First off, anyone wearing hair tonic better either be rogue actor Al Pacino, or be on their way to a dress-up party dressed as rogue actor Al Pacino. Other than that, there is just no excuse for this particular personal grooming faux pas. As for chewing gum, I could plausibly dedicate an entire blog post to how much I despise this habit (bovine cud-chewing comes to mind), but I’ll refrain.

Quick answer: I’d likely be too repulsed by the olfactory onslaught of the combination of hair tonic and gum to form a coherent opinion before I manage to escape the situation.

As for the link between physical appearance and criminality – it has long been suggested by students of physiognomy that a person's character or personality can be judged from his outer appearance. Obviously this theory is hotly contested and has been disproved and then revived time and again over the span of many centuries. Nevertheless, it is interesting enough to warrant consideration. After all, like Aristotle said, it is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it.

Quite obviously a product of the medieval mind (alongside other completely sane ideas like bloodletting and witch hunting), the latest argument in favour of physiognomy takes a psychological stance when suggesting that a person who has certain physical traits that are traditionally associated with an untrustworthy nature (e.g. narrow set eyes, a low brow, etc) can eventually develop an untrustworthy nature as a result of being treated as such all his/her life. A kind of a reverse ‘if it walks like a duck and acts like a duck, chances are it is a duck’ situation, so to speak.

So yes, some people do believe that you can judge the likelihood of a person being prone to crime by looking at their face and physical demeanour. I think it unlikely. Books, covers, all that.

According to About.com’s Geography section the Windward Islands and the Leeward Islands are part of the Lesser Antilles of the Caribbean Sea.

“The Windward Islands are south-eastern islands of the Caribbean and include Martinique, St. Lucia, St. Vincent, the Grenadines, and Grenada. The Leeward Islands include the Virgin Islands, Dominica, Guadeloupe, Montserrat, Antigua, Barbuda, St. Kitts, Nevis, and Anguilla.”

Thank you Google.

Quick answer: If I were the kind of person who were in the position to favour one group of islands over another, I would be inclined to choose the Windward Islands over the Leeward Islands.

Mainly because of recent research into the effect that the dry down-slope wind that occurs in the lee (downwind side) of a mountain range can have on the mood of the individual. Known as a ‘bergwind’ in South Africa, this kind of wind carries largely positive ions due to the immense friction created by die rapid air movement. Research suggests that when air is charged electrically positive it feels oppressive and uncomfortable, while negatively charged environments are deemed relaxing and re-vitalising.

Just a tad airy-fairy, I know, BUT history suggests there is some truth in this assumption.

In certain regions of the world, the seasonal winds that blow have become legendary, causing chaos in many settlements. In these places it has been known for generations that the winds bring feelings of anxiety, stress and depression.

Winds like these are surprisingly common across the world. The Foehn is a dry southerly wind which blows from the Alps across Switzerland and southern Germany. The Sirocco blows in Italy and the Mistral in southern France (it is said that Winston Churchill avoided visiting the Mediterranean coast when the Mistral was blowing). The Middle East has Sharav - also known to the Arabs as Hamsin (the fifty days wind).Western Canada and USA have the Chinook - and in the area around California blow the Santa-Ana and winds known in Indian mythology as "The Bitter Winds".

The effects of the Santa-Ana are even referenced in the novel ‘White Oleander’ by Janet Fitch, when her character Astrid Magnussen states, “Oleander time, she said. Lovers who kill each other now will blame it on the wind.”

So yes, better to stick to the Windward Islands if you want to have a pleasant holiday I suspect.

Three. Sad state of affairs, really.

I know just enough about chemistry to know that I know nothing about chemistry, so trying to answer this question in any coherent scientific manner would be an exercise in futility. Best to make a joke of it then.

Trust the internet to have a quiz called Which Element Are You?, based on nothing but a few frivolous questions with no base in the sciences at all. Lovely, just what I was looking for.

According to this quiz, I am Helium.

“You are helium. After hydrogen, helium is the most abundant element in the universe. Helium is stable. Chemically speaking, it tends to keep to itself, with no real inclination to react with other elements. Helium is a gas that is lighter than air. Helium has the lowest melting point of any element. The melting point is so low that it would not solidify even at absolute zero under ordinary pressure.”

Awesome, I can dig Helium. It is a noble gas after all – I do so like being described as ‘noble’, albeit in reference to the reactivity and molecular bonding behaviour of an arbitrarily-assigned periodic element . Also, it makes balloons way more fun.

To have sand in your craw is an idiom which, according to WikiAnswers, means 'to be courageous or feisty'.

Etymology:

A craw is also known as a gizzard, and is the organ in birds where the animal's food is digested - they do not have stomachs with acid like we do, but instead swallow sand and small pebbles to break down their food. People observed that birds which swallowed smaller stones or even sand were lighter in weight, and thus able to move more quickly and escape the farmer more easily when he decided on a chicken or duck dinner. The expression "sand in your craw" has come to mean someone who is feisty or plucky, like the bird fighting for its life against the farmer. If you don't have much sand, you are not courageous or feisty. Often, the phrase was shortened to just "to have sand."

