That seven interests meme
Oct. 20th, 2007 10:09 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
taratemimaI am combining the requests of ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
mfoley and rubynye.
Reply to this post and I will pick seven interests of yours I'd like to know more about. Write a post about them in your journal and pass it on to others.
Also, if anyone has any 'seven interests' posts I missed, let me know so I can participate.
childfree: I don't want kids. I hate loud noises. I have a very hard time deciphering nonverbal cues, much less cues from babies who cannot speak just yet. I freely admit to being childish at times, and not the sort of model of decorum and reason a child needs. My generative energies tend to be given to fictional characters. I've taken care of younger siblings, and didn't like it. My mom wanted us, but still, I was acutely aware of compromises and sacrifices she made. Plus, the media is full of ways how you, as a mother, are screwing up your child's life. Yeah, no.
It doesn't mean I hate children. It means that I regard having children as an option, not as a default. I wish more people felt the same way I do before becoming unhappy parents raising unhappy children. If they want kids, I wish them well and hope they think carefully.
I don't like the idea that I am some kind of freak for not really having much of biological clock.
Other than that, I tend not to go on foaming rampages that get featured on Encyclopedia Dramatica and all that. I guess I keep it as a interest so, you know, people do not assume not 'wanting kids == foaming at the mouth about losing Harry Potter costume contests'.
One good book I've read about it is Pronatalism: The Myth of Mom and Apple Pie
purple: I like it. I look good in it. It stands out. If something I am wearing is not a neutral color, it's often purple. I like to own purple things.
psychedelia: Oddly enough, for someone who hasn't habitually used psychotropic drugs, I really enjoy listening to music with spacey sound effects, heavily processed guitar, instruments from other places, and evern stranger lyrics. Admittedly, this is a pretty broad category. Let's see, bands I like, besides what is listed in my interests: Hawkwind, Funkadelic, 13th Floor Elevators, some Tool, Fairport Convention. I could even include Massive Attack, Current 93, Coil, Neutral Milk Hotel, the comparatively fluffier music of later Swans, Holy Modal Rounders, Love, Hendrix, Sly, early Bangles (SRSLY), Julian Cope, Robin Hitchcock, Tear Garden, My Bloody Valentine, Orbital, The Church, Cocteau Twins, the Chills, Echo & the Bunnymen, This Mortal Coil. Flaming Lips and Prince are OK. I like bands who seem to draw from their self-contained own world, from childhood stories to esoteric beliefs. I like exploring these worlds. I like the contact high maybe, the bursts of synthesasia.
Tom Lehrer: Once, while having a 'e-mail people and invite them to a resturant I like and have them meet each other' event I did in college, we all started singing Tom Lehrer songs while waiting outside for a table. It's that whole 'smart people and funny things they find' attraction.
However, I cannot ever remember 'The Elements Song'
real person fiction: Somehow, my love of alternate universes and historical fiction has led me to put real living people who don't know me from Eve into stories. There are some topics I will not write about, but they are too boring to go into. Occasionally, I like to read other people's stories. I used 'fiction' instead of 'slash' for my interest because I actually like non-pr0ny stories and stories with m/f and f/f along with m/m (and other combinations).
Part of the reason I write it is, and I am embarrassed to say, I am more in touch with new music than with new TV shows, and a sizable chunk of fanfiction with not-real people are based on that.
Leonard Cohen: Canadian songwriter and poet. I like the 'small universes' and the melancholia of his music, but not necessarily the keyboards in his later stuff. Also wrote Beautiful Losers, which I have yet to read.
Syd Barrett: All right, I started listening to him because of the 'OMG he went crazy on LSD!1111bangeleven' aspect. But his solo work is gentle and full of free association. Reminds me of the Escher painting of a man looking into a reflective ball.
Edna St. Vincent Millay: Independent yet tender. Insisted on having her desires being as important as any man's desires. Cathartic at times. Also, she helped translate Les Fleurs du Mal at one point. I did a paper on her for one of my honors classes and fell hard for her poetry. Renascence is a good poem to start with.
Oingo Boingo: Bouncy band from California who are entirely 80s New Wave and also
frighteningly relevant ("Grey Matter"). Past cure for writer's block. That band Danny Elfman was in before he was doing movie scores and the Simpsons theme. Music about the truly inspirational themes: sex, death, and alienation. Those dead man's party guys who sang that weird science song and that song about loving little girls. They are all of these. I haven't measured it, but I think at least one vampire LARP in every coastal city had "No One Lives Forever" played in the background.
