the good

the bad and the

mediocre

07/29/2004

This is a review of heidiann.diaryland.com.

Content - 66/75pts.
[-]Execution - 40/45pts. "My cunt is screaming and teeth in neck and dominating. Candle wax and toys and indie dyke porn. She wants to be shaved (or dyed pink) and pierced. She is hunger. Pussy is passive while cunt is aggressive."

Whoa! This isn't the diary of a thirteen-year-old Ryan Seacrest-adoring, Olsen twin lipgloss-wearing Canadian girl-child. This is all woman! Commence drooling now for Miss Heidi.

Miss Heidi is enormously popular. She has more friends (and by friends, I mean fans, and by fans, I mean sycophants) on DiaryLand than there are people I know total online and off. And why not? She's terrifically charismatic, drinking from a "Diva Cup" (excuse my giggles and my barf) and partying hardy in general.

The easiest way to be entertaining on the Internet is to be heavily quippy. Miss Heidi dips again and again - "My attorney is a film producer. That's just so L.A. Of course, this means I now refer to him as DJ Esquire." Hah.

Even when describing the worst moments of her life, Miss Heidi manages to slap a smile on our faces - "There were also two large pieces of Styrofoam in the road, which I assume came from me. Evidently Hyundais are held together with Styrofoam, Krazy Glue, and prayer."

And the nuances of grocery shopping -- "Being hit on while trying to decide between Pepperocinis and IMPORTED Pepperocinis. Went with the imported... same size, same price, but IMPORTED."

Once or twice, I got the idea that Miss Heidi might feel that she's always got to be "on," to keep her fickle Internet Sycophant Groupies in line. This forces her to make wink, wink, nudge, nudge jokes, as if throwing in a rowdy "heh, heh" makes up for a lame joke. But generally, Miss Heidi is funny. She just needs to let it flow naturally instead of forcing it.

[-]Grammar/Mechanics - 7/10pts. Drunk entries aren't my piece of cake. Miss Heidi writes well! Why ruin her neurons and the quality of her diary by tainting it with neuron poo? Suffice it to say that I wish I hadn't read "druk.html."

Also, one sober mistake: "You know those kids you see at the mall or in a restaurant who are so rude and obnoxious and loud and irritating and disrespectful that you want to take a belt and just wail on them?"

Yeah, that's "wale."

[-]Readability - 9/10pts. Totally readable. Except when Miss Heidi doused herself with that Tequila.

[-]Style - 10/10pts. Miss Heidi's personality shines through beautifully. Example: "Currently I use Adobe Photodeluxe. I don't know how that compares but since it came free with my computer I assume it's Photoshop's ugly, boring, slow-witted cousin twice removed. And there's probably a mullet and missing teeth involved too. And a hound dog named Cooter."

Right. Haha.

Layout - 8/10pts.
[-]Aesthetics - 5/5pts. "I'm realizing how completely un-hip I am. I don't have the slightest idea who Dashboard Confessional is. ½ the bands people in Diaryland love, I’ve never even heard of. For god's sake, I don't even know what Emo is!"

That doesn't make you unhip. That makes you my hero.

[-]Navigability/Legibility - 3/5pts. Two things.

Thing the first: When I read your diary, you had 338 entries. I read, on average, about every fourth or fifth entry, which is about 70 entries. Whew! And it's practically impossible to keep track of which entries I had read and which I hadn't because your visited links look just like your unvisited links. Boo. I understand that it makes your site look prettier, but it's bad for ease of navigability should anyone take it upon herself to read a bunch of entries like I did. I suggest a strike through of visited links.

If you like that idea, go to your archives template. Find A:visited { text-decoration: none; font-weight: bold; cursor: crosshair; color:#cc0000 } and change "none" to "strike-through."

But wait! That's not enough. You don't want the links in your navigation bar to be striked too. So in each href tag of those links, add style="text-decoration:none"

Thing the second: When I hover over your links, the text turns white, which looks cool in your navig bar, where the background color is black, but really uncool in the archive section, where the text disappears into the white background. I suggest changing the hover to an underline instead of a color-change. To do that, all you have to do is find A:hover { text-decoration: none; font-weight: bold; cursor: crosshair; color:#ffffff; } and change "none" to "underline" AND "#ffffff" to "#cc0000"

Or you don't have to do it. But if you decide not to, think of how hard I worked to type all that up and let the guilt wash over you.

Contact - 5/5pts. 0pr4h's publicity people check those "alternate" spellings out, you know, so I'd be worried about a libel suit in the near future. God, I never knew she was such a b1tch.

Updates - 5/5pts. "I wonder if when Soul Mate and I meet for the first time will it be him staring deep into my eyes and saying, 'Ow, my shirt just got caught on my pierced third nipple.' And then the angels sing and everything goes all slow motion and hazy."

Hmm. That's how Daddy announced his amorous intentions for my mother, and they've been happily married for over twenty years.

Errors - 5/5pts.

Total - 89/100pts. Whoo, Miss Heidi! Roaring in with a "Good" score... I guess that makes me yet another sycophant in her Internet repertoire of sychophants. Much love!

Previous - Next - Back to Top