LJ Interests meme results

bisexuality:
I suppose the general meaning of this one is pretty self-explanatory. Most of my life, all through high school and continuing through my first year at college, I was, as I put it, 'straight by default'. The idea that I was something other than that never really crossed my mind. Even as I took my first steps into exploring my sexuality by investigating furry erotica on the internet in my senior year of high school, I avoided anything with same-gender interactions in it, not because I was uncomfortable with it, but because it didn't occur to me to try looking.

That had begun to change slowly before I met daveqat, but my meeting him was the catalyst to complete the reaction that my mind had just begun. Though there was never really a relationship beyond friendship between the two of us, he was the first person who had ever expressed any interest in me sexually, and that made a big impression I think.

Perhaps the oddest part of the experience, or at least the most unusual one, was that I was only very briefly (perhaps a a week or so) in doubt about my identity or sexuality. I went from being a typical (or at least as typical as I ever got) straight boy to being comfortably and happily bisexual. It just seemed logical, once the idea actually entered my life in any practical sense, not to exclude half the world population from consideration for romance just because of a silly thing like gender.
dadaism:
Perhaps because of my own life-long experience with failure of communication (see face-blindness), I have a fascination with forms of expression that illustrate a break-down of communication. Beside things like Pink Floyd's The Wall and my interest in playing with language, this led me to this particularly absurd form of expression called dadaism.

Rather than try to put the movement into my own words, I will quote from the Wikipedia entry on the subject:

Dada was a way to express the confusion felt by many people as their world was turned upside down by World War I. There was not an attempt to find meaning in disorder, but rather to accept disorder as the nature of the world, using it as a means to express their distaste for the aesthetics of the previous order and carnage they believed it reaped. Through this rejection of traditional culture and aesthetics they hoped to destroy traditional culture and aesthetics.
face blindness:
Face blindness has certainly had a huge part in shaping most of my life, since far before I'd eve heard of it. It explains a good deal of why I am so shy and have the sort of trouble dealing with people that I do. Also known as prosopagnosia (from the Greek words for 'face' and 'ignorance'), it is a neurological condition resulting in difficulty recognizing people by face. I will reproduce here something I wrote about it a couple months ago. This is what it's like to be face-blind.

Imagine being at a party where, while there may be twenty or thirty people there at any one time, these people come from an even larger pool of people who are in the same building. Some stay in the room while others come and go through the night, and some simply come in briefly, look around and leave. There may be a hundred or more people who pass through over the course of the night, but all of them, every one, is wearing a mask. They are not all different masks either. A very few people, perhaps one or two, have chosen to wear a mask that is unique, a mask that you can remember. But most of them have not. Most of them are all wearing one of only four or five masks that were perhaps on sale at Target that week. You see many, many people, some of whom merely pass by, some of whom approach you and talk to you, and some may even flirt with you and try to pet your hair or rub your back. You are not wearing a mask. Everyone knows who you are, even if only as that new guy they saw at Windycon a while ago with so-and-so, or that guy who's been hanging around with person x the last couple cons. They all try to interact with you in their respective ways and you are left to puzzle out who is who. 'I think this person is the one I was talking to about computers a few minutes ago' you think. His voice sounds familiar and he's wearing the same kind of mask, but you're not sure. You pretend you know who he is and try to pick up the conversation where you left off. It's not too hard; it's a subject you know well. When it comes to flirting though, you're at a loss. 'Is this someone I know?' you wonder. Was she the one who commented on how pretty my hair was earlier? Should I be comfortable with this person being this close to me? Is she someone my wife knows, or my friends? Is she the creepy one they were all warning you about? You try very hard to stare at the mask she's wearing without her realizing it, trying to find some detail about it you can remember, straining to puzzle out, from voice and conversation, whether this is someone you know...
furries:
I have for as long as I can remember felt more at ease with animals than with people. With few notable exceptions, animals were much better to me. My family has always had at least a couple of dogs, cats, and other animals, so I was never without non-human companionship at any point in my life.

When going to the cast parties for the shows my parents or I did at the theatre, or any social event really, though those are the ones that come to mind, I always hoped that there would be a cat or, even better, a dog there. That way I wouldn't have to interact with the people any more than necessary. I would have an excuse to sit in a corner and not be a part of the conversations; I'm playing with the dog!

I never dated in high school. In fact, strictly speaking, I never really dated at all. I never thought about other human beings in a romantic sense. They weren't that interesting to me. Though at the time I had never heard of this thing called furry, much less imagined that there was a whole organized community of them, oddly enough, that was where I found that my daydreams of friendship or love often took me. The first thing I can remember that may have given rise to such thoughts is a book by Janet Kagan that I read back in grade school, Uhura's Song. It had these amazing creatures that were like cats, but with two legs and human intelligence...

