swapping vulgarity dialects

Since I started talking to Americans on the internet 9 years ago, I've noticed an interesting trend. This is that Americans are increasingly using the word "Arse" and in return British people are increasingly using the word "Ass". I'm also seeing Americans adopt Britishisms like calling things "rubbish" or "bollocks". Various people have suggested before that eventually British and other types of English will be homogenised into what is essentially American English as a worldwide language. So it's interesting to see that in fact, a lot of words are going in the other direction too.

Interests summary

Hey, it's one of those chain-letter-culturally-transmitted-inquisition things. I usually steer clear of the useless ones, but if it's at all enlightening or interesting, you get to suffer the results. Sorry.

"Look at your LJ "interests" list. If you have fewer than 50 interests, pick every fifth one. If you have between fifty and seventy-five interests, pick every seventh one. If you have over seventy-five interests, pick every tenth one. If you have fewer than ten, pick all of 'em. List them on your LJ, and tell everyone exactly what it is about these things that interests you so much."

Baldur's Gate - It's a computer RPG, which I played online with kyasha for well over a year. It started off being annoying as hell, got better for a bit, and ended up being annoying as hell, with a super anti-climax for the ending. I like computer RPGs and this one was good in some regards.

Computers - Well, I program computers, I play games on computers, I write most of my music on the computer, and I met a fair number of decent people on the computer too.

Death Metal - generally speaking, I like the European variety, not the Florida variety, as the former actually has melody and harmony buried among the white noise. I like it because it's very... intense.

Entwined - a very cool band from the 90s, featuring endofinvention on the keys, with some great gothic-tinged metal. Especially welcome at a time when all the other British metal bands were deciding not to play metal any more.

Gamedev.net - It's a website about programming computer games. I am a moderator on their forums and have had an article published there, so obviously it must be cool. ;)

Heavy Metal - like death metal (above), except alive. Maybe. This is a very subjective thing but no other sort of music does it for me like metal does. I could go into a theoretical discussion of why metal is the best form of music, and the natural evolution of popular music in general, but I will spare you all. ;)

Katatonia - a rock band from Stockholm, Sweden, who started off doing incredibly accurate impersonations of early Paradise Lost but then went a bit more mainstream, and arguably Tool-like. It's quite dark, sad music, just how I like it.

Lord Of The Rings - I think it's fair to say that this book changed my life. And the films had almost the same effect when they came out, 15 years after I first read the books. My mother lending me The Hobbit, and subsequently Lord Of The Rings, is totally responsible for my interest in swords and sorcery, which indirectly ended up getting me into metal music, which contributed to me moving to Nottingham, etc etc. It all stems from that book. Although I found the songs a bit boring, and certain parts hard to understand (when I was 10 years old, anyway), the dark and oppressive nature of the whole story thoroughly grabbed me. Wizards and swords and stuff helped a lot too.

Mud ownership - I like to collect wet dirt. Actually, this refers to a kind of online text-based computer game, one of which I (allegedly) maintain, and one of which I'm currently developing. Text is a good medium for games as it's not subject to the same restrictions that you get with graphics, and with it being much less processor intensive you can do more interesting things like artificial intelligence in the background.

Opeth - very interesting metal band, with lots of folk-like aspects. To be honest I'm not as keen on them as I was when I added them to my interest list 2 years ago, and they're boring as hell live, but they're still a high quality act that everybody should listen to.

Rapture - another band, this one not very innovative or interesting but fun to listen to nonetheless. They play mainstream gothic metal.

Sinergy LARP - my housemate used to run this live roleplaying event, where people dress up in silly clothing and pretend to be extras from Bladerunner for a few hours. The dark concept intrigued me but I never got around to attending.

The Haunted - another band on my interests list that I've, well, lost interest in. (Perhaps I should amend that list, hmm?) Formed largely from ex-members of At The Gates - arguably the band responsible for 95% of the metalcore crap you hear today - they started off sounding like Slayer, but more recently seemed to lose the plot somewhat.

Ultima - the name of a series of computer roleplaying games. Playing Ultima 7 was another one of those life-changing experiences, with me often staying up until the middle of the night on schooldays to do a bit more exploring on this massive game. There have been computer games with bigger worlds, but this one had a massive world for the time, and more detailed than any I've seen since. No loading times, either: why did we regress?

XML - actually, I don't like XML, but it's quite useful in some situations. You can exchange data between computer programs using XML and be relatively sure that the recipient will be able to deal with it, which is always handy.