that interests meme again

[perlmonger]

I’ve not bothered with this one when it’s come around before; the selection it picked from my interests list didn’t inspire me to write anything much. Not that I wasn’t interested in anything it picked, just that they didn’t lend themselves to exposition.

Anyhow, prompted by minkboylove, I thought I’d try again, and this time I’ve ended up with a set I couldn’t resist.

1. badgers:
   It’s because I is one. ramtops came up with the idea, but its usage has spread wide and far amongst the... ummm... more mature denizens of LJ.
2. chosen family:
   Because love and trust that comes without obligation works better for me than manipulation and emotional violence from the other sort of family. Families are not all like that; they don’t have to be like that at all, but too much of my past, and far too much of the past of many people that I care about, is scarred so.
3. dagmar krause:
   Her voice; her uncompromising nature; her politics; her voice again, whether singing Brecht or Wiell, with Henry Cow or Slapp Happy. Sadly ramtops‘ tastes differ on this, but hey! I get to endure Billy Joel, so it balances out :)
4. food:
   Yes. The politics and economics of its production and distribution; buying it, preparing it, eating it.
5. láadan:
   Because language, vocabulary, grammar does shape and constrain perception; because many things I lack the words to say simply and clearly, to even think of easily are the sort of concepts that patriarchal society denies, that ozarque gave words for in Láadan.
6. physics:
   Describing, modelling the reality we are part of is important, and endlessly fascinating. I don’t have the mathematical toolset to understand physics in any depth, but dipping into the best descriptions we’ve collectively come up with for our ’verse is a worthwhile way to spend what little time I can give it.
   
   I only wish that some of the conceptual framework of physics could be absorbed into our language, which remains resolutely Newtonian and Euclidean, and nowhere more so than in politics.
7. routemasters:
   Proper buses. With conductors and all, and a platform. OK, they have some accessibility issues, but no more so IMO than most “modern” arse-engined hardware and why couldn’t an updated design be created with a wheelchair lift incorporated into the platform? Eh? Answer me that.
8. storms:
   I love wild weather: thunderstorms, blizzards, winds screaming over clifftops... Weather that is manifestly outside human control, that shatters our illusions of power and control.
   
   Storms crystalise a feeling of place, of context in the Universe for me; they help me feel grounded and rooted in my own fragility and transience.
9. tilting at windmills:
   Well, it feels like mostly that’s what I do in the world. I’m a person of strong principles and ideals; it’s a pity that they seem to be so far away from the consensus reality we’re embedded in.
10. zar-bettu-zekigal:
    She’s got a tail! A prehensile tail!
    
    Also, she’s a strong female character, manifesting an archetype I love. Assertive and functional, without clouding it either with feminine stereotypes or anything that might be dismissed as “tomboy”, with its implications of an attempt, doomed from the start, to be someone she isn’t. She’s not pretending or trying to be anyone but who she is, and that’s a good thing. There are other women like this in sf - YT, Chevette, Door - but (perhaps because they’re all written by men) they don’t have the clarity Zar-Bettu has. Or her tail.

Enter your LJ user name, and 10 interests will be selected from your interest list.

Comments

[ladyjillian.livejournal.com]

Oh god, my boss is into Routemasters too. And my advisor and his partner recently took a ride on the new 'heritage route.' Will I hear the end of it? Not likely. I've actually been in one once; they were using them as rail replacements somewhere I was going.