Fire Bad!
Weblogs good.

Fire bad, weblogs good! hopes to be an oasis on the harsh, blinding sands of the blog community. Oh, and anything else online we damn well feel like reviewing, even things that are not weblogs. The only links we will provide will be the ones we review (and probably some meta-ones to Uncle Joe and such, just so you can get a more seasoned collection of opinions on other peoples opinions, which is what metablogging is all about) and we hereby swear to focus on content, and to avoid the Trix Rabbit urge to particpate in the link economy. Oh, and we accept bribes and then write what we would have anyway. If you'd like to suggest a blog we simply must review, please email us at avonfrankenstein@yahoo.com and we'll be happy to take a look.

Wednesday, June 27, 2001

Hey, is it dead?
posted by Matthew Rossi 6/27/2001 04:21:01 AM

Sunday, July 23, 2000

Okay, first off let me say that I'm not reviewing Squirrel Bait solely because Meghan makes my hand stand on end and my nerve endings twitch. She does, I admit, but that's not why I'm reviewing it. I'm reviewing it because it is a pioneering site, been around for years. I'm reviewing it because she's been at this for five years, and she still rocks like (insert generic rocking thing here). I'm reviewing it because of the way she can make a story about her car universal somehow. I'm even reviewing it because, like me, she doesn't believe in coddling the wee ones and yet still manages to gush over her godson. I have no doubt that she'd break your neck if you even had a bad thought about that kid. Lucky kid.

Here, read something she wrote a while back and know that she is very, very good.
Actually, all the Murrays liked my costume. I hadn't realized just how much cleavage my Tinkerbell nightie showed until no one commented on my garish eye makeup... and everyone commented about the burn mark on my left breast.

This became all the more clear when I attempted a conversation with Clan Murray... to discover that none of them were looking me in the eye.

"Damn, you have fabulous breasts," Adam muttered.

"I can't stop staring at them," Amber murmured.

"Goo," said Connor, probably thinking something along the lines of "Hey! Big lunch!"

Leave it to my favorite ex-boyfriend, his bisexual wife and their week-old child to restore my self-esteem.

The night passed, as I was reminded again why it's so much fun to be the Sober One at these parties. Guys became more and more brazen in their pursuit of Ardyce... causing one to accidentally burst the crotch seam of his super-tight leather pants. Adam donned my wings and danced around the den fluttering his arms and singing German military songs. Georgia disrobed and ran amok in nothing but her pants and work apron. Waide took control of my video camera but got the buttons confused, resulting in large amounts of video footage that consisted of the Ghearing's floor passing at dizzying speed and beginning with Waide's triumphant pronouncements of "Yeah, I got all of that!" "Oh, that was great!" and "I should be a director!"

I find myself wishing that just the archives of the stuff that was there when I started reading her this April were up, so I could show you just how brilliant she can be. The way she described her co-workers, the night she blogged about wanting so poigniantly to go home...this is online journal as literature, people. Meghan's not especially link-heavy, she's not trendy, she's not obscure and pointless (like some people we know, neh?) she's just cool, talented, and acerbic. She lives, and then she writes. I really don't have the critical tools to talk about it in the proper detail, so again, we'll refer you to the amazing Miss O'Hara.

I don't want to become a hard person, a suspicious person, a bitter person, but I feel it happening to me. I can't let it. Not just because I don't want to, but because it would render me totally ineffective in my chosen profession... as a psychologist, empathy is the most fundamental tool of all, paradigms and theories and tests be damned.

I am full of wishes that I can't articulate... wishes for innocence lost, time lost, the conflicting desires to once again be the trusting and hopeful person I was versus my fear of being hurt again. Whatever else I can say for the armor-plating around my heart, I feel very little real pain... I'm too quick for it... revelations and harsh words are rationalized and denied and disassociated from before I can even grasp them. Only when the lance comes in from a new and totally unexpected angle can it pierce... which happened last weekend... and I already feel the callus forming around it. I will never hurt in that particular place again...

