19 posts tagged “qotd”
What are five things you're good at?
Submitted by HapaLove.
1. Writing.
2. Singing, specifically, singing early choral music.
3. Washing dishes.
4. Scritching cockatiels.
5. Remembering obscure actors' names and what science fiction tv shows I last saw them in.
What's something you bought, knowing it was a total waste of money?
The answer to this question is always going to be books. I know I've bought other things that didn't work out for me--shoes that didn't fit right, makeup that made my face itch--but I have bought an unconscionable number of books just for the sake of spending money. I have sold, at a rough guess, over two hundred books through Amazon, many of which I had on my shelves for years and never read even once.
Here's the deal. I don't own a car, which used to mean that if I wanted to buy a book, or browse for books, I had to catch a bus, ride the bus, expend time and money to get to a particular bookstore. Going to the bookstore usually occupied the middle of the day, and thus it also necessitated eating a meal out. Having spent the time and money to get to the store, and committed myself to eating out, I had two very good reasons for feeling obliged to buy a book: to have something to read while eating, and to justify the time and money I had already expended on the excursion.
I could not leave a bookstore without buying something. And I bought an awful lot of things in which I had only the mildest interest, really. I have parted with so many self-help and "spirituality" books over the years. I finally learned to avoid anything that was targeted specifically to women. Those books always made me feel like I was a third gender from another planet.
What broke this pattern, as you may guess, was discovering Amazon. I spend a lot of money at Amazon, but here's the thing: I have always spent a lot of money on books, and what I order from Amazon, I almost always read, as soon as I get it. Most of what I purchase online is useful and enjoyable. I've discovered it can be fun to buy clothes online, too, and man, do I hate shopping for clothes. Yes, I spend a lot of money on books, and occasionally on whole seasons of television shows, but on the other hand, I don't spend it on expensive athletic shoes, dry-clean-only clothes, fancy kitchen gadgets, or whatever non-book-loving people spend money on. What *do* people who don't read spend their money on?
What books did you love as a child?
Submitted by hearts.
The Chronicles of Narnia by C.S. Lewis. I read all of them over and over.
The Chronicles of Prydain by Lloyd Alexander. The five books in this series were inspired by the great Welsh collection of myth and legend, the Mabinogion. Written in the twelfth century, it probably preserves much older material, including some of the earliest stories of King Arthur and his knights. The Prydain books are the adventures of Taran, a young man who is the Assistant Pig Keeper of a magical pig named Hen Wen. These also I read over and over.
In This House of Brede by Rumer Godden. I discovered this book through a Reader's Digest Condensed version and then read the original through my library. It's the story of a British career woman in the 1950s who gives up her post in Government to become a cloistered Benedictine nun. It impressed on me the idea that religious devotion and commitment were not necessarily confined to a) men or b) neurotics and fanatics; it also gave me a lifelong fascination with liturgy, chant, and monasticism for both sexes.
The Oz books by L. Frank Baum. I always preferred the movie version of The Wizard of Oz to the book, but I loved most of the lesser known later books--The Land of Oz, Ozma of Oz, Glinda of Oz. I loved characters such as Tik-Tok the Clockwork Man, Polychrome the Rainbow's Daughter, and the inventor Professor Wogglebug, T.E., H.M. (Thoroughly Educated and Highly Magnified).
The Lord of the Rings. I'm sure I read LotR more times than I read The Hobbit.
The Mabinogion Quartet by Evangeline Walton. These books, based on the Four Branches of the Mabinogi, the oldest stories, were published by Lin Carter in the seventies, when their author was already an elderly woman who had seen most of her work go unregarded. They're now available in an omnibus volume. Walton painted the gods and demigods of the Mabinogi in terms of a conflict between the matrilineal, earth-worshipping, Goddess-centered Old Tribes and the patrilineal, patriarchal New Tribes who had conquered and meshed with them. Her characters are vivid, her prose magical (and occasionally racy, at least for a child reader).
