A marital art would be a very different thing from what you mean to say
...or would it?
oh whoops!
I wouldn't mind getting married. Aren't there tax benefits or something that go along with it? I know there's more to just wearing a pretty dress and going on a honeymoon
I wanna learn to kick some butt
I've been told I can throw a decent punch, but they might have been just being nice to me.
I'd also like to have a better wardrobe by the time I'm 30. Giving myself a few years cause clothes are expensive and I'm not good at shopping. Plus, I'm still trying to shed a few pounds so don't want to buy it all and have it not fit or something.
My greatest dream is to be paid to eat food, like as a food critic or a food network host, traveling and gushing about delicious stuff. Sadly, my lack of charisma and limited vocabulary prevents me from chasing this dream. Every review would heavily feature the words "awesome" and "orgasmic". Better than yummo, I guess
But not some smooth-cut, vacuum packed polypropylene rag from that Swedish furniture store - an actual carpet from Persia, heaving with a million grains of middle-eastern sand, faded by the scorching sun of a distant land.
Brought back to England not in the chilled cargo hold of a 737, but rolled up into a bundle, tied with rope, and hauled by foot and by truck and by boat. So that when I finally unroll it on the floor of my house, perhaps six months later, the thing is dirty and stained with mud from the shores of the Caspian Sea, huge gashes in the side slowly unravelling after it was snagged on a barbed wire fence outside of Tehran.
I want a Persian rug that is so hard and so rough that simply stepping onto it in the morning transports you back to the blistering heat of the Gulf. And when people come round and notice it, and say 'oh Scarab, my oh my isn't that a piece of crap rug, why don't you replace it?' I can say to them that I went through fire just to get it here and retell the story of its arrival once again.
That kind of satisfaction you can't buy. And that's why I want at least one of my material possessions to mean something greater.
2) Visit the Great Pyramid of Giza
I think everyone has a favourite building, a favourite monument or natural wonder. Something from human history or a vista that defines the planet we live on. For me, it is the Pyramids. There's just something so pragmatic about them. A pile of bricks, cut to unprecedented precision and stacked in honour of great leaders. A simple geometric shape.
And not only that, but it was the tallest human structure for the longest time, for nearly four thousand years. It's so old it has actually shrunk in height due to erosion. Just thinking about that makes me giddy.
What put this on my list was when I visited Lincoln Cathedral, the building that reportedly took its crown away, and what struck me was that it was a modern building. From our time. Maybe not a steel lattice with polished blue glass like the hives of contemporary London or New York, but it had a big wooden door and a door mat, windows and chairs. It felt like it was designed by modern people with modern sensibilities. It wasn't completely alien, not from another era. It wasn't a big pile of rocks.
For me, seeing Lincoln Cathedral made me want to see the Pyramids so much more. That they were so ahead of their time, so inescapably grand, in design and motives. I think in many ways the Pyramids represent the absolute best in humanity, and everyone I know who has seen them has always approached them with a cynical mind, but left feeling utterly in awe of their majesty. Such a simple thing, but the vast, unimaginable length of time they represent is something I want to experience.
3) Take a ride in a jet fighter
I love technology, even the mundane things that have absolutely no effect on society except to make things run a tiny little bit smoother. And to me, jet planes are pretty much technology in a nutshell.
Aside from the fact that planes, in general, still amaze me, there's something so absolutely awesome about the roar of an afterburner. The sleek, streamlined fuselage of a Typhoon, or the angular sharpness of the F-22. I guess it's a love of speed, of power and strength and those things all describe modern fighters so well.
I've been on dozens of planes, I fly around the world almost every year. But a 747 is, in my experience, just a bus in the sky. A cramped bus that gets more uncomfortable over time. I dream of swooping over mountains and through valleys at Mach 2, agile and nimble in a way only jet fighters can be. I used to live near an RAF base and Tornado jets would regularly fly over our house. And you could hear them for minutes before they arrived, and they flew so low it was like a fwoosh and they were gone. Jet planes are bitchin' cool is basically my point here. I bet they're so fun to fly in.
