chickenfeet

Gacked from f4f3

SIX NAMES YOU GO BY:
Not sure I have six…
1. John
2. Chickenfeet
3. Bear
4. Gilksey (a Nomads thing)
5. that's pretty much it


THREE THINGS YOU ARE WEARING RIGHT NOW:
1. XLs rugby shirt
2. ski pants.
3. socks

THREE THINGS YOU WANT VERY BADLY AT THE MOMENT
1. A job
2. To see my daughter
3. that's about it

THREE PEOPLE WHOM YOU HOPE WILL DO THE MEME
Everyone.

THREE THINGS YOU DID LAST NIGHT
1. The Guardian crossword (well started it anyway)
2. Read a very silly book about Mozart by Brigid Brophy
3. Cooked dinner

THREE PEOPLE YOU LAST TALKED TO ON THE PHONE:
1. Kate
2. Almost certainly some pest from a bank or similar
3. see above

THREE THINGS YOU ARE GOING TO DO TOMORROW:
1. Go to the library
2. Go to the pub
3. Work out

FOUR OF YOUR FAVOURITE DRINKS:
1. Good red wine
2. Craft beer
3. Laphroaig
4. Wiser's Small Batch

THREE THINGS THAT MADE YOU SMILE TODAY:
1. Miss Bonkynose McSqueaklepuss
2. John Malkovich strangling Laura Aikin with her own bra
3. twelve across

Seen in many places.

Instructions

1. Open up your music player. Hit shuffle.
2. Record the first few words of the first 20 songs that come up that do not give away the name of the song. Skip instrumentals, but don't skip the embarrassing ones.
3. Make hapless LJ denizens guess the song names and artists. Google is cheating.
4. Least hapless LJ denizen wins admiration.

I modified this a bit as if I did as instructed it would have thrown up 70% opera arias known by their first lines. I took the play list I use for working out and shuffled that instead. I'm still surprised by how high a proportion of stuff I had to eliminate because the title was contained in the first line. Thus there are no 18th century gallery hymns in the following list.

( Here we go then... )

majea associated five things with me. If you want to play you know what to do.

opera

It’s no secret that I enjoy opera and have done for a very long time, as in since I was a teenager. For the longest time I had a huge blind spot about some of the most popular parts of the repertoire, principally the Italian 19th and early 20th stuff like Verdi and Puccini. I have come to like that stuff quite a lot recently so my opportunities to enjoy have increased greatly. I still think my preferences lean more to early and late though. There should be much more Handel opera performed.

A lot of people claim to really not like opera at all. I think there a lot of reasons for that. The first and most obvious is that a lot of people don’t like “classical” music. I can understand that. It’s quite hard work to learn (in what other genre do you have to come to terms with technical conventions that have evolved over many centuries and where works of all those times are still performed?), you can’t really dance to it and drugs don’t improve it. Then there’s the problem that many people have tried to listen to opera rather than watch it which is a bit like listening to football on the radio never having seen a game. It doesn’t work. So a lot of people get put off without ever having seen an opera which I think is a shame. It’s also quite expensive and I can see why people would be reluctant to spend $150 on something they might not enjoy. Fortunately the current MetHD broadcasts are very good and only cost $20 so that’s not really a good excuse anymore.

Bottom line, I like opera and I suspect more people would if they gave it a go. That said I don’t think it’s for everyone but then what is?

feline caretaking

Currently of course we just have three adult cats so the care and feeding thing is pretty easy. Looking after kittens was far more work and was almost a full time job for the lemur who is undoubtedly a Hero of the Feline Revolution. The hardest thing about having cats is going away. Apart from the hassle of organizing care I miss them horribly and worry about them constantly.

debate

Yes, I’m an argumentative bastard but I like to think I’m a logical and reasonable one. I really dislike people who argue ad hominem and I’m deeply suspicious of discourse which privileges a priori positions.

I did do the formal debating thing for a while at school and university. The high point was probably debating against Michael Ramsay shortly after he retired as archbishop of Canterbury. I also, of course, got involved in debates at conventions when I was politically active, both on the conference floor and more relevantly in caucus (where all the real debate happens). People I’ve crossed swords with include Trevor Philips, Charles Clarke and Sue Slipman..

rugby

I first played competitive rugby in 1968. I had a long lay off for all kinds of reasons between about 1980 and 1996 when I started playing again. I stopped playing competitively in, I think, 1993 and then altogether two years ago. Both decisions were injury related. I’m still involved as a coach and referee.

Rugby is a fun game to watch but better to play. As Surtees said of ‘unting, “All the excitement of war but not five and twenty percent of the danger”. It’s a truly physical activity requiring speed, strength, skill and, frankly, courage. I like that and I like the kind of people the game tends to produce. Sure there are some pretty awful rugby types (mostly South African) but most of the people I’ve played with I have liked in one way or another. I’ve also found the parents of the kids I coach to be quite the opposite of the horror stories I hear about soccer and hockey parents.

science stuff.

As opposed to that hand wavy arts stuff? I’m a mathematician by academic background. I’m glad of that because mathematical thinking at quite a high level is necessary to understand much of modern physics. It’s more than just a language or a set of techniques it’s a fundamentally different way of perceiving/constructing reality and that helps with, for example, physics where what happens on a large or small scale simply doesn’t make ‘sense’ in that what is going on is beyond our powers to perceive directly. I also like having an easy familiarity with quantitative arguments. It means I can call bullshit on a large range of crap that floats past my tender nostrils at work and elsewhere.

chiller asks about:

competitiveness

I guess one can think about this at either a personal or a societal level. At a personal level I am in many ways wickedly competitive. I like to win. I'm not completely stupid about it. When I'm coaching kids I don't get on their case because we don't win every game and I won't do stupid or cheating things to win. I'm not above passing on "the tricks of the trade" though. No reason why the kids should suffer by being naive.

