Notes and queries (the gunpowder treason and plot edition):

[raven]

Mostly, today has been Novemberish. Notes and queries:

1. It's November 5th, and I am slightly wistful on this account; I am very tempted to buy sparklers and run around writing rude words in the air, but possibly this would like slightly silly just on my own. I do have a proper bonfire and fireworks to go to at the weekend, but waaah, don't want to sit in on my own tonight, want fireworks. Also a pony and a job, shut up self. I really ought to get down to work in a moment.

2. Signing up for yuletide from SCHOOL! That was a genius idea. And then I could sign up in Firefox 3.5 and not break all my add-ons.

Of course, it would have been more of a genius idea had I not a) not thought of it, and broken all my add-ons; and b) buggered up my sign-up twice running anyway. It's not like I'm offering thirty fandoms or something, I'm offering five and this year they come with handy tickboxes. Sigh.

(One thing that always makes me surprisingly happy is that according to the participants list, I am the only person in these parts of fandom writing under "Raven" or a variant, despite ff.net having appended "25" to mine when they outlawed non-unique usernames. It sounds silly, but I have written approximately 300,000 words of fanfiction over eight years under that name, and it's important to me now.)^[1]

3. Sitting up on Headington Hill while drafting Baby's First Deed of Transfer, I had a very good view of the sunset. I reckon it was too dark to read outside by 4.10pm. Am I the only person who forgets, every year, that this happens? That it's not something you read about in books, it actually is only going to be light for six hours and you're going to spend all of those in school. It was a depressing realisation when there is still almost six months of winter to go. To be fair there are things about winter I love - sharp cold, woodsmoke, the sense of things coming - there is still an aura of decrepit Novemberishness about the place today.

4. On a slightly sillier note, Google have discovered a town that isn't there. On the whole, I think towns that aren't there are very interesting. Pripyiat is a town in Ukraine that isn't there, and Centralia is a town in Pennsylvania that isn't. They are both fascinating places.

However, hathy_col and I have driven through that field. Mostly, we have driven through it at seventy miles an hour singing. The not-thereness of the place can hardly be over-emphasised. I am vaguely impresed.

5. Other interesting thing from today's news: increasing numbers of people who aren't vegetarian, but eat very little meat. The article isn't very profound, but I have always wondered why this is never talked about - talk about vegetarianism in the media always seems to be framed by this odd (possibly Western?) model that people who eat meat are carnivores and people who don't are vegetarians, and there is no continuum between the two, and no complex reasons for why people eat what they eat, or anything.

There is no number six. I need coffee, and I need sleep, but I only get to have one of those. Into the breach again, I s'pose.

---

[1] Admittedly I do exclude the possibility that the name is not used because I have taken it.

Comments

[jacinthsong.livejournal.com]

this odd (possibly Western?) model that people who eat meat are carnivores and people who don't are vegetarians, and there is no continuum between the two, and no complex reasons for why people eat what they eat, or anything.

I tend to think of it as partly economic - even within relatively prosperous countries the point has only recently been reached where people can afford to have meat with every meal. But even then, yes, I think it is (if not exclusively) a pretty Western thing to have the idea of a meal as some one thing built around meat ('and two veg') as opposed to lots of little dishes. Not something I've read huge amounts about, despite vegginess and foodiness, I have to admit...

[loneraven.livejournal.com]

I do agree to a certain extent with the point re: economics, and I was going to say "developed" rather than "Western" above, but then I thought, no, Japan, Hong Kong, Singapore, they're very different when it comes to food, and India will be a developed country some day but I doubt it will then "discover" vegetarianism. I think the notion of it is very culturally specific, and then reinforced by the economic aspect.

[jacinthsong.livejournal.com]

Yes; sorry, I'm not sure if I was entirely clear about it. Basically I think the false dichotomy is v obvious and widespread here now for economic reasons, buuut that partly comes from the preexisting idea that a Proper Meal has meat.

The flip-side of the economic factor is that while you need quite a high income to be able to eat lots of meat, I guess you also (unless you are somewhere, like areas with a lot of strict Hindu and Buddhist people, where not eating meat is relatively normal and catered for) need to have quite a high income to refuse available food? Which would exaggerate the difference further. Er, does that make sense/do you agree?

[loneraven.livejournal.com]

That makes a lot of sense to me, yes, and I do agree.
Another point comes to mind - my cultural background equates food with love and with identity. Okay, it's more complicated than that, but, you know, that's the gist of it: Indians use food as offerings like prasad, and langar, and alcohol isn't as normalised, so food serves as a social lubricant in addition to playing such a major religious role (and then, as my cousin Sunny says, our parents are just one generation away from scarce food and tell us to eat constantly because they love us - because they were not students/young adults who had as much food as they wanted, and they want us to be).

