Today's Meme™: Your five most interesting LJ userpics

[thatcrazycajun]

Iconographically inveigled out of filkerdave, who chose these five of my set:
Reply to this post, and I will pick five of your icons that I want to hear about. Make a post (including the meme info) and talk about the icons I chose. Other people can then comment to you and make their own posts. This will create a never-ending cycle of icon glee...

This was a ready-made userpic I just happened upon somewhere or other by chance, and I liked it because the song it references ("Electric Avenue" by Eddy Grant) has long been a favorite 1980s tune of mine; plus, me being an old Monopoly nut from way back, it made me laugh. Usually seen on posts of mine about nostalgia for what now seems to have been just about the second-best decade of my life so far (the best being the 1970s, when I discovered science-fiction fandom)....or other posts made when I'm just in a silly mood.



This one comes from UPenn's Language Log site, passed to me by my dear friend thnidu. It's intended for use on posts having to do with Cajun cuisine and/or culture, happenings in my old home state and birthplace of Lafayette therein, or simply when I'm feeling the pride in my southwest Louisiana roots that my daddy worked so hard to instill in me...possibly as a reaction to prejudice from outside (see further details here). (This is now also a Facebook Pieces of Flair button, proudly displayed on my corkboard.)

This one I made myself, out of old photos, to accompany my occasional series of posts featuring "fill-in-the-blank" jokes in the style of Match Game. (You have no notion how much of a PITA it was to retouch and crop the silly thing to get all the stars within userpic width.) On the panel, left to right, top to bottom: Tom Poston, Brett Somers, Charles Nelson Reilly, Suzanne Pleshette, Richard Dawson and Fannie Flagg. (This one can also be used for 1970s nostalgia posts.)


This was a poster someone out there in teh intarwebs came up with as a gag, which I adapted for userpic format. It's intended for use on posts having to do with online political issues including (but by no means limited to) copyright, privacy, audio-visual media marketing in digital formats and the US and/or other governments' policy relating thereto. ("Open the pod bay doors, HAL." "Who's there?" "It's me, HAL—Dave Bowman." "Dave's not here...")




This one is also my own creation, using the narration from the Babylon 5 fifth-season episode "The Paragon of Animals," in which G'Kar (the late, great and dearly missed Andreas Katsulas) speaks these lines as part of the Preamble to the new Interstellar Alliance's Declaration of Principles. (You can read the whole thing here...or even better, listen to Andreas' incomparable voice speaking it here.) It's for posts during the December holidays as an alternative to openly-Xtian iconography, or whenever something profound and universal is touched on in this journal.
Your turn.

Comments

[dsthomas.livejournal.com]

Okya, I'll bite!

[thatcrazycajun.livejournal.com]

Okay, tell me in your LJ about these, please:

[dsthomas.livejournal.com]

The first is my back story. I have had back issues since I was a kid. This is my icon for such posts.
Second is my lonely icon.
Third is from "The Glass Menagerie", in which one character had plurosis, which was misunderstood to be 'blue roses'.
Fourth is the red rose... For RosesandThorns group here on LJ
Fifth is for Daddy, Joyce, Uncle Richard ... all the butterflies who have flitted into my life and, like butterflies, are beautiful, fragile and fleeting but have been taken all too soon. Those who have passed on.

Thank you for choosing those!

[thatcrazycajun.livejournal.com]

Could you say a little more about #1 and #3, please? What exactly is RosesAndThorns? And what precisely are your "back issues," if you don't mind my asking? I myself have scoliosis from childhood, plus a damaged disk from an accident in my teens when my dad backed his pickup over me.

[dsthomas.livejournal.com]

I used to have no spine at all. I was a spineless individual. Well, that's what my ex would say! LOL I didn't have much of a 'backbone' back then and now.. I do! Keep reading..

At 12, I had a spider tumor removed from L1. The whittling the doc had to do caused calcium buildup to weaken my spine. I'd begun having severe spinal column collapse, including a 60degree curvature (a "W" shaped curve). {here hunny would tell you of the 50/50% chance I had of living or dying on the table.. walking was such a slim chance they didn't include it} In '04, the Blazer was hit lightly from behind, but enough to kick L1 off kilter. The pain never went away. In the summer, it was bad enough to call a neurosurgeon that I trust for a consult. I got in in Sept! Yes, he's THAT good. Dr Dalton finally took me on and in Feb or '06, he put in a cage where L1 used to be and 2 9 inch titanium rods down my back with 16 screws. I bent one in a fall, my last and hopefully LAST fall. I'm doing well except that I still have rods and the ensuing aches that go along with major surgery. Oh yeah, I almost forgot the neatest part. Dr Dalton has a mechanical engineering degree and designed a 'crank' type gizmo to ratchet my spine straight. I grew 2 inches and my spine was less than 1 degree off from perfect. Until this gizmo, docs were only able to get it to 5 degrees from straight.

You do know you otta stay away from pickups as they back up now, dontcha? Maybe Daltons' gizmo will go on to help others with scolio too!

#3, the girl (Laura??) had plurosis or plurosy. One of the kids she talked with misunderstood her to be saying blue roses. It was a Tennessee Williams play that I had to read (HA! HAD to read? Heck I loved it!) Basics of the play.. truth is hidden. We don't like to 'face' life or our troubles, so we find an escape.

Rosesandthorns.. it's a comunity that Kirsten, a friend of mine here, started. Post your 'rose' or bright spot, and your 'thorn' your low spot of the day.