Interests meme

[elaby]

Atashi meme sheep desu. I've been meaning to put this up, and I keep forgetting!

Just sent about a dozen similar e-mails off to Reading Centers all across the country, asking them what they're up to! Maybe one or two will even respond! I'm not too hopeful, as it IS summer, but this would look good in my research.


Memosity wherin I get you to talk about yourself!

Reply to this meme, and I'll pick one of your LJ interests. You tell me a whole bunch of stuff about it, and we all learn a bit more.
And it's not part of the meme, but I like talking about myself so you can also pick one of my interests and I shall bore you to tears babbling about it!

Comments

[caitirin.livejournal.com]

Aina do it again!!

Tell me all about Kunzite and Zoicite!!!

And you can pick anything of mine.

[elaby.livejournal.com]

Tell me about why you're interested in the music of the spheres!

And I'll tell you about Kunzite and Zoisite when I have time to think about them :)

[caitirin.livejournal.com]

The music of the spheres was a concept that came out of Ancient Greek philosophy, and I forget exactly who thought it up, maybe Aristotle.

He posited that perhaps in the rotation of the spheres of heaven and earth caused this beautiful ethereal music to be produced.

But then, someone asked, how come we can't hear it?

He answered that by saying that we CAN hear it, we just don't notice it because it has been in our ears for every second of our entire lives from birth till death and so we don't even notice that we're hearing this music because it's constantly playing.

Which probably then lead into some kind of self reflection and trying to hear the music and such.

But the idea of this music that is constantly going... is such an interesting idea!

[elaby.livejournal.com]

It really IS an awesome idea!

WAHAHA, you used "posited" in a sentence! Grad school is getting to you!

[caitirin.livejournal.com]

HEEEEE It must be all your fault :)

[elaby.livejournal.com]

Forgive me ^_^

[caitirin.livejournal.com]

I totally do.

[elaby.livejournal.com]

Kunzite and Zoisite are the fourth and third respectively of the Shitennou, the Four Kings of the Dark Kingdom in the first season of Sailor Moon. I like them because in the anime, and arguably in the manga, they're romantically involved. I believe they were my first canon slash pairing. Along with Jadeite (who's boring, meh), they're the ONLY Sailor Moon second-tier bad guys (that is, they're not monsters du jour, they're not Head Bad Person, and they're not Nebulous Bad Being above Head Bad Person) who are not redeemed. They have a really amusing relationship, because Zoisite is such a little bitch. I like him because he's really the most developed of the four, and I like Kunzite because he's sexy and is the grumpy type ^^;; I also like them because while they're not redeemed, they ARE very sympathetic because of their devotion towards each other and their tragic endings.

[caitirin.livejournal.com]

I cannot WAIT to see this!

[miss-next.livejournal.com]

OK, I'll give it a go. :-)

[elaby.livejournal.com]

I want to know about ecumenism and squirdle! I don't suppose you meant Squirtle, the Pokemon ^_^

And you can ask me anything about mine, if you like.

[miss-next.livejournal.com]

I put down "ecumenism" because it was a choice between that or "non-denominationalism", and I thought that of the two it was slightly more accurate. I'm not against denominations, because Christians are all different, and I think it's good that there is room within the Christian Church for everyone to worship in a way that suits their personality and their gifts. However, if you've got denominations and then they don't get on among themselves, then as I see it you're negating the whole point of having them. So, although I don't really belong to a specific denomination myself, I'm very keen on helping to unite those who do, where I can.

Squirdle is the little chap you see in the icon. I've created a lot of characters over the years, and he's probably my all-time favourite. He's actually Maxwell's demon (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maxwell's_demon), and because of the unfortunate nomenclature he thinks he's a real demon, as in Unpleasant Spiritual Entity. The thing is, Squirdle really isn't particularly unpleasant, a fact which bothers him somewhat in his more reflective moments. He made his first appearance in a fanfic I wrote in daily chunks on a message board, which was later collated and entitled The Bodyswappers, and later I wrote a fully-fledged independent story about him called Merry Hell (the jam jar appears in that one).

Squirdle is Jewish. This, he explains, is because demons have to believe in God so they know who they're avoiding. :-)

Now tell me something about Icelandic sagas, if you will!

[elaby.livejournal.com]

Heee, that is SO COOL! What a wicked neat character :)

I've read two Icelandic sagas, Volsunga Saga and Njal's Saga. If you know anything about Germanic legend, you'll be familiar with
Siegfried/Sigurd from a lot of legends, the Nibelungenlied in particular. He's also in Wagner's Siegfried, and The Ring, I think. Volsunga Saga is about him, and has all sorts of neat stuff with gods (Odin shows up all the time), incest, women who kill their husbands and children and then burn themselves on their family's pyre, people getting trampled to death by horses, dragons, and other exciting gory things. It's really cool. Njal's Saga follows an Icelandic family through a bunch of generations, the conversion to Christianity, and this whole huge revenge cycle theme. That one's pretty cool too, but a bit long for me. It has good battle scenes and some really nifty character stuff, though, if you're able to mine it out.

[miss-next.livejournal.com]

So, never a dull moment, then? :-)

[elaby.livejournal.com]

Well, Njal's Saga had plenty of dull moments, owing to the thousands of asides where they'd tell you people's heritage back a few dozen generations. But the people who originally would be listening to this would know who all those ancestors were, and would be able to discern character traits from that information, so it's cool they're there... just meaningless to me. Volsunga Saga, though - no dull moments there!