So, refusing food - even for reasons which seem quite mundane, like vegetarianism - isn't something that can be done as easily as it could be here, I think. There isn't a mental background against which you can place vegetarianism in the Western sense, because an individual's food choices are so heavily intertwined with the cultural structure.

omg tl;dr. sorry.

[biascut.livejournal.com]

We were talking about this at work the other day because a couple of my students are organising a workshop on Arab writing and we've got loads of people coming from the Middle East, and the majority will want halal food. So rather than seek out a caterer who will do halal meat, the students have asked me to make sure the catering's all vegetarian.

One of the women was saying how hilarious she always finds it that when when she's been travelling in Arab countries, she finds most people are completely baffled by the idea of a vegetarian meal and most things inlude animal products somewhere along the way (not necessarily muscle-meal, but stock or other dead-animal-derived products), and then they come to the UK and that's what they get given!

[loneraven.livejournal.com]

That is interesting - why have the students asked for vegetarian instead of halal? Just so it's all easier?

[biascut.livejournal.com]

It's easier to use the usual tried-and-tested who know the university buildings than find another one that does halal meat, basically. In the evening they're going for an Indian meal that will be halal, but for lunch they just want the usual buffet so we're going vegetarian.

[speccygeekgrrl.livejournal.com]

When you said "Pripyat is a town in Ukraine that isn't there," something in my head said "hubbawha?"

Looking at the wiki page, my confusion is explained easily: I must have watched my brother and his friends play the Pripyat level in Call of Duty a hundred times last summer. I knew I knew that name! xD And I'm surprised that I actually recognize that ferris wheel... the game designers did a good job.

[loneraven.livejournal.com]

Ahaha. See, it's not just me who finds places like that fascinating!

(What is it with game designers and ghost cities? I seem to remember reading that Silent Hill was based on Centralia...)

[brewsternorth.livejournal.com]

I suspect a) it's the creepy factor, b) since ghost cities are usually ghost cities for some notable reason, there's plenty of photographic evidence for game designers to base their backgrounds on...

Funnily enough I only knew about Centralia through one of those awful disaster documentaries on National Geographic (it may have been Discovery or the History Channel).

[loneraven.livejournal.com]

I read about it in Bill Bryson, of all places - in A Walk in the Woods he takes a tour of the town. It's wonderfully written but creepy as hell.

[hips-lips-tits.livejournal.com]

i eat very little meat. i was vegetarian for a long time, and then went back to eating just chicken and fish.. i do consume red meat now, but not very often at all. in excess it's not good for you. lean protein is the way to go. i never did it for animal-rights reasons or anything like that, i just.. wanted to? i don't know. everyone has their different reasons. to say someone is 'vegetarian' to me carries the connotation that the person does not consume meat by choice. if it is the fact that someone cannot afford to eat meat, i don't know that i would call them vegetarian.

then again, there are a lot of examples like that. for instance, say, religious people who do not smoke, drink, or do drugs, are not labled as 'straightedge.'

... i think that makes sense.

[loneraven.livejournal.com]

Yeah, yeah, it does. It's basically another version of the same point I was making above, I think - that people's food choices are complicated, and trying to assert that "all people who eat X are X" is just misguided.

(Good call on straightedge, yes - there's somewhere where the context is considered.)

[hathy-col.livejournal.com]

I also love the fact it's called 'Argleton' which quite frankly is a wonderful name for a town!

(And I am a Fake Vegetarian so that article was... odd. I've been a Fake Vegetarian for ten years now, so clearly I am ahead of the crowd.)

[loneraven.livejournal.com]

Isn't it? Oh, Google. :)

You don't eat red meat, is that right? It's what I have always assumed...

[hathy-col.livejournal.com]

I simply Cannot Be Done with red meat; even the smell makes me feel quite sick, and has done so for as long as I can remember. Phrases like 'don't you miss bacon?' lead to a shrug from me, as I never liked it in the first place. I just genuinely prefer the taste of vegetables, and the odd bit of chicken is a result of pleading from my mother for a few years. I eat stuff with meat products in, sometimes (jelly, mostly) and I certainly don't object to other people eating meat either, I just... well, Cannot Be Done with it.

I feel like such a hypocrite from every angle, sometimes. And I don't know why, other people don't have to feel bad for not liking certain types of food - mine just tends to be meat.

(And coriander, but that is whole different argument indeed. Now that is a flavour that I feel passionately about RIDDING THE WORLD of.)

[marymac.livejournal.com]

You're not the only one who forgets about the nights coming in, no. I keep being stunned when I come out of class and its dark.