It didn't take much; just the simple mention when the subject happened to come up at a role-playing game one night that there were other people, in large numbers, who liked the same thing, and I was hooked for life. I started reading alt.lifestyle.furry a good five or six years ago I think, first posting as Stormbear, and I was swiftly beyond rescue.
juggling:
When did I start juggling? I'm not sure. A long time ago, back on one of the trips I took to the Bristol Ren Faire with my parents. Not back in the King Richard's Faire days (I don't remember those), but probably a good twelve years ago. I was with a sort-of-friend-as-long-as-we're-outside-school, Jeff, who told me that he didn't think I could learn to do it. It was something I was interested in anyway after my mother's long attempts to learn the skill, so I bought some bean bags from The Compleat Fool.

I'm still going. I juggle five balls, three clubs, and almost four rings. I've passed flaming torches with a fellow juggler, juggled in a Christmas Madrigal feast at my high school, and gone to a juggling convention. I don't do it as much as I'd like to anymore, but I still try very hard to keep a hand in. Does anyone on my friends list juggle? I'd love to have a partner...
peak oil:
For any non-renewable resource, there comes a time when there is no more left to find and utilize. A time when every last bit of the resource has been found, processed, and used. That precise moment is largely irrelevant to modern life.

What is relevant is the concept of peak production, the moment when you are finding and producing more of that resource than you ever have before...or ever will again.

A large body of evidence is pointing to the conclusion that we are very close to that point. We may see, within in the next five to ten years, perhaps even sooner, the day when demand for oil outstrips the world's ability to supply it as demand continues to go up, but production begins it's slow and steady drop. This will change our world to a degree that we can hardly imagine. But we'd better start trying. Soon.

www.peakoil.com
rain:
I love rain. I love standing outside, barefoot, grass under my feet, the grey skies above blessing me with their gifts. I love bicycling through a misty spring shower, just enough to be noticeable, rushing along the waterfront, the wind blowing my hair back, the drizzle moistening my face so slightly, gently reminding me I'm alive. I love lying in bed with my mate on a cool afternoon in the first days of autumn, listening to the murmuring rain on the roof, watching the lightning and the silver skies outside our window, letting the soft noise, the benevolent whispering of gaia, wrap me in it's ephemeral arms.

I love rain.
sex:
For someone who managed to make it through twenty-two years on this earth without having experienced it, I'm certainly partial to it now. Let it suffice to say that wooisme and I are both making up for lost time in this area...
theatre:
Theatre is what I had as a replacement for a social life in high school.

Not in high school though. Though I was involved with a play or two there, my dad was heavily involved with our local community theatre for some time and I ended up getting drawn in with him. Though our areas of interest differed (he wanted to act and direct and I, forever the starry-eyed techy, wanted to play with the lights), it was something that we could share together. I latched on to Marv, the light guy there, and spend hours helping him hang and set lights. Eventually, I started lighting shows by myself when he was too busy to come in and work. I had a lot of ten or twelve hour days in there, hanging lights, jotting down cues, building sets, doing rigging, and loving every minute of it.

I intended to major in theatre in college after I decided against computer science, my first choice. In fact, I believe that had it not been for my face-blindness and other social impairments (I first learned about face blindness just before the end of my last year in college. One of my professors asked me why I wasn't taking a bigger part in the department when I had been presented with so many opportunities to do so and I admitted to him, and to myself, that I was just scared of people. He told me that maybe I should think about figuring out why. Just a few days later I found face blindness on the internet and my life suddenly made a lot more sense), I would probably be an electrician or lighting designer with a touring company or, if I was really lucky, with a stationary theatre somewhere. I often wonder what my life would have been like and sometimes I regret the missed opportunity, but the simple truth is that it was not meant to be.

Theatre is a smaller part of my life than it was then. I have friends, a mate, and a social life now. But my heart and mind are still drawn to the magic of the theatre, and my sweetie and I go down nearly every Wednesday for volunteer night at the Rhode. Anyone and everyone is welcome, so feel free to join us!
writing coherently:
I will admit to being a stickler for proper English. I can't help but find myself, passing by a billboard with an apostrophe used in a pluralization or 'impact' used as a verb, muttering 'savages' to myself, in an homage to my dear one's father, the professor of English and Latin. I am the sort of person who rubs off extra punctuation (the apostrophe being again the worst offender) on chalkboard menus in restaurants.

The way the internet has vastly reduced our standards of writing saddens me. Yes, a certain informality is to be expected in instant messenger chats, or even in blogs, but to me it's really about knowing the rules first so that you know when it's ok to break them.

I try to be an open minded person, and I understand the occasional mistake. Nobody's perfect. But trying to read people's writings who express themselves like the people quoted here honestly hurts my head. Let's not even start on the RanDOm CapItaliZatiOn crowd, the ALL CAPS assholes, and the 7337 lackeys...