Month: January 1970

Ryan Joseph Hudson has a red and black livejournal with yellow tints and white print. The journal is entitled ‘Belligeretron,’ and is littered with pictures of Asian people. This immediately begs the questions – who is this Mr. Hudson, and why does he take pictures of Asian people?

The answer to this question is, quite naturally, revealed in Ryan’s journal entries. Chronicling the adventures of an expatriate elementary school teacher somewhere in Taiwan, Belligereton is, all in all, a fairly entertaining read. Mr. Hudson has a tendency to review everything he comes into contact with, whether it be records, movies, concerts, animated web series, posters, Taiwanese politics, or even the children in his class. After reading a couple entries, it becomes fairly obvious that Mr. Hudson has an opinion, and that he’ll mince no words in making it known.

Fortunately for Ryan, his in-your-face rants are actually fairly amusing. In describing a show he attends in Taiwan, he criticizes not only the Taiwanes music scene’s apparent lack of talent, but its choice in drugs, as well. Somehow, his rant comes out sounding strangely humorous.

Where Ryan’s journal really shines, however, is in his description of the children he works with. Mr. Hudson might not be flattering in his depiction of these 8 or 9 year olds, yet you find yourself strangely attached to these children he describes – while they often seem lost and unresponsive, you can almost imagine the delicious awkwardness of a white man facing asian children, with only minimal skills in the medium they communicate in. Somehow, these vignettes come across as entertaining in the most charming way.

All in all, therefore, belligeretron is definitely worth a read. While it may come across as random and eclectic at times, solid writing carries it through, and Ryan Hudson manages to keep his readers interested in his rants.Belligeretron

The challenge all personal weblogs face is, invariably, keeping an audience interested. There are ostensibly two ways to do this. The first is to lead an extraordinarily exciting life; the second is to provide enough insight into the mundane as to make your account of the day to day events in your life worth reading. Apart from a semester spent studying in Rome, or a having a hurricane pass through her district in 2003, or getting married and having a son at the tender age of 20, Ashley Sisson’s life is not exactly terribly fascinating. After ploughing through almost 200 entries spread over just over 2 years, I regretfully have to conclude that she’s not particularly insightful, either.

Before I come across as being overly presumptuous, I’d like to state that, above all, weblogs, especially those being reviewed here, should hold some appeal for a larger audience. Therein lies the problem with this particular weblog. Ashley’s account of her college life focuses mainly on classes she takes, grades she receives for them, and random musings about her boyfriend. Eventually, she dumps said boyfriend (Aaron), gets with a new boyfriend (JD), becomes pregnant, and gets married. She stops going to school, and decides to work in a hotel in Victoria, Texas. Throughout all these recollections, she references characters we have no connection to, or interest in.

Ashley’s description of her friends is brief and cursory, so we never really get a feeling for these peripheral characters in her life, and, at the same time, never really become attached to any of them. It seems, therefore, that this weblog is much like any other personal weblog out there – something which only interests people who already have some vested interest in the characters represented.

That being said, Ashley is by no means a bad writer. She conveys her thoughts and emotions competently – the reader who perseveres in going through all her entries will definitely come out with a sense that he or she knows this character, this english song bird. However, as Ashley says on November 25th, 2003, about a short story she wrote, ‘I wouldn’t read all of that unless I had to grade it.’

Indeed, Ashley, indeed.sitdiary The Shadowlands

My initial impression: this is a weblog about someone’s (a teenage boy’s?) obsession with how women look when they are smoking. Guess what? I was right.

This is a blog with pictures of women smoking and the author’s reflections about how that makes him feel. The author wants to figure out why he finds smoking women sexy. (Isn’t it obvious why this is sexy? Well, not exactly, because this is a full blown “fetish.”)

The author has a smoking fetish, even though he is a non-smoker and is otherwise very “anti-smoking” (oh, the irony). He claims to not even like smokers! (Unless the smoker is a woman blowing smoke in his face. That he likes.) He is trying, through the blog, to sort out his personal reasons for finding this particular behavior attractive. There are some mild “x-rated” stories (not about the author, but contributed by others with he same fetish), but nothing too graphic. None of the pictures are graphic (unless you have a smoking fetish). There are candid shots of women smoking in public places and shots of celebrities smoking. I did find the full baring of someone’s sexual obsession more graphic than any of the explicit sexual references. This is a truly intimate view into the author’s fetish.

