Stratovania

annamatic did this meme wherein you request to play and are given 3 people to whom you must assign one role each: do you marry them, shag them, or throw them off a cliff? Post pictures of your candidates in your response.

( My answers )

If you want to do this, let me know, and I'll do my best. Also, let me know whether you want guys, girls, or both.

Oh, and happy birthday to farmanimalsrock!

Here's my third visit to this meme, this time with the topics chosen by lozenger8.

1. Old-style video games

Why does everyone choose this one for me? Not that it's not an interest of mine, just that I should think I have enough other interests without repeating any. Oh, well. Video games have always been present in my life, even when I wasn't actually playing them. I remember picking out a Pac-Man pillow and eating Pac-Man popsicles (they were lemon-flavored, I think) when I was a kid, but I don't think I got much of a chance to play Pac-Man. There was just always something about video games that appealed to me, though, and older ones have nostalgic value for me. For some reason, that even applies to the ones I didn't know about until later in my life. I guess it's more nostalgia for the general feel than for the specifics.

2. Futurama

I've been a Simpsons fan for years (more on that in the fifth item), so I was pretty excited when I learned that Matt Groening was coming out with a new show, and one that mixed science fiction and comedy at that! As much as I love The Simpsons, I felt that the nerdier subject matter of Futurama was more directly geared toward people like me. And it looks like it's been gaining in popularity since it was canceled, which is a good sign in more ways than one.

3. Oz

Okay, what do I have to say about Oz that I didn't say last time? Well, plenty, obviously, but most of that is more specific. I can say that one thing I like about Oz fandom is that, while it's small, there are other people involved in it who are just as geeky about it as I am, doing research and discussing Oz as if the stories were real. For me, it adds to the verisimilitude of a fictional land that I often wish WERE real.

4. Frank Black

I got interested in him by way of They Might Be Giants, as there's not only significant overlap in the fanbases, but the Johns are fans of Frank's and vice versa. They both have a large amount of nerdy appeal, but it's more undercover with Frank. While the Johns have kinda whiny voices and use the accordion a fair amount (albeit less so in more recent recordings), Frank sounds more traditionally cool, even when singing about UFOs and Irish mythology.

5. The Simpsons

I still consider this to be my favorite show, and I watch all of the new episodes, even though I consider it to be well past its prime. Old habits die hard, you know? I've been watching the show since the beginning, but I was more of a casual watcher at first, only becoming really obsessed around the fifth or sixth season. Of course, I'm sure there are fans now who weren't even born when those seasons were first being aired, so I guess I'm an old-school fan by modern standards.

Association Meme: Comment to this post and I will give you 5 subjects/things I associate you with. Then post this in your LJ and elaborate on the subjects given.

I got these from unclemilo:

1. Old Video Games... and I mean 80's stuff (like Bubble Bobble... which I played all the damn time).

I'm not totally sure when all of the games I enjoyed as a kid were released, especially the ones I just rented, but I guess a good rule of thumb is that Super Mario Bros. 3 came out in 1990 (in the United States, that is; it had already been out for a while in Japan). But anyway, before Nintendo became the biggest thing on the planet, most of the video game experience I had was on my family's Texas Instruments computer. TI initially released a combination of original games (like the space shooter PARSEC and the role-playing game Tunnels of Doom) and others that were largely rip-offs of arcade titles (TI Invaders and Munch Man being the most significant examples on that front). Eventually, Atari started porting their titles to the TI, which is how I first played games like Jungle Hunt and Shamus. I was never all that good at most of these games, but I still enjoyed playing them. It seems like that's kind of the way with old games, in that even if you're not that good, you can still have fun and not miss out on much. While I greatly appreciate the added variety and more advanced plots of recent games, they seem to be infinitely more frustrating when you get stuck. Or maybe that's just a result of my growing older. I don't know. My family got the NES much later than most other kids of my generation did, but I was enthralled by it. I still love the Mario and Zelda series, even though I could hardly get anywhere in them myself. Since you specifically mentioned Bubble Bobble, I'll say that it felt more like one of the earlier games that you didn't have to be particularly good at to have fun with (which is basically what I said in review last night, I guess).