Good grief, what a heavy, introspective question.

Quick answer: In some ways I do, in some ways I don’t.

Ways in which I am courageous:

Swimming after eating, sleeping with wet hair, spilling salt without throwing a pinch over my shoulder, walking under ladders, etc. Also: trying new foods; approaching and eradicating insects (cockroaches primarily).

Ways in which I am not courageous:

Dealing with the dark, confronting belligerent car guards, driving fast/being a passenger in a car that’s going fast, snakes, fiction by Steven King, horror films, cleaning my drain of my own hair.

Evens out, I hope.

Seldom, but it does. My living situation is of the type where a would-be visitor has to call me on my phone so I can open the gate, since there is no intercom system. As such, I am usually a bit taken aback when it rings without me expecting a visitor, as it means the person on the other side has somehow managed to breach this modern-day moat of mine and now find themselves on my doorstep whether or not I had approved the time and nature of the visit.

Do I seem a tad overprotective of my space? That would be because I am. VERY. After having accidentally lived with a trance-hippy crystal collector, a subversive lesbian tyrant and a group of 9 first-year boys respectively, I am all about parameters.

One of my all-time favourite bloggers, Allie over at Hyperbole and a Half, once posted a very interesting take on unexpected visits in a post called ‘The Four Levels of Social Entrapment’. Go read it, it is hilarious.

Here is a choice quote:

“Now that you are aware that your home is not the impenetrable fortress of protection you once thought it was, you are forced to live in a constant state of slight uneasiness. Someone could surprise you at any time.  What if your friend decides to surprise you with a visit every day?  Now you have to worry about keeping your place picked up, "just in case."  You're scared to play music or watch movies because then you can't pretend to not be home if someone knocks on your door.  “

See? Funny! Go have a look.

Counter question: Who determined my place(s) in the line-up? May I please review the structure according to which my performance(s) was/were judged, as well as the background, education and current pursuits of the person/people assigned to do so?

It is, in my opinion, completely impossible to neatly classify a human being, even if you were to break down his/her attributes into various categories (e.g. physical, mental, emotional, spiritual). There are simply too many variables and too many viewpoints.

First of all, which grading system was used? Even established tests of which the results are taken very seriously (e.g. the Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale/standard IQ test) are brought into question time and again. As are popular grading systems in use in schools around the world. How can I take a judgement seriously if the very structure on which it is founded has not been standardised, or at very least agreed upon?

Next up, who were the people assigned to judge my performance in a selection of arbitrary categories according to a possibly disputed grading system? How can I be sure that their personal bias to my creed, colour, sexuality, age group or religious/political persuasion may not have influenced their judgement of my performance? Jeez, they might have been wearing ill-fitting underwear, their coffee could’ve been cold, their spouse could’ve left the toilet seat up/the milk out overnight and, BOOM, there goes my grade.

So, based on these concerns, in answer to the question posed: No, I wouldn’t be bothered enough to struggle up, because the judgement couldn’t possibly be proven accurate.

*Image credit: designtaneous.com

Image credit

A two-part question today. Let’s break it down:

Did you love your mother and your father?

Yes, I do love my mother and my father. See them here, read why I love them here.

Do Psalms do it for you?

First, let’s define ‘psalms’.

–noun:  sacred song or hymn; any of the songs, hymns, or prayers contained in the Book of Psalms; a metric version or paraphrase of any of these.

Nah, that’s no fun to answer. Let’s see what the etymology dredges up.

O.E. salm, from L. psalmus,  from Gk. psalmos  "song sung to a harp," originally "performance on stringed instrument”, from psallein  "play on a stringed instrument, pull, twitch."

I pick ‘performance on a stringed instrument’ as the basis for this answer because I like it best and this is my project and that allows me to do whatever I please.

In this case, yes, psalms do do it for me. See one of my favourite psalms below.

**All definitions according to http://dictionary.reference.com

 

No. For several reasons, including:

Laws on the use of sidewalks in South Africa are complicated. For instance, informal traders who use sidewalks as their place of business ‘may not sleep or overnight at the area where he or she is trading, or at the area where another street trader is trading’. This seems to me to imply that sleeping on sidewalks in general is seen as unlawful, which is considered a bad thing. Also, I would not want to inconvenience fellow pedestrians.  

Sidewalks are hard. While general wisdom suggests that sleeping on a hard surface may be good for the back, I really do prefer a mattress or similarly upholstered surface.  

Sidewalks are gross. I wouldn’t eat something I’d picked up off a sidewalk. It seems a good rule of thumb to avoid napping on surfaces that are known to be invested by a large quantity of germs.  

 Antisocial behaviour gets you medicated and put away. While the idea of spending my days finger painting and drooling on a bib while watching reruns of daytime television shows might seem interesting at times, I really would prefer to stay out of mental institutions in general.

My mother would be mortified.

It would seem, however, that not everybody has these same qualms. See ‘Just’ by Radiohead below for a different view.