content generator from sola

[the_siobhan]

Comment on this post. I will choose seven interests from your profile and you will explain what they mean and why you are interested in them. Post this along with your answers in your own journal so that others can play along.

400 blows
One of my ex's once asked me if I had a theme song, and I named this one without even thinking abut it. To me it's always been a song about survival in spite of being on the losing side and about standing apart from other people because of one's experiences.

dutch chicken benchmark
bcholmes has this story she tells about working in Amsterdam and trying to come to grips with how straight forward they are about sex and talking about sex. At one point, she asked a co-worker what kind of topics might be considered to riské for mixed company. The co-worker couldn't think of anything. Gay sex? No, gay sex was fine. Kinky sex? No that was ok too.

"How about sex with an animal?"

The co-worker thought about it. Finally he conceeded that it would depend on the animal.

"So what kind of animal would be considered in bad taste?"

"Say... anything smaller than a chicken."

And so the Dutch Chicken Benchmark was born.

grippy
I'm a big Stephen Colbert fan. At the opening credits of The Colbert Report a bunch of words go by that say things like "INSPIRED" "PATRIOTIC" etc. There's one that hangs out a little longer so you can get a good look at it, and for a long time that word was "grippy".

It has since been replaced by "megamerican", "lincolnish", "superstantial" and a bunch of others. But grippy is still my favourite.

pattern matching
I am fascinated by the fact that people in general have such problems learning from their mistakes, and even more difficulty learning from the mistakes of others. Our brains are supposed to be designed to look for patterns in the way our environment works, but that talent seems to grind to a halt when it comes to human behaviour.

Being able to predict the future by looking at the successes and failures of the past is a process that really interests me.

reluctant messiahs
Originally the title of a book, but I just really took to the concept that certain people have an powerful impact on others through no volition of their own.

urban planning
Mostly because Toronto is so crap at it. There are cities that really work well and ones that really don't, and I'm really interested in how the differences come to exist.

wasp factory
A really cool book by Iain Banks, and a really cool record label in Cheltenham, UK.

Comments

[bellafiga.livejournal.com]

Yo!

[the-siobhan.livejournal.com]

Most of yours are pretty straight-forward, but I'll go with these;

belladonna
deadbolt
feist
kilts
petulance
swords
winter

[eciklb.livejournal.com]

Me, please.

[the-siobhan.livejournal.com]

It's interesting how much your interest list says a lot about you.

claw foot tubs
devil duckies
duct tape
experimental archaeology
social history
stegosauri
visual irony

[eciklb.livejournal.com]

Claw foot tubs - I used to have one in Covington. I like the fact that they're very solid and functional and deep (so good for the rare deep soaking bath) and at the same time they're romantic, in an old fashioned non-excessively-frilly kind of way. I'm generally fond of older architecture that hasn't been updated in bad ways (the 1970s-ification of the house next to us in Covington was frightening!), and claw foot tubs, original woodwork, and elaborate mantels are all signs of that.

Devil duckies - They go in the claw foot tub. One Halloween, we found them at $1 for 3, or thereabouts, on American Science and Surplus. So we bought 15 of them, filled the claw foot tub, added red food coloring, and had a devil duck pond. E put dry ice in the toilet tank, and the bathroom was the spookiest room in the house. I've since given away several of the duckies, because really, how many does one person need? But I've also adopted a normal ducky, a dead ducky (black with green beak and x-es for eyes), and a vampire ducky (dressed like a Bela Lugosi vampire), so I've got a little line of duckies on the counter of the guest bath.

Duct tape - holds stuff together. Also removes paint and plantar warts.

Experimental archaeology - because I've got competing tendencies toward bookworminess and needing to *do* things. I'm always amazed at how long people will sit around talking about how stuff was done in the past without being hit by a compulsion to try it.

Social history - I'm not that keen on battle formations and long-past political debates. I am fascinated by the different ways different societies in the past dealt with issues of gender and sexuality and family and social class, especially since they're often so different from modern perceptions of "the way it's always been."

Stegosauri - this is a fairly recent obsession, brought on by a strange compulsion to hear a song from my childhood that I can't find anywhere. The lyrics include, "My name is stegosarus, I'm a funny-looking dinosaur."

