Wednesday, January 25, 2006

Your fortuitous role

I'll get back to Brian Wilson in a while; right now I've been tagged. (Cheers, Donald. I'll do the same for you, if I get the chance.)

Seven Things To Do Before I Die:

1. Record a CD
2. Publish a book. Well, two books (some short stories and something political). Maybe some poetry as well. Three books.
3. Live on an island
4. See Canada
5. Go up in a hot air balloon
6. Do one of my Fantasy Walking Tours*
7. Meet Tilda Swinton

Seven Things I Cannot Do:

1. Play the guitar
2. Understand spoken Italian
3. Lie convincingly
4. Get up early
5. Go to bed early
6. Swim a length
7. My taxes**

Seven Things That Attract Me to... Islands:

1. Towns with small populations and limited nightlife
2. Circumnavigation by foot
3. The sea, the sea
4. Cliffs
5. Plantlife
6. Stars
7. Pasties (NB applies mainly to Scilly)

Seven Things I Say:

1. "..."
2. "Er..."
3. "Well not just that, I think what I was getting at is that it's more a question of..."***
4. "So, what are we doing today?"
5. "I'm running a bit late"
6. "I'm leaving now"
7. "What a load of bollocks"

Seven Books That I Love:

1. Internationale situationniste [anthology]
2. Nanni Balestrini and Primo Moroni, L'orda d'oro
3. Tom Phillips, The Humument
4. Rex Warner, The Aerodrome
5. Thomas Pynchon, Vineland
6. Flann O'Brien, The Third Policeman
7. Ruth Rendell, The Lake of Darkness

Seven Films That I've Loved:

1. La Jetée
2. Le Fantôme de la Liberté
3. Orphée
4. Toto le Héros
5. O Lucky Man!
6. American Beauty
7. Naked Gun****

Seven People To Tag:

1. Clare
2. Ellis
3. Justin
4. Robert
5. Brian
6. Jonny
7. Chris

*One of them involves picking a square on the map, somewhere near the centre of England, and spending a week - or however long it took - visiting every single named town or village: a sort of pub-hike, in effect. The other is a longer walk, from Kronstadt to Kiel.
**Well, I can (and do), but I find it ridiculously hard to keep things like period dates in my head for any length of time. There's a definite mental block - after I've been doing it for a while I start forgetting other things as well (where I've got up to, where I put the stapler after I used it, what day it is, etc).
***Rough verbal equivalent of 1. and 2. - 'vamping till ready', my father used to call it.
****Bingo!

2 Comments:

Blogger Jarndyce said...

Vineland - great choice.

25/1/06 22:20  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

"7. Pasties (NB applies mainly to Scilly)"


Surely this is a circumstance of two nations divided by a common language.

http://tinyurl.com/csdt9

[WARNING- Pop-up Windows Media music file]

Best Wishes for the Year of the Dog from this side of the Atlantic

31/1/06 05:11  

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