Seven words collide

[j4]

braisedbywolves tagged me (at my request!) with the 'seven interests' meme. Even memes count.


anglo-catholic guilt

To be honest this (like many of my LJ interests) was more a phrase than an interest as such; but it's not entirely empty words. The concept of Catholic guilt is widely known; it's a neat and slightly arch term to wrap up a whole ocean of social, cultural and theological pain. I like the fact that the phrase can both invoke that and write it off, that it can package it up and compress it and distil it, like a small square stock cube of meaning. But I wanted to combine that guilt with a more High Anglican aesthetic, because that's what does it for me. (Another post for another time there, maybe.)

clever people being stupid

That should really be "clever people being silly", or similar; clever people being stupid is just infuriating. What I was thinking of was the sort of 'interdisciplinary knob jokes' I rambled about in a post during last year's not-actually-NaBloPoMo-but-still. Clever people wearing their intellectualism so lightly that their underwear shows through. Seven years of education slouching towards the perfect lolcat. I'm not saying it's right, I'm not saying it's good, I'm just saying I love it.

constrained writing

Bind an artist with artificial chains to wring from his twisting body a tortuous work of art. (The sentence before contained zero times the letter 'e', whereas the sentence here made sure each lexeme contained one.) Poetry is all about constraints; rhyme and metre are the wires that train the branches of the bonsai into shapes that spell magic. It doesn't always work.

mensonge

The deconstructionist's deconstructionist. Mensonge was a little known French structuralist philosopher whose renown today is owed entirely to a slim yet scholarly biography written by Malcolm Bradbury (who may also have been slim and scholarly).

rez

A computer game. I might write more about computer games in a separate post, though that risks turning into one of those awful 30something do-you-remember-the-Adventure-Game nostalgiafests... Anyway, Rez was the game that convinced me that 'modern' computer games (roughly, anything after Chuckie Egg) were worth investigating and could be as addictive as the levels-and-ladders games I used to love, and that trance could be awesome (and I didn't have to go clubbing to enjoy it). The design is elegant, the music is mesmerising, and the actual gameplay is simple enough to pick up in a second, simple and satisfyingly manageable enough that you could achieve a perfect score if you could only play just one more game... and one more... and one more... Also, the final level of the game is a thing of incredible beauty and fear (fear is the mind-killer) when played through for the first time.

transparent society

I haven't actually read The Transparent Society, but I am interested in the thought-experiment of a society where there is total openness and transparency, and in actual moves towards realistic openness and transparency in the society in which I currently live, from open relationships to the wider 'open knowledge' movement. Please note: I say 'I am interested in' these things, not 'I believe these things are right/the one true way/a solution to anything at all'. The issues are interesting. The questions are interesting. I don't claim to know the answers.

word torture

See constrained writing above, but 'word torture' sounds more kinky.

Comments

[braisedbywolves.livejournal.com]

I did well! I was hoping it was that Rez, it along with Ico are my touchstones of "more people would play games if they knew games like this existed". And one of my favourite things about it is (stealing someone else's description) that it's several innovative and engaging levels, followed by one that makes the others look like they were left in the game by mistake.

[tigerfort.livejournal.com]

But odd memes don't?