Visual irony - irony is my preferred form of humor, and I'm generally pretty visually oriented. There's lots of good 20th c. art that falls into this category, and I ought to be able to pull an example or seven off the top of my head, but I can't right now.

[panic-girl.livejournal.com]

Dutch Chicken Benchmark is hilarious!! :)

[the-siobhan.livejournal.com]

brak
exploding dog
haiku4u™
iampureevilwouldyouliketoplayuno?
mannequin depressives
señor shinypants
things that burn

[disastrid.livejournal.com]

hit it!

[the-siobhan.livejournal.com]

2075f
believing in mister grieves
fudgie the whale
knobs
noses
pet sounds
tuning forks

[xandraius.livejournal.com]

Llama, llama, duck

[the-siobhan.livejournal.com]

chaos magick
cynicism
enochian
nightmares
raw emotion
ritual
zoroastrianism

I sense a theme here.

[snogwise.livejournal.com]

*poke*

[the-siobhan.livejournal.com]

black lung
bone
funeral law
hedwig
may
stainless steel
toyfare

[the-fury.livejournal.com]

Go nuts!

[the-siobhan.livejournal.com]

aleotronic
cage
frailing
serialist music
tubes
yelling
yeye

[artistatlarge.livejournal.com]

"Dutch Chicken Benchmark" is officially the best damn thing I've learned today. Brava!

And when I saw "pattern matching", my own brain immediately put it into familiar context: in sewing, one must buy extra fabric to achieve "pattern matching", which is to say, lining up plaids and brocades and whatnot. My favourite maker of corsets charges extra for the service (as well she might), and indicates these corsets to be Of Superior Quality.

[the-siobhan.livejournal.com]

Interesting. Now I've learned something.

alto
bridges
crazy quilts
fortuny
making lists
miniature embroidery
william morris

[mathochist.livejournal.com]

I haven't updated my interests list in a long time.

[the-siobhan.livejournal.com]

cricket cricket
green onions
infinities
naked primes
paradoxen
sapiosexuality
warm things

[mathochist.livejournal.com]

Cricket cricket: short for "Cricket Cricket I'm On Fire", a non-competitie game. Sort of a cross between Pictionary and Telephone/Gossip. Each person gets a vertical half sheet of paper, and starts by writing at the top a phrase, anything that would be good for pictionary or charades or the like. Pass the paper around the table. Each time you get a paper, if you see a phrase, draw a picture to depict it (no letters or numbers), and if you see a picture, write a phrase. Fold so only the part you just did shows, and pass on. End with a phrase. When all are done, unfold the papers and laugh at the results. Next round, pass the papers in the opposite direction.

Hilarious with the right people. Great time-waster with friends. Great break from competitive games.

Green onions: yum! Love them. Dunno why. Addictive veggie matter.

Infinities: My specialization for my MS in Math was Large Cardinals. I don't remember as much as I wish I did (sigh). Fascinating. Mathematical infinities larger than any physical infinities in the universe. How the human mind can wrap around the unwrappable.

For example, consider inaccessible cardinals. An inaccessible cardinal is a cardinal which is uncountable (bigger than the cardinality of the integers) and is bigger than any union or power set of a smaller number of smaller cardinals. The cardinality of the reals is not inaccessible; it is equal to the power set of the integers. Inaccessible cardinals are Truly Freaking Huge. And yet, they are perhaps the smallest -- and easiest to understand -- example of large cardinals.

Zow. Interesting, no?

Naked primes: Came from old flirtations, most notably with australian_joe. Math + nudity, woo! How can you lose with that?

Paradoxen: This statement is false. Consider the set of all sets which are not members of themselves -- is this set a member of itself, or not? Is self-reference really the root of all evil?

Sapiosexuality: mmmmm, brains! Whatever else my sexuality is doing, this part I am certain of: if there's no brain connection, there's no interest (or at least, no lasting interest).

Warm things: and hot things, too! Candle wax, soft blankets, sweatshirts, slippers, flannel, fires, snuggly bodies... I have a couple of microwave-heatable things I like to sleep with, too, especially in the winter. I had a girlfriend who knitted me a blanket... mmm, she knew the way to my heart.

