Query quintet

[venta]

Questions kindly donated by nalsa.

1: How did you get into Rapper sword dancing? It is a fairly peculiar hobby.

I'm second-generation folkie, I'm afraid. I was very nearly born at a folk festival, and was regularly dragged along to them for the next eighteen years of my life. Unlike many people to whom this happens, I actually enjoyed it, and emerged as enthusiastic for the whole thing as my parents are.

I've tried, at some stage, most different kinds of dancing that there are - usually at workshops and so on at festivals. Except Cotswold morris - I always gave the hanky-waving nonsense a very wide berth :)

Although there are other things I enjoy doing - clog dancing, for example - rapper is by far and away the most fun to perform. For a start, it combines naturally with a pub crawl, and in addition it's short, fast, and tends to be accessible to people who have no idea about the whole thing. Also, at the time I'd left university and was looking for a new hobby, I found out there was a rapper team very near to where I was living, and they were short of people.

Particularly living in the south, rapper teams are relatively uncommon, which means that you're far more likely to get invited to perform at festivals. I didn't calculate this in advance; with hindsight, I suspect one of the reasons I've enjoyed it so much is the number of places it's taken me.

I think the really odd cases are the people who suddenly take up morris/rapper aged 35 or so - I mean, I've got an excuse, I grew up thinking this shit was normal!

2: Did you get asked any interesting questions last time 'round?

I can't possibly say "no", I'll offend mr_tom :)

I think they were interesting question to ask, though they were mostly short-answer rather than particularly thought-provoking.

Hang on...
<searches>
Judge for yourself.

3: What is it that you do, as a day-to-day thing?

<short answer for technophobes>I'm a computer programmer<short answer>

Nominally, I'm a kernel programmer. Actually, since bateleur got stolen by another department, and my boss decided writing a web browser was more fun, I am the kernel team :) (But a rather ill-educated one.)

In practice, I seem to be spending most of my time at present trying to mend shell utilities and doing the technical review of the browser documentation.

I work in a proprietary language, which is some sort of bastard offspring of C and assembler. Or occasionally C/C++, but I only do that (a) badly and (b) under protest.

4: You really don't come across as being a goth, despite the Whitby attendance and the - somewhat eclectic at times - musical taste. Would you say this is something quite common amongst UkGoffs?

Er... first off, I don't know, really, any non-UK goffs. (reddragdiva, redcountess, anyone else I've forgotten, you're in the UK, all right ?)

However, the whole UK goth scene is something of a chimera, anyway. (Do I mean a chimera ?) If you look at it closely, you'll find out there's actually nothing there and it's only some sort of consensual delusion on the part of the participants holding the thing together. Of course, the fact that finding anyone who'll bloody admit to being a goth is tricky makes the whole thing impossible. There's absolutely no coherent musical sound either - apart from the whole trad/cyber dichotomy, you can sneak practically anything in. zotz used to play Idlewild at The Calling, for heaven's sake.

Although the "look" does vary a lot (again with the trad/cyber thing, and with people wanting to look "different" :), it's usually easy to spot goths. A lot of the people I know do look the part 24/7 - and a lot of those who don't only don't because their workplace won't let them get away with it. On the other hand, there are plenty who'll turn up at Whitby looking completely un-gothy.

So, if you discount what someone looks like/how they dress, what makes a goth ? I've encountered gratifyingly few droop-by-gravestone stereotypes, so most it seems to boil down to being a bunch of people who, er, go to the same clubs. There seem to be sufficiently few defining characteristics that I reckon it's difficult to "come across as a goth" short of slapping on the white face and the black velvet.

In my case, it's down to indecision :) I like a lot of music that turns up in goth clubs; I also like a whole load of other stuff. I like the daft makeup and silly clothes, but I also quite enjoy wearing different stuff. Oh yeah, and I'm lazy: combats and jumper, none of this faffing about with foundation and eyeliner for hours :)

5: Should you become instantly rich with no pain involved to anyone, what would be the first things you'd do with the money?

Well, much as I'd like to come out as a philanthropist who'd put others' needs first, I think the honest answer is: buy a house.

Firstly, I want more space. I live in a room in a shared house - OK, so stuff of mine is scattered about the kitchen, front room, etc, but fundamentally, my life is squashed into a 12'x10' box. My books, CDs, and clothes are spiralling way out of the confines of my storage space.

I also want the space in a less specific way - I was a series of rooms I can wander through, and them all be mine. (Mine! All mine! Ahahahahah! Ahem.) I'd like to have a room to sleep in, and a room to use as a study, and still have space left over for a sitting/dining room. I want the chance to choose my own furniture and so on, make my surroundings how I want them to be. My definition of luxury is being able to put your stereo's speakers in sensible places rather than where they'll fit :)

Secondly, I've been living in shared houses since I left university. There are many good sides to this, and my current housemates are lovely (and I'm not even obliged to say that as neither of them read LJ :) However, times like tonight when I have the house to myself I really enjoy. Of course, living by myself may have me missing the spontaneous carnage of Frances and I cooking when we get in from work, but at present I feel as if I'd far prefer to live by myself.

---

Whew.

Everyone else, you know how the game works. If you want questions from me, leave a comment in the usual manner.

Comments

Re: Hit me...(figuratively speaking)

[venta.livejournal.com]

*thwap*

1. Is you use of 'V' as a name (which I think is not limited to LJ?) at all related to V in V for Vendetta ? Even post-datedly ? Where did your LJ tag come from ?

2. If you were found wandering, suffering from memory loss, how much of your life/persona would you be able to piece together from the contents of your pockets/bag/etc today ?

3. If you were forced to choose one thing you'd learned during your time in America, what would it be ?

4. How do you see people (eg. me) whom you now communicate with on LJ, but haven't seen for years ? Do you consider the LJ-relationship to be an extension of what was already there, or is it a separate thing ? If you have any LJ-friends whom you've never met, do you consider them differently from people who've reared up from the distant past ?

5. Vanilla, chocolate, or strawberry ?

Re: Hit me...(figuratively speaking)

[arralethe.livejournal.com]

All answered and posted....