Continued - 20 Questions Meme...

Please go and take a look over at Michelle's blog at Raw Cool...Black is the new blog...

Michelle picked up my earlier challenge of choosing the 4th photo in your 4th album, etc, and has picked some beautifully clear and story-telling photographs of her friends, family and daily life! Really lovely, and I feel as if I'm there! Thank you, Michelle!

Following on from yesterday's 20 Questions Meme, here are the remaining 20 - I hope you enjoy them, and I have no probs if anyone wants to pinch owt from them!

(Translation - Please feel free to pick and choose any or all of the Meme questions to illustrate your own blog, and for those rare 'brainless days!')

I do wonder whether I'm letting too much of myself to be seen, but I probably don't care. I don't always hold with all that Astrology stuff, yet I am a true Saggitarian - Always with one hoof firmly in my mouth, and pretty much 'Speak as I find...', i.e. you need to take me at face value, because I am an honest and a very truthful person - I don't dissemble well, look at my face if you want to know what I am thinking! And I rarely lie, unless it's a very gentle lie that will hurt no-one. 'Nuff said?! Then on, MacDuff!

Voila - the remaining 20, very hypothetical, question-ees!


21. One night you wake up because you heard a noise. You turn on the light to find that you are surrounded by MUMMIES. The mummies aren’t really doing anything, they’re just standing around your bed. What do you do?



If they're not doing anything, or planning to do anything, I would lie very still meself, as if mummified, holding my breath, and hope they go away... with my lung capacity, they've got about a minute at most!


22. You have George W. Bush and Osama bin Laden locked in a small room together. It's airtight so both the guys are gonna suffocate anyway, but what amusing weapon do you give them to make it more entertaining?

Sex and Violence - Has this Meme been set by Quentin Tarantino??!

Weapon = A table leg...


23. The Angel of Death has descended upon you. Fortunately, the Angel of Death is pretty cool and in a good mood, and it offers you a half-hour to do whatever you want before you bite it. Whatcha gonna do in that half-hour?

Spend time with my family and say all that needs to be said...


24. Truthfully, what underwear are you currently wearing?

White bra, can't remember what I grabbed out of the laundry pile, but it will be M & S cotton 'granny knickers'! Hello, hello, is anyone still out there?!


25. You accidentally eat some radioactive vegetables. They were good, and what’s even cooler is that they endow you with the super-power of your choice! What’s it gonna be?


The ability to remove suffering in the best possible way... (Right, I am ready for my Miss Universe tiara and orb now...)


26. You can re-live any point of time in your life. The time-span can only be a half-hour, though. What half-hour of your past would you like to experience again?

Tricky question, that one... Best experience would be the birth of my son - I was elated, and no drugs in sight, and what I felt at that moment was overwhelming enchantment and spell-binding love that would surmount all other loves. Of course, he's a teenager now, so I've come to me senses!


27. Moses trips on his robe and drops the stone tablets (Moses sounds as clumsy as I am!). Commandment number eleven is broken off. He leaves it there as his back is killing him (...ditto!). What does it say?

"Though shalt not covet not Paris Hilton's (or any other Zeleb's fake-tan, or fake anything! Thou shalt be true to thine own self..."



28.You can erase any horrible experience from your past. What will it be?

Did you read the one about the bullying manager yesterday? That one! Or, even better: The root cause of my back problems, I believe in any case, is an accident I had at work when I was fresh out of University. I didn't have a proper workstation and I did not know about Health and Safety and so on, and I wrenched my back very badly so I could not move well for months.

I have been suffering episodes of this kind every couple of years for the past 20+ years which I think all stem from that experience - So if I could take that away from the sum of my life, I think I would have led a more active, and less fearful, existence, and I would not be off work now...
Hey ho...


29. Rufus reappears with the time machine and a custard pie. Who's gonna get it?

Bullies at school - Yes, or that ratty manager in Question 3 yesterday...


30. You got kicked out of the country for being a time-travelling heathen who sleeps with celebrities and has super-powers. But you can move to anywhere else in the world! What country are you going to live in now?

