I wonder if they finally got a cut-tag feature? From the look of things, though, it seems that no one I know is posting to Vox, so I guess it doesn't really matter. But I thought I would update as long as I was here. *Waves at the world*
What are your top 10 most-played songs currently?
In no particular order:
Tennessee Girl by Sammy Kershaw
Breakfast After Ten by Blue October
You're Gonna Love Me by Chris Young
Shine On You Crazy Diamond by Pink Floyd
Invincible by Ok Go
Dirty Little Secret by The All American Rejects
Fire of Unknown Origin by Blue Oyster Club
Hanging by a Moment by Lifehouse
Sakura Kiss by Chieco Kawabe
Faster Kill Pussycat by Paul Oakenfold and Britany Murphy
Did lj go down or something? I can only load pages about 1/5 of the time. Is everyone here, or did we decamp to greatest journal?
Goes off to look.
I don't really have anything to say, but I occasionally feel guilty about never posting anything here. But I did have to snag this new design, because I think it's absolutely gorgeous! I hope they transfer it over to livejournal soon, because I'd definitely like to use it there.
Well, not really, but I haven't posted on this blog forever.
The QOTD is something like "What magazines do you subscribe to."
The only magazine subscription I never let lapse is TV Guide, which just shows the level of my TV addiction. I actually started subscribing to TV Guide when I was working nights and my local paper didn't show TV listings past midnight; I needed to be able to know what was on the hours I was up on my days off. Of course, today's TV Guide doesn't carry those listings, either, but I do like reading all the insider stuff and knowing what's going to be on my shows in the upcoming weeks.
Magazines I would still be subscribing to if I had the $$$: The Economist, the Utne Reader, the New Republic, Atlantic Monthly, and Ms. I have had subscriptions to all of these at some point or another, usually gifts, and I like the range of political opinion you get from reading all of them. I'd also consider subscribing to the New Yorker (I love their essays) and to the National Catholic Reporter, if I had the money--I often read these in the library.
Sooo, first post. *looks around* I feel like I should introduce myself or something, but since most of the people who will see this already know me, I don't think it is necessary.
Why do I have a Vox account? Because I'm a sheep. And because, from what I saw, it can do some things with media that might be interesting in a 'I can post music/video/other stuff here and link it to my lj' kinda way. But mostly, I'm a sheep. :P
I'm still not sure I quite get the book function--is this just to let people know what you're reading, or what? But I uploaded an old favorite (Annie Dillard, For the Time Being), something I read recently (Never Let Me Go) and a book I think should be more widely read (Dale Peck, Drift House).
Hmm. Not being able to cut tag for spoilers is annoying when talking about books. Let me see what I can say without being spoilery:
For the Time Being is nonfiction, and it's a little hard to explain the writing style. Essays, sort of, but sometimes a pastiche of interesting quotes and anecdotes spliced together that don't seem to go together, until you get to the very end of the book and can see the complete picture. For a religion geek such as myself, it's really fun--the book draws, among other places, from Hasidism, Christian mysticism, Buddhism, and evolutionary theory, and it's a long meditation on impermanence, transience, and the worth of the individual when measured against the vast scale of time and space.
It's also a really probing exploration of whether it is possible to believe in a loving God in the face of evolution. It's not the *fact* of evolution that causes problems for Dillard--she assumes evolutionary theory is true--it's the consequences. The book opens with this: "I have in my hands the standard manual of human birth defects. Smith's Recognizable patterns of Human Malformation, fourth edition, by Kenneth Lyons Jones, M.D., professor of pediatrics at UC-San Diego, 1988, is a volume to which, in conscience, I cannot recommend your prolonged attention. In vivid photographs, it depicts many variations in our human array."
All in all, it may be my favorite book; it's definitely my favorite work of non-fiction.
Never Let Me Go is a hard book to talk about without spoiling, but I will say this: it is unbelievably creepy, yet very human. I guessed the twist very early in the book--I think probably anyone in fandom would--but as it turns out, the book is really more about the relationships between the characters than the twisted scenario they're living in. This book didn't actually impact me that much when I was actually reading it, but I found that I couldn't stop thinking about it for days afterwards.
