger is supposedly providing noteworthy blogs for our enjoyment and linkage.

Trouble is, most of the Blogs of Note are definitely not noteworthy. In fact, some just flat out stink, some are beyond lame while others are worse than rejected Hallmark cards. Blogger is either yanking us off or they’re making selections based upon a random draw.

Of course there are exceptions.

Prudence

Apparently in Blogger's meltdown a week or so ago, the powers that be prudently deleted this blog, declaring it to be spam. The owner claims to have 20M posts and 25M hits per day (methinks there's a tad of hyperbole in those stats for a blog that's sitting on the blogspot domain and uses a basic template).  

The bad news is, as you can see if you click the link, the blog is back. So people can continue to go and see the cut & paste "political" content from Huff Post and the New York Times that's placed there by some supposed lawyer from Wisconsin. Or, here's an idea...go to the original sources and read it for yourself.

Google, you were doing so well....

Raptured not

I have I different view of the Rapture Event ... and too bad it didn't happen. 

I figure, if there's a god, the Rapture Event (RE) is a perfect house cleaning senario. With the RE, religious nut bars, bible thumpers and cross-eyed zealots would willingly be sucked up into the vacuum of space - where they would be flash frozen and sent crash diving into the sun.

Meanwhile, back on Earth, regular (normal) people would finally have a break from the yapping sounds of loony TV evangelists, pious hypocrites and guntoting missionaries thus allowing us to make progress as a species.

Fed Up

I'm fed up with the blogosphere.  Tired of pap. Tired of crap. Tired of pretensions. Tired of preening. Tired of bragging.  I want real. Where is the real? I want funny. I want clever. I want people to stop showing the shit they dyed with plants in their yard. I want people to stop curating and start being original. I want people to stop being fake and start being real.

Egghead or egg on the face

Oh, my head hurts.
(And it doesn't hurt when I read the works of Spinoza, Kierkegaard, Hägglund or Kafka.)

http://temporaryreality.blogspot.com/2011/05/conversational-nature-of-reality.html

As I read this I can almost envision lance carrying angels, riding unicorns and jousting with each other for a 6-pack of Jolt Cola, a peanutbutter and jelly sandwich plus a chocolate éclair or two.

Etsy Schmetsy

Etsy made a big mistake when they allowed vintage items on the site. What they did was completely remove all traces of meaning from the word "vintage." They say that to be "vintage," an item must be at least 20 years old. That apparently includes old-half used plastic children's watercolors, random bricks, cracked vases and hokey $78 gnomes.  And it means that all of the goodness that used to be there is completely drowned under a whole lot of crap.

And don't even get me started as to how bad they are at shutting down copycats and people selling "handmade" things from a factory in china.

Thank god there's Regretsy.

How to be a writer

I wonder what Norman Mailer or Hunter Thompson would say about this site? Yes, I know they're dead.

Full of ... by-the-numbers, bourgeois advice and steady-Eddie Waspish evaluations, this site is a must for those writing church bulletins and PTA handouts. But wait, there's more!  You will, after studying this blog, be able to reduce any book's (Atlas Shrugged, War And Peace, A La Recherche Du Temps Perdu) word count as well as impress publishers with your ability to diagram sentences.  And, just like NBA players, you'll learn to dribble using either hand.

After scanning though a number of posts, I'm feeling the compulsion ... I too must make a list ... for the soap opera ... “How To Be A Writer”.

•  Read and re-read romance novels and transcripts from earthy TV shows (Cops).
•  Devour Dora the Explorer, airline magazines and botanical garden brochures.
•  Tsk, tsk with a head waggle whenever Hemingway or Sylvia Plath are mentioned.
•  Buy and use the latest edition of “Adjectives, Metaphors and Jim Dandy Homilies”.
•  Pay close attention to warning labels on drawer pulls, hammers and nut crackers.
•  At your desk, keep three No. 2 pencils, a yellow highlighter and several day planners.
•  Be writer hip, have an empty Johnny Walker bottle and a stuffed owl on your desk.
•  Spy on your neighbors, their pets and the mail carrier ... sooner or later a story will show up.
•  Need a quote? There’s always daddy and granny (but only during visiting hours).
•  Self-publish all the comments in your high school year book.  Now you’re an author.
•  Self-publish an exposé about ATMs and germs.  Now you’re a multi-published author.
•  e-publish poetry you wrote while in 7th grade. Gush about yourself.  Now you’re arrived.

Ungrateful Bloggers

Like many people out there, we have chosen to use the Google-owned Blogger as our blogging platform. We did it because it's user-friendly, easy to get up and running, and free. And it's reliable. Jeckle has been using Blogger since 2004 (even before Google owned it). But it's true that in the past 24 hours, Blogger has had a major outage. It stared with a scheduled update that apparently went awry.

But the outage brought out the very worst in people - especially on Twitter. Such a lot of whining hasn't been seen since at least a couple of weeks ago when Donald Trump whined about Obama's birth certificate. Seriously people, you're using a free service that's been totally reliable for years and years. True that Google didn't do a great job of communicating what was going on, but that was undoubtedly because they were shitting their pants trying to fix it.

But worst of all on Twitter were the smug Wordpress and Typepad folks, trying to get the Blogger folks to switch, as if their platforms are superior. Twats.

Blogger, you may not be good at communicating, but we'll stick with you. Just please give us a little more info next time.

Want to improve your blog?

As this blog continues, there will be time for singling out stinky blogs and holding them up for criticism and rebuke.  I use the word rebuke simply because I doubt the authors of these horridly done blogs want to change how they do what they do. 

Remember in high school (and grade school) the students waiting until the last minute to complete an in-class assignment?  And when they received a poor grade they laughed it off, tossed the assignment into the trash and went on with their indifference ... often saying, what they did was good enough, why bother doing extra work. Unfortunately, many blogs are that way. 

I’m not complaining about spur-of-the-moment blogs or even the themes of blogs ... what I am complaining about are crappy photos and poor writing.  And in many cases the derivative nature of blogs.  Why are you repeating the mind numbing mediocrity of other blogs?

A few things to improve you blog.

• Take the time to edit your writing.  Watch for redundancies, overly long sentences and follow the simple rule: Does each sentence make sense when read out of context.  The exceptions are if you write in the style of successful writers, such as, Tom Wolfe or Hunter S. Thompson.

• Resist the urge to post haikus and poems, it’s a given they will be somewhere between tepid and horrid.

• Don’t take photos of cats. Just don’t.

• Don’t take photos of flowers unless the light is perfect and you’re using a close-up lens and a tripod.  And for god’s sake, if you are compelled to photograph flowers, try to do it with some creativity.

• Don’t pander to insipid commenters. When a commenter is fawning and literally smooching you ass, don’t post their comments.  That crap spawns more of the same because in the blog universe there resides tribes of lonely, insecure wishy washy types hunting for bloggers to recognize them.  Once recognized, they will stick to you like fly paper covered with dead insects.