- As a feminist… (G’wan. Get to the point. Quickly, quickly, I’ve some celeb gossip here waiting to be read)
- As a parent…(*deep breath* …. Ah right gotcha. I feared you were going to wax lyrical on what you feel more keenly than those who aren’t.)
- I had this mad dream last night… (*scrolls down*)
- Sorry the blog has been so quiet lately…(And you choose to break the silence with this gem?)
- Do you believe in God?…(As a feminist…haha got you back)
And that concludes today’s edition of Unsolicited Blogging Advice. Tune in next time when we will have tips on how to subtly insert classic literary texts into a post on farts, and Morag will be here to show you how to convert leftover spam comments in to flash fiction.
i
department of speculation 
You couldn’t be more right. Except you forgot one:
Ah xxx!
Like “Ah chocolate! How I love you”
Or “Ah sleep, I remember it well”
I know I have a post that starts “Ah” and I keep meaning to change it.
The biggest offender in my eyes is “Hello lovelies”. WTAF? I’m not lovely, or if I am you don’t know that.
Quite right. I only came on here to take the piss out of blogging advice but I like this latent angst I’ve unleashed. It’ll just take someone to call me out for my brass-necked hypocrisy to ruin the righteousness. Everyone is, like, sooooo offended these days.
There’s another one- posts that start “So, ”
What about ‘And so’? Asking for a friend.
I see Number 4 sooooo much. ‘Sorry I’ve been a little quiet…’ apologising as if blog readers have been refreshing their browser every thirty seconds looking for the next hit from their blog idol. We have a saying up in Norn Iron – “Wind your neck in!” The narcissism and ego of the younger generation never fails to surprise me. Ah well. Rant over.
Catch yerself on, Aidan, that’s hardly a rant. I was stumping up double that when I was your age *pipe lipsmacks* These young wans. No regard for the self-regard of us aul wans.
No.3 is worse in real life – what to do when someone wants to relate their dream to you in forensic detail? With all the ‘mad’ bits included: “….and then the car became like this huge bus and suddenly it was last year…”. I would set fire to something to get away from someone’s dream story.
‘As a parent / as a mother…’ is extremely annoying; it does make me feel a tad inferior, but it’s so oft-used that I’m a bit suspicious that maybe parents do feel things more keenly… I did an informal survey amongst mum friends and they scoffed at it, but I’m always hearing things like “I can’t see that film / read that book / watch that John Lewis advert / listen to the news since I had my children” – is there a whole dimension of emotion that I’m not tapping into? Maybe there really is because I hate those stupid John Lewis adverts and I’ve got a really high threshold for soppy-ness.
How are you with puppies? Manipulative Pixar films? A cardiograph perhaps just to check it’s ticking? I call bullshit on the higher.sense of feeling dramatics. I find “As a human being…” is a handy, and coincidentally redundant, opener when it comes to being appalled or delighted. Or both depending.on if you’re a parent/feminist/arsehole with a serious cheese addiction.
‘Before’ shots of sad-faced dogs that have been mistreated will work for me…. Pixar: never, ever. This is getting off-topic, isn’t it.
In a good way.
Ah, I see where I’ve been going wrong. 😉 I’d better retract what I’ve just sent you the long way round!!
Remember, we’re always exempt from any complaints made on our blogs about other bloggers otherwise where would the fun be be in doing it?
Yes. YES. More of these, please, Depterness. There are so many. I second, third, and fourteenth Bumbles’ antagonism towards “hello lovelies”, and raise her a “hello MY lovelies”. Also-rans are “howdy peeps”, and any post which begins with “Well, …” or even “So, ….” – again, as if the reader had asked a question, rather than the blogger acknowledging the fact that bloggers blog precisely to answer questions which nobody ever asked: not to mention the fact that even if the question had been asked, nobody would have asked the blogger.
Furthermore, any post which has an exclamation mark anywhere in the first two sentences gets a claxon from me.
On a side note, is your stray ‘i’ at the end there some sort of signal I should be picking up? It’s not a cry for help, is it?
No. Well, yes, but the entire blog is. Morag is trying to amuse herself with tattoos while we’re condemned to a phone. Maybe she’s trying to send a message. Hmmm. I’ll deal with her later.
Exclamation marks in the opening lines – yes. Nothing redeemable can come of it.
Bumbles echoed your ‘So,’ anxiety. What about ‘And so…’? Asking for a friend who’s not really asking for a friend.
I have a soft spot for ‘And so…’, which is contrary to my pedantic leanings I know and very hard to explain. Not only do I start waaaaay too many blog sentences with conjunctions in general (don’t start looking for the ‘And’ and ‘But’ sentences scattered all over my blog, you will never be able to unsee them), but ‘And so…’ sounds cutely vintage to me, like it’s about to begin a wonderful parable, or finish with a killer line such as ‘Yea, and verily so.’
That’s it. It suggests an aged woman recounting a journey, reflecting on the occasion that equipped with her with keen insights, a pivotal point from which there could be no return. Or as I called it – a day out in Kilkenny eating ice-cream. In more talented fingertips, it would retain its quaintness, and emotional restraint. I was just hysterical by Remains of the Day standards.
(In other tangential news, I have just finished Unravelling Oliver. Farking brilliant)
Isn’t it?? Isn’t it?? Lying in Wait next. Leave a little break in between, and have at it.
Sold out in our nearest book shop. Well, that, or they’d never heard of it. “How do you spell Nugent?” Nugent with an N.
It was top of the Irish bestsellers for weeks in both July and August so your nearest book shop needs a smack on the botty. Let me know if you want me to sort them out.
I’ve converted unwanted spam comments into posts quite a few times on my blog, it’s a source of creative inspiration that is highly underrated.
I had this mad dream last night that Kim Gordon and Thurston Moore (ex Sonic-Youth) were also top seeded tennis players, & were stopping off to play a game with myself and my brother who I rarely ever see so I have no idea why he was included in this strange mish-mash. Anyway, I lost my raquet AND managed to stand on Thurston Moore’s raquet. When the alarm went off I was feverishly retracing my steps to see if I could find my missing raquet. I’ve not quite yet decoded the meaning of it all. I saw Kim Gordon give a talk last week, (in real life) but no idea why she & her ex became tennis players in my dream.
Coincidentally, I like to use spam comments in my role as expert dream analyst. Hmm. Now, did Kim mention NRA draft results or recommend any bi-focal sunglasses? *pen at the ready*
How fascinating! Do you charge people to perform those analyses? Kim didn’t mention NRA draft results or bi-focal sunglasses actually, but as she languidly hit a few volleys back and forth (it was to be a doubles match – the others were filling in time while I searched for my raquet, you understand) I think I heard her mutter “verdiene mit schmuk geld” ….
Sorry, I really was dying to tell someone about that dream so your hatred of hearing people’s dreams seemed as good an invitation as I was going to get.
That’s the sort of disobedience I expect visitors to commit without having to be micromanaged. Take a bow. Oh you’ve already done it. Good woman.
Something about your blog seems to encourage disobedience, but in a good way. Not in the way that my overly strict, repressive parents encouraged it. More as if you are secretly barracking for it all along.
Morag, fetch two glasses for there. I have an urge to clink glass with our guest here. With something from at least three different bottles of gin.
a large glass, please Morag. *sounds of gin sploshing on doona cover*