Friday, April 14, 2006

Friday Random Rules

Joe asked: "What is the origin of your strange and wonderful 'Friday Random 10' lists?" and I realized I had gotten sloppy about posting the rules.

It is a strangely addictive game I heard about from a few places, but mostly from Jarrett House North, who plays religiously--now estaminet does, too. Although I do not know the exact origin of the game, here is some speculation.

I am a fan of ritual, especially communal ritual. This one helps me mark the end of the workweek--hallelujah.

11 comments:

Joe said...

Ah, I understand now. I can't play though. My mp3 list only has about 80 or 90 songs on it so my random lists would begin to look the same after a while.

Hey, do you like "O Fortuna"?

Isis said...

Yeah, I guess you have to have a biggish list--i.e., be obsessed.

Do you mean the opening of CARMINA BURANA by Carl Orff? I do like it, but I can listen to it with as untainted ears as I used to before it was in the soundtrack to about 50 movies. I really do like the Carmina Burana though.

You?

Joe said...

> Do you mean the opening of CARMINA BURANA by Carl Orff?

Yes. There's a particular performance of O Fortuna that I like. It was performed by the London Philharmonic Orchestra and conducted by Zubin Mehta. It's more dramatic than a lot of the other versions. If you search for O Fortuna on iTunes, it's amazing how many versions there are!

Joe said...

By the way (and this is absolutely off topic and please don't take this the wrong way and please feel free to delete this comment after you read it), I suddenly came to the realization this weekend that you are actually a member of the fairer sex. LOL!

Isis said...

That's hilarious. How did I give myself away??

Joe said...

It was the combination of your love of swimming and gardening with your use of the term PP. I realized that the second P must be "partner" so I thought that you might be gay man. (I know it's a stereotype but in Vancouver there are quite a few gay men in masters swimming) However, when I found an old post on your blog that said PP = "patient partner", I figured you must be a woman. I wasn't conciously trying to
break your "code", it was just a critical mass sort of intuition thing that struck me this weekend.

Anyway, as I said, I won't be offended if you delete this message. I would imagine this sort of thing can be a privacy issue for some people.

Isis said...

Nah, no worries. I don't really try to disguise anything, so I don't mind your mentioning it. I don't like to post pictures etc. because I don't want gender-specific attention, and I suppose there have been times I've masked myself more than others. I do deliberately use "partner" because I like how it can be gender- and sexuality-neutral.

But it is interesting to hear about how I'm perceived--as the stereotypical gay man!

Anywho, it's all just interesting to me, since I do think (and read and teach and write) quite a bit about gender and identity.

Joe said...

Yeah, I should be more gender neutral too. A guy posted a comment on my blog the other day that said something to the effect of "you're sexy". I'm not offended but on the other hand, I wouldn't want to keep getting posts like that.

I would not associate "Fury" and "Furious" with a female's blog. What is the origin?

Isis said...

When I first started writing, the blog was a little more motivated by how pissed off I would get at things around me--hummers, W., etc.--that I thought were unjust or unfair or just Wrong.

In the "About Me" section, I used to have an illustration from The Divine Comedy of the Furies and this description: The furies are hideous snake-haired monsters who pursue unpunished criminals. The three--Megaera (jealous), Alecto (unceasing in pursuit), and Tisiphone (blood avenger)--are also known hopefully as "The Eumenides," or kindly ones.

that's how I liked to think of myself.

At the top I had a quotation from Salman Rushdie's novel FURY, "While we marionettes dance, who is yanking our strings?" I still like that sense that we all get yanked around, and often by people we neither know nor respect.

Then in a flurry of amusement I made the blog pink, and I put up pictures of poodles. People complained, so I changed it more-or-less back (to how it is now).

Joe said...

We are quite like-minded I see. I too get angry about similar things.

I hate hummers too. I'm doing my part for the environment by driving a fuel efficient car (I wish I could take transit to work but it's not really an option right now). And if we all drove vehicles like mine, perhaps the world's oil supply would last a lot longer.

BTW, it's clear that you certainly know your literature! Some of the references you make are amazing!

Isis said...

Re: literature: There are very good professional reasons for that! (I just don't write about my job here.)