5 posts tagged “blogs”
And now I'm all blushy because she picked me as one of seven blogs to which she's awarded this pictorial prize (left). Squeee!
The rules are these:
- Put the logo on your blog.
- Add a link to the person who awarded you
- Nominate at least seven other blogs
- Add links to those blogs on your blog
- Leave a message for your nominee on his or her blog
So now I need to find seven other blogs of brilliance on Vox... I dare say that won't be too difficult! In no particular order:
1. Patricia Volonakis-Davis
This woman is so heaving with love and life and laughter and wisdom it's almost unreal. A champion of honesty, living life in a positive way and celebrating the differences (and similarities), she really rather rocks.
2. Forever Amber (Amber McNaught)
Although her main blog is actually elsewhere, she still deserves the prize! A former colleague in Shiny days (although we've never met since we live at opposite ends of the UK), Amber gains my admiration for running her own blogging business, writing nonstop, being absolutely hilarious, loving Disney World and understanding why flying sucks in every way imaginable. Also, she's got gorgeous red hair. *Seething with jealousy*
3. CupCate (Cate Sevilla)
Bloody hell, another former colleague. This one jumped the Shiny ship shortly after I did, but she's about to pour her own brand of anarchic, sarcastic, Californian humour all over her new baby, BitchBuzz. For which, yes, I will be writing. But I'm not handing on the prize for that reason, but because it was CupCate's sense of welcome commentary and community feel that made me want to join Vox.
4. Iliask (Ilias)
Well, he's Greek, and we stick together, okay? Also, it helps when the person you're sticking together with is witty, interesting, interested (harder to achieve, but oh so much more important) and honest. He's all about social media and environmental issues and honesty and accountability in politics -what's not to love?
5. California Pearl (Judy)
If not for the yummy food blogging and emotional honesty, she'd get the badge just for posting pics of her amazing creativity. Still wowed by that birthday card...
6. Mrs. Peel
Well, firstly the name - rocking, right? Then, creative types always get my attention (good thing I'm marrying one). Third, she gives infinitely sensible and honest advice. All while being charmingly funny. Humour is a theme here, can you tell?
7. NorthernGeek
He's a geek! That's great in itself. Also, for this post.
Please also note disclaimer: Just because I had to pick seven, doesn't mean you ain't all fabulous.
Why do I always want to do everything at once?
Right now I'm trying to write about six blogs, do my job well, write a book, work out ways to live in any country except this one (I'm not sure if I even want to leave the country, but my family are really quite stupidly nomadic and I have regular bouts of wanting to pull up roots and run away, usually at the point that it seems things are settling down) and recover from a bout of sore throaty, runny nosy, churny stomachy sickness brought on by over-zealous office air conditioning and peppered with PMT.
Poor me, right? Whinge, moan.
I want to be an expert on everything without doing the slog. Although having said that, experts these days don't seem to have much expertise. Looking through the blogs, commentary and so forth in Times Online's faith section, it doesn't seem they're saying anything I couldn't, or haven't. I should really up the ante on the faith-tagged posts and then try and convince them to let me do some guest blogging...
I'm also obsessed with food blogging at the moment, but that's nothing new. Please forgive me if I start taking photographs of everything I eat.
The Book (which I'm saying nothing about, it being beyond fledgling at the moment) is also frustrating me. I shouldn't try to write while sick but it's God-given time to do so, no? And everything's just coming out trite, twee and just fucking awful. Grr.
I always forget how much effort it takes to be talented, and how much patience I don't have.
Not that I'm one to complain constantly or owt (or lie blatantly in the first line of a post), but there are certain habits, particularly prevalent on certain blogs and web fora, that drive me to want to pull out each of my eyelashes with blunt tweezers.
1. Lol - This is not a punctuation mark. It does not make a rude comment sound funny and it does not need to be added to the end of every sentence, lol.
2. Punctuation allergy - Seriously there is a point at which a sentence ends you need to understand it's not just unreadable its really annoying especially as you also cant seem to be bothered to spell or otherwise punctuate get a life lol.
3. Capitalism - Its Really Not Necessary To Capitalise Every Single Word In A Sentence Just The Names And Places Its Even More Irksome When Combined With Punctuation Allergy, Lol.
4. Multiple Orgasm - When you have to end everything with forty five exclamation marks!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Or, even more annoying (lol):
5. Interrogation - When every question, particularly more arrogant and angry ones, ends with multiple question marks?????????????
(Oh, btw: lol)
6. Comic Sans - this makes me want to cry. You are costing typographers jobs, you know.
I'm all for shorthand, slang and abbreviation. I am. One of my Americanised habits, which Ash neither understands nor likes, is the ironic "much?" at the end of a sentence. But there's a time and a place for it. A blog, a letter, a text, a comedy programme: those are just a few acceptable media for slang. A serious, abuse-related petition? No.
As the social networking guru at work, it's my job to check out the online presence of other animal welfare groups. One MySpace page led me, not particularly surprisingly, to a petition against Huntingdon Life Sciences. This oft-attacked venue for animal experimentation, which has frequently been targetted by animal welfare activists thanks to evidence of excessive and unnecessary abuses beyond research, has had many a petition started against it.
What caused my jaw to drop was the petition text:
Huntingdon Life Sciences - a notorious laboratory that conducts the most cruel and awful experiments on animals in the name of science. They have been exposed repeatedly by undercover video of abusing the animals in their care - not only by carrying out the dreadful experiments but also by mistreating the animals punching them, kicking them - being in a position of power and control over the animals they tend to go really Auschwitz on the poor animals.
Say what?
I didn't quite know how to respond to that, so I sent it to Ashley. His response:
Yes, hon, that's exactly what they did. Now, you might or might not agree that it's a fair comparison. Personally, as a meat-eating, medicine-taking member of society, I find medical experimentation (closely monitored for its effectivess and necessity) acceptable. I don't mind if you disagree with me, that is your right. You've probably noticed the PETA posters with "Holocaust" written on cattle trucks and agree with the sentiment. I think you're wrong, but that's beside the point.Nice. So they equate animal experimentation (which, while I am not exactly overjoyed about, I see a place for) and the alleged actions of a few cruel individuals with the systematic torture and murder of millions of Jews, Communists, gay people, political prisoners, disabled people etc?
What disgusted me was the offhand way the sentence was thrown out there, as if Auschwitz were a footnote of history and could be relegated to teenspeak descriptiveness. Like, OMG.
If you want to be taken seriously, take yourself seriously. Dust off the emotive vacuous shell and start communicating with reasoned, intelligent arguments; they can be empassioned without being shallow.
(I know flashmobbing is something rather different, but I tend to think of my hit-and-run posts as flashblogging...)
Fucking genius.
