(no subject)

[oyceter]

Yay! It's journal archiving day! I usually go through all my entries and index them with the memories feature once a month, and for some reason, I find this highly enjoyable. I don't know. Something about going over the month and remembering what I read and watched and though is very interesting.

I'm spamming the FL quite a bit today!

I was feeling sort of tired and stressed and blah at work, but then I went home and walked across the street to the library and deposited my check from Broadsheet (yay! I am now within budget!). The grass had just been cut and smelled like cut grass, the wind was blowing just a bit, it was cool, the sky was blue and the trees were beautifully green, and I suddenly felt good. I used to be a very stay-indoors type of person. I probably still am, given my dislike of physical activity, but I adore being outside under a blue blue sky and in the middle of trees and grass.

And yay, people are actually answering my questions! I reread them and realized that I am very, very strange.

Anyway, here are my answers, along with why in the world I asked them.

1. Describe your strangest pair of socks
   
   Mine are a pair of Princeton socks that are a truly dreadful shade of orange with black paw prints on them. I gave them to my sister and she refused to wear them and ended up giving them back to me because they are so ugly =(. They really are. But they make me happy when I wear them because they're orange! I also have pink and grey striped socks and socks with frogs on them. And socks with flying pigs (can't find them) and socks with pandas. But usually I just wear boring white athletic socks.
   
   Obviously I asked this question because I have a Thing for socks. They're just so funny! I mean... socks! I want knee high striped socks now. And more socks with frogs on them, because I like frogs.
   
   Truly I am strange.



2. Can I see pictures of your bookshelves (or book stacks or piles or boxes)?


Yes. They are very big, because when I see bookshelf pictures, I always try to read all the titles, even though it nearly blinds me.

I always want to see pictures of bookshelves. Actually, I would much rather see the actual bookshelves and spend hours staring at all the spines, but since people would probably be rather puzzled if I showed up one day and just started ogling at their shelves, pictures are the next best bet.


3. If you were a hat, what kind of hat would you want to be?


A really ridiculously big and floppy beach hat. Straw. With ribbons! I think maybe happy yellow ribbons or else something with polka dots, just because.

I have no idea why I asked this. I just like hats. I wish hats were everyday wear because I adore them, but then I get hat hair and can't take them off, so when I wear a hat, I have to wear it all day. And people would probably look at me funny if I wore one around the office all day.


4. What's the worst song you've gotten stuck in your head before?


"This is the song that never ends...." Hee hee hee.

I get earwormed a lot, and I think one of the worst for other people was the theme song to Brazil because I kept trying to hum it but was horribly off-tune.


5. My rats: evil killers of paper bags, cute sleepy fuzzballs or embarrassingly tame yogie-drop eaters?


My rats think they are evil killers of paper bags. I think they are cute sleepy fuzzballs. They really are embarrassingly tame yogie-drop eaters.

I couldn't have questions without including the rats.


6. Books or food?


Books. Though I must eat. And I am currently wavering now because I really, really want to splurge and eat really good food. But I shall wait until my parents come visit me and make them pay for everything.

I asked because I spent all my "for fun" money on my plane ticket to see my sister (and hopefully other LJ people!) in NYC for thanksgiving, and right now I only have food money. So I'm trying to eat less so I can get more books, which was working for a while, but now I'm hankering for good food. Plus, the library is across the street. Hrm.


7. If you could live in a book, what genre would it belong to? How come?


I would live in a romance novel. A contemporary romance novel. I'm too fond of the internet and running water for most fantasies, and I'm not much for adventure or sci-fi type things. Plus, this way I would be assured of finding the Love of My Life (tm) and having a really happy ending. And maybe I would be rich without any visible means of income, or poor but still with a glamourous lifestyle even without the money. Of course, if I really did end up in one, I would probably be the cynical best friend who died of jealousy or something ;).

Again, totally random question.


8. Stealing from the movie Wonderful Life (also known as After Life): if you were told that you could only carry one memory with you into the afterlife, which would you choose?


I think one of a cool summer day with sunshine and books and the smell of food in my living room, and that sense of absolute satisfaction and joy.

I like hearing about people's cherished memories, even though this is a sort of weird way to ask. I watched the movie back in freshman year (love it), and it was basically just tons of people talking about their favorite memories and it was so interesting!


9. What do you know a lot about that most people don't? Most people here should be most people, not most people in that field. I specify this because I know how badly I prevaricate when I'm asked about something that I'm good at. Or if you still feel weird, what do you know a lot about that I don't (I don't know about a lot of stuff)? Why is it cool? Tell me about it!


I know about shoujo manga scholarship, although I will probably know less once more people publish stuff. I also know about male-male sexuality in pre-modern Japan! I have strange specialties.

And I feel that the subjects are intrinsically cool because they often combine nationality and gender and some media theory, all of which are things I am very interested in.

I asked because I think it's really cool how much different people on LJ know about different things, and everyone is so immersed in their knowledge. It's like diving into a whole new world if you don't know about it, which I usually don't, and it's so neat watching people talk about it, because they never quite seem to know how neat the things that they do know are, and it's all quite exciting! I always want to sit people down and ask them to tell me all about a certain thing.


10. What random bit of trivia do you know?


Off the top of my head: Cantonese and Taiwanese and other dialects sound much closer to Chinese back when it was spoken in the Tang Dynasty, so if you read Tang poetry in those languages/dialects, it sounds more like the original. I thought this was neat. Along with the whole Appalachian English supposedly sounding like English back in Shakespeare's time bit.

Comments

Re: random trivia

[(Anonymous)]

apparently, if you recite Tang poetry (not just "Tang she1" but also the other Tang poetry) in Taiwanese, everything rhymes better and is even more lyrical. also, some Korean phrases supposedly sound very similar to the same phrases in Taiwanese. unfortunately, i have been unable to verify that because I don't speak a lick of Korean, and my Taiwanese is so poor that little kids can outspeak me. anyhow, i suppose that similarity makes sense because didn't some explorers from tang dynasty end up in "chiao2 sian3" while in search of that "sien1 yiao4" (ummm......the drugs that make you live forever)? and supposedly, that's the origin of some "chinese" blood mixed into korean?

(anlee)

Re: random trivia

[yhlee.livejournal.com]

--it wouldn't surprise me, actually; I remember oyceter and I were tossing phrases of things back at each other, and in a number of cases the Korean words that had been stolen from Chinese, you could hear the similarities.

Korean nobles spent an awful lot of time writing stuff in classical Chinese, too, and an inordinate amount of time on their own poetry. ^_^