[ladyclayton.livejournal.com]

Meme me!

[the-siobhan.livejournal.com]

collecting retro dishes
container ships
otma
st. therese of lisieux
unusual places
voice of the beehive
works in progress

[ladyclayton.livejournal.com]

collecting retro dishes
I don't cook, but I have place settings for an army! I love retro china patterns. A couple of years ago, I won some Franciscan Starburst salt and pepper shakers on eBay. Soon after that, I acquired a Franciscan Starburst creamer. Then I got a LOAD of Royal China Blue Heaven, and the collecting officially began! Since then, I have several patterns I've been working on accruing: Franciscan Starburst, Royal China Blue Heaven, Royal China Aria, Taylor Smith and Taylor Cathay, and Creative 1014.

container ships
When I lived in Long Beach, there were always a load of container ships (the big freighters) going in and out of the port. I like to watch them, because it makes me feel more connected with the world. This is probably the nerdiest thing ever.

OTMA
OTMA are the four daughters of Tsar Nicholas II of Russia. They used to sign memos using the initials of their names: Olga, Tatiana, Maria, and Anastasia. I love the Romanovs, and these girls are fascinating, because their lives were so backward in many ways, and they were killed because they had the wrong parents. Two of my cats are named after Maria and Anastasia.

St. Therese of Lisieux
I'm going to be really lazy and cut and paste what I wrote in eciklb's journal. St. Therese (pictured in the icon) is a saint in the Catholic Church, and I was drawn to her in 2002 when some things happened that made me think she was trying to get my attention (long story). Before that, I hadn't paid a whole lot of attention to her, because everything I saw of her seemed so sentimental and syrupy. I've read her works and read a lot of Theresian studies, and really, she is amazing and very deep. I definitely feel like she keeps tabs on me, and every so often, I feel compelled to read a different book on her or to reread her own work, and every time I read it, I come out with something new. It's an interesting dialogue. :)

unusual places
i'm drawn to places that most other people are not. Friends talk about wanting to go to Hawaii or some other beach resort; I want to go to Dubai and the Torres del Paine Parque Nacional in Chile. I'd kill (almost) to go to Cuba. I'd love to go to this little village in Nepal that is a waystation to the Everest base camp.

Voice of the Beehive
I LOVE THIS BAND!!! They're from my area too. Axel likes them too. :)

works in progress
I like the process of writing and making costumes, although I write far more than I sew. I have three novels that I've worked on on-and-off for several years. I like NaNoWriMo, because it gets me started on a new work-in-progress each year (except the damn website isn't working tonight, and I'm mad, because I want to log my count!).

[inulro.livejournal.com]

I don't cook, but I have place settings for an army!

Heh. I don't cook either (to the point that it's just about the only thing I get phobic and panicky about ), yet I have to be physically restrained from buying cute kitchenware every time I go near a place that sells such things.

[sola.livejournal.com]

I am so, so glad i asked about the Dutch Chicken Benchmark.

[the-siobhan.livejournal.com]

I expect it to show up on a few more interest lists after this. :-)

[liz-lowlife.livejournal.com]

Your chicken benchmark thing...genius!
I can just hear you explaining that!

[the-siobhan.livejournal.com]

alternate universes
bad boy bubby
brain surgery
compulsive lying (down)
forbidden fruit
hidden cupboards
kafka-esque

[liz-lowlife.livejournal.com]

Haha! You picked all the tough ones! Knew you would. :o)

alternate universes
I am fascinated by the idea of infinity and how far you can let your mind wander into the madness of it. In a nutshell; that's what the interest tag is about and YES...I have explored it to the point of insanity!
bad boy bubby
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0106341/
brain surgery
A red herring. I know nothing about it but have stored the interest for future reference. I can learn all about it in minute detail should I ever get onset Alzheimers and need to know what is coming so I can write it down and say to my doctor,"Hey, this might be helpful in curing me."
compulsive lying (down)
I embellish the truth and I am a lazy bastard that enjoys nothing better than lying in bed and formulating dastardly plans to take over the world.
forbidden fruit
Kleptopic tendencies to take what isn't actually mine...but should be. Because I am worth it.
hidden cupboards
What's not to like? A hidden space that is used to store stuff that is big enough for you to hide in! Because you found it and can fit in it!
kafka-esque
Self explanatory surely? Plus a view on the world that finds beauty and wonder in the cracks in the pavement if you look at them correctly, can't be a bad thing!

