Empty Bookshelf Reviews

We’re at it again?

Written by

Nate

in

,

Our website

So I hear we’re starting another project. Wonderful. A website is always something I’ve wanted to see if I could help keep afloat, and as I have nothing really better to do in my spare time lately, and I’ve been feeling rather judgmental, I think it’s worth a try. Reviewing things seems to be a nice concept, and allowing it to be an incredibly broad range of things to review is perfectly wonderful, giving me the freedom to review everything from “getting orange oil on your hands when you peel an orange”, to the atrocity that are UGZ boots, which might I add, doesn’t stand for anything, nor is it spelled remotely correct (the correct spelling would be “Ughs”, as in many grunting sounds made by the idiots who wear them while attempting to communicate with people on the streets of L.A…. which is another valid point: why wear HUGE furry, hideously colored suede boots that get dirty very quickly and are supposed to keep you warm, in the WARMEST AND DIRTIEST city west of the Mississippi river?…. where was I?) Oh yes. This website.
It would be nice to think that many people would enjoy reading the rantings and ravings of a few individuals who consider themselves to be a lot funnier than they probably are, and who value their opinions over anyone else’s. I don’t however think that this may be the case. My fear going in to this is that it will end up much like “The Onion”, coming up with continuously funny headlines and topics that follow the same formula, and have articles that drag on past their welcome. My hope for us is that if nobody else reads it, that it will at least keep us entertained, and provide many inside jokes for years to come. My far-reaching hope would be that it wouldn’t get old and that it would catch on with a hipster college student who would then pass it on, or possibly post our link on his facebook account so that all 551 of his friends (most of whom aren’t really his friends, but minor acquaintances who are too passive to reject him, even though they think he’s quite the creep) can see it, visit us, and pass us on to their more probable list of 37 friends. Realistically, though, I think reviews of things are too focused of a topic to create a website about that would hopefully last more than 2 months. Hopefully by that time we’ll be able to expand the website into other areas such as eating and sleeping, which we’re quite good at.

***½

The concept of this website gets 3.5 stars out of 5, as it is an incredibly wonderful way to give us something to do and tell you how to live your lives in the process. It has the potential to provide hours of entertainment for readers, and shape their lives for years to come. However, the downside is that it could get old real soon, and provide us with nothing but an excuse not to get real jobs.

Nate

Comments

10 responses to “We’re at it again?”

  1. Dan Avatar
    Dan

    Well, some of us have real-ish jobs.

  2. Adam Avatar
    Adam

    Just to clarify, Dan did not mean to imply that he had a real(ish) job…just that there ARE people, whom we might call our peers, out there (somewhere) that have jobs and serve only to give us hope, should we choose to roll out of bed for more than a trip to the fridge/crapper.

  3. Dan Avatar
    Dan

    What’s that candyman?

  4. Adam Avatar
    Adam

    Proves nothing, since we know you have the resources and the complete lack of focus towards projects of any value (see: this website) that would allow you time to conjure up a counterfeit business card. Steal me some X-ray specs and you may convince me.

  5. Dan Avatar
    Dan

    Well, frequently and thoroughly sexually assaulting animals doesn’t automatically make one a veterinarian…

  6. Adam Avatar
    Adam

    Have I ever claimed to be one? And the juries are still out on what constitutes sexual assault of an animal. (I dare you to respond and make this chain of random insults even longer)

  7. Nate Avatar
    Nate

    It’s nice to see that you’ve taken the time to visit the site at least 4 times, yet you still haven’t written any productive reviews. I know I’m only a junior member of the staff still, but it’s like the sasha fletcher factor. When he’s around, all the blame gets shifted from me. It would be an honor if you took sasha’s role in this website. Even if it was a review of your lunch.

  8. Dan Avatar
    Dan

    seconded.

  9. Empty Bookshelf Reviews » Block I of CUCVM, the Human Ribcage (1984 model), and Misc.

    […] Okay, I’ll be honest…I’ve been slacking it on this website. Many (meaning the eight dedicated readers we have) may remember when Nate even semi-demanded me to start posting. Maybe it was because I was a little too proud (probably not), but mostly it was due to time constraints and the simple fact that I have very little occurring in my life that I consider worthy of rating or that I could make it remotely entertaining. Now that I’ve graced the pages of this website, does this mean that I’ve overcome these obstacles? Absolutely not. Unfortunately for all of us, this probably won’t stop any of our readers from continuing. So, now that I’ve managed to take advantage of what little downtime is so rarely presented to me during my endless pursuit of a respectable career, what have I chosen to review? I knew my topic had to be gripping, with bouts of violence, wit, romance, all while being constantly intelligent and entertaining. Of course, I threw all of these notions out the window when Dan decided to yet again pansy-fy me publicly (again, having readers in the single digits makes it no more public than usual, but it’s the principle that the public could eventually read it). So gather ’round as Adam recounts his version of the story. […]