Makes you wish you could write like that, huh? I know it does me. To be honest, it's Meghan's influence on me as a blogger that has led me to leaven the unrelenting insanity of my theories with the confessional bits...to try and explain myself, to give you reasons for who I am and how I got that way. I don't do it as well, of course...few of us do. When Blogger made Squirrel Bait their Blog of the Week, they displayed a great deal of acumen. The only problem is that it hasn't been voted Blog of the Year. When Meghan is having an off day, she's funny and pithy and she'll make you snort whatever your beverage of choice is out your nose. When she's on, she's one of the most fascinating reads out there. I'm not trying to put her up on a pedastal here...she warns against that herself...just to explain why I vastly prefer her site to, say, my own.

Meghan O'Hara, everyone. Oh, and by the way, she is quite the little toothsome, isn't she? Try to catch her with her webcam on...you'll soon be agreeing with the Murrays. And there's that hair. My God...no, no, not gonna do it, as our psi-drug taking, trade minister soiling ex-President used to say. If I started ranting about the unspeakable lusts she arises in me, we'll be here all damn day. Just go read her blog. It's good for you.
posted by Matthew Rossi 7/23/2000 09:18:08 AM

Tuesday, July 18, 2000

Say, kids, did you know urine is sterile? You can drink it.

Oh, and go read This Boy Is Toast. It's good. (There. My review portion is now complete. Soon, I will have all the missiles.)

posted by Peter Milan 7/18/2000 09:17:44 AM

Sunday, July 02, 2000

My sweet Jesus, I just realized I have never reviewed Ethel the Blog. Oh, God, I need to go lie down.

Ethel the Blog is the best blog in existence. I say this with plenty of love and affection for other blogs out there, many of which are very fine indeed. My tastes in blogging run the gamut from the divinely absurd (see the review of This Island Earth below) to the preternatural, such as the blog of Random, my co-conspirator here on Fire Bad!, to the awsome wide-ranging genius of Hal Rager and friends and the quirky brilliance of Meghan over at Squirrel Bait. I could list more...almost all the blogs I or Random have reviewed to date are in there, and there are of course more. But, in a sea of blogs, some great, some awful, there is only one blog that makes me wish I'd thought of it first almost every single time, and that blog is Ethel the Blog. No other blog can take on Shrub, explore Alexander Pope's hatred for Coley Cibber (and trust me, as a guy who saw The Relapse, Cibber deserved it), dish on Mencken, tell us where to find the best bad poetry on the web, and give us flashes of his own life in well rendered prose. Here's a sample.

After returning, I went out to test the damaged knee on the ultimate field and managed - on the very first goddamned play of the game - to bounce off said knee while diving for a catch. The full richness of my muleskinner vocabulary followed, mostly aimed at the dumbass what did the diving.

That's so pithy it's pure, isn't it? I almost don't feel worthy of describing the cognitive explorations one can make with Ethel the Blog. The next time someone decides to go one one of their I'm a member of the digerati and I say all blogs are the same, they're all boring and pointless I'm going to hunt that person down, kick in his or her front door, drag said person to the computer and seat them before the glories of Ethel. It is a incarnate refutation of the argument, a perfect, shining example of what blogging can be at its best. It is unique, it is interesting, it is well-written, it is never puerile or jejune, it is gloriously direct and informative. It is simply Ethel. Steven K. Baum is the Percival of Weblogging. We can all learn from his gentle decency. Start here and then just sort of decide for yourself...I personally like to meander through the archives. But you may decide to go back to the beginning and work your way up, and that's fine too.

Come, let us bask in the reflected light of Ethel. It's good for you. Because I cannot let Steven be summed up in a single quote, here's an excerpt from his truly brilliant Mencken essay, which I am so damn envious of.

A few months later Mencken made his final entry on November 23, suffering a massive cerebral thrombosis eight days later that left him physically stable but completely deprived of the ability to read or write. He lived for another seven years before dying. If he deserved any punishment for the shortcomings outlined earlier, he certainly received it. This was a man who'd written for at least 8 hours a day for most of his life, whether it be regular newspaper or magazine pieces or any of dozens of books, including his massive and monumental The American Language. He'd also prided himself on answering every letter he ever received. They numbered in the thousands, especially his correspondence concerning American Language, which included hundreds of correspondents regularly supplying him with words and examples of their use. In other words, writing wasn't a hobby in which to indulge at the terminal with a few beers in the evening. He lived to write, and his eventual physical death must have come as a tremendous relief after waking each morning for seven years to mentally die all over again upon realizing that what he lived for was gone. Read some Mencken, eh? You should be able to find something appropriate amongst the 2433 volumes currently held at ABE.

