chickenfeet

Anyone who feels like it should post their ten most CRUCIAL CRUCIAL CRUCIAL-ASS movies, like the movies that explain everything about yourselves in your current incarnations (not necessarily your ten favorite movies but the ten movies that you, as a person existing currently, feel would help people get to know you) (they can change later on obviously).

The Seventh Seal
The Cruel Sea
Lawrence of Arabia
Life of Brian
On the Beach
Ran
The Decline of the American Empire
Pulp Fiction
Logan's Run
Belle de Jour

jez_e_bel offered up Queenie, Sybil Fawlty or (for lack of a distinct female character in the Flying Circus) Carol "Cleavage" Cleveland.

Chuck is easy. Sybil Fawlty is the sort of woman the Devil returns from Hell in Irish folksongs.

Marry gave me pause for thought. My initial reaction was "can't marry Queenie because she'll bally well have me executed" but then I realised that if I married her i would be king and could have her executed if I wanted. This is obviously a good thing (though not necessarily a good king). Queenie it is then.

Shag Well that leaves Carol. mmm Zoot. "we have but one punishment for setting alight the grail-shaped beacon: ..."

A (Different) Book Meme for a Sunday
From intertext

Who can resist a book meme?

The book that’s been on your shelves the longest.

I think that would be a set of four figure tables that I have had since prep school. I also have a slide rule.

A book that reminds you of something specific in your life (a person, a place, a time).

There are so many of these. There are obscure political titles from my activist days like Eric Preston's "Labour in Crisis" and Geoff Hodgson's "Trotsky and Fatalisic Marxism". There are university textbooks like Paul Halmos' "Finite Dimensional Vector Spaces" and Cox and Miller's "The Theory of Stochastic Processes". There are also climbing guides for loads of places where I suspect I will never climb again.

A book you acquired in some interesting way.

I have lots of review copies, mainly anti-apartheid stuff. I think the books I won as school prizes disintegrated years ago. I have a collection of short stories for children called "Animal Ghosts" which was given to me by the author of one of the stories, a former girlfriend.

The book that’s been with you to the most places.

"The Pocket Book of Modern Verse" ed. Oscar Williams. It's the book I take when I can have only one book for any length of time like backpacking or canoeing trips.

The most recent addition to your shelves.

A recent delivery from the Folio Society MRD Foot's "SOE" and Thaddeus Holt's "The Deceivers".

Your current read, your last read and the book you’ll read next.

Just finished Christopher Tyerman's "God's War; a New History of the Crusades". (highly recommended if you like that sort of thing) and John Buchan's "Mr. Standfast" (also worth reading. Probably the best of the Hannay stories). Currently reading John Buchan's "Three Hostages" and Cain and Hopkins'"British Imperialism 1688-2000". I'm also dipping into John Aubrey's "Brief Lives". Next up are the two books referenced in the last question.

(adding) The book that has the most personal meaning for you

It would be my copy of Gide's "Thesée" with the woodcuts by Abram Krol. The late Walter Strachan showed me his copy when I was 15 or 16 and I fell in love. I never really thought that I would own a copy but then I found one for sale in the Netherlands for a non ridiculous price just a few years ago and snapped it up.

So here we go.


(  25 things about me you might or might not know. )

via parisbaby_2003

The first five people to respond to this post will get something made by me. It will be about or tailored to those five lucky "victims."

This offer does have some restrictions and limitations:
- I make no guarantees that you will like what I make!
- what I create will be just for you.
- it'll be done this year
- you have no clue what it's going to be. It may be a poem or story. I may make something all craft-y like.
- I reserve the right to do something extremely strange.

The catch? Oh, the catch is that you have to put this in your journal as well, if you expect me to do something for you!

July 9 2003 Ren and Stimpy, Puppets Who Kill and kitten pics.

July 9 2004 Planning

July 8 2005 Running and a cranky hard drive (40GB!!)

