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

[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!