Image from Pixabay. Because I have a sudden ice cream craving after #28.

Answer’s to Jo’s weekly questions over at Dreamwidth.

24. Do you prefer popular music or relatively unknown music?

I don’t care about that at all, except for the fact that more unknown music can be difficult to find to buy/borrow/download. Otherwise it makes no difference to me.

25. If you were given the ability to reform how your country’s leaders were chosen and how they serve, what would you change?

I’m not familiar enough with the minutiae of the voting systems to overhaul completely. But I would certainly want to make it so that people convicted of certain crimes (violent crimes, domestic violence, fraud, tax fraud/evasion, corruption, abuse of office, theft etc. where the sentence is jail time or probation, and also in all cases of ethnic agitation even when the sentence is a fine) are ineligible in future elections and if serving in a government/local government position currently, must be fired from said position. I’d also make it an issue to be pondered whether politicians who keep getting involved in matters that result in fines such as fights, ethnic agitation, drunk driving, harassing women in a provable way etc. multiple times because that shows bad judgement and according to our law, elected officials must be “known to be honest and skilled” and all the afore mentioned crimes prove something other than that. We have have too many politicians guilty to above things.

26. Records, tapes, CDs, MP3s, streaming: which did you grow up with? What is good and bad about each?

Records and tapes. CDs came along just when I turned 20, I never got into MP3 players or streaming music. Records could get scratches, tapes had a tendency to wear out or be cut in half by the cassette players.I much prefer CDs and being able to buy & download stuff from iTunes etc. I really like that now I can get only the good songs from an album – I never enjoy the all the tracks, so now I don’t have to waste money or space on tracks I don’t like.

I don’t like streaming music. If it’s free subscription, there’s ads (shudder) and they won’t let me play my songs when I want them but force other music on me. If it’s pay subscription, I feel like I’m paying for the same music over and over again. And it’s too easy for the service to delete my favorites off their service for whatever reason, and then I feel like I’ve been paying for nothing. I much rather pay and own a copy and download it to my hard drive.

Nowadays my music is mp3 or flac formats, on my hard drive and I use Winamp to play it. I get most of my music from Youtube now, but also buy from iTunes and borrow CDs from the library and rip them to my hard drive.

27. If everyone said what they were actually thinking, what would happen to society?

I’d like to think that things would get better, problems sorted out when people are honest with each other, and awful people wouldn’t get power because everyone would literally see and hear how awful they are, so everything would get better for regular people. But I think just as easily awful people could band together and create a dystopia for everyone.

28. Did (or does) your family take seasonal vacations?

We did in the 1970s/mid-80s when I was a kid, until my Dad got sick. We went camping at my Dad’s Union’s camping area every summer every weekend and when one or both my parents were on summer leave. They didn’t always have full 4 weeks off at the same time, so often one or the other would commute to work from the camp for a week. My Dad had the car (my Mom didn’t have a driver’s license at the time) and my Mom would bike (she always biked non-winter months, and it was about the same length trip whether she biked from home, or the camp, although from entirely different directions). My best fried of the time also often stayed with us for a week, and then after the summer leave, for a weekend. She and I had our own little tent beside our family tent that we’d sleep in just the two of us. I loved those summers! It was by the sea and surrounded by woods and hills, and mostly the same people were there camping every year with their tents or caravans.

As an adult I’ve only ever had one (1) honest-to-god summer leave. That was when I was in occupational rehabilitation in 2017, and only because the rehabilitation company’s staff had their annual summer leave for four weeks in July as normal. Otherwise I’ve either been working (temping for the permanent employees so they can have their summer leave) or I’ve been unemployed which, trust me, doesn’t feel like you’re on leave even if it’s a pretty summer because you have all the same duties and obligations as an unemployed person during winter, and you can be called up at anytime without warning. Not to mention, living alone and being first unemployed and then ill, I never have had money for a proper holiday or even for a “staycation” because even if I had some savings, being unemployed and know knowledge when the next job would be, the last thing I could do was using it for something frivolous like a holiday. So mostly I just enjoy strawberries and ice cream and my Mom’s dog (when the dog was alive) and garden, and try to avoid people’s questions of “What are you doing on your summer holiday?” and “Where are you traveling on your holiday?”.

29. What technology from a science fiction movie or TV show would you most love to have?

Any science from any scifi movie and TV that would cure my chronic migraine as well as migraines. And it’d be a real bonus, if they had the cure for Crohn’s Disease as well.

30. April 30 is “Hairstyle Appreciation Day”. How would you describe your hairstyle?

Short but overgrown. That’ll be fixed next week!