Books, movies, music; what's in your top 5 right now?
Books
Cordelia's Honor: I've just finished my first re-reading of this dual novel, the beginning of Lois McMaster Bujold's chronicles of Miles Vorkosigan. I may be even more impressed with it than before.
Gaudy Night: When in doubt, I re-read this book. Sayer's finest Lord Peter Wimsey novel--mystery, romance, social critique, larded with literary quotations and providing some splendidly quotable bits of its own.
The Ode Less Travelled: Stephen Fry explains it all for you in this engaging, informative primer on writing traditional metered verse. (Yes, I mean *that* Stephen Fry.)
Movies
Dead Like Me: Not actually a movie, but the thing I've been watching with the greatest attention and greatest pleasure, of late. A teenaged slacker's afterlife as a "grim reaper", whose job is to release the souls of people about to die.
Eyes on the Prize: PBS recently re-ran this gripping documentary, now twenty years old, of the premiere events of the civil rights movement. It really makes you appreciate how much the laws have changed and wonder how much attitudes have changed to match them.
The Tick: SPOON!!!
The Twilight Zone: Every so often I order a few discs of this classic series from Netflix, and each time I rediscover *why* it's a classic. I think the secret is that it's not really television, at least not as we understand it now; it's really theatre transposed to the stage. The acting, the makeup, the sets, all belong in a black box as much as on a soundstage, and many of the actors who guested on TWZ, who went on to become fixtures in television, came to TWZ from Broadway and other theatrical venues. It's just plain *good*--drama, comedy, horror, fuelled by Serling's passion for characters and for ideas and the actors' willingess to give the small screen everything they had.
Music
English Anthems of Tallis: Exquisite, crystalline performances of works by The Man Who Invented Anglican Choral Music, sung by the Tallis Scholars. Thomas Tallis and his business partner William Byrd were among the first and certainly among the most influential composers to write for the new, vernacular liturgy of the Church of England.
Royall Consort Suites by William Lawes. Beautiful, complex instrumental music of the seventeenth century, featuring viols. I love viols. I don't like violins--too screechy. Viols are mellow. Lawes was a court composer to Charles I, who was overthrown by Cromwell.
The Great Service by William Byrd. Morning and Evening Prayer, set to music by and for people with attention spans. Suitable for performing in the presence of red-haired Virgin Queens. Magnificent.
Pretty much anything we sing in my church choir, which includes a fair helping of Tallis and Byrd.
And pretty much anything played on the big band show that airs Friday nights on our local NPR station. Even "Elmer's Tune".
What food or drink do you love when it's cold out? (Recipes and recommendations, please!)
I love hot tea even in summer, but it's even better when it's cold out.
I love hot chocolate. I am plebeian enough to enjoy the instant kind that comes in little packets, though I make it with milk instead of water.
A good beef stew, as French as possible, with a base of bacon under the beef and lots of red wine (both in the broth and in the glass).
Warm, gooey macaroni and cheese, the kind that's been baked.
Slightly warm homemade Tollhouse cookies--just follow the recipe on the packages of Nestle's Tollhouse Morsels. Oops, I'm drooling.
Is it time for lunch yet?
What do you like to make or order for brunch?
Brunch is one of the greatest achievements of Western civilization. It is the perfect meal to follow a morning at church; it's also a perfect meal for those who didn't go to church but slept in (which would be myself, this morning).
I make a reasonably good mess of scrambled eggs when I feel like doing so. I like to add, if I have it, some of that Kraft Philadelphia Cream Cheese that has smoked salmon mixed in; it melts nicely and then you have the richness of smoked fish and cheese with your eggs.