4) Learn how to ride a horse
There are two kinds of people who ride horses in the modern era. Ranchers and fine upstanding gentlemen. No chav from Moss Side is ever going to mug you in the middle of the night and then gallop away. No sir. And even though there are the obvious consequences of this - that in practically everywhere in Britain it would be seen as egregiously ostentatious to own a horse in a country with a population density ten times that of the United States (though to be fair, people who use the words egregiously and ostentatious together are already excluded to an extent).
But I basically have this image in my head of Oliver Cromwell, gruff and embittered and too old for this shit. And he's always on a horse. And in the same way all youths try to emulate their greatest heroes, I want to do the same. All of our national treasures come from hundreds of years ago, before I was born, before America was even America. And the time they come from was one where the land was open and quiet and everything just seemed better. It's romantic nonsense, for sure, but still a nice thought.
Seeing as I have lived my entire life in an urban nightmare, and live in one of the largest and most dense cities on Earth - you can't blame a guy for craving that frontier spirit, that freedom of open fields and being one with nature. It sounds so schmaltzy when I type it out but it's a genuine desire, and I'll stick to that. I see other people on these forums post about kangaroos in their backyard and I am overcome with a rush of jealousy. For one, I don't even have a backyard. Riding a horse seems like the best way to fill in that missing gap in my life.
5) Meet Stephen Fry
I dunno, he seems like a really smart and funny guy and is probably the life of a party - assuming that the party in question is hosted by the Great Gatsby. I should be the last person to judge other people, but I do notice that none of my friends or family fall into that intellectual mastermind niche that Fry seems to own. I bet it's cool to be able to flip conversation from the merits of modern industrial design to the life and times of eighteenth century Russian poets. I'd be totally out of my depth but everytime I see him on TV, read about him or in any way learn about the man, the myth, the legend that is Stephen Fry I can't help but be equal parts impressed and in awe.
The rest of my bucket list is personal shit that would be really out of context. And a number of things I have managed to already tick off. I did once visit Saskatchewan (to prove it really exists and isn't just compensation for Canada's empty and boring maps), I did go to the Glastonbury Festival and I did meet and incredible girl who likes The West Wing and collects rare first editions. So I can't really complain too much.
JC of DII think we're fucked up.I know I am.Registered Userregular
edited April 2011
Scarab you should look into flying if planes are really a thing you're into.
My first lesson was today and god damn am I hooked already, though it helps that the owner of the place is a hell of a guy that I could talk planes with for days on end.
Not sure what the requirements are in the UK to learn, but I spent a few hours researching what the FAA wants of pilots here in America, and it turns out it's not all that crazy, so I just went for it. You won't be busting 9 G's at Mach 2 right away, but just going 60 knots on take-off with the stick and throttle under your hands is a huge rush.
I have a fairly extensive bucket list, which is a little more of an immediate concern than most.
the difference being, I don't ever expect to check it all off. If I could do that, then whats the point
stale, do yo wanna join me on my "eating an entire pig" thing?
i was thinking we should go to the phillipines to do it.
(and get hookers)
edit: i've ridden tons of horses. big dumb lovable morons. you know, now that i think about it, horses seem to really like me. i was taking a walk last summer down the road my grandparents live on and my neighbor's horses both came up to the fence and i went over there and they nuzzled me and i petted their noses and then we had magic adventures.
You know I've wanted to see Bucket List for a while, but it seems to me a movie about doing a bunch of stuff before you die can really only end one way and that sort of lowers my drive to actually see it.
Visit the Great Wall of China
Write a book
Get something published (photo, book, short stories, anything)
Learn to draw
Learn to play bass
Have a six pack (I've had low body fat before, but for some reason those abs never came through)
Climb Mt Fuji and see the sun rise
Go to Ankgor Wat
Hike to Maccu Picchu
See a whale shark
Save a life
Get in a real fight
Aphostile on
Nothing. Matters.
