03/17/2003
This is a review of emptygaze.diaryland.com (now defunct).
Content - 43/75pts.
[-]Execution - 25/45pts. Mistake! The poetic, beautiful, meaningful girl who owns this diary (and who requested this review) wrote that "[she's] not here to entertain". Oh? And, know what else? Her diary is also her "emotional haven" and her "reliance on Life satisfaction." I'm not quite sure what "reliance on Life satisfaction" means, but I do know that this girl is cheeky. What a joker! She made it a point to say that she "will not change for you." Ouch! For whomever is "you," anyway.
I know that she isn't talking about me, however. Because, guess what. She's here to entertain me. And if she doesn't, she's going down. And she'd better not be too poetic because I hate teen poetry. I fidget, and I only skim. Hah! Shows her. Boo-yah.
Anyway. This girl is a girl. I know she's a girl because her site is pink.
She's also NOT suicidal. Okay? But she is mostly very unhappy. And sometimes very happy. (Hence the pink, I guess.) In any case, she seems to drag herself through life in those depressing entries, instead of just going and blowing her head off like a normally dissatisfied teenager.
Want to know why she doesn't blow off her head? Because she's pulling Emo Kid on us. Because it's a joke or a fake (although she did seem to warn me in her request that she is genuine. Now. What sort of person needs to put a disclaimer like that in her request except a FAKE?).
For example, a normal depressed and mal-adjusted teenage girl who falls in love would spend her time being, you know, in love, not writing letters to imaginary objects of infatuation. Albeit pointless, this is a very well-written letter. It is arguable, however, that just "I love you" might have had more meaning and less contrivance (or a feeling of it, anyway). And it would have been shorter. Brevity is the soul of something. You read Shakespeare, you know what I mean. Dorothy Parker once said that "Brevity is the soul of lingerie." Ha, ha.
Anyway, the point of that was to tell you to either get a real boyfriend and tell us where he touched you or stop being so gosh-darned magniloquent. (Get it?)
You really do speak like you write? Really? Then why does it still sound contrived?
I think that her score would have been much lower if she hadn't given me this entry, I would have blown off her head for her. (Oh, boy, now I'm threatening her? I saw a horrible movie today.) The best line of the entry was "Enlarge my little, unresponsive penis." Ha, ha. (The movie was really quite rotten.) The worst line was everything else. She was sarcastic in that horrible, predictable way, saying "man, that was just great," when it wasn't great at all. And she had "dont/let/that/scare/you" in there for a reason that I was unable to determine.
I've this same problem except that I also get elf-porn, penis enlargement pills, AND home insurance. Now, where's the info on elfish penis enlargement procedure insurance?
With whom are you in love? Why don't you describe sex scenes? Is your whole life imaginary?
My life is imaginary too. Yes! It surely is.
You know, I believe that you are an attention whore. I begin to think that you created this site, you made it very pink and pretty and then you write excessively depressing entries that help no one, least of all you, all for attention. I'm sure you cry piteously over each entry, and each entry confirms your depression, confirms your unhappiness. Listen, I'm going to begin to list advice about how to fix your life (shut up about your depression! Get a therapist! Get pills! Stop feeling sorry for yourself!) and that's terrible. That's not a review of your diary. That's a review of your life.
Your diary, if it is supposed to help you overcome your depression, ought not be so self-pitying. And it doesn't feel real. It just doesn't. I feel as though I have to justify this (partly because I'm afraid of dropping into your diary a few days hence and finding "oh, woe is me, someone gave me a bad review, I must shoot myself" and then the string of guestbook entries that completely agree about the terribleness of me as a reviewer. Oh, me. I couldn't bear it).
But you write about frivolous things too. And you pretend they matter, using the same words you use to describe your depression-induced unhappiness. Take this entry, where you feel it is your God-given right to criticize a person in his notes. You are so serious about it. My goodness.
In fact, you are just as serious as you are about your suicide attempts and your failed love, and so on.
Oh, I sense a goof. I sense a spoof. I sense quite a large joke.
Your diary is one of the borderline ones, and they are the sort that bugger me the most. I wish I could slap "mediocre" onto you after reading one entry and be done with it (obviously, I'm sure you've noticed that making content worth 75pts makes it really quite impossible to boost yourself up to "good" just based on layout-prettiness). But I can't. Because sometimes you write so compellingly, and I think, oh, golly, I'm glad to be reading this. And other times, like every other time on this review, you write in a way that I can't believe. I can't connect to it. It sounds forced.
