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miphastudies · 3 years

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17 Questions for 17 People

Thanks @its-bianca for tagging me in this! Sorry it’s taken so long, we’re in a third lockdown and I’m pretty sure my body thinks that time no longer exists.

Nicknames: Kim, Kimbo, Kimberlim, Kimothy, Kimberley Dibberley (For some reason my family thought that a nickname based off Cat’s other personality from Red Dwarf, Dwayne Dibberley, was funny and it’s stuck with me my whole life), as well as KIIII (shouted by my sister when she was about 2 and couldn’t pronounce my name, my best friend now yells it when she wants my attention) and Kim-Kim by my Dad who refuses to believe I’ve grown up (beats Kimberley Dibberley any day)

Height: 5'9 - towering over most men is fun, I suggest it to all of you, I’d rather round it up to six foot, but I probs stopped growing at 20.

Hogwarts House: Well I got Gryffindor when I first went on that site, but being my goth self I had to take the test again until I got Slytherin - as far as I remember I had unicorn hair (or horn?) or something of the like in my wand but I’m not gonna fuel JK’s anti-trans pockets by visiting Pottermore ever again.

Last thing I googled: The soundtrack for Futurama’s Luck of the Fryrish episode, I knew Simple Minds were on it but I could’ve sworn Baker Street by Gerry Rafferty was on it, but apparently not. I spent a good half hour trying to sing it into google with their new song-analysis thing to no avail, so I ended up siphoning through all the songs Lisa Simpson has ever played on her Sax to find out what it was (I should be doing my dissertation proposal but my tutors haven’t got back to me yet so what can ye do).

Song stuck in my head: yknow wha I’m just gonna list the songs that have been stuck in my head so far today because it’s too many to be just one as I keep cycling through them (also gonna link them so you can see how garbo weird my music taste is)

Run - Joji Alive - Pearl Jam Clinging On For Life - The Hoosiers Tension - Avenged Sevenfold Boots of Spanish Leather - Bob Dylan Nutshell - Alice in Chains Jaded - Aerosmith The Sea of Tragic Beasts - Fit For an Autopsy

I’ll add my current favourite at the bottom too for good measure (Honestly I spend way too much time listening to music and I regret nothing)

Number of followers: Currently 85. I’ve got about 2k on my main blog but I’ve not touched that since July 2017.

Amount of sleep: Good lord, so I aim for 8 hours, sometimes I only get 5.5 or something along those lines, other times I depression nap during the day and can’t sleep at all, sometimes (like this morning) I’ll go to get up at a normal person time such as 9am when my body naturally wakes me up, but it’s so dark and gloomy outside and cold in my room that I just stay in bed and end up accidentally falling back asleep. 12pm gang rise up xo

Lucky number: 7

Dream Job: Hopefully I get somewhat successful in monetising my hobbies, I’m working on it all atm (I don’t know why but I really hate telling people about my plans because I’m deathly afraid they’ll mock me or do whatever they can to ensure it doesn’t happen, I’ve got this list of things I need to do for my own mental health sellotaped to my laptop stand that had things like when to clean the house, do my laundry, shower, exercise etc, and my old flatmate/friend saw it the other week and mocked me, so I haven’t followed it since and need to find some sort of other way of organising my life instead). But yeah, hopefully hobby based, I don’t want to be stuck in an office job all my life, and I want to leave the UK (although I don’t want to leave my family) so hopefully I’ll be successful enough to bring em all with me.

Wearing: Well I was gonna wear jeans and my Unus Annus longsleeve but I decided to go full kitchen witch and wear this black milkmaid looking dress with long sleeves that I’d bought for work when I got my thigh tattoo started (all the old men appreciated the legs but I didn’t make any more tips, oops)

Favourite song: My favourite song of all time would be The Verve’s Bittersweet Symphony , the band formed at my college, has great meaning and has resonated with me since I first saw the music video after it was played at my Stepdad’s funeral in 2002. Weirdly enough on my last day of college, right after my last exam, I went to get the bus home - put my Spotify on shuffle (bearing in mind I’ve got 805 songs on this playlist) and this came on straight away. That’s probably not important to most people, but being pagan, I like to think that small things like these are signs from loved ones that have since passed. Not too happy that it’s used as the England Rugby theme because it gives me anxiety every time as though I feel like everyone hearing it doesn’t have the same emotional connection with the song as I do, but idk. I saw Richard Ashcroft live and he played this and I legit bawled my eyes out in public, safe to say I’ll try and hold it in next time. I suggest you all have a listen to the song or even watch the music video for it, it’s the most simple but most meaningful music video to me.