[erictragedy.livejournal.com]

O.K. - I'll even try to go into detail about each one.

[the-siobhan.livejournal.com]

bad ties
hecate
visual irony
wd-40
you're under arrest
♀♂♀


[erictragedy.livejournal.com]

bad ties - I remember when I was in junior high school or thereabouts some guy was in the newspaper for having the world's largest collection of ugly ties, and I thought - what a cool thing to collect. When my mother got rid of all my dad's wretched ties from the 60s and 70s, I snatched them up - paisley, polka dotted, rings and weird patterns, some more than 6" wide at their widest point. After that whenever I found really ugly ties at garage sales or thrift stores I bought 'em. In high school I declared Friday "Tie-day" and wore a different bad tie every week, sometimes with matching bad hankerchief. Later, when I started dressing more punk, I just incorporated the ties into my personal style. I never liked when so-called punks became too uniform in dress. I finally stopped acquiring bad ties after buying a box full of hundreds at a yard sale. I have worn them very infrequently since, and just a few months ago, I finally got rid of a majority of the collection, keeping only a few prized pieces for when I really want to make a statement.

hecate - Throughout my life I've vacillated between hard core atheism, agnosticism and various forms of what Christians would call paganism. Sometimes all in one day, LOL. I have always liked Greek mythology as well, and one of the goddesses in ancient Greek religion (actually a mortal but later venerated as divine) was Hecate. She is commonly associated with witchcraft throughout the ages, and is closest to what I think of as a Goddess, when I am in a more spiritual mood. But whether a divinity, a legendary person or a character in stories, I've always just kind of thought she was cool.

visual irony - eciklb and I both really got into this around the time we first started dating. It is the use of irony in art much as it would be used in literature or song. It infuses much of my photography such as this sexualized nun entitled, Thou Shalt Remain Chaste:
(http://photobucket.com)

...visual irony is used in film a lot. Particularly in comedies. One example from Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure is when brought to modern California, Sigmund Freud is seen standing in a shopping mall holding a corn dog.

wd-40 - A space age solvent and lubricant. WD-40 is an amazing substance. I maintain that about 90% of everything in the world can be fixed if you have Superglue, Duct Tape and WD-40. In fact WD-40 is kind of like the antithesis of those binding agents (Duct tape and Superglue).

you're under arrest - I am not a huge fan of anime. Not all the genres appeal to me. I never really cared for knee-slapping comedies like Ranma 1/2, because I don't think the humor translates (to American culture & the English language) very well. Often the comic timing is just way off. But there is one genre of anime comedies that seem to translate perfectly for my tastes - romantic comedies. One great example is Oh! My Goddess, a kind of anime "I Dream of Jeanie", by artist Kōsuke Fujishima. Another one by Fujishima is You're Under Arrest about the life and times of two female police officers. It has everything, comedy, action and romance, and since Fujishima was an engineering draftsman, the technology - guns, cars, motorcycles and whatnot are drawn with incredibly precise lifelike detail, a nice counterpoint to the simplified anime style of the human characters.

♀♂♀ - Every guy's fantasy. 'Nuff said.

 - I've been a PC user since the original IBM PC in the early 1980s. In th late 80s I started using an Apple when the Macintosh line came out. I returned to using PCs during my college years, but rapidly became frustrated with the clunky Windows 3.1 GUI, so returned to Apple for a few years until the release of Windows '95. I was a PC user from '95 until going to design school, and becoming interested in non-linear video editing around 1999. I regularly used PCs and Macs off and on until the release of OS X. Since then, I have mostly been an Apple loyalist. I still have my PC, but almost never bother turning it on, and in fact it isn't even plugged in right now.

