Money

Just for the heck of it, I went to the Daily Zen question.

"Two Questions today... about money.... Would you give up one year of your life for 1 million dollars? You would have to spend one year in prison, for each million dollars that you would receive. You would have to start your prison time today How many years would you give up? If any."

This is easy. None. What's the point of trading life for money? You can't buy and sell suffering. Or freedom. It isn't even a little bit tempting. This seems to me like one of those really life-destroying ideas: I'd end up bitter and unhappy (give me, say, two weeks for that) and wealthy or not, life wouldn't be worth living. Nope, my freedom and happiness are worth a lot more than cold cash. You'd have to bribe me with something really worthwhile. World peace, for example. A cure for cancer. Extraterrestrial travel.

If that all sounds too altruistic, you could tempt me by offering something I really want - say, Mal Reynolds in my bed. I'd have to think about that.

"What if you just could take one year off of the end of your life? Instead of living to 89 years old.. you only live to 88. Would you do that for $1million per year?"

This was a little more tempting. It doesn't involve suffering. I would certainly like to try living with the problems of wealth rather than the problems of poverty. But all the same... it sounds like a bad trade, it sounds an awful lot like giving something valuable (life) for something with no intrinsic value in itself (money). By which I mean, you can't eat money, you can't cure illness with money, you can't use money to get story ideas. I could maybe use it to share - that might be fun - not just obvious things like feeding hungry kids and founding alternative schools and backing AIDS research and so on - but I could go see Egypt with my friends, which I'd so love to do.

But it would be frustrating, too. I could feed some hungry kids in Ottawa, maybe, but what about the whole of Somalia? Okay, maybe doing limited good would be enough, but.... I'd rather earn the trip to Egypt legitimately somehow.

In any case, it feels as if it would be selling my self-respect, and therefore I won't do it.

Perhaps we could negotiate on this sex-with-Mal-Reynolds option?

Making peace here

This is from dargie again. She finds great sites.

Okay, so it's the cut-rate enneagram, and I am certainly a 'peacemaker' type - they got that right - though I'm not so sure about that 'complacent' tag.

My skepticism is not so much about the results as about the questions. There were many cases where I didn't relate to either of the possible answers at all - the one was as foreign to me as the other. Maybe I should go back to the quiz where I turn out to be Chris Keller. Or the one where I get sex with Eomer son of Eomund - yeah, that was a good one!

If I were to reduce myself to one word, the tag I'd've expected was 'communicator'. Or perhaps 'a Romantic', but I don't think that fits the pattern they're building. Obviously - romantics like me don't like fitting into patterns.


free enneagram test

Make love not war. Peace. Yeah.

(no subject)

How did I get banana yogurt for lunch? It must be a terrible accident. I'll swear I reached for French Vanilla.

The pattern in the chaos of infinite possibilities

Browsing viridian5's LJ, I came across her very interesting question: "Directly inspired by a comment Fyrdrakken made to one of my LiveJournal posts, I'm asking you what your ur-fandom crush, your perfect crush character, is." She then goes on to describe hers.

So: what characteristics do my BSOs have in common?

They tend to be strong, self-confident, and assertive to the point of arrogance. They are often in positions of leadership and authority - or conversely, outlaws who have opted out from the authority of others but who have taken authority on themselves. They tend to be independent and, if part of a team, are considered misfits there. Sometimes mysterious, they are often isolated loners - perhaps isolated by command position, perhaps by situation or experience. Usually they are extremely dangerous in one way or another, and sometimes self-destrucive.

They are extremely intelligent and quick-witted, good at snap decisions. They keep their feelings to themselves, usually, but are troubled even if they don't show it. This can spread as far as neuroses and personality disorders. They have great courage and are usually in the forefront of action, and protective of others. Though normally aloof they can be nurturing in the right circumstances. They appear morally ambivalent and may pretend to a different set of morals than they actually have; they are, in fact, moral to an extreme degree but it is not conventional morality they have adopted.

They tend to be complex psychologically, probably conflicted on at least one level

Physically they are tall, lean, dark-haired (or bald), and have a large nose. They have a dangerous smile, but on rare occasions can show also a beautiful smile that is totally sincere.

Now, I don't know if there is any one character who fits all these characteristics, but most of my crushes fit most of them. Examples of characters I adore, and where they are from:

Aragorn (The Lord of the Rings)
Bodie (The Professionals)
Francis Crawford of Lymond (The Lymond Chronicles by Dorothy Dunnett - the only blond in the bunch, unless I add Spike - a contender, though he is a character from a show I don't even watch.)
Nick Fury (Sgt. Fury and his Howlin' Commandos)
Galen (Crusade)
Gambit (a.k.a. Remy LeBeau) (X-Men and other Marvel comics)
Lex Luthor (Smallville)
Magneto (X-Men and other Marvel comics)
Methos (Highlander)
Fox Mulder (X-Files)
Sir Edward Pellew (Horatio Hornblower)
Jean-Luc Picard (Star Trek: The Next Generation - and I think he is furthest of all of these from my usual crush pattern; the anomaly being that he is such a social conformist compared to the rest.)
Mal Reynolds (Firefly)
Xas (The Vintner's Luck by Elizabeth Knox)

Note that this is a list of male ur-crushes in my history. For women, I would have an entirely different set of criteria for a crush. What would it be? That will take more thinking.

Smallville: The Calling (May 13, 2003)

I loved tonight's Smallville. The best episode since "Rosetta". Great moments - aside from every time Lex was on the screen, and every time he opened his mouth - and Clark's beauty -

* Chloe standing up to Lionel for Clark's sake - go, Chloe!

* Jor-El's voice. Whew.

* We heard Clark called Kal-El for the first time!

* Clark's speech at the dinner. He is so cute.

* Lionel's conversation with Helen - It looks as if she isn't working for him after all, or not any more. Her claims to merely love Lex seems feeble. So what's her agenda?

* Lex having the blood (but why isn't he keeping it in his Secret Chamber of Clarkness?)

* Lex's speech to the Kents about how much they mean to him, and then Jonathan's attack on Helen (and, by extension, Lex)

* Clark's fight with Dr. Weldon. Blasted through the barn! No wonder the Kents are almost bankrupt. All those repairs.

* the white chamber in which Weldon was kept by Lex - was that at Cadmus Labs?

* the interplay between Clark and Lionel: Clark wastes no respect on him, but isn't aggressive

* Lots of Lex/Clark eye-to-eye contact

* The mark of the octagon in Dr. Weldon's hand - and Lionel taking it.

* Any representation of Kryptonian. I love it that it gets written in spirals, like Linear A.