I got tagged a few times, but I don’t like forcing memes on people. Sorry for not lj-cutting this, but it’s going to facebook … anyway, maybe you will learn something about me from this?
25 things… blah blah blah
1. I’ve always lived in the same city. I had a moment of panic before leaving on my Otesha Tour this past fall because I had never been away from Montreal for more than 4 weeks at a time. This means all of my seasonal cues are specific to this place, and I really should move one of these years to get some perspective.
2. I am living with my mom in the house of my youth during this year off business, and it’s great. I get along really well with my small family, in part because we all respect each other too much to infringe on privacy or judge hastily.
3. My father died unexpectedly when I was 8 years old. This was traumatic and the most identity defining part of my life until I graduated this past year, legitimizing my ambition of becoming a music researcher.
4. If you’ve never seen me do my “letter box mouth” trick, ask. I have won every can-you-do-this-weird-trick-with-your-face competition with this amazing oral formation since I was eleven because I can do everything else, and no one I have yet met has managed to recreate the pagoda sillouette. But please do try; your attempts are hilarious, and a great example of the broken way we interpret the actions of others in our incomplete physical empathy.
5. I have three explanations for being vegetarian and when asked why I eat the way I do I have to judge which would be best recieved/most useful to the interested audience. From ethical to absurd, my reasons are: “dude, I am trying to eat sustainably”, “If I can’t kill a cow, why should I let someone else do it for me?” and “eating meat feels like cannibalism”.
6. TV programs that adults find funny often freaked me out as a kid. Bananas (kids in the hall) and laundry hampers (red dwarf) continue make me uncomfortable, and I still expect vampires to pour out of the laundry room when I am going up the basement stairs.
7. At thirteen I decided, in my young feminist way, that if I shouldn’t judge people because of what they look like, then I shouldn’t romantically discriminate based on sex. So in a way, I’ve been bisexual (or pansexual if you want to be picky) since that conclusion, though I did wait for repeated evidence of sexual responses to women before coming out. I knew enough as a teenager to realised that as much as I should define interesting partners by things other that how their bits jiggle, I couldn’t just force cold logic over my deep set human prejudices.
8. I love talking back to movies. I think to most fun I’ve had in a movie theater was going to see Tomb Raider 2 and being the hooligans in the front row of the theater yelling at the inconsistencies with the games and absurd sexual objectifications and throwing popcorn at the screen.
9. I am a huge Jane Austen fan. I read her works like candy, but my least favourite work is Northanger Abbey because Catherine is too silly and naive for me to relate to. I like to think of myself as a Jane, or an Elinor, or maybe even an Elizabeth, but I am afraid I might be more of an Emma.
10. I am not really addicted to coffee. I drink it a lot, and I appreciate its function in social interaction patterns, but I am a total failure as an addict because I forget about my habits at the slightest distraction.
11. Similarly, despite my conscious intentions, I avoid developing routines. There are some things I do regularly, like reading until I fall asleep every night (a bad habit, I assure you), but I think I am afraid of the days bluring together with the same thing over and over, so I willfully neglect bits and pieces of how things could be done regularly and efficiently to keep me on my toes. Or maybe I am just messy.
12. I really want a two year old child who is always asking why because I foolishly think I could always come up with an interesting answer.
13. I have currently a three octave vocal range, from E3 (164.8 Hz) to E6 (1318.5 Hz). I used to go up to G6, but I haven’t been singing much recently, and biking in cold weather is not good for the vocal chords. I am hoping I might get it back some day. But even without that top bit, I can comfortably cover soprano and alto ranges well, and so I honestly do not know which I “should” sing.
14. I really like frogs. At times people have missguidedly given cow themed things, and cat themed things (my cat broach collection is embarassing) but really, all I want is frogs.
15. I am incapable of following recipes. I read them happily, but even when I mean to stick to the instructions, I’ll substitute something or other without thinking and again will not have made what was intended. This probably has something to do with that routine avoidance thing.
16. I grew up watching my brother play video games, or rather watching the video games as my brother played. Because of this, I often make little noises to accompany regular every day actions, like crossing the street, or opening doors.
17. I also squeak when poked. Please do not abuse this admission.
18. I rarely shower, I occasionally bath, and I often wash out of a bucket with a spounge and plastic container. Showering daily dries out my skin, causing break outs on my back and chest, so it is for personal comfort as much as water conservation.
19. I own and play (rather badly) way too many instruments. From most to least currently sharable musical sound devices: voice, piano, bassoon, djimbes, guitar, penny whistles, tamboa, gourd shaker, finger cymbals, panpipes, a Laotian Khaen, dijeridoo, and a few mouth organ like Southeast Asian instruments. I need to add brass and bowed strings at some point in the future. I also need to host jam sessions to make use of this excess.
20. One of my more educational university experiences was failing and retaking Algebra 4. It was a very much needed wake up call, as I had been neglecting the subject and the rest of my studies in my extracurricular overload, and going over the material a year later gave me the chance to see how I could approach the class differently. I still only handed in half the assignments though, and got an A-. It’s also nice to laugh at people who assume I am a “straight A” student.
21. I hate impolite cyclists. I don’t always obey traffic lights, but I am selective about my infractions so that I am not inconveniencing others. Cars often find bikes scary, so it helps everyones comfort levels if cyclists are visible, signal when changing lanes and turning, and don’t sneak into tight spaces in traffic to jump the queue. It also drives me crazy to play leap frog on the bike paths with slow helmetless cyclists that never stop for reds. arg.
22. English is my first spoken language, but french is my first written language, and so I have a difficulty with both on a regular basis. Some major consequences of this bilingual beginning is a phonetic representation system that forgets the great vowel shift, excessive comma use and randomly distributed ending e’s.
23. In consequence to the former, I used to pronounce chaos (a mathematical concept very dear to my heart) like a slowed down version of “cows”.
24. I value and justify every action and experience in my life in terms of “learning” as if wisdom, rather than happiness or piety or virtue, was the goal of life. Honour comes up as a close second, but learning always takes the cake. That isn’t to say I don’t do anything for fun, but understanding new things is fun, so it always goes back to the same principal. This also means I get really impatient when people explain things to me, or others, that I already know. I wish there was some kind of short hand cue for “yes, I’ve already thought about that, let’s move on.” I get over it by remembering that a different mind will lay emphasis in different patterns and might expose aspect I haven’t been able to consider, but that doesn’t always work.
25. I expect to finally come into my own in my late forties, early fifties. Middle age will be a rockin’ time for this bird – just wait and see!
Finn Upham 