I spend far too much time reading blogs. I’m sure you all agree it’s a shameful, compulsive disorder. So I’m cutting down. I’m going on a draconian low blog diet. I’m going to have a balanced healthy blogroll featuring only contents that are good for me. So who’s getting the chop? Well anyone who hasn’t posted for over two months for a start (adios most of my EVO chums). There are, however, some more borderline decisions to be made:
UPDATE: I took the rest of this post off because it was mean-spirited and I ended up regretting it.
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Confinement
Being confined indoors most of the day, just the four of us, is reminding me of the days when my children were wee and most of our weekends ...
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Deborah, who still doesn't have a blog, sent me some photographs of her place for posting "to make everyone else feel better about...
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I spend far too much time reading blogs. I’m sure you all agree it’s a shameful, compulsive disorder. So I’m cutting down. I’m going on a dr...
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I have a few friends who are currently choosing baby names, so the topic has been on my mind lately. Not long after I met P, he told me that...
32 comments:
Oh, but I only visit one of those blogs from your link... Thank God she'll still be there for a while.
I blame my blog addiction for my loss of ability to sit down and read a good book. It's all about attention span.
Wow. Thank you for saying what I've been thinking about a couple of those blogs you mentioned. I don't think I'm brave enough to actually say those things out loud!
For me, the problem is that blogs end up being substitute friends, even though I barely know any of their authors. One day I'll have to turn off Bloglines and go make some real ones.
Some of your comments made we really laugh. These 2 in particular:
The one with the 'sycophantic' fans and the one with 'the dog photos'
I thought that I was the only one that thought that !!!
Vivi - I know what you mean some of blogs are netter than watching a 'soap'
Lesley - Give me a clue about the thin/hygiene obsessed/super cook/ Mensa member blogger. Which blog is that ?
Ms Mac: I wonder which one that can be?
Vivi: I'm glad I'm not the only one too.....
Léon's Mum: It's the third one down from the top. I'm not going to link to it because although I'm critical I really would hate to hurt anyone's feelings.
My obsession is the bbc world service (radio)
someone does something called The interview, which is always with people who actually do something useful and helpful with their lives so you can think well that is surely better than reading Lesley's blog all day ........last night a South African politician called Patricia de Lille info at
http://people.africadatabase.org/en/person/6151.html
The other day the interview was with a Hong Kong based American /Chinese, his blog is called
EastWestNorthSouth
http://www.zonaeuropa.com/weblog.htm
his name is Roland Soong
info at
http://www.thestandard.com.hk/news_detail.asp?pp_cat=11&art_id=5573&sid=5396554&con_type=1
Anyone who is remotely muscular as well as thin should be deblogged immediately
ditto anyone who goes jogging, eats healthy food or hoovers their house more than once a month
I would cheerfully poison all big dogs in Bordeaux as well as the small.... the size of the piles of excrement in this road are spectacular. I'd like one of those umbrellas which has a sharp point filled with lethal poison carried round by those Bulgarian secret police in the sixties (they did actually kill someone unfortunately), so perhaps the owners as well. In fact I'd just like to wave a magic wand and the owners would find a week's pile of their dog's muck on their doorsteps not mine. To be fair there is one neighbour who picks up her yorkshire terrier's turds, it is the Great Dane's owner who sneaks round before sunrise who is the problem.
Patricia de Lille says she has two German shepherds, oh dear
I've got a book somwhere about heroic dogs .... somehow I still have it after all these years, I think I'll get it out now ...
cheers
Well, thank you - I sat here sniggering as I read your comments on others blogs. Utterly agree with Vivi.... although it has alwyas been lovely when you actually meet them in the flesh (90% of the time anyway).
But I always feel so hypocritical because one of those blogs you mentioned also drives me crazy for its sycophancy. Yet I still visit it very day. It's like rubbernecking at car crashes.
Don't you hate those lazy bloggers who can't spell or punctuate for toffee?
Drives my mum and my friends crazy.
I meant 'always' of course.
Deborah: Absolutely agree on the dog shit in Bordeaux. the thing is that if you criticise these people, they accuse you of hating dogs, when in fact anyone keeping a dog in a tiny flat in the centre of a city is anything but an animal lover.
L'Oiseau: Ooooo, now I'm left wondering about the other 10%
What else can I say except that you are so right. I waste way too much time on photoblogs but recently I came to the conclusion that they are for the most part very unoriginal and me too. As for the comment leavers. Same thing. No useful comments. No critical comments. No in depth comments. Mostly things like "I like the photo." Duh. Everyone is just so busy patting themselves on the back and desperately hoping that the other person may visit their site and leave a lovely comment too and maybe just maybe link to them! Yes. Way too many hours wasted looking at mediocre pics.
As for other blogs. I did once leave a derogatory comment on the Loversite. I said that it was yucky and mills and booney. But then I felt bad. I was the lone voice and I chickened and said sorry :-( No backbone. As though it mattered. Love in this particular case is pretty dull. I feel sorry for the Frog and for the Tadpole.
I can't work out who is the dinner-for-one gymster. Better to avoid it. I don't want to get hooked. And avoid at all costs greektradgedy.com if you don't want to foam at the mouth at the sheer self love that is going on there.
Yes, it's not enough that we live in a shallow celebrity culture but we fan the flames of the many wanabees by merely reading their blogs.
Yes. I'm going to get out the broom and sweep some links from my page.
Well done, Lesley for mouthing off. You do realise that you'll now be on some blog hit list. Let's hope we don't find you sleeping with the fishes.
Oooh. I've done it. Thinned out those links a little and I feel much healthier for it ;)
Sarah - So it was you that left the unsycophantic message, you know that's not allowed. Did you get you fingers slapped you naughty, naughty girl !
