Category: me(me)

on 123

Magpie tagged me for the 123 meme. I thought it was fun to get hit with this one, since it was quite possibly the first meme I’d ever seen. It looks like back in September of 2006, back before I even had this blog, I saw it over at my friend jenny’s.

First, here be the rules¹:

  1. Pick up the nearest book (of at least 123 pages)
  2. Open the book to page 123
  3. Find the 5th sentence
  4. Post the next three sentences
  5. Tag 5 people

Next, here be my results:

“…Do let’s get out of thsi wretched wood into the open as quick as we can. And none of us except you saw anything.”
“Edmund?” said Peter.

This be from Prince Caspian by C. S. Lewis, the second book in the Chronicles of Narnia. (By the original ordering. Not the irritating chronological re-ordering by which new editions of the books are now numbered.)²

As for the tagging, this memery is so painless, I think I can manage 5. It’s also one that one could do multiple times, so I won’t feel lame for tagging someone who’s already done it. So, I’ll say: ericalee, az, lori, fireweaver and averagebean. Hell, I’d happily tag everyone and their dog⁴ with this one, just to see what sort of books people have lying around. So, anyone else want to pick up on this, consider yourself tagged.

——————

¹ It would appear that I still occasionally feel the need to talk like a pirate. Arrrr.

² This is not actually the most recent book I read, but it happened to still be sitting on the end table next to the couch. The most recent book I read was The Horse and His Boy. The actual nearest books to me are board book versions of Mr. Brown Can Moo! Can You? and Good Dog, Carl, neither of which have anything like 123 pages.³

³ I was very tempted to go sit somewhere else to do this, so I could find a more intriguing book to use. But I played fair.

⁴ So maybe I should tag Snuffy.

have you ever?

I made it through November with my 30 posts for 30 days. (40, if you want to add in those I did for the Ministry of Silly Blogs.) It wasn’t particularly hard for me to come up with topics for daily posts (though it was sometimes hard to work up the motiviation to post at all.) I didn’t manage to do too well on the list of my intended topics.¹

Another thought I’d had was to do a meme I’d seen at Stretched to the Limit, which had a big old checklist of things done in one’s life. Many of the things I’ve done on the list have some sort of story behind them, and I thought I’d work my way through some of them. In fact, I still might do that. But probably not for last month.

The instructions are to bold the “done” things. I’ve also gone and italicized things that I haven’t quite done, but where I have a story related to that thing. (It’s kind of a weird list of things, and it makes me curious about the origins. It reminds me a bit of the drinking game “I never,” or a related game where people state something they’ve always wanted to do but haven’t done.)

01. Bought everyone in the bar a drink
02. Swam with wild dolphins
03. Climbed a mountain
04. Taken a Ferrari for a test drive
05. Been inside the Great Pyramid
06. Held a tarantula
07. Taken a candlelit bath with someone
08. Said “I love you” and meant it
09. Hugged a tree
10. Bungee jumped
11. Visited Paris
12. Watched a lightning storm at sea
13. Stayed up all night long and saw the sun rise
14. Seen the Northern Lights
15. Gone to a huge sports game
16. Walked the stairs to the top of the leaning Tower of Pisa
17. Grown and eaten your own vegetables
18. Touched an iceberg [I’m assuming this doesn’t mean the lettuce]
19. Slept under the stars
20. Changed a baby’s diaper [duh]
21. Taken a trip in a hot air balloon
22. Watched a meteor shower
23. Gotten drunk on champagne
24. Given more than you can afford to charity [possibly]
25. Looked up at the night sky through a telescope [probably]
26. Had an uncontrollable giggling fit at the worst possible moment
27. Had a food fight
28. Bet on a winning horse
29. Asked out a stranger
30. Had a snowball fight
31. Screamed as loudly as you possibly can
32. Held a lamb
33. Seen a total eclipse [maybe]
34. Ridden a roller coaster
35. Hit a home run
36. Danced like a fool and didn’t care who was looking
37. Adopted an accent for an entire day
38. Actually felt happy about your life, even for just a moment
39. Had two hard drives for your computer
40. Visited all 50 states
41. Taken care of someone who was drunk
42. Had amazing friends
43. Danced with a stranger in a foreign country
44. Watched whales
45. Stolen a sign
46. Backpacked in Europe
47. Taken a road-trip
48. Gone rock climbing
49. Midnight walk on the beach [may not have been actually midnight]
50. Gone sky diving
51. Visited Ireland
52. Been heartbroken longer than you were actually in love
53. In a restaurant, sat at a stranger’s table and had a meal with them
54. Visited Japan
55. Milked a cow
56. Alphabetized your CDs
57. Pretended to be a superhero
58. Sung karaoke
59. Lounged around in bed all day
60. Played touch football
61. Gone scuba diving
62. Kissed in the rain [probably]
63. Played in the mud
64. Played in the rain
65. Gone to a drive-in theater
66. Visited the Great Wall of China
67. Started a business
68. Fallen in love and not had your heart broken
69. Toured ancient sites
70. Taken a martial arts class
71. Played D&D for more than 6 hours straight
72. Gotten married
73. Been in a movie
74. Crashed a party
75. Gotten divorced
76. Gone without food for 5 days
77. Made cookies from scratch
78. Won first prize in a costume contest
79. Ridden a gondola in Venice
80. Gotten a tattoo
81. Rafted the Snake River
82. Been on television news programs as an “expert”
83. Gotten flowers for no reason
84. Performed on stage
85. Been to Las Vegas
86. Recorded music
87. Eaten shark
88. Kissed on the first date
89. Gone to Thailand
90. Bought a house
91. Been in a combat zone
92. Buried one/both of your parents [not taking this literally]
93. Been on a cruise ship
94. Spoken more than one language fluently
95. Performed in Rocky Horror
96. Raised children [I don’t think quite yet]
97. Followed your favorite band/singer on tour
98. Passed out cold
99. Taken an exotic bicycle tour in a foreign country
100. Picked up and moved to another city to just start over
101. Walked the Golden Gate Bridge
102. Sang loudly in the car, and didn’t stop when you knew someone was looking
103. Had plastic surgery
104. Survived an accident that you shouldn’t have survived
105. Wrote articles for a large publication
106. Lost over 100 pounds
107. Held someone while they were having a flashback
108. Piloted an airplane
109. Touched a stingray
110. Broken someone’s heart
111. Helped an animal give birth
112. Won money on a T.V. game show
113. Broken a bone
114. Gone on an African photo safari
115. Had a facial part pierced other than your ears
116. Fired a rifle, shotgun, or pistol
117. Eaten mushrooms that were gathered in the wild
118. Ridden a horse
119. Had major surgery
120. Had a snake as a pet
121. Hiked to the bottom of the Grand Canyon
122. Slept for more than 30 hours over the course of 48 hours
123. Visited more foreign countries than U.S. states
124. Visited all 7 continents
125. Taken a canoe trip that lasted more than 2 days
126. Eaten kangaroo meat
127. Eaten sushi
128. Had your picture in the newspaper
129. Changed someone’s mind about something you care deeply about
130. Gone back to school
131. Parasailed
132. Touched a cockroach [possibly]
133. Eaten fried green tomatoes
134. Read The Iliad – and the Odyssey [just the Odyssey]
135. Selected one “important” author who you missed in school, and read
136. Killed and prepared an animal for eating
137. Skipped all your school reunions
138. Communicated with someone without sharing a common spoken language
139. Been elected to public office
140. Written your own computer language
141. Thought to yourself that you’re living your dream
142. Had to put someone you love into hospice care
143. Built your own PC from parts
144. Sold your own artwork to someone who didn’t know you
145. Had a booth at a street fair
146. Dyed your hair
147. Been a DJ
148. Shaved your head
149. Caused a car accident
150. Saved someone’s life