Bauhaus: the band, dammit, the band. One of the bands recognized as the progenitors of goth rock. I hear something brittle and distant yet fiery and writhing within their songs. Favorite song: "Sanity Assassin". "Bela Lugosi Is Dead" is all right, and hey, they did use a dub beat slowed way down, which amuses me so much. David J, a member of the band, did a couple of albums with Allan Moore writing the lyrics, including "This Vicious Cabaret". I also saw them the first time they reunited.
thanatology: I've been misspelling it all along apparently. Ah well, I've corrected it. A topic I have not done formal study in but am interested in when it comes up, thanatology explores the effect that death has on human beings, and human societies. It is often studied to improve palliative care toward the dying and their loved ones. It also used to explore fear of death and to study and sooth the grief of those left behind.
semiotics: The study of signs and symbols and how they acquire their meanings and how others communicate them, which can be words ('liberty'), visuals ( leaves blowing in the wind, :-) ), gestures (the 'kiss of death'), and numbers (23). This applies not just to humans, but to animals too. It does have crossover with linguistics, but linguists stick with words, spoken and written.
However, the whole process of encoding and decoding is fascinating to me, as well as learning to decode symbols and signs unfamiliar to me. I haven't done any formal study in this topic, but then again, I haven't done much formal study in A LOT of things.
merlot: OK, I admit, I am not a great consineur of wine. If I like it, I try to tell why, I have vague ideas of what drink goes with what, but I rather taste more and travel more widely before I can even say I know something about wine.
Merlot appealed to me because it was dark, it was heady, the kind I liked tasted like dark fruits, and it was shorthand for 'I'm a picky lush!'
Strawberry Switchblade: A band in the early 80s, and well, I'll let discogs.com handle this:
From the ominous shadows of Goth suddenly appeared two young girls in polka-dot dresses, flaming red lipstick, and hair ribbons. Looking like the brides of Robert Smith, Strawberry Switchblade made a brief splash on the U.K. charts and then abruptly vanished in the mid '80s, leaving their fans with a handful of collectible singles and one LP of deceptively sweet-sounding dance pop.
You can find their big hit "Since Yesterday" on YouTube, and they sing songs about agoraphobia and loneliness and all that.
mfoley and rubynye.Reply to this post and I will pick seven interests of yours I'd like to know more about. Write a post about them in your journal and pass it on to others.
Also, if anyone has any 'seven interests' posts I missed, let me know so I can participate.
childfree: I don't want kids. I hate loud noises. I have a very hard time deciphering nonverbal cues, much less cues from babies who cannot speak just yet. I freely admit to being childish at times, and not the sort of model of decorum and reason a child needs. My generative energies tend to be given to fictional characters. I've taken care of younger siblings, and didn't like it. My mom wanted us, but still, I was acutely aware of compromises and sacrifices she made. Plus, the media is full of ways how you, as a mother, are screwing up your child's life. Yeah, no.
It doesn't mean I hate children. It means that I regard having children as an option, not as a default. I wish more people felt the same way I do before becoming unhappy parents raising unhappy children. If they want kids, I wish them well and hope they think carefully.
I don't like the idea that I am some kind of freak for not really having much of biological clock.
Other than that, I tend not to go on foaming rampages that get featured on Encyclopedia Dramatica and all that. I guess I keep it as a interest so, you know, people do not assume not 'wanting kids == foaming at the mouth about losing Harry Potter costume contests'.
One good book I've read about it is Pronatalism: The Myth of Mom and Apple Pie
purple: I like it. I look good in it. It stands out. If something I am wearing is not a neutral color, it's often purple. I like to own purple things.
psychedelia: Oddly enough, for someone who hasn't habitually used psychotropic drugs, I really enjoy listening to music with spacey sound effects, heavily processed guitar, instruments from other places, and evern stranger lyrics. Admittedly, this is a pretty broad category. Let's see, bands I like, besides what is listed in my interests: Hawkwind, Funkadelic, 13th Floor Elevators, some Tool, Fairport Convention. I could even include Massive Attack, Current 93, Coil, Neutral Milk Hotel, the comparatively fluffier music of later Swans, Holy Modal Rounders, Love, Hendrix, Sly, early Bangles (SRSLY), Julian Cope, Robin Hitchcock, Tear Garden, My Bloody Valentine, Orbital, The Church, Cocteau Twins, the Chills, Echo & the Bunnymen, This Mortal Coil. Flaming Lips and Prince are OK. I like bands who seem to draw from their self-contained own world, from childhood stories to esoteric beliefs. I like exploring these worlds. I like the contact high maybe, the bursts of synthesasia.