My overall feeling is that a lot of bloggers seriously lack a sense of humour, and their is a lot of soul searching going on. I find that really weird to do on the internet ! Don't they have any real people to talk to ?
I got my hands slapped chez P. A. for exactly the same thing. I felt so bad about it that I blogged about it : All I said was.....
You see I sat fuming over those posts - because I have my own pov on it all of course - and I watched others get lynched when they dared to question. And I was cheering you both on... cowardly and silently behind my screen. Because I do feel that if someone broadcasts private events publically, waiting for all those comments to soothe your fragile ego, then you will have potentially equally valid comments from those who hold a different view.
Rant over.
Sarah, I think you are taking the comment thing too seriously. It can be very relaxing to be neither useful nor indepth and just sit and say well I like that (without saying why)
Mills and Boon is escapism, sooooooooo relaxing too, no better than believing in the signs of the Zodiac. You have a choice in a restaurant, if you have a bad meal you can tell them so, or you can choose never to go back ..... ditto blogs.
One half of the world cannot understand the pleasures of the other............. quote Jane Austen
It was 'Lover' girl that got me hooked on blogging...I stumbled on her blog through a link in The Guardian nearly a year ago and, as a newbie to France, was hooked by her funny descriptions of life in Paris. But something has disappeared from her blog and although I do read it every day, it's become a bit boring and too self-analytical and I prefer the other expat blogs I've since found. They're way more interesting and down-to-earth.
And I once left a derogatory comment on 'the lady who asks for money blog' - and have ever since been banned from commenting...she must have blocked me or something. Sniff sniff...not.
I so need to find the asking for money blog now!
Errmmm, I am a great big blog coward and don't want no trouble so if I can't say nothin' nice I don't say nothin' at all!
And then I scoff and mock at home.
oh, great, it's one of those posts - the "look at how clever and smart i am, that i can be critical of other people's blogs without having anything of substance to say on my own." Please. Save your infantile self-righteousness for your therapist or your diary.
Gee how b****y can you be? Seriously, anonyomous is right: what kind of insecurities led to this post? I've read the first blog you're talking about and you exaggerate almost beyond recognition. Let's have a little civility here - I know it's a mostly anonymous environment, but really let's not go attacking other people just because they're fit, they cook well, and they're trying to make a life for themselves. Blogs, like any other form of genuine communication, are about trying to figure out what it is to be a person. And I don't know that you've come across as a very good one in this post.
Having complained that others can't take negative commenting on their blogs, it would be a bit churlish of me not to take the last two on the chin, and let them pass as part of the ongoing debate in this great big friendly community ;-)
So, I have just one question, what does b***y mean?
Hi, Lesley. I got here because someone followed the link from your blog - ironic no?
I agree that my blog has got somewhat dull in recent months, sadly underemployment tends to do that to a person (particularly when your job involves being a receptionist in a sports centre). Rest assured that the moment I get a proper grown-up job again, I shall go back to grumbling about my workmates(*) and posting long rambling posts about things that go bump in the lab at 4am.
(*) I may have to grumble about current workmates in the near future if that helps.
Hugs and kisses
SaneScientist
Hi Sane Scientist: I used to love all of those posts about Northern Blots (the ones that worked and the ones that went wrong). I really learned an incredible amount about how science is carried out in a modern lab. Somehow the sports centre just isn't as interesting. So, I for one, am rooting for you become a scientist again very soon.
Seems I found my way here through the same route as sane scientist. Anyway, that has got to be the most hilarious description of my blog (and my life) I've ever read. If only it all were so perfect and pristine!
Please do go ahead and take my blog off the blogroll. I won't be the least bit offended, and really it sounds like it would be for the best if you didn't read it since my blog (and, in turn, the way I choose to live my life) irks you so.
Kind regards,
profgrrrrl
The last thing I will add is:
Sanesnientist: Bravo for taking a cristism so well, that takes a stong person. I am now a fan and will pop over and read all you boring posts. I love boring posts, I do them all the time myself.
Lesley: Bravo to you too, it takes guts to say what you think and feel.....and from the number of comments you received even those 'brave anonymous' ones. You can see that no one will ever agree. As they say in France "Chacun a son gout" (or something like that)
Now lets get back to something deep and meaningful, has anyone got a good joke to tell me.....
Profgrrrrl:
Unreserved apologies.
Call me naïve but I didn't think you would ever read that rant which really was meant to be much more about my own inability to wean myself off blogs with which I'm no longer in phase, than about your blog.
Shit, why do people come and visit my blog when I've said critical things about their blog and never when I've said something innocuous in their comments box ?
Aha! That's how I felt too. Mean spirited I mean. When I do things like retracting my words - because I have hurt others - I wonder if my much dreamt about position as News of the World editor is just merely pie in the sky. Hmm.
In the Oldie magazine on the correspondence page they always publish one letter entitled 'Bore of the month'
On this page organelle wins hands down.
As for un utilisateur anonyme he/she totally missed your drift, Lesley.
Another quote from Jane Austen:
For what do we live, but to make sport for our neighbours and laugh at them in our turn?
PS
I think the missing letters in b....y might be what you get after seven years of marriage.
Or maybe the blogger had gone back to our favourite gripe and was thinking about dogs?
Léons life, hope these nice feeble jokes wil do!
No worries ... I really found it humorous and was not offended. You can't put yourself out on the Web and expect all reactions to be sweetness and light. That said, it is a tricky game -- mention another blog and people will go there. The blog owner may notice unusual linking patterns and go check out whoever is linking to them.
Kind regards,
profgrrrrl
Thanks Profgrrrrl,
I'll drop in and read you from time to time, maybe several times a day was a bit too often. I just hope I don't get any withdrawal symptoms.
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