0
Options
MrMonroepassed outon the floor nowRegistered Userregular
You know I've wanted to see Bucket List for a while, but it seems to me a movie about doing a bunch of stuff before you die can really only end one way and that sort of lowers my drive to actually see it.
I mean, a movie about Hitler's reign in Germany can really only end one way but that doesn't stop us from watching them
how weird is it that I jumped right to German Fascism to make that point?
I did the last leg of the Inca Trail right before high school, and I have to say that seeing the settlement from the Sun Gate was far more fulfilling than it might have been if we just took the bus up.
My dad and I did it in three and a half hours, but it is a matter of intense debate in our family as to whether we were totally badass in beating the average tourist's time of seven hours or we are totally punk bitches for having only done the last leg in the time that it would take one of their news runners to run the entire trail.
Far more humbling than their admittedly astonishing feats of architecture was attempting to play footie with a group of local boys near Cuzco. Running flat out for a hundred yards after only a week of acclimatization can make you pass out and throw up all over yourself. Just FYI.
I did the last leg of the Inca Trail right before high school, and I have to say that seeing the settlement from the Sun Gate was far more fulfilling than it might have been if we just took the bus up.
My dad and I did it in three and a half hours, but it is a matter of intense debate in our family as to whether we were totally badass in beating the average tourist's time of seven hours or we are totally punk bitches for having only done the last leg in the time that it would take one of their news runners to run the entire trail.
Far more humbling than their admittedly astonishing feats of architecture was attempting to play footie with a group of local boys near Cuzco. Running flat out for a hundred yards after only a week of acclimatization can make you pass out and throw up all over yourself. Just FYI.
Oh, I definitely want to hike the whole thing, however many days that would take. I've done Half Dome and that was amazing, but I really want to experience a multi-day hike that throws you for a loop with that amazing payoff.
Scarab you should look into flying if planes are really a thing you're into.
My first lesson was today and god damn am I hooked already, though it helps that the owner of the place is a hell of a guy that I could talk planes with for days on end.
Not sure what the requirements are in the UK to learn, but I spent a few hours researching what the FAA wants of pilots here in America, and it turns out it's not all that crazy, so I just went for it. You won't be busting 9 G's at Mach 2 right away, but just going 60 knots on take-off with the stick and throttle under your hands is a huge rush.
What is it costing you to do these lessons
This is something I've wanted to do for one hell of a long time
Ledneh on
0
Options
MrMonroepassed outon the floor nowRegistered Userregular
I did the last leg of the Inca Trail right before high school, and I have to say that seeing the settlement from the Sun Gate was far more fulfilling than it might have been if we just took the bus up.
My dad and I did it in three and a half hours, but it is a matter of intense debate in our family as to whether we were totally badass in beating the average tourist's time of seven hours or we are totally punk bitches for having only done the last leg in the time that it would take one of their news runners to run the entire trail.
Far more humbling than their admittedly astonishing feats of architecture was attempting to play footie with a group of local boys near Cuzco. Running flat out for a hundred yards after only a week of acclimatization can make you pass out and throw up all over yourself. Just FYI.
Oh, I definitely want to hike the whole thing, however many days that would take. I've done Half Dome and that was amazing, but I really want to experience a multi-day hike that throws you for a loop with that amazing payoff.
I did half-dome too! (the easy side, not the totally insane face climb) It is spectacular.
The full Inca Trail hike is generally cited as a seven day endeavor, but that's the tourist number, so you might do it with more alacrity than the average hiker.
Once you get there with your backpack full of peanut butter sandwiches, however, you'll gain a tremendous amount of respect for the people who ran the route without interruption in order to warn the aristocracy that the Spanish were coming.