Tom Lehrer: Once, while having a 'e-mail people and invite them to a resturant I like and have them meet each other' event I did in college, we all started singing Tom Lehrer songs while waiting outside for a table. It's that whole 'smart people and funny things they find' attraction.
However, I cannot ever remember 'The Elements Song'
real person fiction: Somehow, my love of alternate universes and historical fiction has led me to put real living people who don't know me from Eve into stories. There are some topics I will not write about, but they are too boring to go into. Occasionally, I like to read other people's stories. I used 'fiction' instead of 'slash' for my interest because I actually like non-pr0ny stories and stories with m/f and f/f along with m/m (and other combinations).
Part of the reason I write it is, and I am embarrassed to say, I am more in touch with new music than with new TV shows, and a sizable chunk of fanfiction with not-real people are based on that.
Leonard Cohen: Canadian songwriter and poet. I like the 'small universes' and the melancholia of his music, but not necessarily the keyboards in his later stuff. Also wrote Beautiful Losers, which I have yet to read.
Syd Barrett: All right, I started listening to him because of the 'OMG he went crazy on LSD!1111bangeleven' aspect. But his solo work is gentle and full of free association. Reminds me of the Escher painting of a man looking into a reflective ball.
Edna St. Vincent Millay: Independent yet tender. Insisted on having her desires being as important as any man's desires. Cathartic at times. Also, she helped translate Les Fleurs du Mal at one point. I did a paper on her for one of my honors classes and fell hard for her poetry. Renascence is a good poem to start with.
Oingo Boingo: Bouncy band from California who are entirely 80s New Wave and also
frighteningly relevant ("Grey Matter"). Past cure for writer's block. That band Danny Elfman was in before he was doing movie scores and the Simpsons theme. Music about the truly inspirational themes: sex, death, and alienation. Those dead man's party guys who sang that weird science song and that song about loving little girls. They are all of these. I haven't measured it, but I think at least one vampire LARP in every coastal city had "No One Lives Forever" played in the background.
Bauhaus: the band, dammit, the band. One of the bands recognized as the progenitors of goth rock. I hear something brittle and distant yet fiery and writhing within their songs. Favorite song: "Sanity Assassin". "Bela Lugosi Is Dead" is all right, and hey, they did use a dub beat slowed way down, which amuses me so much. David J, a member of the band, did a couple of albums with Allan Moore writing the lyrics, including "This Vicious Cabaret". I also saw them the first time they reunited.
thanatology: I've been misspelling it all along apparently. Ah well, I've corrected it. A topic I have not done formal study in but am interested in when it comes up, thanatology explores the effect that death has on human beings, and human societies. It is often studied to improve palliative care toward the dying and their loved ones. It also used to explore fear of death and to study and sooth the grief of those left behind.
semiotics: The study of signs and symbols and how they acquire their meanings and how others communicate them, which can be words ('liberty'), visuals ( leaves blowing in the wind, :-) ), gestures (the 'kiss of death'), and numbers (23). This applies not just to humans, but to animals too. It does have crossover with linguistics, but linguists stick with words, spoken and written.
However, the whole process of encoding and decoding is fascinating to me, as well as learning to decode symbols and signs unfamiliar to me. I haven't done any formal study in this topic, but then again, I haven't done much formal study in A LOT of things.
merlot: OK, I admit, I am not a great consineur of wine. If I like it, I try to tell why, I have vague ideas of what drink goes with what, but I rather taste more and travel more widely before I can even say I know something about wine.
Merlot appealed to me because it was dark, it was heady, the kind I liked tasted like dark fruits, and it was shorthand for 'I'm a picky lush!'
Strawberry Switchblade: A band in the early 80s, and well, I'll let discogs.com handle this:
From the ominous shadows of Goth suddenly appeared two young girls in polka-dot dresses, flaming red lipstick, and hair ribbons. Looking like the brides of Robert Smith, Strawberry Switchblade made a brief splash on the U.K. charts and then abruptly vanished in the mid '80s, leaving their fans with a handful of collectible singles and one LP of deceptively sweet-sounding dance pop.
You can find their big hit "Since Yesterday" on YouTube, and they sing songs about agoraphobia and loneliness and all that.
