venta | Four, four, four for my headaches

I just started writing up my answers to the four-things meme, then stopped when I realised it was crashingly dull. This is not intended to be a comment on other peoples' answers; just that mine in particular were dull.

Four jobs ? Unless I count two roles at the last one separately, I've only had three[*]. Places I've lived ? Two, unless you let me count different roads in Oxford. Four TV programs ? I think I might have watched four this year - that is, four episodes of QI and bugger-all else. I don't watch films over and over, in fact I don't really watch films.

The biggest problems I have, though, in answering questions like those is, firstly, to think of four places I'd rather be "right now". As it is, I'm sitting on the sofa, I'm quite comfy and I'm quite happy. OK, so it's not the most exciting venue in the world, but if I were right now ski-ing down a glacier in New Zealand I'd have terrible trouble getting back for work in the morning. Also, I can't ski. I appreciate that this isn't really the point of the question, but it's the way my mind works. Even in my flights of fancy I demand a certain element of realism, and being somewhere significantly else this evening just isn't going to happen. I am practical to the point of mundanity.

Secondly, I don't have favourites. I never really have. So, four favourite foods ? I can tell you four things I like, but as I rule I couldn't rank them or claim to be consistent two days running. I couldn't tell you my favourite book, or favourite song, or favourite place, though in each case I could give you a selection of examples that I thought were pretty good.

At a confirmation class when I was about 14 we were instructed to bring the following week our favourite possession. I forget what the point of the exercise was, but I simply wasn't able to come up with a sensible answer. Various people tried asking questions like "what would you grab if you had to run from a burning house?" but really, I still didn't know. Nowadays I suppose it would be my wallet and phone for convenience; a pet if I had one. There are many possessions I'd be sad to lose, but nothing that really stands out.

Does every else have clearly delimited favourites ? Books, films, foods ? If so, is that a long-standing list or does it change regularly ? Do you have something you'd refer to as a favourite possession ?

[*] The possible only piece of interest in my entire meme-answer was that the other two were agricultural labourer and ballet-school pianist.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Family faioing. Saves getting het up about things.

And so are typos!

a pet if I had one

Although even then possibly for other reasons than it being your "favourite thing".

Does every else have clearly delimited favourites ?

I do, but mostly because the "favourite X" concept is so much a part of the culture I've lived in all my life that I've learned to preselect favourite things. Bea takes a different approach and gives a different answer every time. In fact she actually told me off the other day for always giving the same answer to her "what's your favourite X" questions!

Oh, I can select a thing if required to do so and have a few standard answers ready in case asked. I just never manage to give a favourite very much conviction, because I'm aware that really there's thing B and thing C queueueueueing up behind, and they're not any less my favourite.

I can occasionally pass off "favourite" as "thing I'd most like at this moment", especially with food. Though that would always be a different answer - very hungry on a winter's day wants a very different thing from just had tea on a blazing summer evening.

I think Bea's got the right approach :)

I agree with Bea as well.
There are a few things which are my famous 'favourites' but they won't even be used consistently as answers by me - I like potatoes a lot but even they won't be my favourite food in the middle of a hot summer :-)

Films, music anything like that and it completely goes. No chance of a favourite. I believe this lack of favourites is one of the things which made it onto a small scrap of paper listing the things

triskellian and I both agree on...

I believe this lack of favourites is one of the things which made it onto a small scrap of paper listing the things triskellian and I both agree on...
It is indeed ;-)

I have some 'canonical favourites' which I can mention when people ask (if you ask me my favourite book, I'll probably say The Robber Bride, and I will claim Little Earthquakes as my favourite album), but most of the time they're no more favourite than many other similar things I could equally have said - it's just an easy answer that is probably right on average more than most of the other possibilities.

Purple, of course, remains my favourite colour in all circumstances.

Yeah, I'm with Bea on that one. Go Bea.

Particularly with food, I have things I like a lot, but I also like variety, so if I've had something yesterday I'd rather have something different today.

I have a favourite film and album, probably. Most other categories would need to be posed a lot more specifically to get a sensible answer. And the burning house question would elicit those things least replaceable rather than most loved.

So, what are your favourite film and album ?

I don't think I care about films enough to have a favourite, though I think I have previously cited The Straight Story when forced to declare something. I might actually cautiously declare the eponymous The Stone Roses as my favourite album - I don't think they're my favourite band, and I don't think it contains my favourite songs, but taken as a whole it's the most coherently pleasing album I've heard. I think.

I have problems with favourites too. I remember being frustrated as a kid asking what ppls' fave colours were and the adults havng no idea how to answer, because as a child I had definite and delineated tastes. I have no idea what my favourite possession might be. I'm a worldly creature and there are an awful lot of items which I would be pissed off to lose, but my favourite? Usually whatever fell into my sticky little paws last.

I think with the four things meme, I'd have been horribly tempted to try to sound impressive to A. N. Other.

God, I'm commenting a lot today...

Other than favourite whisky (which I think is a matter of record) there's not many things I could state as favourites with any assurance that they would not become invalid in an arbitrary period of time (such as the next five minutes).

So, I suppose I can also name my favourite favourite, being whisky, since it's reliable.

Glad it's not just me.

I suppose I tend to think of the purpose of these things as being entertainment rather than revelation. So I would answer with whatever was bubbling around the top of my mind at that time, in the hope that people would find it interesting, rather than worrying that it wasn't a true representation of my inner psyche.

I would probably also invent spurious jobs etc to make up the numbers, and invite people to guess which ones weren't true.

But on the deeper point, I think that the ability to have a favourite anything must be genetically / memetically determined, in that people seem to divide so clearly into those who do and those who don't¹.

1 That's my favourite psychosocial theory. Or... is it?²
2 No.³
3 (Because I am of the latter type.)

Well, so far I don't think we've had any defenders of having favourites posting here... I was beginning to wonder whether in fact having definite favourites was something that in general people grow out of. But a sufficient number of people have answers ready when asked that this fact is usually obfuscated.

I was counting

triskellian,

secondhand_rick and

phlebas as having expressed at least one authoritative favourite. Even if they shy away from extending favouritism to all spheres of life, it's clear which side they're on!

Interesting. I find it hard to generate favourites because my memory's so appalling that I can barely remember the last four Xs I've experienced; nonetheless, the idea of whittling down iTunes to my 10 favouritest songs appeals strongly.

Er... why does it appeal ? Would you then listen to just ten songs on a loop all day ? Or do you only listen to music rarely, so it would save selecting an album's worth to listen to when you do ?

Even though it's more generous than the traditional desert-island eight, having only ten songs available sounds like a pretty miserable existence to me.

Two reasons: one, to have a playlist ready when I'm not in the mood to settle for mediocrity; two, as an ideal of minimalism, so I'd know what to keep if space forced me to sell most of my CDs (or books).

(I wouldn't actually delete my not-favouritests, but it's nice to be able to select them out so conveniently.)

Ah. I'd understood "whittle" to imply the deletion of all else. I'm less confused by it as an idea if you merely mean selection, not reduction.

Four, four, four for my headaches

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Secondly, I don't have favourites.

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