  10. Empty Bookshelf Reviews » Empty Bookshelf’s First 100 Reviews

    […] August 11th, 2006 Nate Oh, those kids. Always at it. You guys really shouldn’t’ve. So here we are at the first of what may be a few reviews of our first milestone, 100 reviews. Not only is this the first review of this milestone, but of what could be very many milestones. We here at the Bookshelf like the word “milestone”, and don’t believe in Thesauruses. So here we go, our first hundred in a nutshell. The first actual review happened way back in October of 2005… remember that time before the Steelers won the superbowl, before “Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire” movie, before Dick Cheny accidentally shot his friend while hunting, and before Bristol, United Kingdom celebrated the 200th birthday of Isambard Kingdom Brunel (actually April 9) by relighting the Clifton Suspension Bridge? Dan’s first review was aimed at complaining about post-game hype surrounding an extremely long baseball game. Of course our readers probably care about boring Astros-Braves baseball games as much as they seemed to care about my terrible review of the dictionary. Even though that picture was good, it was nowhere near the five star quality of this image. I too tried my hand at reviewing food, but it was an utter failure. On the plus side, my review of the letter to the editor is one of my favorites, and my first review actually got eight comments, including this link. The few following that grilled cheese review focused mostly on music, my opinion of “Good Night, and Good Luck”, a particular episode of Trading Spouses, and Dan’s opinion of My opinion of “Good Night, and Good Luck”. Dan also said that the Colbert report wouldn’t last, which seems to have been proven false. October seemed to be us finding our footing. November saw Dan’s Cleveland Trifecta, a diatribe against horses, a road that he liked, an episode of “Coach”, and his complaints about how much he aches, now that he’s an old man. I started the month strong with the Beth review, but struggled through the rest of it, with lame reviews like Thursday, a type of tooth”paste” that doesn’t work for me, and an insightful, yet completely unnecessary complaint about my nosebleeds. My FAO Schwarz review kinda made up for them, but the highlight of the month involved Dan and I sparring about how Christmas is coming earlier every year, and something about me being a time-traveling sheep. November didn’t see much improvement over October, but the Christmas stuff was entertaining. December got a bit better, even with a few less reviews. I busted out the old NES games, for a few reviews that I swear are not trying to copy off of XE, another personal favorite, Christmas Cards, Adam’s first review, Dan throwing the hate down on Pitchfork media, and a surprising amount of people commenting on Roger Ebert’s take on video games. The biggest advance in December was the pop-ins, that added added some clarity to our parentheses-obsessed-writing. December was a highly engaging and entertaining month, even with only nine reviews. 2006 rolled around, and January saw Dan get political, review half of a book, not like warm winters a lot. I only contributed three of ten reviews that month, but all three of them were relatively alright, mostly because “Where In Time is Carmen Sandiego”, and “The Simpsons” after season 9 is so easy to complain about. January’s topics fell off a little. February, while being the shortest month, was also a monster for us, as far as number goes. A whopping twenty-one reviews. To be fair, 17 of them came in our envelope-pushing live superbowl reviews, the biggest stunt pulled in the history of reviewing anything and everything on a five star scale. The only other reviews of any substance were my Gauntlet Review of the Beatles albums, and Dan’s digging up of our one-issue underground high-school newspaper. Despite the big stunt, and two good reviews, February was kinda lacking. March just plain sucked. Four reviews total. One by me. Three mega-reviews by Dan. April was slightly better, with another of my top five of my reviews, Legacy of the Wizard. The other four I would give an average of 3 stars to, but since there were only four during the month, that’s going to cancel out the Legacy of the Wizard bonus and take it down a half star. For my money, May was our best month yet. Dan’s contribution was the lengthy three-part TV landscape review. I threw out quality stuff with my Songs for Silverman, and Degree Navigator reviews. The shorter American Dreamz and Da Vinci Code video game reviews were serviceable, but my immense LOST season 2 review tops everything. June fell off a bit. Four reviews total. Split two and two. Mine were based on a ridiculous news story, and anger at other people for coincidentally coming up with the same ideas as me. Dan tried to put everything into perspective by seeing how well the entire history of human ingenuity and artistry stacked up in the interstellar community, and complained a little about how the national geography of roadways isn’t designed to suit his needs. July was filled with the (I gotta admit my ignorance as to the relevance of this phrase… and wikipedia does nothing to help) Navel Gazing set. I was had for a few minutes by a Jimmy Kimmel hoax, and I thought the critics were a little too harsh on Shyamalan. Despite the mediocre numbers for the month, I’d give it a 3.5 This gives us a per-month average of 3 stars, which isn’t too shabby. In my first ever review, I reviewed the concept of this website. I claimed that we wouldn’t be able to keep it fresh, that we’d run out of ideas, and that we wouldn’t be able to stay somewhat funny at least. I believe my exact quote was “It has the potential to provide hours of entertainment for readers, and shape their lives for years to come. However, the downside is that it could get old real soon, and provide us with nothing but an excuse not to get real jobs.” Well, I think we’ve significantly proven wrong every single point that I just brought up. We have 29 categories, 19 subcategories, and even two sub-sub categories. We’re still writing about reasonably different things, and while we may have slacked on the funny in recent months, we still bring the ‘A’ game on occasion. As far as my quote goes, I’d be willing to bet that we’ve provided maybe a few hours of entertainment for a handful of people, which probably did nothing to shape their lives for even the near future. On the upside, it hasn’t gotten old, and we have gotten real-ish jobs. For all of these reasons, I’m willing to up our star rating by half a star, over the average rating of 3. I’ve also realized that my method of calculating the rating might not be the best, so I’m gonna throw in another half star for a final rating of 4 stars out of five. And for those of you playing along at home, yes, this technically is the 100th review and so therefore should be included. This review receives 3 stars for not having much to offer in the way of witty musings, and for having a faulty overall rating method, but for packing so many subjects and links into one review. […]

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