The Assignment
I wanted to do another writing based assignment and chose the Find Your Voice ds106. This assignment asked me to find blogs that I enjoyed because the voice of the author really shone through their posts. Here is the description:
The best blogs are ones that express a person’s personal voice: whether that be their sense of humor, wit, likes, dislikes that sort of thing. Find an example of a blog where the author’s voice shines through their posts and give a reason of why you like their posts. See if you can use this to inspire your posts during the semester.
The Process
So this is a bit tricky. The assignment asks for the blogs that I like and to explain why I like them, so I’ll do that here. It’s not really a “process” in the same way that creating an image ds106 assignment is, but it’s still one nonetheless.
There are many blogs that I enjoy for their personal voice, but there are two posts in particular that I chose for this assignment that first came to mind. While I appreciate good formatting, information, and photographs on a blog, I also appreciate humor. I think both of these posts exemplify that.
This post is from TheBlogess. I don’t want to go into details about what exactly happens in the post because that would really detract from the impact of the story. It’s written in a very train of thought sort of way and details the results of the blogger’s fight with her husband. It’s a classic story of wife wants towels, husband says “No”, and the wife says “Well, f*ck you then!”
This post chronicles the goings on of the author’s life, so naturally it’s very personal. It’s not like she’s writing about something that’s objective and research based. You really see her personality not only in her writing, but in her conduct in the situation she writes about. She also writes very casually, as if having a conversation, which makes it very light and easy to read. I think the added lines of dialogue she throws in also really puts you into the moment, the situations she’s describing, with her. It’s almost like you can laugh along. Overall I think this post just screams personality… I think it’s harder to describe it all than it is to just observe it.
I usually eat according to a paleo/primal diet. If you want information about that I recommend Googling around or checking out Archevore and Mark’s Daily Apple. That means no flour in my pancakes. It also means that I eat low carb. Usually you find this recipe made with pancakes, but I wanted a lower sugar (and lower carb) solution in using pumpkins.
Even though this post is about a recipe, you really hear the author’s voice throughout the post in not just her prose but in the non-recipe things she adds. It starts from the very first line with “Saturday was one of those, wow, it’s so beautiful and sunny and cool and perfect for fall pancakes and also for a bird to fly right into your glass sliding door and die.” Honestly, it’s a terrible “recipe” post because she doesn’t tell you what quantities or ratios you need when using pumpkin puree instead of bananas, but it’s still hilarious… Albeit in a very dark way. Again, it’s another post where I think the effect is far better when you read it than if you have it described to you.
In both examples I think what really made me tune into their posts is how their humor shines through. I think that when you know a person’s type of humor you get a lot of insight into the individual.
The Story
I honestly found the Blogess website because I think it went viral for a while. It was being posted on my Facebook stream constantly and I finally checked it out. I thought it was amazingly hilarious and I was busting up laughing out loud at work. My boyfriend disagreed with my assessment of it’s hilarity. He says she sounds childish and annoying. And sure, I don’t think what she did is the best way to react to a disagreement, but that doesn’t make it any less hilarious. I loved the writing, and he thought that was also horrible too.
As for the second blog post about the Pumpkin Pancakes, I found it because I was really searching for a recipe. Of course it failed to a certain degree because it didn’t specify the ratio of pumpkin puree to egg/almond butter. My first batch ended up being more of a soft pumpkin scramble instead of pancakes. Still, I thought it was memorable because of the juxtaposition of a dying bird with breakfast while maintaining a humorously detached attitude.
