Not a meme

[liv]

I have a million things I want to post about, so I'm going to summarize rather drastically. And to make it a bit more interesting, I'm going to write the summary as if I were other people from my friends list.

If I were redbird, I would post about how when I came here at the beginning of the month, everything was bare and there was frost on the ground in the morning. And now everything is in full leaf and the spring flowers are giving way to summer flowers. There is white lilac everywhere, and purple lilac just coming out. Every open space is full of forget-me-not and cowslips and other flowers whose names I would probably know if I were really redbird. And I have seen woodpeckers, the black and white kind with red markings that look like picture-book woodpeckers, and any number of brightly coloured tits and finches, and several red squirrels, and lots of deer. A stag strode across my garden yesterday morning, the size of a large dog. He looked at me for a while, decided I was harmless, and went on.

If I were rysmiel, I would point out sarcastically to the Annoying Scientists who wrote a paper criticizing the paper that I think of as "ours" even though in fact my predecessor wrote it rather than me, that if you are going to claim a system is dynamic, it behoves you to actually show some dynamic behaviour, rather than merely showing that two completely separate experiments have different outcomes. Wishful thinking is one thing, hypothesis testing is another, and only one of them is accepted scientific method.

If I were lethargic_man, I would write a detailed account of the panel discussion I wandered into yesterday. I would give lots of useful links to ground the notes for people not familiar with the assumptions. But I came unprepared so I wasn't able to take notes. The general topic was about how to construct a Jewish identity, in a positive way, without being exclusivist or looking down on outsiders, and how we relate to the mythical, whether we reject it as scientific, rationalist types, or whether we accept that myth is part of human psyche and try to make positive use of it. So potentially quite interesting, but the way it was actually handled it was full of the kind of post-modernist stuff that annoys me.

If I were jpallan, I would write a long long list of all the things I need to do in the next couple of days and in order to get experiments set up. I would continue with angst about whether or not I can cope with this job that I've taken on, even though I do know I'm intelligent and competent.

If I were darcydodo, I would remember that I forgot to post about the party I went to on Friday, to celebrate the ten year anniversary of the founding of the bit of the institute I work for that isn't the Karolinska. There was lots of very tasty Lebanese food, and it was a chance to chat with my colleagues which I appreciated. They all decided that they should try to talk me into having children...

If I were hatam_soferet, I would recount how the rabbi approached me after the service, and told me that he had noticed I wore a tallit, and I might like to know that the community were in a process of consideration regarding egalitarianism. June, apparently, is the month set aside for Experimenting with Egalitarianism, following which there is going to be a vote on whether women should be allowed to be directly involved in the ritual. I would probably make sarcastic remarks about the concept of taking a vote on whether you need a penis to be able to read from Torah.

As a side anecdote, an elderly woman said something to me in Swedish, the only bit of which I caught was that she thought I was a boy. I inwardly rolled my eyes, here we go, here comes the same old stupid argument I really don't want to have. But she repeated herself more slowly and with lots of hand gestures (so much more helpful than switching to English, thank you, old lady) and turned out that her point was that since I had been fiddling with my plait and putting it over my mouth, she had mistaken it for a moustache.

If I were shreena, I would describe the strange incident I observed on the way home last night: the long distance train on the other platform was being emptied of both people and luggage. They were shining bright floodlights on the platform, and blocking part of it off with hazard tape. I would ask if anyone has any idea what might have been going on. I don't think it was a bomb scare because nobody seemed to be in any particular hurry.

If I were pseudomonas, I would probably not post on LJ at all, but I would phone me and have a long and involved conversation about the meaning of the phrase if I were, pedantically pointing out that if I really were any of these people, I wouldn't be in the situation I'm currently in so I wouldn't write these things at all...

Comments

[lethargic-man.livejournal.com]

I have a million things I want to post about, so I'm going to summarize rather drastically. And to make it a bit more interesting, I'm going to write the summary as if I were other people from my friends list.

That is such a good idea, you know! And you carried it off so well. I'm not sure I could have done so well.

If I were lethargic_man, I would write a detailed account of the panel discussion I wandered into yesterday.

Whilst that's fair as a one-line stereotype of my blog, ploni_bat_ploni also said something this morning about my blog being academic. Well, it's not; I'm still posting the kinds of things I was posting before I started putting up Limmud notes. Such journal entries are no longer the majority, though.

BTW, I've been holding back some interesting Jewish learning notes until you were back online and had time to read them. Should I start putting them up now, or hold off until you have a pooter at home?

If I were pseudomonas, I would probably not post on LJ at all, but I would phone me and have a long and involved conversation about the meaning of the phrase if I were, pedantically pointing out that if I really were any of these people, I wouldn't be in the situation I'm currently in so I wouldn't write these things at all...

Tuuuuune: Suede: Trash

That so should be "If I Was" by Midge Ure. :o)

[liv]

I wasn't trying to imply that those are the only things that the respective people post about. I was just thinking, which of these potential posts would lethargic_man give priority to. You might write a review of some TV programme you watched, for example, but since I haven't watched any, then if you were in my situation you wouldn't do that. I'm glad you liked my mimicry, though.

It's really up to you when you post the Limmud notes. I have been enjoying your more academic posts, but often I want to put time and thought into replying, so end up not replying. I know you don't mind if people come back to old posts, so I'll probably do that when I'm more online.

