Random Thoughts 2: Of ships and shoes and sealing wax, and cabbages and kings

This week's blog challenge, set by my partner in crime, I confess has had me somewhat flummoxed. My prompt was to write about a man who teaches his cockroaches how to dance. I mean...??? To be fair, this kind of thing was always going to happen since we're taking our challenge prompts from a creative writing ideas page. But, since my blog is generally about me and my meanderings, and dancing insects with exoskeletons don't generally make an appearance in my daily life, this was a hard one.

To start with, I thought I'd find out a bit more about cockroaches. A quick Google search took me quickly to more information than you'd ever want to know. And just as quickly convinced me that I *really* don't want to know anything more about the little darlings -  I mean, I knew (and was quite comfortable knowing) that they are hardy little creatures, most likely to survive a nuclear holocaust, but did I really want to know that the female can remain pregnant forever and can produce 150 offspring per year? Or that they can fly? Or that they can grow to be over 2 inches long? No, I didn't. And, sadly, now that I know them, I can't unknow them, no matter how hard I try. And believe me, I'm trying really really hard just now!

By now, you're probably as grossed out as I am by the subject so I'll change it - but first, another factoid I discovered is that they have 6 legs with 3 knees per leg. So dance classes were probably quite fun - if you like cockroaches that is...

Anyway, having convinced myself that I didn't need to know anything more about cockroaches, my mind next wandered on to that phrase about angels dancing on pins. I realised that I didn't actually know what that meant, what the proper quote was or even where it comes from.

Seems it is a reference to pointless discussions about meaningless things, or at very least things so completely theoretical that it would be impossible to prove them one way or the other, and of little real value if you did. Hmm, sound like another item in the news recently?

And after that, my wardrobe mind led me on to the quote in the title of this post -a prize to the first person to correctly identify its source (without checking Google first - no cheating now!). Details of the prize will be revealed once the winner is announced.

Which all just goes to prove, if you really try, you can write about anything...

And in case you're wondering about the photo, as befits a post about random thoughts, it's a random picture too. Pretty, isn't it?!

Random Thoughts: Wealth

I blogged earlier this week that I've taken up a new blogging challenge - the Random Thoughts challenge set by my partner in crime, the awesome Just Frances. So here goes with my first one...

I am challenged to write for you about Cooking up my own 'Get Rich Quick' scheme. Now this is a bit of a hard one for me, in part because I've never yet managed to do it, and in part becauise I'm really not that interesting in getting rich. In fact the whole millionaire celebrity culture that we appear to have created in this country simply turns me off. Don't get me wrong, I like having cash. I like being able to afford to buy the pretty silly things I like, but if I'm honest, I'm really quite happy just being comfortable. I don't crave more, I'm content with what I've got - and I really don't know what I'd spend it on if I had more. Apart from shoes, that is - obviously. And travelling...

But back to the challenge. I've never really been an entrepreneur. As a child, I wasn't the one setting up car washing or gardening businesses. I did have an after school job doing ironing for one of the local shopowners, but that was the scale of my ambition.

My only foray into self employed-dom has been a fairly unsuccessful (financially at least) dabbling in handmade jewellery making. For a couple of years I spent most of my evenings creating 'unique' (ie unsellable) items that I would then spend most of my weekends at craft fairs not selling.

Overall I made a financial loss on the 'business'. Ironically, however, I did make a profit courtesy of HMRC - to keep on the right side of everything I opted to declare myself self employed and as a result was obliged to complete a tax return each year. It seems I was overpaying tax on other aspects of my earnings and as a result for the last few years I've received a rebate.

Not quite get rich, and certainly not very quick, but bizarrely it did bring in additional income. Ho hum, who'd have thought it.