[ihvpave.livejournal.com]

It's interesting how often these sorts of things are called "memes" by the general public when they are more appropriately termed "lemmings" - have you ever noticed that? So it's beautifully amusing to me that you specifically say "it's not a meme!" in your tag, and yet I see "meme me!" as a comment.

All of that to say: I would ask you to lemming me, but I think most of my interests are pretty self-explanatory.

[the-siobhan.livejournal.com]

You think so, do you? :-)

agent orange
communal anarchism
extreme self-expression
juxtaposition
microhabitats
refugees from hilton head
supercharged big blocks

[ihvpave.livejournal.com]

*laugh* You just went and picked the ones no one else has for the most part, dincha? :P

Ai'ight:
agent orange
Best surf punk ever, with a kickass show. I spent a good chunk of my formative years hanging out with a buncha skate punks; as a result, Agent Orange is a seriously nostalgic trip for me and gives me happy thoughts. Kinda like listening to Jane's Addiction does (same period of my life). Plus there are times when nothing else sounds quite as perfect an expression than "Everything Turns Grey" or "Speed Kills." I'm not big on hardcore as a lifestyle, but DAMN if the music doesn't kick ass.

communal anarchism
Everyone asks about this one, and it always confuses me because it seems so obvious. Simply put, this is the idea that society doesn't necessarily require formal rules to be established by some hierarchical system, but that given the opportunity entropy forms communities that self-support and enforce. For me, this is the logical progression that comes after nihilism. Both are necessary for the radical shift in perception, but nihilism is by definition self-destroying.

extreme self-expression
This is something that I kinda have in my head and have never really tried to define/ explain... It's kinda an idea that wherever you are, you have an obligation to yourself to be precisely yourself in the most overt way you have available to you in that circumstance, without obligation to the expected paradigm. Interestingly, I am opposed to being freaky for the sake of being freaky - but I feel very much that one has a responsibility to find out what the most honest interpretation of self is, commit to it, and not merely go along with how one is expected to present. That sounds completely insane when put into words, I think, but I don't have a concise phrasing because I've never really tried to explain it.

juxtaposition
Kinda goes along with extreme self-expression, because I am completely fascinated with things that appear to have no business together and smashing them into a single state. Like the icon, there: punk rock prom queen - the indiviual bits have nothing to do with one another and appear to be in complete opposition, but it makes an interesting thought for me. Leather and lace, vlevet and velcro, pearls and pyramid spikes, cats and dogs, being a complete slob but incredibly anal retentive... it pleases me to find everyday juxtopositions and somehow find a throughline that connects them.

microhabitats
I am fascinated that there are entire ecosystems in tiny area that vary significantly from their immediate surroundings - at home, it was the entire tiny world that lived on the marshes during low tide; in a desert, it might be a tiny pool of collected water - life will prevail in any circumstance, as long as there are options. In my own yard, there's the world that has sprung up under my compost bin that wouldn't be faciliated anywhere else on my property, and the other world that lives under my giant sprawling azalea - they have vastly different lives and communities attached to them as a habitat and environment than my yard does, for example. I try to remember that there are creatures and beings who will thrive in something my neighbours may not find so appealing.

refugees from hilton head
Hilton Head is where I grew up, and it was not a particularly conducive location for anyone under the age of 50. If you didn't golf, play tennis, like boating, or wanna buy a ton of crap tchotchkes, you were pretty much outta luck. For lots of us, the only thing we were waiting for was a chance to get off the rock. To the general populace, it's presumed it was a charmed life, but... it really was pretty hideous all the way around, and it's such a weird way to grow up that it always seemed almost anologous to being a refugee 'cos no one that hasn't lived through it could understand. It's presumptuous as hell, and I know that, but it's the closest I've ever been able to come to describing it.

supercharged big blocks
Mmmm. MORE POWER! It's one of my juxtopositions: I hate that they are such fuel guzzlers and emmission controls tend to be crap on them... But I do I love the roaring of an engine with a shit tonne of cubes and horses behind it.

[inulro.livejournal.com]

Go on then!

[the-siobhan.livejournal.com]

agonised by love
aztecs
colonial south america
postpunk
southern gothic
urban history
victorian low life