[dakegra.livejournal.com]

yo.

reminds me, I owe caitirin an answer!

[elaby.livejournal.com]

I'm going with the very first one! What is "ansible"?

[dakegra.livejournal.com]

http://www.ansible.co.uk/

Ansible is a British SF/fantasy newsletter, emailed out once a week or so. Highly entertaining.

[elaby.livejournal.com]

Ooooo! Nifty! I always was kind of interested in those, and in the fantasy magazines that run stories and stuff, but I never bought more than one.

[caitirin.livejournal.com]

S'truth! XD Maybe I can charge interest and ask about two things!

[x-pyewacket-x.livejournal.com]

^^ Research, whee!

[elaby.livejournal.com]

Yeah, it's fun!

Dunno if you meant to reply to the meme, but I'm going to ask anyway!

I want to know what gondwanaland and shatterzone are :3

[x-pyewacket-x.livejournal.com]

^^ You ask, I answer, madam!

About 650 million years ago in the Cambrian Period, the earth's southen hemisphere was absolutely DOMINATED by a continental mass that consisted of modern day Australia, India, South America, Africa, and Antarctica (possibly a chunk of Florida and southeast Europe as well). Dr. Eduard Suess, an Austrian geologist in the 19th century, came up with the notion of the supercontinent and dubbed it "Gondwanaland" after a region of rock strata, Gondwana (Gondhyana) in India that provided solid support to his theory. Besides being one of the largest landforms ever to grace the face of our little blue world, it's also up to our current knowledge the one that lastest longest, with an overall longevity of about 550 million years before the individual continents began to split up. ^^

-I- think it's particularly cool because our region, parts of coastal Maine and maritime Canada, originated from a tiny little speck of a micro-continent called Avalonia that broke away from Gondwanaland sometime during the Ordovician period, and travelled from somewhere in the latitude of New Zealand before becoming part of North America. ^^ So we grew up on a part of old Gondwanaland! Which excites me!

And...Shatterzone. Oh dearie me and lawks.

That has two definitions:
1) The distinct geometric cracks formed in certain igneous rocks formed with molten magma oozes up through existing rocks, which stresses the overlying bedrock and makes big chunks of rock fall into the molten magma body. Some of those chunks of bedrock melt in the magma, while others stay intact and end up suspended in the magma. When the granite cools these blocks remain surrounded by crystallized granite. The broken, fractured zone of rock is called the shatter zone.
2) The name of the punk rock band that antarcticlust and I will one day form in order to bring positive, hip press to the scientific community. All ours songs will be about geology, climatology, dinosaurs, thunderstorms, mountains, and glaciers. We came up with the notion while exploring the shatter zone on the volcanic Great Head lobe by Sand Beach in Acadia National Park.

Future album releases will include the titles, "Mammoth Love" and "Don't Hold Back Your Ice Age" and the legendary ballad "Isostatic Rebound is So Uplifting." :3

[elaby.livejournal.com]

That is the coolest thing EVER. Your awesomeness knows no bounds ^_^ I learn something cool every time I talk to you!

Next time I go to Acadia, I am SO searching that out!

[cortue.livejournal.com]

Something I don't know: the nibelungenlied
Something I do know: athos

[elaby.livejournal.com]

The Nibelungenlied is a medieval Germanic romance/epic thing. It starts out very romance-like, all talking about court life and love and women's clothing (paragraphs and paragraphs of clothing) but then it goes all epic. There's a huge revenge plot and a demonized vengeful woman, and blood drinking. And lots of carnage. It's REALLY cool.

Athos! Squee! That interest is sort of double, because I like the Athos in your icon, and I also have a character named Athos, who has nothing to do with Musketeers, but who I also like ^_^

Wow, you have AWESOME interests! I want to know about haunted mailboxes!

[cortue.livejournal.com]

Ooo. *makes shiny book eyes*

Double the athos love! Never a bad thing.

Thank you! That might actually turn out to a had-to-be-there thing, but I’ll try to tell it anyway. My friend Jes used to call me the nights that her family’s American Idol addiction forced her out of her house onto her porch. And some weeks we’d run out of conversation topics because one or both of us was half asleep; so, we’d play stupid games. In this case it was I spy.

Jes: I spy a...wait no I don’t. I spy...what is that.
Sarah: I’m sure I’ll be of great help here. What does it look like?
Jes: A windmill.
Sarah: I—
Jes: No, no it isn’t. It’s a dog.
Sarah: How did you get those two mixed up?
Jes: I have bad eyesight and wait. It’s not a dog. (pause) I think it’s a man.
Sarah: A man? Just...standing there?
Jes: Yeah.
Sarah: Well, that’s a little creepy.
Jes: Yeah, kind of. I’m still not sure if it is though. I’m going to check.
Sarah: You’re going to check if what you’re seeing is, in fact, a crazy creepy killer man just standing there? WHAT IS WRONG WITH YOU?

But I was yelling at air, because she’d put the phone down to go check it out. She came back, after a very few long seconds and said:

Yeah. It’s a mailbox.

[elaby.livejournal.com]

That's a wonderful story! Makes sense to me ^_^