Drift House is a children's fantasy, sort of Lemony Snicket meets the Chronicles of Narnia, but I found it very enjoyable. It follows three children in their adventures on the sea of time. The characters are enjoyable, and there are pirates and mermaids, which is always a plus for me, but I also liked the philosophical underpinnings of the universe a lot. I'm looking forward to the 2nd book in the series, that comes out in January.
Ok, the "soda v. pop" question of the day is EXTREMELY LAME (though if you actually care, I grew up with "pop" in the Midwest, then went to college in New Jersey and got brainwashed into "soda," which I have basically used ever since, much to the amusement of my midwestern family), so I've invented my own. It is:
now that you have a Vox account, how many blogs do you have?
I was thinking that with my norwich36 lj, and certain sockpuppet accounts I created for sockpuppet day, and my backup greatest journal account, and now Vox, I now have FIVE blogs! And also five separate email accounts (work, RL name @ yahoo, two for the lj accounts, and one new gmail I just got yesterday. Plus I'm thinking of getting a gmail account in my RL name too.)
All I can say is, I find people like msscribe very impressive, because I can't even keep this relatively small number of blogs and email accounts straight!
Wow, the fact that Vox is for the older crowd is clearly indicated by the HUGE fonts of everything on the posting page. Since I'm expecting to actually need reading glasses in another year or so, I'm not really complaining, but this posting interface looks SO strange. And I think I have to spend some time figuring out the commands.
Is it true there is no cut tag on this thing? If that's the case, I may need to reconsider using Vox for personal stuff and lj for fannish stuff, since I always want to cut-tag personal stuff; I can't imagine it isn't boring for 90% of my flist. Or neighborhood, as the case may be.
But I'll take the chance this once to bore you all. I am car free. That is about 70% by choice and 30% various economic and other reasons. I know someday I'll probably need a car, but right now I live in walking distance to work and my city has fairly decent bus service. Not as good as a major city, but much better than the average medium-size town. And since I am a (lazy) environmentalist, not to mention a lazy person in general, not owning a car at all is a good way to make myself live more sustainably and also to get some exercise occasionally. Forcing myself to exercise is a very good thing, since I am definitely, um, fan-shaped.
However. Normally I would NOT choose to take a 30 minute walk when it is 107 degrees outside. I made this dentist appointment months ago, though, and one thing being carfree requires is that you take shopping opportunities when they arise, since you can't carry nearly as much stuff on the bus as you can in a car. So after I got out of the dentist, I went shopping for a while, and ended up with my backpack stuffed and about three other small bags of groceries. So of course this would be the day when the bus broke down.
It was pretty dramatic, actually. It started billowing huge clouds of black smoke about 5 minutes after I got on, and the driver was in constant conference with the dispatcher deciding what to do. They decided he should try to make it downtown, so we preceded at about 2 miles per hour for an interminable half hour, during which more and more and more people got on, none of them particularly fragrant because it is damn hot outside. Finally it broke down altogether, a little less than a mile from my destination. I guess I could have waited on the bus with everyone else for the replacement, but between the eau de extremely unwashed sweaty people and the smoke from the engine overheating, I thought I was going to throw up, so I thought making the trek to my office (which was closer at that point than my house) was the better part of valor. And I can attest that 107 degrees (that's 41.6 to you Celsius people) is HOT. I actually walked a meandering path that took a little longer just to stay in the shade, since it felt like at least a five-degree temperature difference. And boy, was I ever kicking myself for drinking 9/10 of my water while waiting for the bus.
So there you have it: the valiant and heart-breaking sacrifices of the car free. I'm not sure I'm going to be ready to leave my office for home for a couple hours--I was tired enough when I finally got here that I took the elevator the one flight up the stairs (something I regularly make fun of several of my coworkers for doing!!) and spent ten minutes trying to figure out when they had changed the locks when I simply was using the wrong key! Fortunately, it was a few minutes after five and everyone had already gone home, so there was no one there to witness my heat-induced stupidity.
I have to leave for the dentist in 5 minutes, but thanks so much for itsaslashything for giving me the invite!
When I have more time, I'll post more clever stuff here. Right now I'm just being a lemming, because having 3 livejournals and a greatest journal account just ISN'T ENOUGH. I must accumulate more, more, more ways of being annoying to the whole world!
