“Comment to this post saying that you want to play [do not feel at all compelled to join in, I'm just reposting to explain this entry] and I'll give you 5 subjects/things I associate with you. Then post in your LJ and elaborate on the subjects given.”
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lizbuf gave me the following:
1.
OttersI do greatly love otters and I currently never shut up about them at work. I remember buying a soft toy otter on a school trip aged around seven or eight, which I of course called Tarka. I come from
Tarka country so read the book when I was quite young; maybe this helped to instil a sense of childhood loyalty towards poor persecuted otters? It's hard to believe they were once hunted in the same way as we (kind of) still do with foxes in this country. Mostly they are just adorable though: like water dwelling cats, and they make very cute noises. They’re even cute when stuffing their faces with dead baby mice and three-day-old chicks at zoo feed-the-otter talks. I refuse to choose between our river-dwelling native type and the American wrapping-themselves-in-kelp sea type as my favourite, not forgetting there are actually 13 species all together.
2.
PenguinsPenguins are just awesome, what more is there to know? I recently found out that the Madagascar penguins have some kind of spin-off kids TV show. I intend to find and watch some of this.
3.
Penn and TellerI love
Penn and Teller and hope that the “&” means they count as one guest at my ideal dinner party. Penn’s gig as Drell in Sabrina the Teenage Witch was casting that required no acting of any kind, and prepared me well for an adulthood of enjoying his loudmouth showmanship/ranting. After a while you realise all that talking is largely to distract you while Teller silently does something sneaky. Their wikipedia entry describes them as specialising in “gory tricks, exposing quacks and frauds, performing clever pranks, and they have become associated with Las Vegas, atheism, scientific skepticism, and libertarianism.” I’ve probably watched just about every piece of their “magic” you can find on the net as well as all of their more recent Penn & Teller: Bullshit shows, where they “apply critical thinking to misconceptions” with a strongly libertarian angle. I guess we don’t really have libertarians in the UK, not in any noticeable sense anyway, but being generally liberal I agree with the majority of their thinking. Plus they actively encourage people to freak dinner guests out by explaining how to make it look like you’re stabbing yourself in the eye with a fork. What better dinner guests could you ask for?
4.
Big Bang TheoryNot the theory; the American sitcom!
lizbuf got me started on this with her talk of glow in the dark goldfish nightlights. So after a bit of relentless nagging (or it might have been gentle encouragement – I don’t quite recall) I found and downloaded the episode with said glow in the dark goldfish. Although it was a few episodes into the second series and I didn’t know any of the characters, I quickly got into it and watched the few earlier episodes from that series. And then the entire first series. Like over the course of a week! (In my defence each episode is only 20 minutes long…) Sheldon really makes it for me in his narrow-minded geeky inflexibility and bizarre misunderstandings of “the social protocol”, but really the entire show is a beacon of excellent writing and geek-love. It’s a fave!
5.
Real AlesAn odd one you might think, for a girl who didn’t drink more than a sip or two of other people’s beers until she was 21! (And for any non-UK folk who may stumble across this I point out I had been legally drinking loads of other stuff since I was 18). I just didn’t like beer unless it was mixed with cider and blackcurrant cordial. Then in my final year at uni I joined the Cardiff University Real Ale & Cider Society. Maybe it was because I was a postgrad and thought it was about time I joined a more “mature” society (some like the Harry Potter society attract mainly freshers, others mature and postgrad students). Maybe it was just due to my South West upbringing which gave me a love of cider! On the first pub tour/crawl I asked some of the others what was a good beer for a non-beer drinker, to give the ale side of things a shot, and was advised to try Leffe Blonde. It was surprisingly not disgusting, and I haven’t really looked back since then! I try to help out at CAMRA beer festivals when I can and spread the love of proper ales; from the palest of India Pale Ales to the darkest of Porters and Milk Stouts. Drink up!
lizbuf also (kindly?) tagged me with some random happiness thing which would entail posting eight days in a row! *hysterical laughter* As a compromise, one thing that made me happy today was getting to lick three spoons covered in plain, milk and white chocolate from coating mars bar krispie cakes ready for work tomorrow. Yum.
chipper