Predictably, France...



31. What part of your body would you change (no, you are NOT perfect; you gotta answer this one) and why?

Fat content..



32. You have been eternally banned from every single bar in the world except for ONE. Which one is it gonna be?

Our local, The Shoulder of Mutton... Good beer, great fire, nice food, friendly staff!


33. What's the last thing you ate?

Boiled egg and bread fingers, fresh from the new bread-making machine I bought GJ for his birthday last week! Selfish, moi?!




34. Hopefully you didn’t mention this in the super-powers question…. If you did, then we’ll just expand on that. Suddenly, you have gained the ability to float. Who are you going to show this to first?

My friends, the sea otters!


35. The constant absorption of magical moonbeams mixed with the radioactive vegetables you consumed earlier has given you the ability to resurrect the dead celebrity of your choice. So which celebrity will you bring back to life?

Albrecht Duerer.


36. The Celestial Gates of Beyond have opened, much to your surprise because you didn’t think such a thing existed. Death appears. As it turns out, once again Death is actually a pretty cool entity, and happens to be in a fantastic mood. Death offers to return the friend/family-member/person, etc. of your choice to the living world. Who will you bring back?

After yesterday's experience, and the quiet of my house today, if it were an animal, it would be this one,

In all reality, and because I would not wish to choose from either of my own departed parents, who waited long enough to be together wherever they are... I would elect to bring back Mad Asthmatic, Emma Bearfoot, bloggeur extraordinaire to her parents... For no child should outlive her parents.


37. What’s your theme song?


All your life you've never seen a woman...
Taken by the sky...
Would you stay if she promised you heaven?
Would you even try?



Dreams unwind
Love's a state of mind
Dreams unwind
Love is hard to find...

Rhiannon




38 When did you last have sex?




39. Buffy, Willow or Xander?



Van Helsing! Next to Dave Grohl (see yesterday), Mr Jackman comes a close second in my books!


40. Who’s up next?




And just as a post-script, it seems as if yesterday was silent reading poetry day across pockets of Blogland, and so as not to miss that boat, here is one of my favourites... Hope you like it...


My soul is an enchanted boat,


Which, like a sleeping swan, doth float
Upon the silver waves of thy sweet singing;

And thine doth like an angel sit
Beside a helm conducting it,
Whilst all the winds with melody are ringing.

It seems to float ever, forever,
Upon that many-winding river,
Between mountains, woods, abysses,
A paradise of wildernesses!

Till, like one in slumber bound,
Borne to the ocean, I float down, around,
Into a sea profound of ever-spreading sound.

by Shelley

The Power of the (Flash) Mob, Performance Art and the Feel of Silence

For those of you who missed yesterday's, Thursday's post concerning Geordie Ferrets, please see further down the page - I have been all over the place with the dates for my posts, sorry for any confusion caused!

Today is Friday, so I really don't understand why the blog is now showing Thursday - I have had it with Blogger! Bring on the Luddites!!!


Ever heard of Flash Mob? Here's a very short introductory clip courtesy of Look North - the North East's local TV Station about the phenomenon, including crappily posed piece by the studio staff!


Just shout if you need anything translated - but you can see how people really get into it, and onlookers, even the elderly, aren't unsettled; They are amused, bemused and perhaps pushed a little bit outside their comfort zones, but hey, they seem ultimately cool about what has happened to them.
It wouldn't be me without a little bit of WIKI history, would it?

"The first flash mob was created in Manhattan in May 2003, by Bill Wasik, senior editor of Harper's Magazine. The origins of the flash mobs were unknown until Wasik published an article about his creation in the March 2006 edition of Harper's. The first attempt was unsuccessful after the targeted retail store was tipped off about the plan for people to gather.

Wasik avoided such problems during the second flash mob, which occurred in June 3, 2003 at Macy's department store, by sending participants to preliminary staging areas—in four prearranged Manhattan bars—where they received further instructions about the ultimate event and location just before the event began.

More than one hundred people converged upon the ninth floor rug department, gathering around an expensive rug. Anyone approached by a sales assistant was asked to say that the gatherers lived together in a warehouse on the outskirts of New York, that they were shopping for a "love rug".

