a host of eccentricities

[ontology]

I feel like catching up on the memes that have been floating about under my nose for the last eon or so. I always want to do them and never get 'round to it (mainly because I have a sneaking suspicious that I am, indeed, a lazy git--and forgetful). I have to dig up the five questions that avendya asked me--oh, back in April, I think. I did them in a Notepad document and lost them, and then I found them again, and now I have to re-find-them-again. 

Anyway, mermaidrain tagged me for the five-odd-things-about-you meme not too long ago, and while I'm thinking of it, I ought to have a go at it, yeah? It's been a while since I've done it, and there are lots of people reading this journal that weren't then. (I don't remember when this was, incidentally. Back when I had three or four friends, more likely than not.) 

i. My guilty pleasure, where food is concerned (you know, since 'everything' doesn't count--I have been severely enamoured of food since I learnt to chew, which likely has got something to do with my father working as a pastry chef and baker for a number of years and feeding my young self things like blueberry mousse and cream puffs) is frosting. Vanilla butter frosting, actually. There's a recipe for it under the 'recipe' tag. It's got powered sugar and a bit of margarine or butter and some vanilla and milk in, and it comes out all creamy and fantastic and I could eat it forever and ever and ever. If you are lazy or haven't got a mixer or arms, you can buy something very similar in cans from Betty Crocker, which is also very tasty but the homemade variety is much cheaper. (I just made some yesterday to go with chocolate cupcakes.)
ii. I have a perfect hourglass figure, which these days is no longer considered perfect, to my great vexation. (That is to say, I would have a perfect hourglass figure if I were not quite so enamoured of food--I am not exactly overweight, but I do have bits of surplus flesh in awkward places, and when one has had large hips bestowed upon them by apparently vindictive nature, an extra pound or five makes a lot of difference.) The main downside of this whole business is that trousers cannot be found to fit me for love or money or even desperate blackmail--the few pairs I have got are too large and must be held up with belts, and they were rare finds because everything else is three sizes too small. The upside is that I look fantastic in period costume, as the clothing was made to suit a figure like mine. People with nothing up top usually look funny. (Also, period costume hides the more unnatractive of my curves quite nicely. I reckon this was on purpose, as people were more apt to be fashionably plump a century or more ago, but didn't want the lumpy bits to be accentuated.)
iii. Speaking of food--and this had better be the last of it!--I eat everything very methodically. I have little routines for various sorts of food, which are rather difficult to describe. I eat around my sandwiches and toast, getting all the crust except for the bit at the bottom, then eating the middle until there's an inch left above the bottom crust, and then devour that lengthwise. This is about the simplest it gets. The rest of them are much weirder. 
iv. An album has never been listened to properly until I have heard it through my headphones while not doing anything else. I like becoming properly acquainted with albums on roadtrips. Headphones are very intimate, wheras speakers aren't--you don't have the same musical experience when the entire room is privy, you know. Also, I love catching all the little nuances of instrumentation and concentrating on where the melody goes (especially if it's one of those really fantastic melodies that surprises you by leading you one way and breaking off to go another at just the right moment--I'm thinking of Vienna Teng's 'Pontchartrain' just now because my guitar teacher and I were talking about it a little today). 
v. I have this really terrible habit of talking to books. This is one of the various reasons why, when I am reading a new book, I do it very much alone. (Also because I don't like distractions; I want to be as immersed in the bookworld as possible, and I would rather not come out of it at all!) If they are books that I am chummy (read: fandomy) with in any particuar way, this is greatly intensified to epic lengths. I will occasionally come out of books in order to berate a character (funny, the talking-to is usually berating), advise them, or otherwise have some kind of a chat. Sometimes this involves them answering back, which usually ends in violence. I have been known to 'accidentally' take tumbles from the tops of parapets.

In other news, I got a package from lexiedohtoday, containing the belated Christmas present of this very fantastic shirt (!!!). I wore it to my lesson today and my guitar teacher loved it (as do I, naturally). It is utterly perfect!!

Comments

[wanderlight.livejournal.com]

♥! I don't think I could agree with you more re. the albums; my favourite bit about roadtrips is being able to stare out the window, watching the scenery and absorbing my music. If I'm reading/doing homework/etc., I can't give albums the attention they deserve -- they need all of it. And I love listening to all of the threads of instrumentation, too (sometimes I pick them apart and listen to various strains on their own, which is dorky); the love of instrumental layers must be why we both like Dreaming so much. (Did you pick up the accordion bit in it? It's lovely.)

Hee, I talk to my books and other media also. I kept screaming at Ten yesterday while watching "The Satan Pit", my sister thought I was going insane and actually came over to see if I needed any help. Once I had to put a book down on the table and got into a yelling match with it. And then I got so angry I had to actually go outside and take a walk before I could pick it up again. Er.

Also, I LOVE THE SHIRT!!!

[faeriemaiden.livejournal.com]

Yes; roadtrips are fantastic because there's so much room for quiet when you're in the car and aren't required to be doing anything; I can listen to music for three hours, and music is the best instigator for thought of which I know. (And I do the picking-apart thing, too. I once played around with my headphone plug because if I put it in just right, the sound came through in a weird way through just one side, and I could hear this very unusual harmony vocal I hadn't noticed before.)

the love of instrumental layers must be why we both like Dreaming so much. (Did you pick up the accordion bit in it? It's lovely.)
Oh, blimey, yes. And it's not only layered--it's layered well. I've heard some songs that had only two or three instruments in them and they sounded crowded, and I've heard great hosts of instruments that all fit together like patchwork. This may come from listening almost solely to movie scores (namely LotR) for about six to eight months of my life--I love having three melodies going at once on different instruments.

