azurelunatic | Interesting Interests Theatre:

ursamajor picked the following interests of mine to ask about:

poodle! stop humping!, yeeth, Cordelia Vorkosigan, duct tape sword guys, ectogenesis, egyptian fayoumi, Liquid Satan, Malkavian

She mentioned that most* of them sounded as if they were fantasy-related. In actual practice, the links are often tenuous at best.

poodle! stop humping!: My aunt has a poodle, currently named Dazzle (formerly Parnelli). The poodle was intended to be a guide dog, but washed out for medical reasons (soft trachea). In moments of excitement, the poodle humps the lab (Deacon, another guide dog washout). This is not an ideal situation. The homosexuality issue doesn't really enter into it, but Deacon is an old dog, and it's not good for his hips to be humped (and not good for his shoulders to hump the poodle). When staying with my aunt, I kept a running tally of the number of times per day one would have to tell the poodle to stop humping, and the circumstances surrounding the humping. *There's no connection to fantasy here; ursamajor just finds the whole thing fantastically funny. :D
yeeth: This is an in-joke from the Johns Hopkins Center for Talented Youth summer programs. We were thinking of other definitions for "CTY", one of them being Center for Talented Yeeth (this being the plural of "youth", according to our sugar-high teenage brains). Others included "Cavalcade of Teenage Yaks", and "Association of Bad Spellers". We read a lot of science fiction and fantasy there.
Cordelia Vorkosigan: Countess Cordelia Naismith Vorkosigan is the mother of Miles Naismith Vorkosigan. She is a native of Beta Colony, but left in order to marry. She had extensive training in enough branches of science to command a Betan Astronomical Survey ship, command of which has been likened to herding cats. She applies her hobbies of sociology and psychology in order to hold her own on her husband's home planet of Barrayar, a frightening backwater that isn't up to galactic standard in terms of either technology or human rights. This is science fiction.
duct tape sword guys: For people who like swordplay, but aren't up for live steel, you grab your PVC pipe and your pipe insulation and your duct tape, and you put together some weapons, then find a backyard or field or other unoccupied area relatively free of innocent bystanders and obstacles, and proceed to whack merrily away at each other. One of the most entertaining participant sports in the world, and it can be as freewheeling or organized as you care to have it. Duct tape sword guy-ing is a male-dominated sport. It can be pure sport, or historically, fantasy, or science fiction themed.
ectogenesis: Literally, the process of gestation outside of the mother. In the context of my interests, it is the ten-year-wonder of a first novel that I will likely never finish. It has a lot of truly terrible stuff in it, but I learned a whole lot from it, and all the plots still excite me, even though I have other things that I need to write before I even dream of going back to it. It originated as a particularly appalling Mary Sue Star Trek Voyager/reality crossover, but evolved into contemporary science fiction with elements of fantasy/magical realism.
egyptian fayoumi: This is a particularly insane breed of chicken, and the breed of my beloved childhood pet hens Calico and Aurora (and the less-beloved Storm and Fleeta, and Tay-Tay's Bakeem and Nemka, and my Virtual Aunt's King Tut). Their Wikipedia article does not address the sheer manic energy that the breed in general has, nor their frequent complete disconnect from reality. They would make good alien birds, or magical creatures, because one doesn't really think of chickens being quite that weird.
Liquid Satan: Long-time readers will recall That Idiot Shawn, my high school best friend, whose partner in hijinks I occasionally was. It was very clear who was the sidekick throughout our long association. One of his many creative applied-science projects was the formulation of better and improved forms of recreational caffeine delivery. First there was Death Swill, which was the strongest coffee the vending machine could be convinced to dispense. Then there was Life Swill, which involved extra strong, extra cream, and extra sugar. Then there was Liquid Satan, which Shawn brewed up at home. It involved espresso shots and probably instant coffee too. It was impressive. I do not think any actual cases of caffeine poisoning resulted from this substance, mostly because it was too bitter and acidic to drink enough to suffer further adverse effects. There was no actual resort to fantasy in the substance; it was named by Shawn because it was the next step up from Death Swill.
Malkavian: This comes to my interests list from White Wolf's Vampire: The Masquerade. Once upon a time, I agreed to participate in a LARP of this game. My character was one Azure Lunatic, an ex-nun who had been Embraced quite some time ago. She had no attention span, had lost contact with reality enough to be nonfunctional in the game, had a fascination with wood, and quickly got bored with the game. She became a regular fixture in my head, and became my default username, and earned "malkavian" its place on my interests list. This is, in fact, fantasy-related.

Curious about some of my other interests? Ask away! Want to have something to write about? Say the word, and I'll pick a handful of yours for you to post about.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Your description there of the CTY thing reminded me very much of the similar gifted-kids programme I was involved in as a teenager, and the sort of conversations we would have. I remember the incredibly high energy & bouncing off each other & all that - bloody brilliant :)

It's incredible. It was the first time I was surrounded by a critical mass of intellectual equals of my own age for an extended period of time, and I recommend the same for any miserable smart kid.

Yes. I got exactly this as well, and I very very much agree.

Like water in the desert, isn't it?

Yes.

And then I thought I could never have it again, but my tech support job and #lj_s and #dw are actually remarkably close.

Dazzle is one special dog. Don't ask what he thought of the ferrets.

I heard that one of the dogs licked a ferret all over.

Have you ever seen a nonplussed ferret? They are very cute.

I haven't, but if I were a ferret and a dog licked me all over, nonplussed would not even begin to describe it.

ZOMG another LARPer!! *flails* I too played ~~more than~~ my fair share of Malks back in the day... been there, got the T-Shirt. (Uhm, no, literaly. I have a Malkavian T-Shirt. Two if you count the Happy Face one I drew fangs on.)

Oh, also: !!pleh, !pleh??, "my cocks(?) is down", cult of josh, egyptian fayoumi, tits against the rte, phighting collective phail, lart, livejournal support prevention team.

Please????

I got egyptian fayoumi in this one, but the rest are here!

I think I was involved in the LARP for perhaps two or three sessions. Azure didn't find it interesting enough to keep playing; she was Not Impressed with the political games that the other vampires were trying to play. This is a problem when playing certain kinds of Malkavians, evidently, and I was not experienced enough at roleplay that involves plot to figure out with the other players how to actually involve Azure in the plot in a way that she would have had the time for.

I'm not much of a gamer under ordinary circumstances, but I'm currently in an online RPG.

*nods* Yeah, I've seen that happen a lot, sadly. Ah well.

(FYI: When I went to look at your interests, I noticed your profile page references LJ as though this journal were housed there.)

I found several I'm curious about. What are these? blue hair, chaos, do another, dream treatments, mud cult, nevermore, s.oteri, stargaet

And if you'd like to ask about some of mine, I'd enjoy writing about them.

Heh, I just imported it straight over, and didn't really worry about that; I poked at it a bit this morning though.

And here you go!

These interests: alice's restaurant, bells of the north, etymology, hoopdance, khazaria, kodt, scottish country dance

...and you have the HEALY MICE, OMG. :D :D :D :D :D (I cannot wait for them to be in print.)

Here you are!

And yes, Healy mice squeee!

I'd be interested in magic-geeking & s.oteri. I suspect I know about the magic geeking but I want your take on it.

I'd love to hear about your take on my interests; which you'd like to know more about.

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Re: interests