A meme, a meme

[louiselux]

I've enjoyed reading the responses to this on other people's journals. I got this version from yonmei

Some of the people on my friends list, I hardly know. Some of you I think I know well, but I'm sure have the capacity to surprise me still.

So: comment and tell me something about you. Something random, or something that you think is the key to your entire personality. Yes, even the people I've known for years. Yes, even the people I've never talked to.

Comments

[cangetmad.livejournal.com]

On my mantelpiece, I have an African-style carving of a bare-breasted woman who, rather disturbingly, actually has a carved tongue which you can only see if you get close enough to peer into her mouth. It was made for me by my grandad, who is a Communist former shop steward from Hull.

[laizeohbeets.livejournal.com]

i got to this meme via my friendsfriends list. hi. :)

i'm jessi. and i like hobbits.

[louiselux.livejournal.com]

Hello there. I like hobbits too:-)

[daegaer.livejournal.com]

When I was brought home from the hospital as a newborn our dog, Rufus, decided I was his. When my great aunt had poked at me enough, he thought, he took her wrist in his mouth and led her carefully back to her chair.

He was the best dog in the world.

[louiselux.livejournal.com]

Oh, that's just too sweet for words. You had your own protector from day one against intrusive relatives! He sounds like he was a wonderful animal.

[snowballjane.livejournal.com]

When I was a kid my brother used to play competitive tennis and my parents would go to watch. I wasn't keen on watching kids tennis, so they would leave me in the bookshop near the tennis club for a couple of hours a week as a cheap form of creche. It was fantastic (although probably not recommended as a safe form of childcare really)!

[gehayi.livejournal.com]

My Uncle Tatie fought in Spain against Franco.

[tboy.livejournal.com]

When I was having my first child, there was a moment during the birth when I 'went away'. C said he saw me do it, and it scared the crap out of him. In the midst of this amazing pain, I just... left.

I came back. After a couple of years I had another go with my second child. Knowing the pain levels in advance was far worse, as per 'once bitten, twice shy'. I therefore insisted that I have the gas during labour this time around. It actually made no difference, but I used that gas mask much as Linus does his blanket. It was mine, and I was not letting go. I had mask-shaped bruises on my face for days afterwards.

[louiselux.livejournal.com]

The thought of submitting yourself knowingly to that amount of pain must've been quite horrible, although the end result must make it dwindle into insignificance:-) I'm really in awe of any woman who's had a child. So, that's most of them!

[foreverdirt.livejournal.com]

When I was fifteen I discovered a book by Keith Hartman called The Gumshoe, The Witch and The Virtual Corpse which is a brilliantly funny thriller-mystery-sci-fi-political-and-religious-satire-queer-issue book that changed my life just by teaching me that the things I wanted to read? People were writing. I think most people I know would like it, but I tend not to pimp it because I worry that they won't.

[louiselux.livejournal.com]

I'll keep my eye out for it- it sounds just the sort of thing I'd like too.

[cenire.livejournal.com]

I've never seen a horror movie, or anything really scary at all (I don't think the Helms Deep battle sequence in TTT counts for much). I am sometimes more frightened by my own mind.

[biascut.livejournal.com]

My laptop is dying, and I'm thinking of getting a new one after Christmas. It's dying because I had it in my bag with some plastic things of spaghetti bolognese, and they leaked on the screen. This was last December, and it's slowly getting worse.

Bother.

[yonmei.livejournal.com]

The first book I remember reading and wanting to read again was about a goose with no feathers who was an outcast because of his featherless state until a kind sea-captain knitted him a grey jersey.

I wasn't much older than three.

[penknife.livejournal.com]

When I was a child, I couldn't sleep unless I had my plastic snake wrapped around the bedpost of my bed.

[ellen-fremedon.livejournal.com]

The book I reread the most as a child was probably The Long Winter. I read it obsessively, over and over. I think that might explain a lot about me.

[yay4pikas.livejournal.com]

The first book I ever read by myself was Dr. Seuss's Put Me In The Zoo. I was four.

I really, really like books, and the thing that pisses me off the most about formal education is that it leaves me no time for informal education.

I LOVE sushi.

[gehayi.livejournal.com]

I learned to read before I was a year and a half old. This discombobulated the teachers at Montesorri School and Renbrook Nursery School no end, as this was the era of learning by appointment. I was not supposed to start learning to read, according to the experts of the time, until I was seven.

My favorite books of the time were three child-sized books about Lassie. One involved a fire, and one involved saving a girl from drowning. I forget what the third was about. I also have an old copy of The Wizard of Oz--yes, the original, unabridged text of L. Frank Baum--that my mother gave me when I was three or four.