And yes, the accordion is lovely. Accordions are an instrument that needs more exposure; I listen to so much traditionally based folk music that I didn't realise they were so ignored by the rest of the music world (they're a staple in the most average of traditional Celtic bands!), and then I started hearing accordions here and there occasionally--Patrick Wolf's got one, which made me SO HAPPY--and thought, oooh, now there's an instrument with potential. (Had never heard a creepy, watery-sounding accordion until 'Pontchartrain', which may be the singular most atmospheric song I have heard in a six months, maybe a year.)

Hee, I talk to my books and other media also.
I have paused movies to pace around the room and talk. And, er, I can directly trace the Evangeline story to a pacing session I had after a book I'd read made me so angry that I had to monologue about it for fifteen minutes before I was satisfied. (Only some of this was out loud.) I also threw The Two Towers across a picnic table. Ruddy cliffhangers. Especially when your mother's friends tease you about them. :p

[wanderlight.livejournal.com]

!!! My old mp3 player used to do that; if I half-pulled the plug I could listen to just the instrumental sides of some CDs. It was fantastic and probably not good for the thing, which is why it's not defunct, but whatever. There should be options on media players to allow you do do that -- hear just one bit of the song, be it the lyrics or the background instrumentation.

Yes. Patrick. ♥ (How are you liking Patrick?) I think The Arcade Fire uses accordion; I'm just sampling their CD Funeral right now and it's addictive. Loads better than your usual indie pop.

Ooh, I know. "Pontchartrain" is just --. Emotionally draining, though; it isn't exactly background music. Patrick Wolf's "Empress" does the same thing for me: wraps me up and spirits me away.

When I first read LOTR I read The Two Towers, because it was the one I'd brought to China with me, and then I couldn't read the first or third until I got back from the trip. Torturous. And the worst possible way to read a series, but it worked, at least?

[lady-moriel.livejournal.com]

And, er, I can directly trace the Evangeline story to a pacing session I had after a book I'd read made me so angry that I had to monologue about it for fifteen minutes before I was satisfied.

Mm? What book was that? (I should probably know this, but...I can't remember.)

[faeriemaiden.livejournal.com]

I never actualy did rant about it publically, because the whole thing in my head was so long and complicated, but the book was Stephanie Meyer's Twilight, which was superficially annoying for hinting at a nice gothic aesthetic and NEVER DELIVERING--it has one of the coolest covers ever, and the main characters have got severely gothic names that sound sort of silly when there isn't anything gothic happening, and BEING ABOUT VAMPIRES, you would think that it would be...yeah. Instead, it was ABOUT HIGH-SCHOOL DRAMA, and vampires with all of the inconvenient bits taken out (i.e. the more interesting bits).

I think where it really lost me was when we discover that not only does sunlight not vaporise vampires, it makes them TWICE AS HAWT, because their skin goes all glowy and glittery and stuff. >_< Also it had no plot and consisted mostly of Look, A Hawt Vampire Guy Who Protag Is Madly In Love With For No Particular Reason, until the author decided to tack some action on at the end. And even then there is no interesting gothic aesthetic, despite Protag being held captive by scary vampire in an abandoned dance hall, the awesome possibilities of which were completely ignored.

All of this wouldn't have made me particularly angry, just a bit vexed--what really got me going was the weird, unhealthy ideas that started cropping up. First off, Bella the Protag confesses in the beginning that her mother is her best friend, but not long after, she falls madly and clichedly in love with Hawt Vampire Edward, and suddenly he is The Only Thing That Matters, Ever. This is stressed repeatedly throughout the book: she can't live without him, life without him is meaningless, she loves him more than anything else ever, including people like, you know, HER PARENTS, who she's known all of her life, and she's only acquainted with Hawt Vampire for a few months. This is presented as being awesome and romantic. >_<

AND THEN. AND THEN. At the end, she wangsts about how SHE IS NOT A VAMPIRE, and all she wants is to be a vampire so that she can be with him forever (literally), and her parents don't matter, blah blah blee. ARGH. What kind of message are you passing on to the sentimental young girls who are reading this??

So, I paced around the room ranting in my head for half an hour about stuff I don't remember, but the thing I mostly recall is pondering what an actual romance with a vampire would be like, portrayed as realistically as such can. I mean, for me, I can't get buy a romance if I can't imagine these people living their lives together. So, why does nobody ever seem to consider this sort of thing in vampiremances? And also, don't these women (or men, I suppose; there must be female vampires being lust objects somewhere) consider the dangers of--stuff? So he's hot--he's also UNDEAD AND POSSIBLY EVIL and vants to suck your blood. Allowing him to shag you is probably inadviseable, but this is only even considered superficially. (And you don't get mother-freaking-out scenes--'YOUR BOYFRIEND IS WHAT?' and mother lecturing Vampire Boyfriend all 'who do you think you are?' and stuff.) I was also ranting about the lack of gothic aesthetic, and being nagged by the 'if you want it done right, do it yourself' thought and masterfully banishing it, but it was very persistent, and then Evangeline started nattering in my head, and things Happened. (Although I don't know how much I'm going to be dealing with the former topic, honestly.

...Gosh, that was long. This is the condensed, breakneck-speed, 'I need to get off the computer, make this quick' version, too. *headdesk*