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Shooting Oneself in the Foot
September 30, 2003, 5:10 p.m. A few months ago, while doing a massive (moving furniture kind of massive) clean up of his room with Elf-boy, I sprained my left shoulder tendon. I went to the doctor, got some anti-inflammatories, it was all good. Every once in a while, though, it plays up on me. I like to say it does it in cold weather, but that’s not really true. Today though, it was really killing me. I probably should go see my doctor about it, get an X-ray or something, to check that I haven’t done lasting damage. I feel like such an old biddy, though: “Ah, my arm’s playing up on me. There’ll be no bowls game for me this week.” Arrggh! I knew I shouldn’t have signed up for reviews . . . now I’m obsessed with them : ) I keep looking for new sites to sign up to, but they’re all either hopelessly new, several months since their last update, on hiatus (and desperately clamouring for reviewers) or closed all together. The ones that are still trooping along, I don’t like the look of, either. All their fidgety little categories to win points in. Of course, then I start thinking about how I’d run a review site. In my perfect review site, you’d get 40 points for layout, and 60 points for writing. Layout would be subdivided into aesthetic appeal (30) and usability (10), in which I berate you for colour schemes and image choice, and errors and navigation respectively. I wouldn’t give a toss if it was a Diaryland template, though you wouldn’t score very highly on aesthetics, because some of the best diaries I’ve read have been written in Diaryland templates. Nor would I dock points for having a designer template, because I’ve sat there for hours, searching for the right template. And then, under writing would come content (45) and readability (15), in which I judge your topics and your spelling. I would not, ever, give points for having contact details. That just seems so pointless. Maybe people don’t want to put their email address up, and expose themselves to a whole lot of spam? Maybe they just don’t want to be contacted, maybe they just want to write and leave? (Why they’d then ask for a review, I have no idea, but then the human mind does work in mysterious ways . . .) It’s all well and good to sit here and say, “Oh, I’d run the world like this.” We all know I’ll never do it. Mostly because, as is blindingly obvious from the aforementioned status of the other review sites: many are called, few are chosen. Most sites die within the first few months, usually because of understaffing. And I’m too bossy and perfectionistic (that’s so not a word) to share my review site. Plus, I don’t think I could rope anyone else into it : ) And I wonder how this will affect my score, when my reviewers read it. Anyway, 28 Days Later tonight – I’ll see you all after I’ve fainted from fear.
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