Being Queenie

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1. I am in the UK, not the US. This doesn't even apply to me.

2. In the course of my degree, we examined the effects of various psychotropic substances, both at the cellular level and upon the whole body. I find marijuana a particularly thorny issue, as two of my friends at school committed suicide after imbibing a large amount of marijuana (one threw himself off a roof, another took a whole bottle of painkillers and died in agony). Several more progressed to hard drugs. It's all very well to look at marijuana as a recreational drug from the viewpoint of the occasional user from a nice home; the reality is vulnerable people in the worst areas. I have seen the actual, peer-reviewed, scientific papers on the effects of marijuana, and it's not easy reading. I have never touched the stuff and have no intention of doing so.

Besides which, if we're working on banning one kind of smoking, what point is there in encouraging another?

I should probably point out that there is no worse trigger for my asthma than marijuana smoke...

Although, the one thing it would do is deprive organised crime of an income stream. That's the only positive I can think of right now.

If a government legislature must legalise it, then controls must be rigorous. It's an individual's choice and I don't agree with the state dictating what we do to our own bodies, but I do think that some substances need to be controlled.

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I distinctly prefer cats. The more vicious and hate-filled the cat, the better I tend to like them - if anyone has seen my old posts about Ba'al, you'll know exactly what I mean :) Cats aren't cute little fluffy balls, they're vicious killing machines with cute faces :D

I don't mind dogs. I don't like yappy dogs, or the ones who sound stupid when they bark. I kind of like highly-strung, clever dogs like Afghan hounds and Irish wolfhounds, and there's a man who lives near me who breeds cross-breeds (wolf and husky) which are absolutely stunning animals, even if they do occasionally turn up in my back garden.

But I'd still rather have cats. I was immensely proud of Golgotha for his mole-killing spree :D And Gethsemane looks like a sweet little thing, but has been depopulating the area of mice for several months now :D

Yes, my cats do all get vaguely biblical names, do you think I'm the kind of person who'd call her cat 'Fluffykins'?

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No.

I don't care about the personal/ romantic lives of soap 'stars' film stars, footballers, golfers, actors, or anyone else for that matter. I can't stand chat magazines, the vacuousness and viciousness of them drive me to screaming fury.

You can only expect people to be human, not saints. I don't imagine there's any higher a degree of misbehaviour in politics than in any other profession.

There have been plenty of politicians who have successfully held down high profile posts whilst 'misbehaving'. I think it depends on how far something is in the past; if, for example, they're coming to power in their 50s and the indiscretions were whilst they were at University in their 20s, then pffft. People mature, settle down.

If it's not affecting their job, why do we even care? If the man who ran your local chip shop was in his 50s and had an affair, but you could still get cod and chips on a Friday night when you wanted them, you wouldn't care, why should you care if the Secretary for State had a weekend fling with his secretary but is still doing his job well enough? You have to allow people some slack.

Now, if the indiscretions are criminal, then the public has a right to know. But if it's yet another pointless story about a politician having an affair, who gives a toss?

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I was at University before the Internet really got off the ground, so do the 20+ years before that count? ;)

Probably about 3 months, and it suited me fine. I do like to use t'Interwebz to keep in touch with people, but when I go offline, I do it to get some peace and quiet. Sometimes I just like to be a hermit for a bit :)

I got loads of sewing work done without it :D

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I tend to talk about personal stuff on LJ. I talk more about corsetmaking, my literary tastes, my taste in music and any health issues here. I only use one other social networking site, Facebook, and I must look shallow as a puddle in the middle of the Sahara in hot season on there.

Most of my offline friends are online (except Olly, and he's a bloody luddite). I only get to talk to some of my friends on LJ, some because they live on different continents, and some just because we have never chosen to meet up. I would say there are some things I talk more freely about here, because people can choose not to read them. In person, they're stuck with you droning on and on about stuff they don't give a hoot about!

I think that my LJ is pretty much me, warts and all. I'm fairly certain my friends will back me up on that :)

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Urgh 'love songs'. They all make me cringe. Rock ballads should be banned, and those stupid women who scream lyrics which amount to "I will stalk you!" make me want to vomit.

Don't even start me on duets.

In short, yuck. I can haz decent music plz?

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I detest romances and 'chick lit'. I just have no empathy with the characters. I despair when a perfectly good book starts rambling off into romance territory. Urgh.

As to films, I'm not fond of romantic comedies, especially modern ones. I just wind up wanting to slap most of the characters in the head. I'm not hugely fond of action films set in the modern period, either, where it has no plot beyond a flimsy excuse to blow things up and race around in souped-up cars.

And finally, 'horror' films which are just one long round of blood, gore, torture, and chasing half-naked girls. I thought that went out in the 70s, but apparently not.

I put up with them when I'm forced to, but most of my friends have zero interest in these kind of films either, thankfully :D

It caused more problems when I was working in offices, and was forced to have conversations with the kind of people who read chick lit, go to see rom coms at the cinema, and griped endlessly about not being able to find 'a perfect man'. I just had no patience for them, and would sit in the corner of the cafeteria, reading something I liked, and ignoring them!

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You're supposed to be POLITE? When did that memo go out, because I think I missed it? ;p

Seriously, it's not been a big thing for me - I've had friends who were clingier than my boyfriends. And the 'too interested too soon' is entirely dependent on circumstances - if it was someone I had just met, I would have been very rude, but if it had been someone I knew for a long time, I would go easier on them.

Course it's a moot point now :D

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See now, that's my idea of hell. I can't understand why one CD would be enough, unless it had about a thousand tracks on it. Music isn't something you should ration like this! I have days where I want some Dvorak or Carl Orff, and days when I just want to listening to industrial screaming. Most days I'll listen to all sorts of music.

When Ghost is reviewing CDs, he plays the same one over and over, and after 6 listens even the best albums get boring.

One CD for the rest of my life would put me in the lunatic asylum.

[Error: unknown template qotd]Well, Ruthven was based on Lord Byron *fangirl squeeeeeeing*. I don't think I'd like Edward Cullen anywhere near me, as I am the kind of woman who would ask "Is that body glitter?" (although I wouldn't judge a man for wearing body glitter, men in make-up are fine by me :D). I'd probably go for Dracula himself, so long as I didn't have to live in the harem with his brides :D