Altogether, I don’t like the way this particular service works (BlogOnTheWeb). The links were not well organized and it was hard to distinguish which links were parts of the blog and which were links to other sites. It was also hard to read the archives because they were a series of links rather than the full posts. It was hard to get oriented to the blog. The design is ugly and only barely functional. There is a particularly ugly ad banner at the very top of the page. This blog service seems to have very little to recommend it. I had no problem clicking through links, but I didn’t always know where I was when I got there. There are real navigation problems on this service.

The writing was adequate, though the tone was all over the place. In parts it was self-reflective and personal, in others, it was purely about the author’s fetish and exactly which aspects of watching a woman smoke he finds attractive. This serves his stated purpose of understanding his fetish, but if you are not curious about it or don’t share this fetish, those sections are rather slow going. There was not a consistent story line to follow. The theme, the fetish, is the only constant, but the weblog doesn’t fall in coherently around the main idea.

There is not much humor in this blog, nor is there meant to be, but it certainly could use it. There is something humorous about a virginal, non-smoking 18-year-old boy being obsessed with women smoking, women addicted to cigarettes and interpreting all women’s smoking actions as a subtle (or not so subtle) part of foreplay. But, of course, this is a very serious matter to the author. He is worried that perhaps something is wrong with him and he also does not know how this fetish will affect his future sexual/romantic relationships. This is a lot of pressure for someone still looking forward to beginning that part of his life. Still, for his own happiness, I hope he finds a way to lighten up, even if he does not intend to light up.

I cannot recommend this site to general readers, but if you have a smoking fetish or you are interested in fetishes, in general, you will find something of interest here. My rating: 2.5.Smoking Women Are Sexy

This is my journey… is basically what you get, a personal blog about 23 year old female. She lives in Canada, just brought a new car and her archives go all the way back to September 2002, so there was quite a bit to read!

The blog itself loads up into a nice blue 3 columed blog, with the writing in the middle. The layout of the blog is well done, the links work, the about section gives you an insight into the author.

There were some entry’s that made me smile and other’s that I skimmed through as they just didn’t draw me in. The writing style of the author herself is about her outlooks and thoughts. Some are interesting, other’s just didn’t appeal.

As most personal blog’s I find it hard to keep myself interested as I don’t tend to find much that spikes my interest enough to draw me back. But it’s definately worth a peek-a-boo at if personal blog’s are your thing!this is my journey …

When I read the tag line: “I am a non smoking teenager trying to get to grips with my smoking fetish. A woman dragging deep on her cigarette is so incredibly sexy and this blog is for me to try to work out why,” the first thing that popped into my head was, “Well, he certainly gets points for originality.”

Originality is all over “Smoking Women are Sexy.” It’s an entire weblog where one person describes his attraction for smoking women and how this fetish has been kept in the closet. There are candid photographs and interest blogs on poignant subjects. I was wondering, after reading the tag line, whether this blog would be a bunch of pictures of sexy actresses, models, etc. lighting up, with little discussion besides some crude comments. But, I was glad to find that the author talks about some very good issues pertaining to smoking and dating someone that smoked.

One such example is entitled “Long term issues and the sexy Tara Reid.” Here, the author brings up a good point: long-term smoking ages the skin. What would it be like to see your partner age quickly due to their habit? This is a good point that was raised, and there are other entries that raise good points, as well.

I did wish there was a section with a little on the author. I would not have wanted much; I would have been satisfied with a little background information, even very vague things or a quick list of hobbies. Since 99% of the website was this man’s fetish, I did find myself wishing for background information to make him more well-rounded in my eyes. Otherwise, it seemed like a person who spent way too much time thinking about femme fatales smoking.

So, if you like the off-beat, the slightly kooky type of weblogs, I suggest you give “Smoking Women are Sexy” a read.Smoking Women Are Sexy