03/19/2003
This is a review of malinkaa.diaryland.com.
Content - 47/75pts.
[-]Execution - 30/45pts. It was frightening for me to encounter early in my perusal of her diary a request for me to download "The Boring Life" by Sly Caps. This is frightening because she says that it "pretty much sums up her life." Oh, gosh, and I have to spend the next few hours reading about this life. Twenty-two seconds later, I'm listening to "The Boring Life." I can bear her taste in music. This will be remembered
According to the song, she is whiny and nasal. And a loser. Hey! She's a loser! Anyway.
I encountered a request for a "regular" boy. Conventional, sure. You'll find such a request on every female diarist's page (or almost every). I mention it only because our Polish friend knows people with three ears. Yep. Three ears. Apparently, according to her, wholesome American boys live in states like Montana. I wasn't aware that anyone lived in Montana.
I find your entries interesting. Too bad that the most interest comes out for that Japanese soap opera with which you find yourself fascinated. But who cares? I'm not here to criticize your lifestyle. The only problem was that in the follow-up entry, you said that no one cares about the story and consequently you cut parts out of the story. Oh, bummer.
When you do write about your life, I am not nearly as interested. It becomes a sort of inside joke, as if you feel that you don't have to explain things as clearly as you do when describing the TV show. This leaves a person wondering. I mean, why would you waste your time with a boy whom you hate?
For some reason, I've got a copy of "I'm Gonna Wash That Man Right Out of My Hair" on my mp3 list.
I liked this entry because it easily dealt with your weight issues. (You have none! Good!) HERE is how you leave things unsaid. You didn't write "I weigh such-and-such and I want to weigh such-and-yeah-right and this'll help, ha, ha!" Those are the sorts of details one ought to leave out. But details about why you hate that boy? Leave those IN.
The Polish girl has a stalker. I bet it's the man with three ears.
And here is an amusing story from Polish youth. I shall give away the punchline - her friend's grandmother is a caterpillar and legs go flailing. I'm so British with my humor. People falling down amuse me to no end. I'm in a chipper mood now, but I must still criticize - I couldn't quite follow the bit about your friend's friend's fall down the stairs. Despite that, this is a nice story.
Some of your entries were pointless, however. Like this one. What was the point of THAT? Also, you misspelled "existence" in the title.
And I hate quizzes. (This didn't really deduct any points. But I'm just saying. I hate quizzes.)
[-]Grammar/Mechanics - 0/10pts. I picked one entry and wrote about every single error in it.
1.) Due to my non existant social life
2.) actually came across a fabolous TV program
3.) other wise I wouldn't be here talking about it.
4.) A young girl recently graduated from high school bumbs into her ex teacher
5.) Yep, can't wait till next friday
6.) they're so versitile
I wasn't going to comment on any more grammar mistakes since you've already lost all of your points, but on this page, you confused "bear" and "bare" TWO times, and I thought, this cannot be! Vocabulary lesson for the Crazy Polish Foreigner:
- bear = big scary animal AND to hold or to support AND a lot of other meanings that aren't relevant to this lesson (want to read them all? Click on the link.)
- bare = naked! And that's it!
Your mistakes came here: "couldn't bare to see him with the girl(I'm still getting the names down, bare with me)"
[-]Readability - 10/10pts. Despite your Polish nature, I find you very readable.
[-]Style - 7/10pts. Here: Please don't use words like "freakish"
The raw human emotion, oh, it makes me weep. I was going to just post this entry and complain about your lack of paragraph breaks, but as I read it, I found that the story was actually compelling, interesting, and well-written. Good job! And now, I must tell you that you have a lack of paragraph breaks. Put those in.
And the story was wholesome and enjoyable. One thinks at first that it is going to be a whiny tale of teen love and lust, but it failed. Turns out to be a story of a girl noting her silliness. The best parts of the story probably came at the end of the LONG paragraph, about your hot night together (just kidding). Improvement could be made to your description of your reasons for finding the poor little Polish boy tiresome. It could be that you are more adult now and find it difficult to connect with your younger self, but that's no excuse for poor writing.
But the magical extra bit that gets you a reasonable score is the ability to interest the reader through word choice, syntax, and organization. And you've made it over the hill of stupidity.
Layout - 8/10pts.
[-]Aesthetics - 4/5pts. Okay, here we go with the crazy stuff people do to their links. Bah. It rots. When a person hovers over your links, the browser not only highlights the link AND changes the color of it, but it also makes the font BOLD. Excessive, no? You should take out the "bold." To do this, just find in your source code the part that says "a:hover." This line contains all of the changes that occur to the link when a person hovers over it. Then find the bit that says "font-weight:bold;" Delete that, being sure to delete the semi-colon too.
[-]Navigability/Legibility - 4/5pts. The links in your archives are too big and annoying. Fixing it will be a bit of work because you'll have to catch Diaryland at a time when you're able to alter your template. When those mysterious servers aren't busy. Good luck!
Anyway, click on the link that says "click here to change how each entry on your older.html page looks." Then you'll see this tag <FONT SIZE=+1 FACE="times"> The "font size=+1" part is what makes your links so large. Change that +1 to a -1. You might also want to change your font face from Times to Trebuchet MS, which is what you use on your regular pages. So the new tag (which you can simply copy/paste into it) is <FONT SIZE="-1" FACE="trebuchet ms">.
Contact - 5/5pts.
Updates - 4/5pts. What did you do in December? With whom did you make love? What did you eat? What did Jesus give you under the tree? You're a Polish December Mystery.
Errors - 5/5pts. The only time I click on the other links (the extras) is to check for errors. I discovered that your name is Joanna Janina. Hah! No wonder your life anthem proclaims you to be a loser.
Total - 69/100pts. This would have been a 79 if you didn't make those grammar mistakes. Tsk, tsk. Nevertheless, you have landed yourself a crowning of "Mediocre." Wear it with pride. With Polish pride.
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