Favourite Instrument: I’m left handed and I had this Yamaha acoustic guitar that my stepdad gave me - and taught me to play when I was about 5, a few months before he died (it’s still weird to me that I had no idea he had cancer at that point and instead spent his last few months teaching me his favourite hobbies) all he had was right handed guitars, so he taught me to play Metallica’s Nothing Else Matters upside down on this 20 odd year old right handed acoustic. He hadn’t played upside down himself before but did it so I could see what he was doing. I remember sitting in our green living room on the couch with him moving my hands to the right position (I don’t know where my mum was in this scenario, probably in the kitchen). He’d brought this guitar with him the first day I met him, it was probably like 11pm but I was 4 and thought it was 3am or something, but I heard voices coming from the living room and had gone to investigate - there sat my mum and my stepdad having Chinese on the living room floor, laughing together, my stepdad saw me and had brought sweets for me and my brother for when we woke up, but he beckoned me over, gave me a lollipop, stuck a two litre bottle of tizer in front of me and told me to dip the lollipop in the drink and lick it (not a good idea as I would’ve been bouncing off the walls, but I think I must’ve had a sugar crash and fallen asleep). My mum had no idea he was coming as he’d sneakily been texting her, asking what her favourite drink was, her favourite food and flowers etc, after they met in a pub when my mum was at a hostel with my brother after my Dad had taken me. My mum told him that the council had given her a place and he decided to show up and surprise her with all her favourite things and play guitar for her after my brother and I had gone to bed, I don’t remember much time passing before we’d moved into his house (where my mum and her new husband live to this day), but they got married a few months later and I still can’t play that Metallica song (I did try to teach myself more of it though). I also had this black left handed Ibanez prestige that my Dad got me for Christmas about 9 years ago, I could play quite a lot on it but eventually just stopped. Very good at piano though.

Aesthetic: I’m not sure what this entails but I’m a sucker for neon/RGB/cityscapes and that type of malarkey. Also space. Love da space. Also whatever Cornwall would be considered as. Cottagecore? I think that’s only an animal crossing related aesthetic but I’m claiming it nonetheless.

Favourite Author: I’m a big goth so it has to be Stephen King by default. I’ve got copious first editions of his books from the 70′s and 80′s that my Mum bought when she was a teen. At my flat I’ve got Carrie, Christine, Salem’s Lot, Misery and The Shining first editions and the others are in my room at my Mum’s house. I don’t tend to read for joy like I used to, or write for fun either but I’m hoping I do more in 2021. Currently reading The Outsider by King, it sounds eerily familiar to a novel I wrote for coursework in college in 2014 and I’m half pressed to think he’s stole my brain ideas. I’m watching you Stephen. Always watching. Always.

Favourite animal sounds: I don’t have favourite sounds, but my husky Nanook is my favourite animal because he’s dumb and I love him. Also Kookaburra sounds are terrifying and you all should go listen to what a koala sounds like. When I go to Adelaide (hopefully this year, if not next) I am NOT stepping foot in a nature reserve unless I’ve got an anti-kookaburra noise suit on. They obviously don’t exist so I’m gonna have to make one.

Random: I’m part of a viking reenactment group where they use actual swords and fight each other, and we have to basically sign our lives away when we join, to say that if we die, it’s not the groups fault. I don’t actually do the fighting though, I’m part of the villager group, so I do all the crafting and food making and most of the teaching when we do shows. I’ve not yet been to a show as I’ve had uni to go to, but my parents, sister and brother do - They stayed within Whitby Abbey last year during the Viking festival where everyone did the show and the adults got drunk round campfires in the castle grounds. Zacky Vengeance once complimented my shirt if that’s something. I’m also colourblind, got glared at by Liam Gallagher in the Liverpool Echo Arena parking lot and have too accurate a sense of smell.

Sorry this was so long, obviously I felt like word-dumping and my brain has a lot to say as I find too much meaning in these things. Thanks again for tagging me! I’ve not got 17 people to tag as I don’t interact with anyone at the moment but I’ll come back to this and add people as the week progresses :)

#tagged #personal #asks

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jamesv-t · 4 years

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Crowdsourcing my runs

Over the last few weeks, I've hit a bit of a creative slump with regards to my running. In the absence of parkrun and the social aspect therein, I've been doing the same routes and getting bored of it. I decided to shake things up a bit and ask my friends on social media to choose for me. A soft launch on Twitter using a carefully selected series of polls (to prevent people telling me to run a marathon in 20 minutes) kicked things off.