July 9 2006 England cricket selectors

July 9 2007 Bullshit all the way

I like this one though I've done it many times.


This time via sabotabby... "Comment on this post and I will choose seven interests from your profile. You will then 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."

sabotabby gave me ten interests (it's a long story).

alan turing

Brilliant mathematician who proved that Hilbert's Entscheidungsproblem was not decidable and in so doing paved the way for modern computers. These ideas were fundamental to his activities at Bletchley Park during WW2 where he was a key player in breaking the German Enigma ciphers without the which the Battle of the Atlantic, and with it the war, may well have been lost. He committed suicide in 1954 after being charged with homosexuality related offences.

complexity theory

A loose body of theory ranging from the rigorously mathematical to flaky new age wankery about how 'systems' behave in and adapt to their environment. It gets used a fair bit in organizational change settings where, despite weaknesses, it seems to provide more insight into behaviours and behavioural change than more mechanistic models. It has produced useful insights like the concept of 'necessary redundancy' and useful techniques such as the use of metaphor and narrative in framing problems and solutions.

invented traditions

see Hobsbawm and Ranger "The Invention of Tradition". Most of our 'traditions' of the kind generally believed to be very ancient kind are 19th or 20th century inventions. "Highland Dress" as worn at innumerable Canadian weddings and most of the other Highland themed Scottish flummery was invented by Sir Walter Scott for George IV's visit to Edinburgh in the 1830s. "Trooping the Colour" was invented long after British regiments stopped carrying colours in battle. Most of the 'traditional' features of American Thanksgiving were invented by women's magazines in the 1950s and so on.

weill

Wicked composer at least until he sold out to Broadway. Der Dreigroschenoper, Mahagonny etc are some of the most pungent and accessible works of the 1930s.

mrs ackroyd band

Les Barker, you're a bastard. A band originally put together over a few pints at Sidmouth to perform Les Barker's folk song parodies. Anyone who is anyone in the English folk scene has sung or played with the band. "Gnus and Roses" is probably the best album.

letterpress

My interest in small press run fine books is hardly a secret. They are almost always produced by letterpress, the old technique of setting metal tape and applying the inked plate to the paper. Once a common commercial process, it is now used almost exclusively for fine press work although the Kitchener record used letterpress as recently as 2000.

boethius

Marcus Anlius Boethius, philosopher and martyr. "The Consolation of Philosophy" is one of my favourite books. Although I'm not a Christian (Boethius doesn't seem to have been a very orthodox one) I find the combination of Faith and Stoicism of the Consolation enormously consoling.

lost causes

There is something about a lost cause that appeals to the romantic in me. It may be why I still cling to a residual Marxism.

mentalites

A form of historical enquiry originating with the group of historians around the journal "Annales d'histoire économique et sociale", it seeks to investigate the mindset of people in the past; to gat at what they believed by what they did and said. The approach has gained something of a foothold in North America in, for example, the work of Philip Darnton into various belief systems in early modern France.

Idea shamelessly borrowed from frankie_ecap and others.

( Ten things )

zantic asked:

1) Ogen Nash or Spike Milligan?

I'm not overly familiar with Nash but I love Spike Milligan so Spike it must be.

2) What is the one piece of music you could not live without?

I don't think there is one I couldn't live without. Pieces that have huge emotional resonance for me include Beethoven's 7th symphony, The Marriage of Figaro, Billy Bragg's "Between the Wars" and Dick Gaughan's version of "Raglan Road".

3) What is it about black pudding?

It's delicious. It reminds me of home (for some value of home) and people like you don't get it!

4) Kittens - how did you get involved in kitten fostering?

We started out by feeding kittens in the nursery at the shelter and found it was actually less hassle and more fun to have a batch at home instead.

5) Which is the next film you are going to go and see?

I rarely 'go and see' films on account of having a rather snazzy home theatre set up a zip.ca account. At the moment I have "Ratcatcher" and "Juliet of the Spirits" waiting to be watched.