2. Music.

I tend to be someone who has strong opinions on music. That's not to say that there aren't plenty of songs I like casually, but when I get into a particular artist or band, I REALLY get into them (not literally). And I like music, even if it's NOT good, to be in the forefront. I've never been the kind of person who thought much of background music, because for me it's impossible NOT to listen to it. Which is why I'd rather work to no music than to bad music, a contrary opinion to those of some of my previous co-workers.

3. And more specifically... XTC

I usually consider them my second favorite band, after They Might Be Giants. I love the variety to their music, the general Britishness of it all (yeah, I guess I'm one of those Yanks who has a mild case of anglophilia), and the poetic style and clever wordplay to the lyrics. They're sort of the first band whose songs really resonated with me. I mean, as great as TMBG's lyrics are, it wasn't as often that I found a lot of meaning in them.

4. Being Married.

bethje and I were already in a committed relationship before getting married, so it hasn't changed all that much in our day-to-day lives. I now have health insurance, and her mom let me live at her house, so some things have definitely improved. But I've never really understood the couples who are together for years, and then everything goes to shit once they get married (or, alternatively, everything gets better when they're married, but I don't hear about that as often). I am glad to be married, but I don't think things would be too different if we'd just stayed together without telling the state.

5. Mythology.

I guess you could consider mythology my main passion in life, in that most of my other interests can be connected to it. Sure, I probably write more about Oz than about straight-up classical mythology, but the Oz books have their own mythology of a sort, and plenty of influence from the classics. Much of my interest comes down to how engaging and often just plain bizarre the stories are, but there's more to it than that. I've never been a religious person, but the idea of supernatural forces having their own personalities has a certain appeal to me. I think a lot of the idea of divine personalities has been sucked out of modern religion, with so many people talking about God and Jesus, but not really caring how the Bible characterizes them so much as whether everyone is following arbitrary and repressive rules, some of which aren't even IN the Bible. And I think there are a lot more similarities between ancient pagan religions and modern belief systems than many people would care to admit, both good (parables about the human condition) and bad (people insisting on following ancient rules and ceremonies without being concerned about the reasons behind them).

The three most recent books I've read:

Doctor Dolittle's Post Office, by Hugh Lofting - I believe this was the third book to be written for the series, although it actually takes place before the second one. (I think all of the ones after that do as well, for that matter.) It involves the Doctor setting up a post office in a small African kingdom, using birds to deliver the mail. I appreciate how the Doctor really only has one unusual ability, but can use it to get out of pretty much any situation.

The Atlas of Legendary Places, by James Hardur and Jennifer Westwood - A coffee table sort of book featuring both mythical locations (like Camelot and the Garden of Eden) and real places of legendary significance (the Taj Mahal, the Himalayas, King Tut's tomb, etc.). Unfortunately, the library copy that I read was missing some pages, but I found it interesting, and it had some great pictures. One of the mythical places mentioned was Avalon, which I hope to feature in one of my mythology posts in the near future.

The Tales of Beedle the Bard, by J.K. Rowling - Of all of the books mentioned in the Harry Potter series, I'm not sure why this is the one that Rowling would actually produce, but I liked it. The stories themselves, written in a traditional fairy tale style but with plots of particular interest to wizards, are pretty good. The real highlight, however, are the notes, written in character as Dumbledore, and explaining the morals and history behind each story. One problem with the book was, as zaph pointed out, the stories were supposed to have been written in fifteenth-century Europe, yet had to be translated from "ancient runes." There could be an explanation for this, like a secret language used by wizards of the time, but there's certainly no indication of such a thing in this book or the main series. It seems like Rowling wasn't quite sure how old she wanted these stories to be, and so gave us contradicting references. One footnote that particularly interested me gave us a tantalizing glimpse at the history of Nearly Headless Nick, although it didn't explain why he was executed. Maybe Rowling is saving that for her encyclopedia, if she ever writes it.

Speaking of books and authors, this utility says, "http://vovat.livejournal.com has a slight similarity with the works of Edgar Allen Poe." I'm not quite sure how, and suspect it might just be random. I mean, I can't expect too much from a site that doesn't even know how to spell Poe's middle name. (It's actually "Allan.")