Manipulating polls to get the results I wanted

The week after, I tried Instagram, giving followers who cared enough to interact with my stories the choice of a fast and flat run, or hills (hills hills). Unsurprisingly they picked the hills, with a follow-up question seeing 2/3rds choose hill repeats over one big hill in a poorly worded question. Due to wanting a beer on a Saturday night, I elected to do these the morning after watching the film/war-crime Cats, but on the bright side after three 2km reps up a steep hill my hangover was gone! With a nice 2k to get there warming me up (and down afterwards), and the hill being a kilometre high, it was a great route to discover for the future.

So, with a bit of success from these, I opened things up to user submissions. Knowing that they'd probably send me on a route that includes Land's End, John O'Groats, Mordor, Atlantis and Venus, I kept things simple and asked for music submissions. The rules included one track per person, and outlawed any repeats. I also pledged to listen in the order of submission to avoid any suggestions I was adjusting the playlist to make it easier on me. I also privately promised to run for the entire length of the playlist - had I admitted this, I could pinpoint exactly who would submit the longest song they could find just for a laugh (and one of them couched their suggestion with "the longest version of this song you can find", proving me right).

I was nervous about it, especially knowing what the second song was, and only familiar with about a quarter of the songs submitted. How would they fare as running songs? How would they hold up as songs at all? How far would I have to run? Where is the love? Do they know it's Christmas? D'ya know what I mean?

1. MØL - Bruma

Straight in with something new, a shoegazey metal band from Denmark! If the two coffees to start the day hadn't woken me up already, this definitely would have done. I really liked it, it reminded me of Arch Enemy and I'm going to check out more of their work later this week.

Song: 8/10

Suitability as a running soundtrack: 10/10

2. Crazy Frog - Axel F

And the first of the troll submissions. (To be fair, with the amount of shots I've taken at Swindon Town on Twitter, I deserved it.) This started as a "grit your teeth and pray for it to end" song but the steady beat and 80s synths really helped me click into my pace - it's just a shame about the ringtone championing amphibian singing all over it!

Song: 3/10

Running: 8/10 (I'll add the original to my regular running playlists)

3. Bastille - Joy

Any song after the preceding one would be a blessing, but this just clicked with me. Maybe it was seeing the sun breaking through the clouds above the piers, maybe it was just the general pleasantness of the song, but it definitely uplifted my spirits ahead of what could turn out to be a gruelling run.

Song: 8/10

Running: 8/10

4. Bill Withers - Lovely Day

And another nice song. A steady beat, a song that moves along at a fair clip, it was a surprise that I found it so easy to run to but I'm pleased it was added. I don't know that it would've clicked quite as much if it had been chucking it down but it really was a lovely day for running!

Song: 10/10

Running: 7/10

5. Vidiots - Dog Rap

I was nervous about this song to start with. I had absolutely no idea what to expect and was slightly scared of what I would have to listen to. Luckily, within about 10 seconds I realised it was exactly the sort of rap parody you'd see on SNL or an episode of Crazy Ex-Girlfriend, and I had a great time with it! I did have trouble keeping my cadence to it, unfortunately.

Song: 7/10

Running: 6/10

6. Turbowolf - Domino

I won't lie, I was half hoping that this would be a metal cover of a Jessie J song. It wasn't, but that wasn't much of a detriment - just three minutes of full on rock 'n' roll, and another band I'll check out more of later!

Song: 9/10

Running: 8/10

7. Rammstein - Deutschland

Finally, a familiar song! I've run to this track before, and it's not the only one of theirs that I've run to, so I could relax into the run a bit easier. I really should remember that my mask blocks infection but not my voice, as I think I scared other runners by singing along.

Song: 10/10

Running: 9/10

8. Das Sound Machine - World Championship Finale

And from a German band to a faux-German group, performing a mash-up of Fall Out Boy and DJ Khaled. While I didn't enjoy the Pitch Perfect movies as much as people expected, this was a clever combination of two songs I was vaguely familiar with, didn't overstay its welcome, and even raised a smile!

Song: 7/10

Running: 5/10

9. Brothers Osborne - It Ain't My Fault

Again, more expectations of pop song covers dashed, but even though this isn't a countrified Zara Larsson song it still rocked! A good steady beat, it reminded me of a train but that may have been because I was running next to a railway line! Another pleasant discovery. I realised at this point that this was also probably the most different male vocalists I'd listened to in succession in years.

Song: 9/10

Running: 7/10

10. HUNGER - Light It Up

Knowing the musical overlap I have with Elise, I was surprised to hear a(nother) male vocalist on this track. It was great despite that, the song reminded me of a third act heroic run in a teen movie, which really boosted my serotonin.

