Flaming testicles: On fire or burnt out?

With a name like “Flaming testicles”, one would expect a controversial blog headed by a team of contentious males. I was in for some disappointment. Most of the content appears to do with “[taking us] on a ride of sexual self discovery”. Not particularly enlightening. It then causes me to question the relevance of this blog to budding journalists, particularly women. I say this because we as visitors to the blog are welcomed as “testes”. I highly doubt any female visiting this blog would enjoy being addressed like this. And referring to themselves as “team testicles” just gives the impression that they are a group of sexually frustrated males. One of the bloggers is in fact, a female.
One of the first things that caught my eye, apart from the clichéd blog template, was a video bar on the side. All about cars. I still fail to see the significance of this. There is, however, a beautiful though rather random slideshow of romantic sunsets. One aspect of the blog that I find absolutely pitiful is the fact that there are only eight posts. This not only shows that they did not contribute extra blog posts, but they did not even complete the required assignments. There are no hyperlinks within the articles – just some unrelated hyperlinks in the sidebar. Some blog posts are either without titles or have unimaginative ones. This blog seems to give the wrong impression of Journalism; it is explicitly implied that it involves “juicy gossip”. Flaming testicles – you’re certainly not on fire.

Blogging Manifesto by Wilhelmina Maboja

Every writer's interests,musings and sub-conscious concoctions are somehow reflected in what they write. As a young journalism student in a tiny area called Grahamstown, South africa, I want to cater to my fellow small-town-dream-big future journalists. At the same time, there are thousands of interests and expectations that the journalism student has that cannot always be catered for. The blog name Revolution Readers embodies the young student "journo" who does not limit themselves to reading only news texts, fiction, biographies, magazines and others but attempts to place their finger on every pulse of various reading texts. As a writer, I see the world as a collage of all sorts of images, people and stories that range from the macabre to the down right side-splittingly humorous. The thread Revolution Readers will follow is that of perception of the media and media texts, among other themes. Because the media is made up of a bunch of witty, cut-throat and sarcastic bunch of individuals (affectionately known as journalists, of course) the internet is the perfect source where individuals of the global crucible smelt together. With a society driven by consumerism, babies in prams throwing rattles at unsuspecting bystanders and instant gratification, it is enough to pull one's hair out when a tabloid channel is the replacement of a news channel. The Revolution Reders's blog will not only read news texts but also stick a scrutinising eye in as many magazines, novels and newspapers as possible. The aim of the blog is to show a revolutionised way of not only thinking but of media consumption. It is expected that we are to willingly construct ourselves into walking and talking information consumers but I want to remind budding journalists out there that there exists another side of the microphone-brandishing and notebook-scribbling individuals at a press conference, cell phone always on standby. Much of our media consumption is done on a large scale at the peak of our smouldering youthful selves before it becomes centred and customised according to whether you're a Bloody Mary and biscuit sort of person in the morning. This also means that much of one's perception of the internal and external world is shaped during this time period amid the turbulence of terrorist attacks, anti-clockwise flushing toilets and boring lectures. With websites such as Twiter and Eblogger, revolutionary readers such as ourselves are slowly demolishing archaic concepts of information consumption and revolutionising our world as young and critical future journalists or simply students with a broader knowledge beyond Perez Hilton and price hikes. With knowledge of the past, present and a vague but vivid idea of the future, this marks the beginning of a reader revolution.
sneak a peek on my tweet, you know you want to.