Movie Reviews

Here's a meme that both colbyucb and unclemilo did before me. I'm actually only doing part of it, because the other part wasn't especially relevant to my icons.

HOW MANY ICONS DO YOU HAVE: 15
OUT OF HOW MANY AVAILABLE ICONS SPACES: 15
IF YOU COULD BUY SPACE FOR MORE, WOULD YOU: I CAN buy space for more, and I don't. It would be nice to have more icons, but not enough so that I'd be willing to pay money.
DO YOUR ICONS MAKE A STATEMENT: Not really a statement per se, but I try to use icons that are at least slightly relevant to either the content or the mood of what I'm saying in a particular post or comment.
WHAT FANDOM DO YOU HAVE THE MOST ICONS OF: Oz
AND THE SECOND MOST: Super Mario Bros.
WHAT SHIP DO YOU HAVE THE MOST ICONS OF: Polychrome/Victor Columbia Edison. I want them to make little rainbow victrola babies. No, seriously, I've never been one for shipping.
ARE YOUR ICONS MADE MOSTLY BY OTHER PEOPLE: No.
DO YOU MAKE ICONS: I usually just take pictures from the Internets and turn them into icons, with no alterations beyond cutting out the occasional superfluous part. I guess that's making icons in the same sense that microwaving a frozen pot pie is cooking.
ARE THEY ANY GOOD: They look all right, for the most part, but they don't exactly show any skill.
ANIMATED ICONS ARE: Beyond my ability.

DO THE MEME.
Coding can be found here

bethje was telling me recently about how her young cousins were getting into direct-to-video Disney sequels and the like, and that one of them is now interested in Hannah Montana. I don't know. I believe that kids should be free to develop their own tastes, and if they end up liking stuff like Sleeping Beauty V: Back to Sleep on their own, then hey, tastes differ and all that. But I think some parents and other relatives will just buy their kids any old thing, without considering whether it might actually be any good. Shouldn't parents TRY to help their kids develop good tastes, even if they don't end up keeping them? Of course, I'm not a parent, and maybe some of you who are are thinking, "What does this guy know? Our schedules are already so busy, we don't have time to discern whether the Disney Channel original programming is any good!" And that's fair enough, but perhaps not all of it is that hard. Why not give kids things you liked when you were young? I'm sure most of today's parents didn't grow up with The Little Mermaid VI: Ariel Does Denmark, so why give that kind of thing to your own children? And I get the impression that some kids think any cartoon is appropriate for kids, which is why you'll get complaints about how South Park isn't family friendly, when it obviously wasn't intended to be. Beth also told me about how she heard some mom in a store saying that her kid wanted a Mario Kart game, but she was going to get the Cars game instead, because it was cheaper. Come on, this isn't exactly the same as buying the store-brand saltines instead of the Premium kind. That just strikes me as willful ignorance, like saying, "All these games are basically the same, and as a bonus, both of these two involve driving!"

Another thing that's been bugging me recently is how many people seem to see Christmas gift-giving as an obligation. And I don't except myself from this, but it just seems to be missing the true spirit of the season. Am I wrong that giving gifts should be enjoyable, not a chore? And I DO like giving gifts when I have some idea as to what the person wants, but I have no clue what that might be for a lot of people I know. If you're grouchy about giving gifts (or, worse yet, you trample other people to get the best bargains), isn't it kind of missing the point?

Oh, and it's final day of the happiness meme, isn't it? This post hasn't been too happy so far, but I'll wrap it up on a pleasant note by saying that having breakfast at McDonald's (two bacon, egg, and cheese bagels) made me happy. Small pleasures, you know?

Wow, there's been a sudden influx of people I know from college on Facebook. Not sure if anyone I added there will follow my links here, but if you do, salutations from Stratovania! I try to write about a little bit of everything, so if you've been turned off by my recent Oz and video game posts, there might well be something more interesting coming up soon. Or maybe not.

