Letter Meme
Apr. 30th, 2006 10:45 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
slemslempikeThe letter D
Dictionaries
I just really like them, though I don't have a particularly impressive vocabulary, and I never really remember cool words I find (although, I do if I read them somewhere else, just not outside of books). I also really like the appendices in dictionaries. In my A level French/English dictionary they had neat little pages about French culture.
Dimsie
Mostly here to represent school stories in general. But I think these might have been among the first I read - after Malory Towers. In my primary school in Qatar they had a lot of the Goodchild reprints, which I took out repeatedly, and then moved on to the Drina and Penny books and the school Antonia Forests. I like Dimsie. Mostly I like her around other people, and I think that the Springdale books might be a bit better, but I have a large soft spot for her (along with everyone else in the known universe).
Dustwrappers
They can be really pretty. It's also a value thing, so that when I was cataloguing books for work the presence of a wrapper increased the price fairly significantly. But mostly, I think my shelves look nicer when the books on them have wrappers that decorate the spines. I don't have any blue-spine Chalets because of that. Of course, sometimes the wrappers can be hideous or just plain inappropriate, but even that's interesting, to think about whether the artist knows the book and if that's why they made the choices, or if not, what on earth that can have been given as a brief that created such an inapt picture.
Dye
Not so much at the moment, I have about two or three inches of roots. But my natural hair colour is brownish and the dye has faded to a reddish brown, so I don't think it looks too awful. I like dying my hair. I don't wear make-up (except very occasionally, preferably when someone else does it), so it's my one thing of changing my appearance really. I've been dying my hair since I was fourteen, starting with those little wella mousse things in mahogany. Then I had various shades of red and purple throughout school, and blue in one summer holiday. The blue wasn't terribly successful, and I didn't wash it out properly because then it wouldn't have shown up at all, and so it just bled steadily onto my neck and all my clothes throughout my holiday near Machyllenth. COOL AS FUCK. Mmm. After that they brought out those blue-black and purple-black colours, so I had those a lot through sixth form and first year uni. When I was doing my year abroad I dyed half my hair black and the other half bleached to be Cruella De Vil at halloween. Then I dyed over the bleach with turquoise, which faded to green, and I had absolutely kick-ass hair that year. I perhaps clung onto it a bit longer than the regrowth really allowed. Then back to the normal colours again until my MA year, where I wanted quite desperately to have rainbow hair. I even got as far as buying the individual dyes. Then I roped in a friend to bleach my hair underneath. It was not a success. I had about two inches of very white hair, then a few of bright orange, fading to very dark brown at the ends. She was more tearful than I was. It was fixed by an emergency visit to Toni and Guy, who patched it up nicely, but didn't seem to get that I hadn't actually tried for the tie-dye effect and kept asking me why I'd done it in tones of sorrow. So that wasn't really a great moment in the life of my hair. Mmm. I'd still like to have it, but if I need to get a job then it won't be the greatest, and the bleach would still be a huge hassle.
DVDs
I like buying these. And I love that they are bringing out old things on DVD all the time, and if they would just do ,i>Grace Unver Fire that might almost content me. I like it when they do imaginative things with extras and the casing - like wrappers. And I like that I can watch a DVD on my laptop while doing my work, and it actually makes me get through all the boring parts of copying and pasting and data entry.
Doug Penhall / Peter Deluise
JUMP! Street. Hurrah. Peter Deluise plays Doug Penhall who is wonderful and lovely and beautiful in the right light. Peter Deluise does some commentaries for JUMP! Street and is very lovely on those too, mostly being (justifiably) rude about his acting. He moved into directing (though he also played a bully on Friends, and did a guest thing with his brothers and dad in Third Rock from the Sun) and was involved with the Stargate things and Jeremiah. I have listened to a few Stargate commentaries and he is still adorable but unfortunately rather earnest about things that really don't deserve it.
