Mrs. Mecomber’s Scrapbook

Mrs. Mecomber (uh, that’s me. I sometimes speak about myself in the third person) has the pleasant opportunity to review blogs for those who request a review. It’s a free review, I ask nothing in return except a visit to my humble blog to read the review.

I’m fresh from checking out an entertaining blog called The Space Turtle: odd news that never happened, stories that entertain. The stories certainly do entertain. The post titled “Russian Subs Seen at Los Angeles Coast” caught my attention. When I read that sandwich mogul Crazy Ivan has just opened up a submarine sandwich shop in California, I had a good laugh. The Space Turtle reminds me of Scrappleface with the good humor and entertaining stories– very “punny,” as my husband calls them.

The design of the blog is clean and very simple. I usually dislike dark backgrounds with light-colored font, but the color scheme complements the style of the blog’s content. There are few diversions in the sidebars, supposedly, I assume, to keep the reader’s attention focused on the content of the posts. It is effective, whether it is intentional or not. I thought the sidebars a little too sparse, but hey, too sparse is better than too overbearing.

I did a little searching to find out the who and why of the blog. I always like to know why a blogger names his blog as he does (especially something so unique as the “space turtle”) and the author was kind enough to divulge:

The idea for the space turtle came from Terry Pratchett’s Discworld series where the entire Discworld rests upon four elephants that stand on the shell of a giant turtle. My turtle is no where near that big, of course.

…What is the Space Turtle? Mainly it is a vehicle for me to write creatively and be able to share my silly stories with the entire world. Unfortunately most of the entire world has not even seen my site yet, so feel free to help me inform the entire world in any way you can. This is somewhat a “news” site, where I make up silly news, but I also post stories, some single short stories, as well as some continuing stories.

Discworld, hmm. Isn’t this from some ancient myth, similar to Atlas holding the world on his shoulders? I am not familiar with Terry Pratchett so I wasn’t sure. Anyway, it’s a quirky title for a blog filled with quirky stories. I like it. I like reading how people can take a story and be very creative with it, and present it from a different (and funny, like the Russian subs) angle. I also love how some of the links for replacement windows and wood preservation fit into the stories so well. Now that’s creativity!

One thing I didn’t like was the requirement to register to leave a comment. I know, I know, in this world of blog spam and nasty anonymous sideswipes, comment control is becoming a necessity. I just hate to see it, and I think it discourages readers from commenting when they otherwise would like to. I also don’t personally like to click on “read more” to read more. I am impatient, and my Internet connection is sometimes slow; plus, I am a very lazy clicker and I don’t like to click any more than I have to.

These days it seems hard enough to find good writing and quality content anywhere, but especially on blogs. The Space Turtle is different. Combining good content within the brevity of a blog post, you can get your craving for a good, short story fulfilled.