This has been languishing in Draft for too long.

As seen on Beth's journal:

Comment on this post. I'll choose seven userpics from your profile and you'll explain what they mean and why you're using them. Post this along with your answers in your own journal so others can play along.

My addendum: Feel free to ask me about any other of my icons in comments to this post.

lunabee34 tagged me:


Keywords: anime night
Source: made by radicalein.  Back in 2002 I watched the animeicons community for a while.  This is Fushigi Yuugi, which means nothing to me, but I like the sad wistful cast to it, as well as its wintry feel.  This icon dates back to when I only had like 6 icons (man, remember ye olden days when a free account was 3 icons and a paid account was like 10?), so while I use it less now that I have so many more nuanced icons, it did a lot for me back in the day.


Keywords: pensive
Source: Some Bif Naked photo, I think from her official website.  Sadly, I often forget I have this icon.


Keywords: your mountain is waiting
Source: As the comments say, it's from Oh, the Places You'll Go by Dr. Seuss.  Made by firingneurons, probably seen on book_icons.
I was given a copy of this book as a high school graduation present from Jane, one of the women I worked with at MML and adored, and I used the full text as my first LJ bio, so I was terribly pleased to years later come across an icon.


Keywords: ineffable
Source: made by fourthage, on book_icons [here]
A Good Omens reference, and a handy multi-purpose icon.


Keywords: all the beauty just keeps shaking me, full of grace
Source: marrog_icons, crediting www.durhamtownship.com/portfolio/index.php for the image source
I'd been looking for quite some time for an icon for those moments of aching beauty [Indigo Girls "World Falls" -- "Everywhere I turn all the beauty just keeps shaking me."] and this one isn't perfect, but it works.
I find it interesting in thinking about these two sets of keywords that they're both from songs which are ambiguous -- I listened to "World Falls" (and "Galileo") a lot during finals period my second semester of college, and what I took from it at that time was the parts about struggle; and the Sarah McLachlan song . . . basically every line that isn't the eponymous "full of grace" is depressing (the chorus, which that line is part of, begins with a conditional, and there's never any real resolution).


Keywords: potato
Source: This Ann Althouse post.  There are followup posts, but the original seriously consists solely of the un-cropped/resized version of that image.  I am a huge fan of potato products (POE-TAY-TOE!  hi, Cat) so I was seriously stoked to have a potato icon.  ('Cause potatoes themselves don't lend themselves to iconnable images.)  I don't have occasion to use it much, but I love it.

***

hermionesviolin: If you want me to talk about any of my icons, go ahead.
fox1013: Okay, some of these I need explained, and some I just think are really pretty, but. yes. Chose these!


Keywords: i do it for the joy it brings
Source: The text is from the Ani DiFranco song "joyful girl," which I love a lot.  It's a good happy icon for when I'm not feeling quite so enthusiastic as "Numfar, do the Dance of Joy!"  I also like the ambiguousness of the line (also present in the song) -- as to whether she's doing it for the joy it brings her or others or both.
I cycled through various previous incarnations of icons with this text -- enlisting the flist to iconize a Cordelia cap and then asking jacklemmon to make me one.  This one I made myself, from some Emma Caulfield photo shoot.


Keywords: crazy [lavellebelle]
Source: Made by outoftime (formerly user=lavellebelle, hence the keyword).  Glory's actual line is "at least I admit the world makes me nuts," but I actually prefer this.  Very self-explanatory.  (I have a lot of pissed-off icons, I found, in looking at my icons.  Pissed-off and/or smart seem to be my themes.  Oh, and sex.)


Keywords: restless [moobytooby]
Source: Made by whisperwords (formerly user=moobytooby, hence the keyword).  From the eponymous episode, obviously.  I don't use this much, but I love it too much to get rid of it.


Keywords: moon house
Source: From a book_icons post.  Art by Quint Buchholz, icon by zebra_patronus.
I use this mostly for talking about apartment stuff.


Keywords: skate away
Source: Icon made by queenvirginia.  Text from the beautiful Joni Mitchell song "River."  I'm actually usually quite content, so I rarely have occasion to use this (it does come in handy for comments on figure-skating stuff, though I feel weird 'cause it's such a melancholy icon, which isn't usually the mood I'm in when I'm commenting on such stuff).


Keywords: paper symbols
Source: Icon made by ldymusyc for an alphabet challenge.  I loved the line "I tore these out of your symbol and they turned into paper" (iconized here), hence the keywords.  I like having a more ambiguous icon than just one with the straight-up text.  I can use it instances where I want to invoke that text, and Firefly fans will know what I mean, but I can also use it for more ambiguous stuff.


Keywords: Josh Lyman, New England, The West Wing
Source: Icon made by scrollgirl [here].  Image and text from "Mandatory Minimums."
I am totally a bitchy New Englander, so I love this icon a lot.  I also used this as a Smith College icon briefly, before creating a Pat Skarda icon, so I sometimes comment about snarky Smith stuff and mean to use this icon but end up with Transfiguration!Skarda instead because I forget that this icon no longer has the "Smith College" keyword.