I have a low self-esteem, so my Bucket List would probably be much different from any other person's list. That said, here's mine:
Have somebody I've never personally met compliment me because of something I've done (I'm a sucker for compliments, and I loved my only experience with Secret Satans last year because of how amazing people are.)
Make a positive enough impact on someone, most likely one of my best friends with how things are going now, to the point where they tell me they couldn't live without me (If this ever happened, I am confident enough that I could die right then and I would look like the happiest dead guy)
Go to China and (maybe) hug and/or pet a panda (God help me, I love pandas)
Go to Ireland, my ancestors' home country, and drink at least one alcoholic beverage (Tough, because I'm straight-edge, but it's Ireland. You can't go there and not drink something alcoholic)
Meet either Stephen King or Johnny Depp and engage him in conversation (I say this because I walked past Depp once, on accident, and said hi, and he said hi back, and that was the extent of our conversation. I want something lengthier)
Be famous (Big if here)
Go to the Caribbeans (Vacationing there would be amazing)
Play professionally in at least one sport (Hopefully rugby)
Posts
...or would it?
Have sex with crwth and chico and berk at the same time
oh whoops!
I wouldn't mind getting married. Aren't there tax benefits or something that go along with it? I know there's more to just wearing a pretty dress and going on a honeymoon
I wanna learn to kick some butt
I've been told I can throw a decent punch, but they might have been just being nice to me.
I'd also like to have a better wardrobe by the time I'm 30. Giving myself a few years cause clothes are expensive and I'm not good at shopping. Plus, I'm still trying to shed a few pounds so don't want to buy it all and have it not fit or something.
Alabama crabdangle
pervert
OH GOD IT'S A REAL THING THANKS A LOT INTERNET
the difference being, I don't ever expect to check it all off. If I could do that, then whats the point
Surely we can make this plan work.
We'll call it "Nino's Nosh"
I'm still sticking by 'midget'
1) Own a Persian rug.
But not some smooth-cut, vacuum packed polypropylene rag from that Swedish furniture store - an actual carpet from Persia, heaving with a million grains of middle-eastern sand, faded by the scorching sun of a distant land.
Brought back to England not in the chilled cargo hold of a 737, but rolled up into a bundle, tied with rope, and hauled by foot and by truck and by boat. So that when I finally unroll it on the floor of my house, perhaps six months later, the thing is dirty and stained with mud from the shores of the Caspian Sea, huge gashes in the side slowly unravelling after it was snagged on a barbed wire fence outside of Tehran.
I want a Persian rug that is so hard and so rough that simply stepping onto it in the morning transports you back to the blistering heat of the Gulf. And when people come round and notice it, and say 'oh Scarab, my oh my isn't that a piece of crap rug, why don't you replace it?' I can say to them that I went through fire just to get it here and retell the story of its arrival once again.
That kind of satisfaction you can't buy. And that's why I want at least one of my material possessions to mean something greater.
2) Visit the Great Pyramid of Giza
I think everyone has a favourite building, a favourite monument or natural wonder. Something from human history or a vista that defines the planet we live on. For me, it is the Pyramids. There's just something so pragmatic about them. A pile of bricks, cut to unprecedented precision and stacked in honour of great leaders. A simple geometric shape.
And not only that, but it was the tallest human structure for the longest time, for nearly four thousand years. It's so old it has actually shrunk in height due to erosion. Just thinking about that makes me giddy.
What put this on my list was when I visited Lincoln Cathedral, the building that reportedly took its crown away, and what struck me was that it was a modern building. From our time. Maybe not a steel lattice with polished blue glass like the hives of contemporary London or New York, but it had a big wooden door and a door mat, windows and chairs. It felt like it was designed by modern people with modern sensibilities. It wasn't completely alien, not from another era. It wasn't a big pile of rocks.