Song: 8/10

Running: 8/10

11. Prince - When Doves Cry

The first of three submissions from the same person, and reluctantly the only one I could keep. It's to my shame that I forget how good a musician Prince was, and this was a welcome reprise. It soundtracked the portion of my run along the western arm of Brighton Marina, and reminded me of that beautiful moment when two people called Milhouse finally meet.

Song: 10/10

Running: 9/10

12. BLACKPINK - BOOMBAYAH

I'm glad I stuck to my guns regarding not using shuffle, as it lead to this colourful trend - mix black and pink and you get purple, the previous artist's signature colour! Another familiar song, another relaxing segment of the run, by this point along the foot of the cliffs towards Saltdean. By now I was confident of being able to run to pretty much any song - alternating between music and podcasts over the last few years had broken me out of old habits of needing fast paced songs to keep me going. I could just settle in and enjoy the mix of English and Korean!

Song: 9/10

Running: 9/10

13. P!nk - Raise Your Glass

It is a fault of my own that I associate too many songs with the TV show Glee. I noticed it working my way through Van Halen's discography the other week; I noticed it here as well. I mostly put that out of my mind after the first verse, focusing on P!nk's snarky asides that didn't make it into the sanitised, TV friendly version. It also made me realise that I really should listen to her more!

Song: 8/10

Running: 8/10

14. Stan Getz, Joao Gilberto - The Girl From Ipanema

This was the first song that genuinely threw me off my pace. I stumbled and said (probably too loudly, I'm sure that people overheard) "what the fuck is this?!" when the French jazz came on. Over five minutes long, I felt myself slowing, and willing it to end. My colleague's attempt to throw me off worked - I'm just glad she didn't choose Ed Sheeran!

Song: 2/10

Running: 0/10

15. A Flock Of Seagulls - I Ran (So Far Away)

(This worked really well, but the plan for using the gif came to me within seconds of the intro and I couldn't not do it)

Song: 9/10

Running: 8/10

16. The Walkmen - The Rat

By this point I had hit the turn around point and was heading back towards town, along the undulating clifftop. It was also the penultimate song that I had no idea about, and another surprise! Chock full of driving drums, it reminded me (to no detriment) of The Bravery's An Honest Mistake, and I was pleased to find out later that the two songs were released within six months of each other! Another song that'll find its way onto my regular running playlists in the future.

Song: 8/10

Running: 10/10

17. Chemical Brothers - Galvanize

I could've sworn when I was listening to this song that it had been used on an advert, or TV show, perhaps as part of an exercise montage - but Wikipedia is remaining mute on the subject. Regardless, it made me feel like I was in one, so this is going on the playlist from now on. You might say it...galvanised...me into running faster!

Song: 8/10

Running: 10/10

18. Russ Abbot - Atmosphere

The final song on this list that I knew nothing about - and within seconds I was convinced it was a hastily written song to cash in on the popularity of Agadoo. According to Google this was written by Joy Division, but I'm certain that's incorrect. Spotify credits the singer, and it's really not good. I'm just glad it had some semblance of pace to it so it didn't drag!

Song: 1/10

Running: 1/10

19. Britney Spears - Toxic

About ten years ago the branch of German budget supermarket Aldi in Canterbury closed down, and the cramped site was taken over by upmarket supermarket Waitrose. The sudden increase in quality is a perfect metaphor for the vast uptick in quality between the last song and this. The Grammy award winning track is the musical equivalent of doping - listening to it makes you run faster, lighter, easier and happier.

Song: 10/10

Running: 11/10

20. Faithless - Insomnia

This was a song I was convinced I knew, but two-thirds of the way into the song it still wasn't ringing any bells...until the bells kicked in and I recognised the bit played on Invicta FM on the car rides to school all those years ago. Another great song to run to, soundtracking my run along Marine Parade back to the pier.

Song: 9/10

Running: 8/10

21. Garbage - Temptation Waits

The opening track on the first proper album I ever owned, and the third track on the "Buffy The Vampire Slayer" original soundtrack album...this is very possibly one of my most listened to songs, ever. A slow burner, it explodes on the listener partway through - and I guess knowing I only had ten minutes left of my run helped boost my motivation too!

Song: 8/10

Running: 8/10

22. Focus - Hocus Pocus (live at the Rainbow)

This was submitted with the caveat of "hopefully a 15 minute live version". The longest one I could find was "only" eight and a half minutes, but the yodelling and guitars sped me to a fast finish on Hove Lawns. I really need to give the studio version another listen!

Song: 8/10

Running: 9/10

Had I just been listening to podcasts, I probably would've called it a day at 10 or 12k. I tucked another 6k under my belt (two more pints in my beer total), covered a more interesting route, and good lord are my legs feeling it now!

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