Monday Meme - Curious as a Cat - #129

1) What one thing in your life best represents freedom to you?

Laying out here in my hammock, enjoying my time, reading, now blogging, being able to share my opinions - good, bad or indifferent. That is important. The freedom to express myself, to be myself. That's a great thing.

2) What musical piece makes you feel contemplative?

The list might be shorter if you ask me what music doesn't make me feel contemplative. Some are more effective than others, granted, but what is music if it doesn't make you feel? Whatever it may make you feel - joyous, sad, intensely alive. I find that classical music as a whole is thinking and contemplative music... Listen to the Four Seasons by Antonio Vivaldi to truly grasp that feeling of how music emotes. It opens in spring, with the bright promise that it brings, through the lazy, hazy yet most active days of summer and a gentle summer rain, into the brilliant hues of autumn and the changes that autumn - for all its beauty - herald, to the haunting, stark nakedness of winter as the land appears dead... but will, again, rejuvinate in the spring.

3) What is your biggest pet peeve?

In general or specifically today? I guess I have too many if I have to ask that. My biggest overall pet peeve is how stupid people are to fall into this whole "green" thing but while doing one really green thing, at the same time, doing other things that are the opposite. Isn't that just a little hypocritical?

4) Would the world be better off if it was run by a global government?

It sounds interesting but unrealistic. The world is a little too big to effectively pull that off. Not to mention that it seems to pave the way for a dictatorship that might be way too hard to get rid of once in power. Look at Hitler and what he did with that rather small parcel of land that was late 1930s Germany... This would opening the floodgates!

5) Show and Tell. What comes to mind first when you see this picture? Or, tell a story if it reminds you of one.

[Photo of the back of a workout guy - whaddya call it - a weightlifter.]

It's easy to jump to conclusions about people based solely on appearance, but it is not a good idea to do so. What can I say, I'm just as guilty. I never really consciously thought to myself that body builders are total narcissists, but I do find myself thinking that they are disproportionate (tiny heads on huge bodies) and so they look stupid. Looking stupid and being stupid are two totally different things. I work with and have worked with people that I found out after I'd gotten to know them were body builders. Maybe not professionally, but still huge, and still likely had tiny heads and these were in no way stupid people. So when I looked at this image what came immediately to mind was not jumping to unfair conclusions based on this.