My mother also had a knack of picking up books at garage sales, shoving them in my hands and ordering me to read them. As a result, I learned a lot about Greek, Roman and Norse mythology, classical literature and grammar without realizing that I was learning anything.

(Yes, I read grammar textbooks. If you had my mother, so would you. I suspect I learned to enjoy it because I knew I had to read them, and having to read something and hating it was intolerable to me. Math was bad enough.)

I suspect that all this explains a lot about me.

[yay4pikas.livejournal.com]

Unfortunately, some people still think it is that era.
"Learning" to read in first grade was boring, since I was reading adult books by then, the teacher thought my parents 'forced' me (because obviously no child that age would willingly read Shakespeare), and the psychotic school librarian wouldn't even let me go in the 'big kid section' until my parents got special permission from the school.

Bleh. >.< Yes, I am still bitter.

I read a lot of mythology growing up. My love of grammar books is recent.

Things you probably didn't want to know

[omelton.livejournal.com]

Hullo!

My first fandom was Der Rosenkavalier by Richard Strauss. I was madly in love with/wanted to be Octavian Rofrano. I still know most of the libretto by heart.

When I get dressed in the morning, I always think 'what image would you like to project today? What character are you secretly pretending to be?' My Aziraphale kit consists of a white dress shirt, a broad grey tie with diagonal navy stripes, a v-neck black jumper, corduroys, and a tan leather men's coat that reaches to my ankles. Oh, and a plaid scarf.

I don't like okra, but I'll eat it to be polite. (I'll eat anything to be polite.)

I can't stand flavoured lipstick.

I am contributing to my sisters' broad-minded world view by telling them all about slash.

I have great trouble getting through any of Charles Dickens' works.

I like Stephen Fry's autobiography better than any of the novels he's written.

When conversing with an English speaker, I more or less subconsciously try to tailor my accent to fit theirs. Then I get very embarrassed about it and wonder if they feel insulted.

Good Heavens, that's about enough, I think. This meme is dangerous, I could go on spouting trivia about myself for hours on end.

Cheers,

O

Re: Things you probably didn't want to know

[odditycollector.livejournal.com]

Love your icon!

Re: Things you probably didn't want to know

[omelton.livejournal.com]

Thanks! Had a hell of a lot of fun making it.
Er, ow. The puns strike when you least expect them.
I shall make some more GO icons in the near future, I can feeeel it...

Cheers,

O

Re: Things you probably didn't want to know

[louiselux.livejournal.com]

I like the sound of your Aziraphale outfit. Have you got a Crowley outfit too? I usually just have to put sunglasses on to channel my inner demon these days.

Re: Things you probably didn't want to know

[omelton.livejournal.com]

Well, I did buy a new pair of sunglasses a few months ago. They're very nice, understated yet elegant, thin silver metal rims and dark mirrored lenses...
But otherwise I'm so definitely not Crowley-shaped that I haven't quite dared to put something together yet... well, that and I don't own many black articles of clothing.
The glasses and my plastic-with-shiny-metal-bits parka will have to do at the moment. And the optional mp3 player blaring something like Nine Inch Nails, loud and antisocial. Or, er, Queen. And damn me if I haven't started listening to Queen actively after having read Good Omens. Augh.

Cheers,

O

[minkhollow]

For as much as I say I can't sing, I'm at least in tune most of the time - I just refuse to go in front of an audience. What singing talent I've got is from singing along to CDs (mainly Barenaked Ladies).

[shati.livejournal.com]

I'm not, as far as I know, afraid of tidal waves, but I've had three dreams (that I remember) about fleeing tsunamis, failing to get far enough away, and then waiting for them to hit. In fact, most of my dreams involve dying. The best dream I ever had was about me drowning.

[odditycollector.livejournal.com]

I have stolen collected every textbook I've used since elementary school. Every so often I consider giving them back, as I'm not at the point in life where a grade five math lesson will do me much good, but I have a thing about keeping every book I touch. Bookstores love me.

[askance.livejournal.com]

but I have a thing about keeping every book I touch.

But this is normal... honestly. I give the look of horror to any secondhand bookstore owner that makes the mistake of suggesting I could bring my books back and resell them. Infidels.

[afrai.livejournal.com]

I have favourite daydreams I return to and elaborate upon when I am bored.

Sometimes I wonder what it'd be like if somebody close to me died, and I always feel vaguely guilty about wondering. I mean, I don't want it to happen, obviously. I just wonder.