[blogfocus tuesday] the boys cut loose

The moment you try to make a distinction between the best men’s and women’s writing, you’re on a sticky wicket and people can equally point to a hundred pieces which would disprove your hypothesis.

Still, I do persist that there is a subtle difference in style, in approach. Dare I say it’s maybe the difference between ‘power and range’ and ‘unerring accuracy and roundness’? Perhaps not. Well, you be the judge, as the boys flex their muscles this evening:

1 Dead as a Dodo was always going to be a great concept – to write up events and pass them off as if they were obituaries - but great concepts are as dead as dodos if they’re not accompanied by some nifty writing, as in the death of Free Will, peace be upon it:

Free Will was an unpopular child – frequently getting into fights with philosophers who felt their decision to gang up on Free Will and attempt to beat it to a pulp were all preordained by bearded men on Mount Olympus given to chucking thunderbolts about and changing into swans and bulls to ravish young maidens. Later on it would grow up be an unpopular adult, frequently getting into fights with Logical, Biological and Theological determinists who thought their decision to gang up on Free Will was preordained by past events, the contents of their genes or a bearded man in the sky with a strange resemblance to Dr Rowan Williams.

2 The rant is a form of writing many ladies do well but for sheer effortless style, the Periodic Englishman takes some beating. Here he explodes at the escalation of atrocities and dispiriting cr-p which is going on in the world just now, peace not be upon the perpetrators:

What is wrong with people? Where in the name of God are the good guys? How is it possible to twiddle one’s thumbs as these babies cry out in despair? A club to the head and a knife through young hearts and a mother slumped dead in her chair. A blood soaked mountain stinking of death. Too much to take in, too much to deal with, and all so very far away that it should just feel fine. It really doesn't though. I’ve got to quit this Rwanda habit immediately, because it simply does my head in. This shattering confirmation that the world has gone to hell destroys the will to live.

Does it not, sweet Romeo?

3 One of my very favourites, if you can see past the c—ts and f---s, is the Reactionary Snob and I enjoy him more in cruise mode than in overdrive but each to his or her own:

I am an anachronistic, mud-soaked old thing who likes things the way they are. I like, when I get in to my house, to be met by a rather stiff gin & tonic. I like my son to eat at the table in the fashion that the Booby and I have instructed him, rather than doing his 'pig eating slops' impression and I am not too keen on the new fashion of footballers kissing each other when celebrating a goal - not that I'm a homophobe, I just don't think it's the done thing. I am, as you may have guessed, inherently conservative.

Nine more boy bloggers here.