Tag Archives: memes and surveys

Baaa!

LJ Interests meme results

  1. blues:
    I should probably be more specific: delta blues. Dirty, scratchy vinyl sounds behind a miserable bastard with a guitar and a spare rythmn. Music made more as much out of myth as notes. No show, no flash, but something honest and human. Dark bars and cold booze on hot nights.
  2. early punk:
    I feel the need to qualify that so that people don’t think I like Blink 182, or something horrifying. Musically, a lot of it is fucking awful anyway, but I’m a sucker for a DIY ethic, unless it is in some way connected to shelves.
  3. futurism:
    I think anyone without a certain amount of interest in this is missing the point. We’re going to be living there tomorrow, so we ought to be fucking well trying to guess what it’s going to be like, if only so we have a better chance to get it right.
  4. high weirdness:
    Well, come on, if you’re going to enjoy weirdness, it might as well be the really fucked up shit.
  5. lafitte’s:
    Lafitte’s Blacksmith Shop is the best bar in New Orleans, and on that basis, a serious contender for being the best bar in the world. If it has survived the hurricane, I will be both shocked and delighted, but I really don’t expect that it has.
  6. new orleans:
    The only American city I’ve been to that I can say I really enjoyed just for itself, despite the place doing it’s level best to kill me with heat at the time. I can only imagine how much I’d have liked it if I’d gone at a sensible time of year, and I can only hope that they rebuild it exactly as it was.
  7. photography:
    As I keep telling everyone, I have no interest in this whatsoever.
  8. queen & country:
    Greg Rucka’s fucking brilliant series of comics and novels about life working at the sharp end of MI6. Forget the Bond movies. This is a series about damaged headcases, and the way the job chews them up and spits them out.
  9. stories:
    They’re what make us human. If you cannot tell me a story, I have no wish to know you.
  10. this too shall pass:
    I have this tattooed on me, because I think it’s a sufficiently important sentiment to merit making sure I can’t forget it.

You’re all bored of it, I’m sure.

But I’ve been away from the computer all day, so I’m (fashionably) late again:

1) Find a word or phrase that reminds you of me.

2) Put it into Google “images”.

3) Choose a picture from the first page of answers, and paste it in this thread.
(eg: click on it, click on the small picture in the top bar, copy the url, put that into ” [img src=” “] ” in the reply box of this LJ post, only using < > these brackets instead.). Don’t tell anyone what the word was! Unless it makes the result funnier.

Spreading like a…

Complete your own metaphor here. Prizes awarded for answers that make me laugh.

Tagged to do that “Top 6 songs” thing by mrtreacle. Usual tedious “only six” and “only valid for next ten minutes” disclaimers apply, because obviously, I want you all to think I’m the sort of deeply interesting person that loves all sorts of music, and has a really hard time picking just six out of the huge breadth of my taste.

But despite the fact that I listen to both classic jazz, and obscure shit that shounds like a three year old trying to fit a cat into a kettle, my list is, in fact a tediously predictable load of uncomplicated alt-type stuff, because I’m a tediously precitable and uncomplicated alt-type at heart, and I really can’t fight it. So, in fact, forget those disclaimers. It was quite easy to do this, and you can regard this list as good for a whole month or two. Yes.

Tom Waits – “Come On Up To The House”.
Tansads – “Drunken Serande”.
Dropkick Murphys – “The Dirty Glass”.
Shane MacGowan and Sinead O’Connor – “Haunted”.
Firewater – “Dark Days Indeed”.
Flogging Molly – “Within A Mile Of Home”.

Books! Old and new!

cairmen asked, I answer:

1) Total number of books owned?
Dunno. If we allow comics-with-spines as books, 3 full-height bookshelves worth, plus more in storage. Without that, 2 full height bookshelves, plus storage. What’s in storage is probably another full-height and a bit of proper books.

2) Last book I bought:
Like cairmen, Brookmyre’s new one. I don’t think it’s soulless, although it’s a bit Brookmyre by the numbers. Boiling a Frog remains his weakest as far as I’m concerned.

3) Last book I read:
Last one finished was “Rip it Up And Start Again”.
a) With Pictures?
Erm… Flight 2, or possibly Four Letter Words. There’re a few others I’ve bought, but not read – mostly Marvel and DC trades. Very little new that’s a “god, got to rush home and read this…”
b) Non-fiction?
Rip It Up is non-fiction. But for fiction, the last thing I read was re-reading Grant Morrison’s “Lovely Biscuits” and David Conway’s “Metal Sushi” on the tube last Saturday (I took quite a few tube journeys, and read fast). Then I went and fed myself brain-altering chemicals, and in hindsight, should not have been entirely surprised…

4) 5 Books that mean a lot to me:

  • 45 – Bill Drummond. Bill Drummond has the most relaxing and accessible way of talking about Art and modern life that I know. More books about Art should be like his. A friend of mine once flattered me outrageously by comparing my writing style/way of looking at the world and Drummond’s. I think he’s mad, but yes, Drummond is certainly an important influence of mine.
  • The Complete Sherlock Holmes – Arthur Conan Doyle. My favourite pulp fiction, the light by which I make a basic judgement about almost all Fantasy/SF/Comics work – do I enjoy it as much as Holmes?
  • Fear and Loathing On The Campaign Trail ’72 – Hunter S Thompson. My favourite work of journalism, and also my favourite work about politics.
  • Winnie The Pooh (and The House at Pooh Corner) – A A Milne. Technically two books, I suppose, but I love them beyond belief. The only “classic” on my list. Brilliant, brilliant children’s fiction, and the standard by which a person’s soul can be measured. If there is no love in you for these stories then, you should be kept away from real people, as you’re obviously some kind of parasite.
  • From Hell – Alan Moore and Eddie Campbell. Not, I should add, on here as a token representative of comics, but on here as a thing I genuinely think of as an Important Literary Work. Yes, it still is the bar that I think other comics have yet to beat in terms of all round quality, but more than that, it’s an excellent work of literary/historical fiction, that doesn’t put a foot wrong at any point. A must-read for anyone, regardless of their prejudices about comics.