NEXT MONTH...
...a review of the online journal "Beelzebub's Bathroom Pass," in which a young girl struggles with her life as a devil worshiper and elementary school hall monitor. 

COMING IN APRIL...
...the daily musings of an idiot-savant, committed for life in a state mental hospital: "Cooperstown's Spam-Flavored Gull Typewriter." 

ABOUT THE REVIEWER...
...Ronald N. Leng has been extensively researching and reading online journals for over 24 days. His credits include writing for such luminary online publications as "Where's My Goddamn Bologna Sandwich?" and most recently for the daily self-pleasuring website pudwhack.com

ABOUT ONLINE JOURNAL REVIEW...
...begun in early 2001, Online Journal Review has become the #1 website for on-line journals.  Because of Online Journal Review, many journals have attracted meaningful attention and gone on to great  success.        

     TOO WAY OUT FOR ITS OWN GOOD

     I have to admit that my first impression of Way Out In Left  was not a good one.  Actually, I must say that my first and second impressions weren't good at all.  The more I read it, the more I disliked it.

     First off, the graphics are rather simple and not exactly pleasing to the eye.  With a black background, yellow font and pretty much no graphics whatsoever, I developed a headache after about 3 entries.  The pages load quickly, but credit for that should go to the web host, not webmaster.  But since content should always come before form, I was willing to overlook the author's lack of website savvy.

     Yet, after actually reading the journal entries themselves, I realized that the web design is a minor problem compared to the rest of the journal. 

     The most disturbing aspect of Way Out In Left is the content itself.  After a couple of "traditional" journal entries, Way Out veers way off course, taking a direct route through Bizarre, past Odd and Weird and finally ending up at Stupid.  The author, Glenn Arnold, posts entries that include, among other things, Hitler's home page, a mock interview with ESPN's Baseball Tonight, and plenty of stories about tulip bulbs, crack addicts, and assorted masturbatory experiences.  I kept asking myself, "Where are the journal entries?"  Isn't an online journal supposed to be just that?  Confusion sets in.

     Well, after a second read, I found that he did indeed have a few traditional journal entries about his life in Fairfax, Virginia, his job as a drugstore manager, and his interaction with his friends, girlfriend, and ex-wife.  Yet such entries were few and very far between.  In one entry called "Rather Dull Updates," he talks about softball, his cat, his current job situation, and his love for hockey.  But then, in the very next entry, he's simply quotes some Jim Morrison poetry (rather bad poetry, I might add) and moves on.  Just when you feel like your finally going to get to know a little more about Glenn, he pulls the rug out from under you.  One second he's talking about how he longs to move back to his hometown, and the next second he's going into a page-long faux email war with Netscape.

     After a third run-through of Way Out, however, I did find a lot of little things that I should give kudos to, such as an extensive credits page and oft-recurring side comments that Glenn posts on many of the entries (such as noting that a pitch he struck out on was actually ball four, in his entry about an all-night softball tournament).  These little things do help this "journal" limp along, as it barely seems to do.  Also, some of the more normal stories do have a humorous quality to them (such as the one about him standing up to his fourth-grade teacher) and every few entries the reader is pleasantly surprised with such anecdotes.

    Yet, the funny stories and side comments happen so rarely that it's not really worth slogging through entries about Britney Spears saying the f-word just to get to the good stuff.  Even after my fourth reading of Way Out, I simply couldn't stomach the diatribes about farting in Chevy Suburbans anymore.

     So here's hoping that Glenn will get his act together and realize that an online journal is supposed to be a strict personal recount of one's life, not a open forum for insanity.  But in the name of journal reviewing, I'll keep checking on a daily basis to see if Way Out In Left finally shapes up to be a true and traditional journal.  Until it does shape up, though, this is one journal that won't likely attract any meaningful attention or go on to great success.

- Ronald N. Leng