That so should be "If I Was" by Midge Ure. :o)
I don't think I know that song, though. And my music field at the moment is being filled in with whatever comes into my head, leaving out the most annoying earworms, because I don't actually have any equipment to listen to external music just now.

[lethargic-man.livejournal.com]

It's really up to you when you post the Limmud notes.

That may as be the case, but it strikes me as a waste of effort if a major part of my intended audience isn't reading them, or is too rushed to give them the attention they deserve. (You all bar missed (http://lethargic-man.livejournal.com/73608.html?thread=267656#t267656) a post of mine recently, for example.

[liv]

Yeah, I know. It's not exactly as if I like being out of touch, you know. I might use this unexpected four-day weekend (!) to catch up a bit with all my communcation stuff, but then again, it does seem a bit sad to waste my opportunity to explore the area by spending all this bonus free time staring at a computer screen. So I'm hoping to find some kind of balance.

I do want to have lots of fun limmud (small l) discussions with you, and discussions about every other topic too. I feel bad about it already without you being all resentful, frankly.

[lethargic-man.livejournal.com]

I do want to have lots of fun limmud (small l) discussions with you,

We need a better word for that.

I feel bad about it already without you being all resentful, frankly.

I'm not being resentful; I was merely discussing what the right balance is for me. After all, all the limmud notes I've been posting to my blog for the last while were all typed up and finished a month and a half ago in Eilat.

[darcydodo]

You so do do that with your braid. :)

Although I'm not entirely sure I would've written about that, I agree it's probably more likely than me writing about the other things in your list (though I sure wouldn't've included the last bit!). I'm especially amused by your last sentence in hatam_soferet's, which is her to a tee. :)

[hatam-soferet.livejournal.com]

OK, ok, I'm predictable :)

[liv]

I know, I totally do play with my plait like that, so once I understood what the woman was saying it wasn't a surprise to me.

I like that icon, it brings back extremely happy memories :-)

I think your journal is quite hard to characterize / predict, actually. You write about all kinds of random things, or don't post at all for ages. But you do sometimes belatedly catch up by posting about social events you've been to, and you report the sorts of conversations you had there and so on. So it was my best guess.

[darcydodo]

Well, it's true that I would have probably done a big catchup post. And I would quite likely have posted about food. There's no way that people would have been trying to convince me that I want children, though! :)

(The other thing I would've done by this point is posted lots of pictures of the area. Ahem.)

[hairyears.livejournal.com]

You forgot to write an (unnamed) DeadJournal Goth drama queen account of your breakfast and bus ride to work, or some similar life-changing emotional trauma. But feel free to put in a sardonic Hairy-Eared post, complete with a careful explanation of the economic and fiscal consequences of exporting or research effort to another out-of-Eurozone Western European Economy.

Bonus points for proposing a credible methodology for obtaining a Net Present Value, and a possible price discovery mechanism (or even proposals for some kind of exchange-traded security), for each member of your FriendsList.

[liv]

Well, I was trying to imitate (some of!) my friends list, not random LJ stereotypes. I might try the second next time I have a load of unconnected fragments to post, though.

I don't think I could imitate your journal at all. I definitely enjoy reading your posts, but you think about things, and know about things, that wouldn't even occur to me. So I don't think there's much overlap between things I wanted to post, and things I thought you would be likely to post if you were in my situation.

[pseudomonas.livejournal.com]

I blatantly wouldn't phone myself. I'd phone someone else.

[liv]

See, this is exactly the sort of thing I meant. You're a dear silly badger, and thank you for this comment.

[rysmiel.livejournal.com]

*giggle*

I'd snark, all right. But I'd quite likely also post in detail about the Lebanese food.

[liv]

The thing is, what you would actually do is post a much greater proportion of everything that comes to your attention than I could possibly cope with. But trying to imitate that would be rather beyond the bounds of the game I was playing here.

I'm not very good at writing about food. I tend to degenerate into Enid Blyton-style breathless lists of all the goodies, thus: felafel and houmous and really nice tzatziki and babaganoush and properly salty feta and good olives and pita bread that's worth eating for its own sake and halloumi and a really interesting though probably inauthentic salad of melon, basil and chilli. And I've just realized that I mixed several languages in writing that description, because those are the words that first come into my head to name all the foods involved. If I put my mind to it I could probably come up with the Arabic names for everything instead of throwing in bits of Greek, Turkish and Hebrew anyhow...

[wiredwytch.livejournal.com]

I happened to stumble upon your journal one way or another (I really can't remember how) and I decided to add you, if you don't mind. I read you are currently living in Stockholm and are trying to get your life organized there. I really admire that. I have been in Norway for 1 year as an exchange student, and that really was difficult enough. I am still thinking about possibly emigrating to either Norway or Sweden as well... Somehow those countries have put a spell on me.

[liv]

Greetings, very nice to meet you. You're very much welcome here, and my apologies if I'm not interacting very much at the moment, because I'm still not properly online. Have some virtual tea, in the meantime.

[wiredwytch.livejournal.com]

Tea sounds good! And don't worry about not being very interactive, you need to get things sorted out first!

[hairyears.livejournal.com]

you think about things, and know about things, that wouldn't even occur to me.

This is, of course, true in both directions; this is why I read your journal.

As for imitating my style, just put in lots of contradictory subclauses and a semicolon or two.