5 posts tagged “vox”
Some of the stuff in this entry is a long time coming. I'll try not to make it a novel (partially because I know you don't want to read my detailed explanations of everything that's happened to me in the past month, and partially because I should be reading right now).
I really doubt my trip to California could have been any better. Brian and I spent the entire trip being lazy, watching movies, cuddling to the point of excess, eating beyond the point of excess, and doing all those little things you miss so much when you live so far apart. Though I enjoyed all this doing-nothingness endlessly, by far the highlight of the trip was a day-trip to San Diego!
...Okay, that was supposed to be the wedding music, but whatever. Perhaps I should've gone with "dum dum da dum"? ("Here comes the bride"?) WHATEVER.
The point is, mariaelaina is getting married today! Everyone should send her congratulations. Hope the ceremony is a wonderful one, and may the life to come be even better (and, if you're lucky, contain even more cake)! =)
So in spite of this week's (month's? semester's?) persistent negative attitude, I tried to be positive and cheerful and not puke on things that are vomit-inducingly sweet. And then I get on Vox, and look at the picture on the This is Good: "Your Life Has Meaning."
Further justification for my last post.
Ok, to be honest, I'm in a good mood right now. But I was seriously hoping that somehow, they would update the This Is Good to be full of pessimistic nuggets of negativity.
Thought Inspired by a Typo: If someone slapped a bunch of people and stole only a few bucks each time, would they call it "muggets"? Just wondering.
Hope my neighborhood is doing well.
Alright, maybe I'm just feeling overly cynical today (or perhaps I'm just being a bitch right now--it's hard to say). But there are a few things about Vox that drive me just a bit insane. Don't get me wrong; I love Vox and it didn't take me long to prefer it to Livejournal. I love that I've made such cool friends already (there's not a person in my neighborhood that I don't look forward to reading, you crazy interesting people!), and I love that it's so easy to just make a few clicks and find someone new to read about or talk to.
Mental Note/Brief Digression from This Rant into Another One: Why the hell can't you end a sentence in a preposition? I love English and grammar and all that crap, but this drives me insane. Because I know that rule will be dropped in the future, and going out of your way to avoid ending a sentence with a preposition--e.g., "I love that it is so easy to make a few clicks and find someone new about whom to read"--will make you look like a silly archaic-pants. Digression complete.
But here's what tends to bug me about Vox (aside from the fact that I don't get e-mails notifying my when someone has responded to a comment I've left in their Vox): it's so freakin' sunshine-and-candy-and-flowers happy all the time. Now I wouldn't prefer something so dark and morbid as deadjournal (although when it first came out I could not stop laughing about it), but still... when I'm in a mood like I'm in today, or even when I'm just not in an over-the-top happy mood, some of the more bubbly aspects of Vox leave me feeling a little nauseated.
I know I'm not the first person to feel this way (see Doc Paradox's QotDs That Will Never See the Light of Day, for one hilarious example). But sometimes I see that occasional picture on the "This Is Good" front page that screams "I spent hours strategically planning this shot (and secretly hoping that Vox would validate my existence by declaring it 'good')," and I think... If you're not a professional or at least semi-professional photographer, stop trying so hard. Or, like today, I read something featured on the "This Is Good." I read it, and I VOMIT. Because it's so obviously fiction. It is clearly someone who sat down to write something touching or inspirational and pass it off as something that actually happened to them. But unlike such "Glurge" as the story of Robby, there are no obviously incorrect bits of information to definitively prove that oh wait, this story was made up to look nice.
The point of all this bitching is this: Call me a mean person, but I wish there was a [this is crap] option (or some equivalent). Something, anything, so that when I read garbage like
When I was 6, my parents gave me an adorable puppy named Sunshine Bubbles for Christmas. While walking Sunshine Bubbles down my perfect suburban street, I saw a homeless man, crying. When I asked him why he was crying, he responded, "Because I have no one to love, and no one loves me," and right there I gave him Sunshine Bubbles, which licked the homeless man (who smelled like flowers and not booze) all over, and the man began to laugh. Today, that man is Bill Gates, and he says if it weren't for Sunshine Bubbles he wouldn't be where he is today. Sunshine Bubbles is 30 years old now and still going strong!
and I see thirty thousand [this is good]s attached to it, I can slap a [this is crap] or a [get a life] or an [are you kidding me?] on there and feel better.
And speaking of [get a life]... after typing all of my bitterness out, perhaps I should go practice what I preach.
I've decided that at least for now, I'm going to reserve this Vox thing for my obsession with music as well as a sort of chronicle of what I've been reading. When more people I know start embracing their inner Vox, I'll probably switch over to a more day-to-day, read-my-whiny-entries style a la LJ.
That being said, I just finished my first adventure into the world of D. H. Lawrence.
Sadly, I can't say I'm all that impressed. The writing was beautiful; I think some of the endnotes even compare his writing style to the Impressionistic painting style of the book's main character, Paul - which makes sense, given that this novel is apparently all kinds of autobiographical. But I just never bonded with the characters (who bounce between loving one another and hating one another so quickly you might as well be reading tennis), and frankly... the whole mother-son near love affair bit is too much. Of course there's no real physical ickiness, but there are some definite implications. It's Oedipustastic!!
My parents brought me some Colin Hay back from Florida, and I am eternally grateful. I'm also eternally grateful to Zach Braff, who tossed Colin Hay all up in the Scubs and Garden State goodness; without him, I would be Hayless. If you're looking for some soothing acoustic guitar singer-songwriter action, here ya go. If you just want to hear what happened to that guy that sang "Do ya come from the land down under?!" well then, here ya go again.