Okay, next time (whenever that is) if you want, I'll actually sit down and do my Arthurian Round Table of Blogging. Trust me, none of the blogs will be what you expect. Until then, stay well.
posted by Matthew Rossi 7/2/2000 04:09:45 PM

This is such a neat site. You wanna know why? Here's one reason:

I'll never forget this band, for two special reasons. One, because back in junior high, I went to see Rocky III with my friend Soheil, and the guy would not stop screaming "Eye of the tiger man, eye of the tiger!" at regular intervals for the next month (he was serious, by the way — this was during the 1980's, when the government instituted irony rationing because of the Grenada War.)

Another reason is the awesome imagery of the site. Bryan has managed to create a blog that appealingly pokes a smidgeon of fun at the great pulp SF iconography of yore, but does it with love. This Island Earth doesn't do a lot of Metablogging, or blogging about ideas, it's just Bryan's blog, but that's damn well good enough.

That fez-wearing primate used with permission, by the way.

Go check out This Island Earth. It's funny, witty, and a whole lot of other words ending in 'y'. It's the blog equivalent of those neat ads for X-Ray specs you used to find on the back of your finer class of comic book. I'd like to say more, to go into linguistic pyrotechnics about the style and verve of the site, about Bryan's quiet charm and tactful wit and colorful art...but it doesn't really carry through. Just go see. Trust your uncle Matt on this one. You'll be glad you did.
posted by Matthew Rossi 7/2/2000 03:45:56 PM

I think today, I'm going to do something a bit different than usual. I'm inspired. I'm going to review a weblog I really fucking hate. And when I do, I'm going to tear it a new asshole. I'm going to say horrible things about the person responsible, compare his or her ancestry to sexual molestation among farm animals, and in general tear aside the mask of respectability to reveal the capering werewolf within.

This blog sickens me. He's so fucking obscure and aimless, and he meanders around like a drunken goat molester. Pick a fucking subject, you waste of skin! Nobody cares about elves and gods and all that other weird shit you write about. For Christ's sake, where's all the bemoaning of web unoriginality!? Where's the endless linkage to articles posted by Yahoo and The New York Times and Adbusters! Why do you think we care about your bizarre subconscious, you obsequious insect!? Matt Rossi, you are without a doubt the most pathetic waste of time in the history of blogging!

Man, that felt good. Anyway, I'll be back in a few with an actual review.
posted by Matthew Rossi 7/2/2000 03:36:16 PM

Wednesday, June 28, 2000

Of all the men I’ve ever seen, I think the most handsome is Max von Sydow. I’m thinking here of a particular moment in “The Passion of Anna”. His eyes are slightly downcast, his mouth slack, but he’s standing tall, more like a tree than a man. So what that his eyes and his stance were guided by a director. He had a way of seeming to convey deep and abiding shame. He did it so well and so often, I’ve wondered about his life. I remember him thusly the way I first saw him in “The Exorcist” as the old priest, and later as Volger in “The Magician”, and later still as the devil in “Needful Things”. At first I did not know these were all the same man. It was not until years had passed that I connected the man and his longevity to all these different films. It was not until I saw “Shame” Igmar Bergman’s half bad/half good film about war that I connected all the shames and realized that behind the various masks lurked one man. I had come full circle around the man, seeing him under different illuminations and different angles, but always with the same shadows revealed in his mind and in his heart. You might wonder why I bring this up here. Why am I not rating somebody’s weblog today. Well, quite simply I refuse to rate the last several suggestions promulgated to me electronically. I refuse to bathe in the tripe of wasted words and call it call roses. So I’ll say nothing about it. I would like to read a weblog about movies, and the people in movies. I would like to read a weblog where somebody celebrates something. Somebody out there write a weblog, have your friends join. Think about the deepest movies you ever saw. I cried bitterly and repeatedly, I could not sleep for days, after I saw “Jack be Nimble”. Was it brilliant, was it deep? I doubt it, but I had sudden charge of awareness following that movie. That movie, simplistic, as it was, changed my life. So it was with “Carnival of Souls” and others that I won’t name here. Think about somebody. Write something new.
posted by Random Person 6/28/2000 06:08:52 PM