The Dukes
The Dukes is our local arts cinema and theatre. I love it. I have a student card, so all the films and all of their home-produced plays are a mere £3. And they have a bar, which isn't hideously expensive, and you can take drinks in with you, but you're not allowed ice in the live productions because of the actors. I assume because of the noise, though perhaps they've had some disgruntled patrons and had the need to remove any possible projectiles? It's quite a small place, and they usually show things like Harry Potter and LoTR a few weeks/months after they come out, and then the "critically acclaimed" stuff, and interesting foreign-language films. The last two films I saw there were Jarhead and Breakfast on Pluto. People tend not to talk through the films, which is lovely, though there are often some particularly knowing chuckles, which is amusing. And occasionally some politically-motivated clapping.
Doctorate/degree
I hope to earn one. Unfortunately that will require a lot more work than I'm doing at the moment. Mmmm. I try not to think about the end of the degree too much, as it seems like tempting fate, and the middle is also a bit scary, but I have at least started it, and I have a proposal, which is a good step. Although technically I'm an MPhil student, not a PhD student.
Diaries
Other people's, that is. I do not keep one, other than this journal. Fictional people mostly. I really like well done novels in diary form - Provincial Lady, Adrian Mole, and the Princess Diaries are pretty good fun. And Bridget Jones was really good at the diary entries. It's probably also why I enjoy lj, though not all of you are fictional.
Dictionaries
I just really like them, though I don't have a particularly impressive vocabulary, and I never really remember cool words I find (although, I do if I read them somewhere else, just not outside of books). I also really like the appendices in dictionaries. In my A level French/English dictionary they had neat little pages about French culture.
Dimsie
Mostly here to represent school stories in general. But I think these might have been among the first I read - after Malory Towers. In my primary school in Qatar they had a lot of the Goodchild reprints, which I took out repeatedly, and then moved on to the Drina and Penny books and the school Antonia Forests. I like Dimsie. Mostly I like her around other people, and I think that the Springdale books might be a bit better, but I have a large soft spot for her (along with everyone else in the known universe).
Dustwrappers
They can be really pretty. It's also a value thing, so that when I was cataloguing books for work the presence of a wrapper increased the price fairly significantly. But mostly, I think my shelves look nicer when the books on them have wrappers that decorate the spines. I don't have any blue-spine Chalets because of that. Of course, sometimes the wrappers can be hideous or just plain inappropriate, but even that's interesting, to think about whether the artist knows the book and if that's why they made the choices, or if not, what on earth that can have been given as a brief that created such an inapt picture.
Dye
Not so much at the moment, I have about two or three inches of roots. But my natural hair colour is brownish and the dye has faded to a reddish brown, so I don't think it looks too awful. I like dying my hair. I don't wear make-up (except very occasionally, preferably when someone else does it), so it's my one thing of changing my appearance really. I've been dying my hair since I was fourteen, starting with those little wella mousse things in mahogany. Then I had various shades of red and purple throughout school, and blue in one summer holiday. The blue wasn't terribly successful, and I didn't wash it out properly because then it wouldn't have shown up at all, and so it just bled steadily onto my neck and all my clothes throughout my holiday near Machyllenth. COOL AS FUCK. Mmm. After that they brought out those blue-black and purple-black colours, so I had those a lot through sixth form and first year uni. When I was doing my year abroad I dyed half my hair black and the other half bleached to be Cruella De Vil at halloween. Then I dyed over the bleach with turquoise, which faded to green, and I had absolutely kick-ass hair that year. I perhaps clung onto it a bit longer than the regrowth really allowed. Then back to the normal colours again until my MA year, where I wanted quite desperately to have rainbow hair. I even got as far as buying the individual dyes. Then I roped in a friend to bleach my hair underneath. It was not a success. I had about two inches of very white hair, then a few of bright orange, fading to very dark brown at the ends. She was more tearful than I was. It was fixed by an emergency visit to Toni and Guy, who patched it up nicely, but didn't seem to get that I hadn't actually tried for the tie-dye effect and kept asking me why I'd done it in tones of sorrow. So that wasn't really a great moment in the life of my hair. Mmm. I'd still like to have it, but if I need to get a job then it won't be the greatest, and the bleach would still be a huge hassle.