More broadly, I'm agnostic about the value of competition in areas like the provision of public services. I can easily accept that where enterprises are competing for individual's money in areas where they can make a reasonably informed choice then competition is good and stimulates innovation. Do I want a Mars bar or a Crunchie, a Mac or a Dell; that kind of thing. OTOH I've seen far too many examples of the public sector buying things, whether in internal markets or from the private sector to think that any rational form of competition is operating. The incentives aren't (and can't be) aligned to make the process work in an economic way. So it doesn't

freedom

It's mostly a good thing. That said, I'm not a propertarian. I believe that there are basic human rights that transcend the right to buy and sell. There are very good reasons why all legal systems evolve some sort of equity based system alongside more contractually based ones. More broadly, ideas of freedom need to be reconciled with understanding that we live in power structures where individuals are not always or entirely free agents. Whether Mrs. Thatcher liked it or not, society is, as Carlyle recognised, more than the sum of the individuals in it. So my take on freedom would be sort of utilitarian. I believe in the greatest freedom for the greatest number.

Trading off freedoms is complicated. Trading off freedom for an illusion of security is just plain stupid. You can take your surveillance cameras and Gitmos and detention without trial and torture and stuff them very hard up the arses of the fascists who dreamed them up.

lettuce

I'm fond of lettuce. I eat quite a lot of salads though perhaps not as many as I should. I think romaine (cos) is my favourite. A properly made Caesar salad is a wondrous thing. The thing that all too often passes for a Caesar salad is not.

cellphones

Like most new technologies it wasn't one I adopted immediately. In fact for quite a while I resolutely refused to carry one except during working hours. That said, I've had one for about fifteen years back to the days when 'portable' was a relative term. Nowadays I have a Samsung Jack which doubles as a phone, email device (work and personal) and MP3 player. It's small enough for that to be OK.

rain

I spent the first half of my life in places where it rains often (ie whenever one wants to go climbing or watch cricket) but rarely torrentially. Now I live where it doesn't rain nearly so often but when it does it tends to be deadly serious. An electrical storm blowing in off Lake Ontario is truly awesome to watch. I have an especial fondness for the sort of 'fret' that is endemic on certain coasts. The Olympic coast of Washington would be an excellent example where rocks and sea and sky merge into a shifting pattern of greys. It's really rather lovely.

Feel free to ask for five topics of your very own.

The Metropolitan Opera has a quiz to help you figure out what kind of opera you might like. It's funny in a memeish sort of way without apparently having been written by an American high school student.

Depending which way I swing on a couple of questions I score as Madam Butterfly or Lucia di Lammermoor.

via kalypso_v

Post a picture of a cat in your journal. (Your cat, a lolcat, or someone else's cat. But preferably yours, if possible.)

( So three snap shots taken a few minutes ago. )

Not a big surprise

( Read more... )

From oursin

1. Is there anywhere, that, supposing you to be offered the ideal job with more than acceptable pay and benefits there, you would refuse to relocate to?

If it were just me and a return ticket was involved then the answer would be "very few". I don't think I'd be interested in going somewhere really dangerous or unpleasant like Baghdad but I'd be pretty flexible. However, in reality, it would have to be somewhere lemur_catta would be comfortable which would restrict the choice quite a bit.

2. Is there any particular cuisine you have not yet tried that you would like to?

I've had little or no exposure to Laotian or Cambodian. I think I would probably like them. I've not had much South American food either though what I have had I've liked.

3. What would be your ideal production of a particular opera with particular performers?

Last year's Met Peter Grimes came pretty close! OK, assuming all performers are 'in their prime' then I go with Le Nozze di Figaro with Fischer-Diskeau and Schwarzkopf as the Almavivas and Terfel and Bartoli as the lovers. I can't make my mind up whether I want Bohm or Beecham in the pit.

4. If you could take a year off to research some particular topic or learn a skill, what would it be?

I think maybe rugby coaching. Given a year full time I might get quite reasonable at it.

5. Normans or Saxons?

Let's see, we have a relatively literate people with an amazing literature and really cool art plus trade, a navy and so on who even produce scholarly and/or saintly kings on a fairly regular basis. Or we have a bunch of illiterate barbarians camped out pretending to be French. As far as I can see the only good thing the Normans did was to lay waste to Yorkshire. It's no contest.

Usual rules. Comment for questions but if you do you have to answer them!

Observed near ubiquitously

"When you see this entry quote from Doctor Johnson."

A decent provision for the poor is the true test of civilization.

Much may be made of a Scotchman, if he be caught young.

Meme: A device through which the multitude erroneously believe their several follies may bring forth a collective wisdom

No, I'm not going to do the meme. FWIW I think I score something like 89/100 and I don't think there is anything I wouldn't try on the list. It's not like I have an aversion to Michelin 3 starred restaurants but my bank account does.

What's interesting me is the things people say they would never try. Now, I understand that vegetarians and others with dietary restrictions are going to have things they won't try and I get that some people are squicked by insects or innards and so on but some of the exclusions just seem really weird to me. Why would anyone be averse to gumbo or salted lassi or lapsang souchong? Chacun a son gout and all that but I do find some of it a bit puzzling.

Now, for me, the only things I absolutely wouldn't eat are primates (much too close to cannibalism). endangered species, cat and bear (both for entirely sentimental reasons). You can bring on the grilled rice field roaches, throw another koala on the barbie or open a jar of fermented fishy things. No worries!