For me, seeing Lincoln Cathedral made me want to see the Pyramids so much more. That they were so ahead of their time, so inescapably grand, in design and motives. I think in many ways the Pyramids represent the absolute best in humanity, and everyone I know who has seen them has always approached them with a cynical mind, but left feeling utterly in awe of their majesty. Such a simple thing, but the vast, unimaginable length of time they represent is something I want to experience.
3) Take a ride in a jet fighter
I love technology, even the mundane things that have absolutely no effect on society except to make things run a tiny little bit smoother. And to me, jet planes are pretty much technology in a nutshell.
Aside from the fact that planes, in general, still amaze me, there's something so absolutely awesome about the roar of an afterburner. The sleek, streamlined fuselage of a Typhoon, or the angular sharpness of the F-22. I guess it's a love of speed, of power and strength and those things all describe modern fighters so well.
I've been on dozens of planes, I fly around the world almost every year. But a 747 is, in my experience, just a bus in the sky. A cramped bus that gets more uncomfortable over time. I dream of swooping over mountains and through valleys at Mach 2, agile and nimble in a way only jet fighters can be. I used to live near an RAF base and Tornado jets would regularly fly over our house. And you could hear them for minutes before they arrived, and they flew so low it was like a fwoosh and they were gone. Jet planes are bitchin' cool is basically my point here. I bet they're so fun to fly in.
4) Learn how to ride a horse
There are two kinds of people who ride horses in the modern era. Ranchers and fine upstanding gentlemen. No chav from Moss Side is ever going to mug you in the middle of the night and then gallop away. No sir. And even though there are the obvious consequences of this - that in practically everywhere in Britain it would be seen as egregiously ostentatious to own a horse in a country with a population density ten times that of the United States (though to be fair, people who use the words egregiously and ostentatious together are already excluded to an extent).
But I basically have this image in my head of Oliver Cromwell, gruff and embittered and too old for this shit. And he's always on a horse. And in the same way all youths try to emulate their greatest heroes, I want to do the same. All of our national treasures come from hundreds of years ago, before I was born, before America was even America. And the time they come from was one where the land was open and quiet and everything just seemed better. It's romantic nonsense, for sure, but still a nice thought.
Seeing as I have lived my entire life in an urban nightmare, and live in one of the largest and most dense cities on Earth - you can't blame a guy for craving that frontier spirit, that freedom of open fields and being one with nature. It sounds so schmaltzy when I type it out but it's a genuine desire, and I'll stick to that. I see other people on these forums post about kangaroos in their backyard and I am overcome with a rush of jealousy. For one, I don't even have a backyard. Riding a horse seems like the best way to fill in that missing gap in my life.
5) Meet Stephen Fry
I dunno, he seems like a really smart and funny guy and is probably the life of a party - assuming that the party in question is hosted by the Great Gatsby. I should be the last person to judge other people, but I do notice that none of my friends or family fall into that intellectual mastermind niche that Fry seems to own. I bet it's cool to be able to flip conversation from the merits of modern industrial design to the life and times of eighteenth century Russian poets. I'd be totally out of my depth but everytime I see him on TV, read about him or in any way learn about the man, the myth, the legend that is Stephen Fry I can't help but be equal parts impressed and in awe.
The rest of my bucket list is personal shit that would be really out of context. And a number of things I have managed to already tick off. I did once visit Saskatchewan (to prove it really exists and isn't just compensation for Canada's empty and boring maps), I did go to the Glastonbury Festival and I did meet and incredible girl who likes The West Wing and collects rare first editions. So I can't really complain too much.
like a footballer or somethin'
rule 1: don't sit on your balls
My first lesson was today and god damn am I hooked already, though it helps that the owner of the place is a hell of a guy that I could talk planes with for days on end.
Not sure what the requirements are in the UK to learn, but I spent a few hours researching what the FAA wants of pilots here in America, and it turns out it's not all that crazy, so I just went for it. You won't be busting 9 G's at Mach 2 right away, but just going 60 knots on take-off with the stick and throttle under your hands is a huge rush.