Something I was thinking about recently is how I don't necessarily mind pretentiousness in comedy. I mean, Tom Lehrer had a kind of pretentious manner, and I love his work. Of course, he was also self-deprecating, quoting his own bad reviews and all, which helps. bethje used to watch the late-night shows quite often, and she said that one reason she much preferred Letterman and Conan to Leno was that the former two made fun of themselves, while the latter seemed to think rather highly of himself. What I think does tend to bug me is smugness, and I came across a good example of this when I last watched The O'Reilly Factor. Dennis Miller appears on his show pretty much every week, and man, that guy is smug. He'll make...well, not even really a joke, but just a reference to something kind of obscure, and then sit there as if saying, "That's right, I know what that is!" I really didn't see much of Dennis during his liberal days, but I get the feeling his style of comedy was much the same. On the show, he made a reference to some hockey player (I forget the name, but I think he played for the Seahawks), and O'Reilly totally indulged him, saying something like, "Hardly anyone will get that!" But wait, doesn't that mean it's not a very good joke? Yes, jokes that not a lot of people are going to get have their place, because they make those who DO get them feel like they belong. But it seems like you'd have to have a fair number of people on the inside to make such a line worthwhile. I don't know. I make a lot of obscure references myself, but not so much to show off my own knowledge as because a lot of things remind me of stuff that I know well, and others might not.

Along the same lines, I mentioned in that same earlier post (I'm getting a lot of mileage out of that entry, aren't I?) that I thought Festivus displays might potentially ruin the joke. The thing is, no one who hasn't seen the Seinfeld episode is going to think it's funny. I feel much the same way when people bring up forty-two being the answer to life, the universe, and everything. I'm a big Douglas Adams fan, but that bit really isn't that amusing outside of context. References like that work sort of like computer subroutines, in that they remind people of something else that was funny, rather than being funny on their own.

And to get back to that happiness meme, what's making me happy today is the prospect of going out to dinner. I still haven't quite decided where, but I'm leaning somewhat toward the Olive Garden.

Happy St. Nicholas Day! I remember in high school German class when we'd all take off our shoes to get them filled with candy on this day, the anniversary of the saint's death in 346. One year, I was the one who played St. Nick and filled them. The Germanic shoe tradition is believed by some to have been derived from a similar ritual involving Odin at Yuletide, and of course came to be replaced with stockings hung by the chimney in many places. Anyway, Nicholas (if he really existed) was the Bishop of Myra in modern-day Turkey, and the patron saint of children, sailors, fishermen, nudists, the falsely accused, pawnbrokers, prostitutes, and repentant thieves. Maybe the nudist thing explains why there are so many pictures of naked women in Santa hats. The most famous legend surrounding the saint is that he secretly threw bags of money through a window to pay for three poor girls' dowries (a story that, according to Wikipedia, is also told of St. Basil of Caesarea). Interestingly, the first known references to the birth of Jesus being celebrated around the time of the winter solstice date back to the fourth century, not long after Nicholas' death, but it wasn't until much later that the saint came to be associated with Christmas.

The modern figure of Santa Claus is largely an American creation, believed by many to have been based on St. Nicholas legends and festivities brought to New Amsterdam by the Dutch, with a name derived from the Dutch "Sinterklaas" or "Sinte Klaas." Washington Irving (that guy has been coming up a lot recently, hasn't he?) is believed to have originated the image of St. Nicholas as a fat guy with a pipe, which was later expanded upon in the poem "A Visit from St. Nicholas." The poem is usually attributed to Clement Moore, but his authorship is pretty widely disputed nowadays. Thomas Nast drew images of Santa in a red and white coat, and Haddon Sundblom's Coca-Cola advertisements helped to make this the standard Santa garb. I'm not sure when Santa started wearing glasses, which are a pretty typical accessory for mall Santas, perhaps largely because they work with the fake beard in hiding the person's real face. It also helps convey the image of Santa as a jolly old man.

The European equivalent of Santa is Father Christmas, who originated in the seventeenth century as a personification of the holiday of Christmas. This was the era in which Puritans refused to celebrate the holiday, which was rather more chaotic in those days. (Okay, it's still chaotic, but not in the same way. The Christmas of that time actually bore some similarities to the modern Halloween.) Father Christmas did not originate as a gift-giver, but the European and American traditions merged, so that he and Santa are now pretty much interchangeable. Images of Father Christmas often have more of a rustic, woodsy look than modern portrayals of the American Santa, though. Some European countries have come to incorporate both St. Nicholas AND Father Christmas into their own traditions.