Because if you didn't want advice, why do you ask for reviews? Why do you link to your guestbook AND your notes? Stop lying to us.
Here are two waste-of-time entries. Or, two entries that could have replaced the entire diary. (I like posting these. It makes people regret wasting Andrew's space making them.)
blah.html - the real entry.
fcuk.html - oh, the real entry again.
This might be a nice diary for YOU, the writer, but a depressing, predictable, confusing, repetitive diary for me, the reader and reviewer.
[-]Grammar/Mechanics - 4/10pts. Capitalizing random words like "winter," "hope," and "God" is okay in poetry, but buggers the hairy fur off of a chinchilla in prose, you know? You do it all the time. For example, here and here. And here.
I judge you more harshly because you claim to be a writer. Now, kiddo, tell me what's wrong with this sentence: "It leaves me awe, but I want..."
It is incorrect to put a comma after an ellipses. Pick one or the other. Nothing is so emotional that you need both. (It looks something like this --> blah, blah..., more blah, blah)
I'm getting hives from this error! It makes me hate Americans! And foreigners, but only if they make the error. Found here: "Anyway, it's words are really comforting."
[-]Readability - 7/10pts. Several of your entries were dedicated to other people. I hate that. I hate it like the dickens. You want to write something to a particular person? Use e-mail. Don't use your diary. And then afterwards, don't get someone like me (who never gets ANY e-mail - thus, I'm jealous of any interaction other people experience) to review your diary.
[-]Style - 7/10pts. Like I've said, it sounds forced. Maybe you're not as unhappy as you think you are. Or maybe you don't write as unhappily as you think you ought to write. You have an excellent control of the English language, etc., all that jazz that every reviewer and every English teacher has ever told you. And so on.
Also, from this entry, you wrote: "I saw him jogging, or whatever would be a jog for a four-legged animal, being cautious of his surroundings"
The word you wanted was TROTTING. Or the all-purpose "toddling" (which is what a fat American coyote would do).
By the way, I liked that entry.
Layout - 8/10pts.
[-]Aesthetics - 5/5pts. Lovely. And pink. It reminds me that you have a uterus.
[-]Navigability/Legibility - 3/5pts. Your font is too small. Your font is TOO SMALL. I am blind. And your font is too small. (I'm sure you've noticed that if you use CSS to set the size of your font, people with IE can't change the size of said font. This is a bugger for me because your site DOES NOT WORK in Netscape or Opera.)
Your font is really small.
Also, your background is not opaque enough. It is too transparent. It is TOO transparent. (Changing it from 65% to 75% makes it perfect. Beautiful.)
Contact - 5/5pts. You have way too much contact information for a person who doesn't want advice. (Yes, you said you abandoned your old diary because of it. Go read your first entry again.)
Updates - 5/5pts.
Errors - 3/5pts. Do NOT EVER DO ANYTHING weird without testing it in at least Netscape.
Do you know what "anything weird" is? That's anything you learned after knowing HTML for a week.
Got it? That's EVERY CSS tag you know. Because your site does not work in Netscape. It does not work. It does NOT work. (I complain so much, and I use IE. Ha, ha. Anyway, I'd LIKE to use Opera, but it doesn't work there either.)
How to fix it! Go to your style class declarations >> .entry >> overflow-y:auto; and that little line should be changed to overflow:auto;. (Well, minus the period.) And that is that. (By the way, doing that'll make it work perfectly in the latest version of Netscape. It won't work in Opera, no matter what you do. So, I would take out the window-in-a-window business, if I were you.)
Total - 64/100pts. Don't really worry about the number score. It's the category that matters, and you've landed into the World of Mediocrity. There might be some who find your diary compelling, and sure, I was interested by an entry or two, but by and large, I'd rather have played with my webcam than voluntarily read your diary. Good luck with your pink life. I hope no one who goes to your site through the review dares to give you advice! In fact, I now ask all readers to refrain from giving the girl advice. (It's hard not to do it. Even I've slipped, and only just barely covered it up.) Anyway, kids, off you go.
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