Subsequently, 200 people flooded the lobby and mezzanine of the Hyatt hotel in synchronized applause for about fifteen seconds, and a shoe boutique in SoHo was invaded by participants pretending to be tourists on a bus trip.

Wasik claimed that he created flash mobs as a social experiment designed to poke fun at hipsters and to highlight the cultural atmosphere of conformity and of wanting to be an insider or part of "the next big thing." The Vancouver Sun wrote, "It may have backfired on him... [Wasik] may instead have ended up giving conformity a vehicle that allowed it to appear nonconforming."

And so, flash mobs are a form of performance art and spontaneous social interaction. The phenomenon uses modern communications technologies, (just like us!), including decentralised personal networking, known as smartmobbing, the Internet, email, chat rooms and text messaging, so not actually spontaneous at all, but definitely subversive and 'underground'. Sometimes these get-togethers are used as a means of making charitable donations, such as taking food to the homeless, so they're a good thing, right?!

The first recorded use of the term flash mob was in 2003 in a blog entry posted in the aftermath of Wasik's event. And so we are returned to our world of what you could call Flash Blogging... You know the kind of thing:- Where someone writes a poignant and meaningful piece, or chooses particularly touching images, and it sets you or I off on a chain of thought, that serves to influence our writing or thought patterns in turn...

This short video shows the recent Flashmob Finger Gun Fight at the Tate, London


My own first experience of these flash mob performances, was when I and GJ were two out of only 100,000 people in the UK who tuned in to the newish station BBC Three to watch Flashmob - the Opera, which took over London's Paddington station one evening when people were making their way home from work.

Three professional singers and 65 musicians from the BBC Concert Orchestra belted out popular arias from operas such as Madame Butterfly, Don Giovanni and La Traviata. They were joined by opera lovers and performance buffs, who wanted to play their part in the fun, bringing opera to the commuting masses... Unsuspecting travellers wandering around the concourse were regaled with an aria from a woman, dressed in a red winter coat, who appeared to be going about her normal business, while mourning her lovelorn state. commuters.

Over the years and months since 2003 there have been other kinds of social gatherings, across the world, and these are just a few:

... Pillow Fights across the world, here in Paris.

and here in, I think this is Germany:



Giant Conga Lines, just like the one in Newcastle:



And people just doing something odd - It looks pretty cold for the posers of this piece:


I just recently learned from a colleague about the trend for wedding parties to break out into an impromptu rendition of Michael Jackson's 'Thriller' dance - Look for it on Youtube, there are many amateur videos, some obviously more rehearsed than others... Great fun, and seeing the brides taking their dance so seriously in their frou-frou dresses is priceless! This sits slightly outside the world of Flash Mobbing, but is based on the same principles, of course.

Which brings me to another form, and my favourite Flash Mob performance - The Big Freeze in Paris. Please take the 5 minutes to watch it - The music isn't bad either. This is the official video by the way, and it's just amazing to see people's reactions to the freeze, including the Police and the many tourists. And some of the poses being held for 5 mins are incredible...



What moves me in this piece is the stillness, and to be fair, appreciating those still moments in life, in our ever hectic lives, is not the easiest of things to do... How often do any of us just sit, still our minds, and properly reflect for more than five minutes?

Do we allow ourselves the thinking time we deserve, when we are busy with our children, our animals, and our understandable and ever-present cares and our woes? Ought we not to occasionally stop to smell the flowers, and not just photograph them, for example?

Braja recently posted on silence and its strength, so I will not replicate that here, but it is important to note that:

'The benefits of silence and an empty mind are well known: less stress, clearer thinking - Studies have even pointed to a strengthened immune system and better heart health. Silence is something to welcome. It's nurturing and refreshing. It offers a unique feeling of peace'. (Source: allspiritfitness.com)

So, do look out for Flash Mob - There is a website - Google it if you want to take part, and you could be alerted by text message to the one nearest you, and you could be the next Flash Mob Ninja, or Still As A Statue I see!