Musical Mystery Tour

As some of my friends from Facebook will know, over the last couple of months I've been undertaking a small iPod challenge. I was finding that random/shuffle on my iPod just wasn't random enough and I was worried there were tracks I was never hearing. So, as a solution, I decided to listen to my entire iPod alphabetically by song title. Doing it by artist would have been a bit dull, but by song title gave a whole new meaning to the word 'random'. Where else could you listen to U2 and Thievery Corporation side by side? The only time I can remember having a run of songs by the same artist was courtesy of The Hoosiers of all people, although I do remember a bit of a Madonna segment, and perhaps an REM one.

Now don't panic, I only actually had 1444 songs on my iPod when I started this challenge (and I've only got 1473 now!!) so it wasn't too much of a mammoth undertaking. But it was incredible fun - and it did remind me of stuff I'd put on there and hardly listened to yet. In the space of the last 6 weeks I've been all the way from A-Punk from Vampire Weekend (of Oxford Comma fame!) to Zephyrus by Bloc Party and finished up this weekend with a handful of numerically inspired tracks.

As well as finding a way to make sure I'd listened to all of the tracks on my iPod, this little adventure did have a few other by-products.

For example, I've listened more carefully to the lyrics of quite a few of the tracks (most of the listening was through headphones, although some of it was through my ever surprising bargain £5 speakers - yay, PoundStretchers!). Discoveries from this were:

- Guillemots with Blue would still be Blue, a lyrically perfect song about living life

- Death Cab for Cutie with I will Possess your Heart, a truly beautiful love song (or one about a stalker if you read some of the comments!)

- Postal Service, We Will Become Silloheuttes, the jauntiest pop song about nuclear holocaust I've heard in a long while!

...to name but a few.

I also got a whole heap of new music suggestions courtesy of the Facebook 'guess the first track for each letter of the alphabet' game I played with my more long suffering friends. Quite often it lead me to want to rush off and buy the track. Occasionally it made me want to hit people over the head for thinking I would listen to such rubbish!

In my more boring moments, I even played musical mathematics - for example, did you know that the first 3 letters of the alphabet are statistically over-represented in my current collection? And by the time I'd got half way through the alphabet I was already 60% of my way through the music.

All in all, it was a great experiment that I'd recommend to anyone. But there's only one problem. Now that I've finished what do I listen to next? Luckily one of my fellow bloggers has already answered that one for me - buy a heap more music and start all over again. I've already started in fact, with purchases from the Coral, Teenage Fanclub (apparently also known as The Fannies, and that's only really funny to people in - or from, or who lived in - the UK!) and I am Kloot (although I don't actually remember buying that one!!). I also have a number of other great suggestions to rush off and try - top of the list is Pomplamousse who appeal to my (at times) quirky musical taste! And even as we speak Arcade Fire is down loading from the iTunes store.

So more adventures to come. If I promise not to inflict it on you all, can I start at A again sometime soon?

and for those who are interested, these are the first songs for each letter on my iPod at the time of the great A-Z challenge

A-Punk, Vampire Weekend
Baba, Alannis Morissette
C'est La Vie, Shania Twain
D is for Dangerous, Arctic Monkeys
The Earth Gave Me You, The Delays
Fake Tales of San Francisco, Arctic Monkeys (again)
Generator, Foofighters
Halloween, Kirsty MacColl
I'll Take the Rain, REM
James Bond, Scouting for Girls
Ka-Ching, good old Shania again
La Femme Parallel, Thievery Corporation
MIA, once again the mighty Foofighters
Nah!, Shania - what is it with you and having to be first?
O Green World, Gorillaz
The Panic, Dykeenies
Queen's Tattoos, Aztec Camera
Rabbit Heart, Florence and the Machine
SOCA, Asian Dub Foundation
Tahiti, Bat for Lashes
U Can't Touch This, MC Hammer (cringe!)
Vampires, Thievery Corporation (again)
Waiter, Bring Me Water, Shania (what again?)
X-Ray, The Macabees
YahWeh, U2
Zephyrus, Bloc Party
10:15 Saturday Night, The Cure

all finishing up with 9/15ths, Biffy Clyro

PS Sorry for the pic, big sis. Couldn't resist it when I found it on my phone!!