Meat-in-every-meal always seems to me to be a very Northern European/points-North-in-general kind of thing. I suppose because you have the kind of land that supports it and for most of the year, climatic necessity for lots of good heavy fat and stodge to keep you warm. And I know in Ireland at least, preferably you were feeding everyone out of the one pot, because its less fuel to cook one thing than many, so you have more fuel and more heat for everything else, and you can have something that's always hot on the go - my great aunt used to have a pot of stew ready to go for dinner one side of the range and a pot of soup keeping simmering on the other, all winter, so the farm hands could come in and get something hot if they needed it.

Its also why rural families always kept pigs. You can feed the family all winter off two pigs and they're really cheap to raise.

[loneraven.livejournal.com]

That's a good point. It substantiates the idea of it all being culture, doesn't it - that cultural attitudes towards meat are really very ingrained, even if the reasons for them aren't so relevant any more.

[deepbluemermaid.livejournal.com]

I knew in advance, before arriving in the UK, that winter days were short. But it was still a hell of a shock to the system to have night come so early! In Wellington, which is the world's southernmost capital city but is still only on the same latitude as Madrid, the sun sets at 5pm in midwinter. On the flip side, of course, we don't get the same long summer nights (sun sets around 9pm in summer).

Also: one thing I love about my house is that we have a view straight across the harbour to the western hills. We can track the progress of the seasons merely by watching the sunset. In midsummer, the sun sets over the southern suburb of Seatoun; in midwinter, it's over Mount Kaukau to the north. It's a tangible sense of the passage of time that I really missed while overseas.

I don't like steaks, or chops, or other big slabs of meat. I hardly ever cook with red meat (I use mince sometimes), although I will usually eat it if offered. My older sister has been a vegetarian since I was about 12, but has never managed to convert me. I could give up everything except chicken and maybe bacon!

[loneraven.livejournal.com]

That's lovely, about the view across the harbour. I can imagine winter being a real culture shock, after that!

Sunset was closer to four than five, today. Siiiiigh.

[snowballjane.livejournal.com]

I'm finding the Argleton thing so funny - so close to home and we never knew it was there!

[loneraven.livejournal.com]

I know, right? A whole town that somehow we never stumbled across...

[kismeteve.livejournal.com]

Haha, Argleton's a wizarding town, outed by Google.

[loneraven.livejournal.com]

Ahahah, YES.

[dr-biscuit.livejournal.com]

When I left home I became economically vegetarian. I think I now fall into an even weirder category. I think there are ethical reasons not to eat some animals (eg most chicken, pigs in lots of countries), but ethical reasons TO eat animals that live happy jolly lives (eg free range birds, most sheep in the UK). I think there are environmental reasons not to eat beef and most fish. So I mainly eat veggie, with some lamb, pork or game.

Try explaining THAT when people ask 'are you vegetarian then?' It's particularly tough because I try not to eat fish, which many people think would be fine if you are 'a bit vegetarian'. So I can say 'yes' and they get puzzled if I eat bacon, or I can say 'it's complicated, I eat some meat' and then have to explain why I won't eat fish. (It's a bit more complicated for T because he doesn't eat mushrooms, so many a 'vegetarian' meal is inedible to him.)

But in none of these things do I take a 'purity' approach - I don't think it's all or nothing. And I am trying to avoid the animals being farmed, not trying to avoid putting them in my body. So if someone gets it wrong and offers me salmon they've already cooked, well I'll eat it, because it's tasty. Also, I suspect, because I grew up in a family where there wasn't enough money to be picky.

(Also? Counting Crows are awesome. Just sayin')

[loneraven.livejournal.com]

Ha, yes. Food is complex! It's really complex! And "vegetarian" and "non-vegetarian" is just obfuscatory and not helpful.

The "purity" approach is interesting, and I agree entirely: there are a few things I try not to eat, but in the crunch I don't think my food choices are so important that I won't eat something someone has lovingly cooked for me.

(Counting Crows are awesome! August And Everything After is a yuletide fandom. I have no idea how this is going to work, but I think it is very awesome.)

[pinkdormouse.livejournal.com]

Re 5: I always find it odd when for one reason or another people randomly assume I'm vegetarian. Current trigger seems to be because I get Graze (http://www.graze.com) boxes delivered to work at least twice a week instead of buying sandwiches.

I hate how early it gets dark now too.

[loneraven.livejournal.com]

Heh. Graze boxes do sound nice - if I ever have a workplace to get them delivered to, I might invest!

[pinkdormouse.livejournal.com]

They're excellent, although I find that the special ones they're doing because of the post strike are more filling than the usual ones and so I end up with a drawer full of little cartons of nuts if I'm not careful.

[tau_sigma]

This year, I am finding the drawing in of the nights very difficult. I think it's actually significantly worse, now I'm back in the midlands for the winter. (It doesn't help right now that I was supposed to be in the southern hemisphere, enjoying 27 degree sunshine. *sigh*)

Pooony. I want a tiny pony.

[loneraven.livejournal.com]

If I could, I would get you a tiny pony. With bells on its bridle and plaits in its mane.