It's alright
I too want to know what that feels like
What spring does with the cherry trees.
shut up, prettylips, I've seen the camwhore thread
stale, do yo wanna join me on my "eating an entire pig" thing?
i was thinking we should go to the phillipines to do it.
(and get hookers)
edit: i've ridden tons of horses. big dumb lovable morons. you know, now that i think about it, horses seem to really like me. i was taking a walk last summer down the road my grandparents live on and my neighbor's horses both came up to the fence and i went over there and they nuzzled me and i petted their noses and then we had magic adventures.
i used my mouth.
Visit the Great Wall of China
Write a book
Get something published (photo, book, short stories, anything)
Learn to draw
Learn to play bass
Have a six pack (I've had low body fat before, but for some reason those abs never came through)
Climb Mt Fuji and see the sun rise
Go to Ankgor Wat
Hike to Maccu Picchu
See a whale shark
Save a life
Get in a real fight
I mean, a movie about Hitler's reign in Germany can really only end one way but that doesn't stop us from watching them
how weird is it that I jumped right to German Fascism to make that point?
I did the last leg of the Inca Trail right before high school, and I have to say that seeing the settlement from the Sun Gate was far more fulfilling than it might have been if we just took the bus up.
My dad and I did it in three and a half hours, but it is a matter of intense debate in our family as to whether we were totally badass in beating the average tourist's time of seven hours or we are totally punk bitches for having only done the last leg in the time that it would take one of their news runners to run the entire trail.
Far more humbling than their admittedly astonishing feats of architecture was attempting to play footie with a group of local boys near Cuzco. Running flat out for a hundred yards after only a week of acclimatization can make you pass out and throw up all over yourself. Just FYI.
Oh, I definitely want to hike the whole thing, however many days that would take. I've done Half Dome and that was amazing, but I really want to experience a multi-day hike that throws you for a loop with that amazing payoff.
What is it costing you to do these lessons
This is something I've wanted to do for one hell of a long time
I did half-dome too! (the easy side, not the totally insane face climb) It is spectacular.
The full Inca Trail hike is generally cited as a seven day endeavor, but that's the tourist number, so you might do it with more alacrity than the average hiker.
Once you get there with your backpack full of peanut butter sandwiches, however, you'll gain a tremendous amount of respect for the people who ran the route without interruption in order to warn the aristocracy that the Spanish were coming.
You just reminded me that I wanted to add:
-Make it to one of those big cookout PAXes that you southerners do and have some real BBQ.
That would make me truly happy.
Have somebody I've never personally met compliment me because of something I've done (I'm a sucker for compliments, and I loved my only experience with Secret Satans last year because of how amazing people are.)
Make a positive enough impact on someone, most likely one of my best friends with how things are going now, to the point where they tell me they couldn't live without me (If this ever happened, I am confident enough that I could die right then and I would look like the happiest dead guy)
Go to China and (maybe) hug and/or pet a panda (God help me, I love pandas)
Go to Ireland, my ancestors' home country, and drink at least one alcoholic beverage (Tough, because I'm straight-edge, but it's Ireland. You can't go there and not drink something alcoholic)
Meet either Stephen King or Johnny Depp and engage him in conversation (I say this because I walked past Depp once, on accident, and said hi, and he said hi back, and that was the extent of our conversation. I want something lengthier)
Be famous (Big if here)
Go to the Caribbeans (Vacationing there would be amazing)
Play professionally in at least one sport (Hopefully rugby)
And I think that's everything I can think of.
Steam
a specific one of you
Uh-oh I accidentally deleted my signature. Uh-oh!!
I am pretty lazy. getting off my ass to go to the gym is the hardest part of my day
okay gym time
I kinda force myself to enjoy it because I am more sane when I'm regularly exercising.
I'm starting to think this is a myth.
One summer I ran pretty much everday about 3-5 miles each time.
I.hated.every.minute.of.it.