During the Protestant Reformation, Martin Luther thought that the celebration of Nicholas was too Catholic (he was, after all, a saint), and encouraged the adoption of a new gift-giver, the Christ Child. In German, this version of the baby Jesus (not sure why he reverts to infant form to deliver gifts, but hey, mysterious ways and all that) was called by the diminutive "Christkindl," from which the name "Kris Kringle" derives. The belief in the Christ Child as the distributor of presents lives on in some parts of Europe, including Austria, Hungary, and southern Germany. Northern Germany, however, has adopted Father Christmas, referring to him as "Weihnachtsmann" (literally "Christmas Man"). I suppose that means Germany actually has THREE December gift-givers, but maybe they can afford that in the post-reunification economy. (Too bad I didn't think of that joke, like, fifteen years ago, since I'm not sure the German economy is quite as strong now.)

So, in other words, if you throw a Turkish bishop, a one-eyed Norse god, the winter solstice, a holiday personification, and soda ads into a blender, you end up with the modern idea of Santa Claus. Later this month, I intend to take a look at Santa's helpers. Also, I noticed on Wikipedia that Italy has traditions of a woman on a broomstick and a blind lady on a goat giving presents, so those might be worth checking out.

For a special bonus, check out the first appearance of Santa on film. Not sure what's up with the music from Home Alone, but I guess that kind of thing is par for the course on YouTube videos. ( And here's my computer-generated letter to Santa. )

Here's an interesting meme that I got from travspence:

Put your MP3 player thingy on shuffle and write down the first line of the first twenty songs. Post the poem that results.

It can sometimes be a little hard to judge exactly what should be considered the first line, but here's what I came up with:
( Read more... )

bethje and I went to Philadelphia last night to see John Hodgman, who for some reason was speaking at the Latvian Society. Nothing in the performance had anything to do with Latvia, though. The first presenters of the evening were Patrick Borelli and Douglas Gorenstein, the authors of the book Holy Headshot!, a collection of amusing headshots of amateur and wannabe actors. The authors (especially Borelli) provided entertaining commentary on some of the pictures from their book, giving advice like, "If you own your own weapons, you should definitely feature them in your headshot." After him came David Rees, author of the Get Your War On comic. He read several of his strips, including giving a seven-minute run-down of the War on Terror. In all honesty, he's not the greatest at reading aloud, but he and the comics themselves were still funny. Hodgman read from his new book More Information Than You Require, getting volunteers to help him out. The guy reading the questions about voting machines did a good job, but the guy asking about mole men was either drunk off his ass or really good at pretending to be. The whole thing ended with an auction, with items including autographed books and the chance to have a drink with Hodgman (bottle of bourbon included). Proceeds from the auction were donated to the presidential candidate of the audience's choice (and considering that the audience was largely comprised of Philadelphian hipsters, you can probably guess who that was). I really didn't expect the show to last so long, but I did enjoy it.

Here's the latest Friday Five (and yes, I know it's not Friday):
When did you last...
1. scrounge for change (couch, ashtray, etc.) to make a purchase? I always try to find change in my cupholder when getting something at a drive-thru. I'm not sure whether or not that counts as scrounging.
2. visit a dentist? Back in April, I think. I need to make another appointment soon.
3. make a needed change to your life? Does getting married count? That would be 29 February of this year.
4. decide on a complete menu well in advance of the evening meal? It's been a long time since I've planned a meal, or at least one that didn't consist of take-out or frozen food.
5. spend part of the day (other than daily hygiene) totally/mostly naked? Well, sometimes when I'm using the computer late at night when nobody else is up, I'll just wear my underwear.

Finally, here's another meme that you can respond to if you're interested (or not, if you're not interested):

Leave a comment here, and I will:

a) Tell you why I friended you.
b) Associate you with something - fandom, a song, a color, a photo, etc.
c) Tell you something I like about you.
d) Tell you a memory I have of you.
e) Ask something I've always wanted to know about you.
f) Tell you my favorite user pic of yours.
g) In return, you must post this on your own LJ. (Optional.)