Tuesday, June 13, 2000

I'm sorry I'm such a naughty posting mate, Matthew Rossi. I went out kayaking this weekend instead of blogging like a good blogger. A few comments about kayaking. Kayaking involves two things I hate: nature and ...nature. Never have I been so afraid for so long. I can't wait to do it again.
posted by Random Person 6/13/2000 07:30:53 PM

Bad juju is a community weblog. They are self-described as more of a family than a community blog. Forgive me Matthew Rossi if we have already reviewed this site. As you know some many thoughts have filtered through the jelly cream that is serving as my brain this week that I can't remember, and don't see it when I read.

But I feel. I feel so very strongly, that probably we have talked about this before.

Anyway. Bad juju. Community blog. Social commentary. And some nifty writing. If you never read the blog again read Onion's comments on Lanthanum being removed from the Periodic Table. Whoever knew this could be a topic of mirth and merriment? Well, the amazing folks at Bad juju. There entire page is spiced with mirthful life commentary, unique insight, and yet they never stop giving you that comfortable feeling of listening to a group of friends chatting around a table late at night.

I saw on the site that one of the members had a flame moment. Ah, it reminds me of the friend who always got drunk and bitchy at the party. Everybody else had to talk him/her down. The nice thing about being on-line is you never have to hold up a friend's head while he/she is horfing bile all over your shoes.

And by the way Rossi, we do have suggestions for blogs to review. I have been working my way through an interesting site aptly called the not journal. My favorite part of this journal is the interactive nature of it. The author, Michael Daines, stops right in the middle and asks the reader questions. Cool.

I have no idea, what in the hell the graphic is at the top. I swear it looks like dolphins and paintbrushes dances around on cork board. By the way Michael Daines is quite a character, he sold a picture of his (fully clothed) midsection on E-bay for $10.00.

I am a little biased against his journal, because I prefer longer entries. I like to get a feel for a true reflection of a life event, rather than just a description of that event. Case in point. Michael Daines was at a store trying on women's clothing with a friend who was a girl. Was it a lark? Was he trying to get in her pants? Did he feel like he looked good in women's clothing? If you're not out here telling us your deepest, your darkest, your lightest, and your brightest secrets why are you doing a journal?

This guy is having some amazing life experiences. Unlike me, who is currently sitting in front of a computer screen, tell me what they were like! I want to live vicariously!!

posted by Random Person 6/13/2000 07:17:17 PM

Sunday, June 11, 2000

Still doing nothing, Just Because I Can. Wow. Feels damn good. I'm not going to review anything today. Instead, I'm going to once again call for suggestions. There are a whole 'buttload' (a very scientific measurement, I assure you) of blogs, things that are sorta like blogs, and things that aren't even remotely blogs out in the world for me to review. I need input! I know you read the other blog more, because you find my complete mental breakdown fascinating (although the guy who sends me email about how the government has implanted a transciever into his cat scares even me a bit) but I could use the help in narrowing down the metablogging options. So please mail avonfrankenstein@yahoo.com with your ideas.
posted by Matthew Rossi 6/11/2000 11:25:11 PM

Our Contributors Pictures...or something akin to them.

In his name, we do good work. In his name, we do evil. It's all the same to him.

Knower of dark magics, some say he is the immortal Tulpa of Giordano Bruno. We say, this is a Review Blog, not a nutty conspiracy blog. Random Person controls the rarely read blog, Dark Currents.

If you'd like to join in on this whole lunacy parade, send an email to avonfrankenstein@yahoo.com and let us know.

Blogs Reviewed Thus Far.
The Realm of the Restless Dead
Clowns will eat you
Vavatch Orbital
ZZXYX
Vicious Thinks
Pig Inc
Follow Me Here
More to come when I catch my breath...