DVDs
I like buying these. And I love that they are bringing out old things on DVD all the time, and if they would just do ,i>Grace Unver Fire that might almost content me. I like it when they do imaginative things with extras and the casing - like wrappers. And I like that I can watch a DVD on my laptop while doing my work, and it actually makes me get through all the boring parts of copying and pasting and data entry.
Doug Penhall / Peter Deluise
JUMP! Street. Hurrah. Peter Deluise plays Doug Penhall who is wonderful and lovely and beautiful in the right light. Peter Deluise does some commentaries for JUMP! Street and is very lovely on those too, mostly being (justifiably) rude about his acting. He moved into directing (though he also played a bully on Friends, and did a guest thing with his brothers and dad in Third Rock from the Sun) and was involved with the Stargate things and Jeremiah. I have listened to a few Stargate commentaries and he is still adorable but unfortunately rather earnest about things that really don't deserve it.
The Dukes
The Dukes is our local arts cinema and theatre. I love it. I have a student card, so all the films and all of their home-produced plays are a mere £3. And they have a bar, which isn't hideously expensive, and you can take drinks in with you, but you're not allowed ice in the live productions because of the actors. I assume because of the noise, though perhaps they've had some disgruntled patrons and had the need to remove any possible projectiles? It's quite a small place, and they usually show things like Harry Potter and LoTR a few weeks/months after they come out, and then the "critically acclaimed" stuff, and interesting foreign-language films. The last two films I saw there were Jarhead and Breakfast on Pluto. People tend not to talk through the films, which is lovely, though there are often some particularly knowing chuckles, which is amusing. And occasionally some politically-motivated clapping.
Doctorate/degree
I hope to earn one. Unfortunately that will require a lot more work than I'm doing at the moment. Mmmm. I try not to think about the end of the degree too much, as it seems like tempting fate, and the middle is also a bit scary, but I have at least started it, and I have a proposal, which is a good step. Although technically I'm an MPhil student, not a PhD student.
Diaries
Other people's, that is. I do not keep one, other than this journal. Fictional people mostly. I really like well done novels in diary form - Provincial Lady, Adrian Mole, and the Princess Diaries are pretty good fun. And Bridget Jones was really good at the diary entries. It's probably also why I enjoy lj, though not all of you are fictional.
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Hello you!
Date: 2006-05-01 04:58 am (UTC)Dimsie is the name of a schoolgirl heroine, or rather the nickname, as her full name is Daphne Isabel Maitland, initials DIM, nickname Dimsie. The books are a bit like that.
Re: Hello you!
Date: 2006-05-01 05:25 am (UTC)modality noun (modalities) 1 music the quality or characteristic of music as determined by its mode (noun 4). 2 grammar the modal property of a verb or construction.
That's not terribly helpful, is it? Modal is a kind of mood, and in grammar I think it's the condition, so whether it's past or present or whatever. I might be wrong.
'not all of you are fictional. '
Date: 2006-05-01 01:46 am (UTC)That's a very interesting post. I find dustwrappers can be a snare and a delusion. It took me ages to bring myself to sell the Pat Smythe Three Jays books which I had never even bothered to read because the dws are so pretty. How do you feel about photocopied ones? I think they're better than nothing. What I really like is not just the prettiness but the information: the pictures of the author (a beaming, genial Malcolm Saville, for instance) and the kind of blurb that says, 'If you have enjoyed this book you will also like...'
As for hair dye, I've never done it. My hairdresser is always saying, 'You don't know how lucky you are' and my friends say, 'What a lot of money you save.'
Re: 'not all of you are fictional. '
Date: 2006-05-01 05:11 am (UTC)A lot of my books have photocopied wrappers, and when they're covered with plastic they look almost the same. They satisfy my lust for wrappers, anyway. When I am less genteely impoverished I will get some more from Sue Sims and spend many a happy hour covering them and then just staring at them. I like the descriptions as well, looking at what incidents they pull out and how they describe it says a bit about what sort of reader they're trying to get.
I like hair dye. I only ever do it myself, which doesn't look terrific all the time, but saves a large amount of money.
no subject
Date: 2006-05-01 01:50 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-05-01 05:14 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-05-01 05:56 am (UTC)Yay, good list :)