If I'm going out for brunch, there are a lot of things I might order, depending on where I dine. There's a restaurant in my neighborhood which serves *very* fresh pulpy orange juice and makes superb chocolate chip pancakes. My favorite eatery, my home away from home, which specializes in fabulous ribs, makes an "Eggs Ribless" which consists of two poached eggs over a toasted English muffin, topped with barbecued pork (no bones) and nacho cheese sauce, with potatoes on the side. It's heavenly. A really good fluffy omelette with ham and cheese is not to be scorned, and if I'm at a big buffet brunch, I tend to make a pig of myself over the smoked fish.
Church, brunch, and an afternoon nap while public television murmurs in the background... pretty much an ideal Sunday.
What's the last thing you usually do or think about before you fall asleep?
I often fall asleep to the soothing stream of words from a documentary on PBS. If I don't have the television on, or the radio, my last thoughts tend to be about the routine tasks I perform every night to secure my home: The door is chained, the dishes are done, the birds have been settled, the alarm is set. It's a kind of litany to reassure me that I can let everything go and it won't go to pieces while I'm asleep. Sometimes the words from the psalms rise in my mind:
Into your hands I commend my spirit,
for you have redeemed me, O Lord, O God of truth.
Keep me, O Lord, as the apple of your eye;
hide me under the shadow of your wings.
What tv show(s) will you be watching this fall? Why?
The shows I know I'll be watching in the next month or so are shows that are no longer airing but are available on DVD:
Death is just a wake-up call for young Georgia Lass, who prefers to be called George. When this eighteen-year-old slacker gets hit and killed by a flaming toilet seat from outer space, she discovers she is destined to be a grim reaper--one of the undead civil servants who collect the souls of those about to die. George finds herself holding down a boring day job in an office (the same office where she worked in life) while harvesting the souls of those who, like her, died by violence--murder, suicide, or accident.
The Tick can only be described as The Most Perverted Cartoon I've Ever Seen. Cancelled on the Fox Network because too many adults watched it and not enough kids, it takes every superhero trope and cliche and stands them on their heads, wearing purple tutus. A superhero who's a giant insect. His sidekick, a chubby accountant wearing a moth costume, who gets mistaken for a bunny because of the long white moth antennae. Villains who quote The Iliad, pay tribute to Joseph Stalin, and attempt to clone an Evil!Tick from a kleenex he used. I can't wait to see this again. Spoon!
What movie can you quote by heart?
Submitted by clamhead.
There are quite a few movies I can quote liberally. I have a very good verbal memory and memorize words easily after hearing or reading them a few times. Here are the main ones I can think of:
Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home: I watched this again recently and noticed how many of the lines I remembered. I think my favorite exchange is between Gillian the whale specialist and Kirk: "Let me guess," she says sarcastically, "you're from outer space." Kirk gives her his most disarming smile. "Actually, I'm from Iowa. I just work in outer space."
GalaxyQuest: This movie is chock-full of great lines, many of which are tributes to Star Trek. My favorite is when Tim Allen's character is beamed back from a dusty planet after an exhausting fight first with a sort of pig-lizard and then with a giant rock monster, in the course of which he (like Kirk before him, in the glory days) somehow got his shirt ripped off. Alan Rickman's character, in alien makeup, eyes him narrowly and then says, without moving his lips, "I see you managed to lose the shirt."
Ghostbusters: "Okay, my girlfriend sleeps above the covers. Three feet above the covers."
Actually, when it comes to science fiction movies, I don't even memorize the lines. I've seen so many of them I can predict what the characters are going to say and say it with them. I won't even go into the many, many lines I know from Original Trek episodes; I'll just leave you with one quote as a representative sample:
"Brain and brain! What is 'brain'?!"
What's up?
"Up" is an illusion. There is no such thing as "up". What we call "up" is really "out", that is, away from the earth, away from earth's gravity. What we call "down" is really "in", toward the earth and its center. We go out toward the moon, toward other planets; we go in toward earth, toward home. We go in toward ourselves, our core, our deepest nature; we go out toward other people. No up, no down. Out, in, about, within.