So it looks like I’ve done 56 things on the list. How many have you done?

I’d love to take requests for stories or details on any of the above listed items. You could just pick a number, or several. At random, even. And I may even treat you to the tale of how I once ate sushi when I had dyed hair.

——–

¹ I guess this is my NaBloPoMo Post Mortem. My NaBloPoMoPoMo, if you will. It’s probably not post modern enough to be a PoMoNaBloPoMoPoMo, though.

how do I plead?

Erika of the fabulously-titled mmmm, brains has tagged me with a meme that intrigued me. (As usual, though, it’s taken me over a week to get to it.) The meme in question is on the topic of “guilty pleasures,” and was abbreviated from a longer assignment. The full thing, which I won’t indulge in, was as follows:

  • Name six guilty pleasures you wish you had the courage to indulge.
  • Name six pleasures you once considered guilty but have now either abandoned or made peace with.
  • Name six guilty pleasures no one would suspect you of having.

Erika just did the last one I listed. So I thought I could do that one. The trick is, who is this “no one?” I think most of my guilty pleasures are pretty public. So I’ll modify the task a bit further and name 6 pleasures that I feel guilty (or embarrassed) about, and that have been known to surprise people.

  1. I have a weakness for certain types of junk food. I like to eat healthily, and to eat good quality fresh food. But I have rarely turned down Nacho cheese Doritos, Reeses Peanut Butter Cups or donuts.
  2. Action movies. This is not a surprise to anyone who reads this blog, seeing as I have a whole project related to these. But I am a peace-loving academic who studies language. Why do I enjoy watching a good fight scene?
  3. Tuna. I stopped eating red meat and poultry over 18 years ago, but I can’t quite manage to give up all seafood. Most seafood and fish I could take or leave. Mostly leave, actually. Canned tuna doesn’t excite me. But a seared tuna? Or tuna sushi? I realize that it’s wrong on many counts. Over-fishing and all. To some extent I have the same guilt liking for salmon, especially smoked salmon.
  4. I like some music that I feel somewhat embarrassed about. Specifically some 80s music with boppy synthesized beats: Nik Kershaw, Howard Jones, early Depeche Mode. What can I say? I was a teenager in the 80s.
  5. Checking my blog stats. It’s a sickness, really. It’s not so much the numbers as seeing what people look at and where they came from. Since most of my traffic is due to search engine hits by people who probably barely stop to look, I like it when I see signs that someone looked around, such as visits to my “about” page or some of my favorite posts. (Comments are, of course, the best. Those get emailed to me. Not too surprisingly, I always check my email eagerly, too.)
  6. I like memes. I know I should be scornful of them. But I think they are fun. And I find it fascinating to see what different people do with them.

It looks like this memage involves tagging 6 people. This is the part of meming that I find the trickiest. Some people tolerate memes. Others loudly protest them. Others welcome them. I once had a good experience tagging a couple of random people: one I found through the WordPress “pants” tag, and one who I found using the WordPress “next” button. I had no luck getting Kevin Smith to participate. (Kevin, if you read this, you’re tagged, dammit. Or for that matter, I suppose I could tag this other Kevin Smith.)

So, I’m going to go all random again. I will tag the folks at these 6 blogs I found totally randomly through the NaBloPoMo randomizer. (Okay, it wasn’t totally, totally randomly. I did skip a few blogs where music played automatically, and a couple of very topic-specific blogs, like a birding blog and a chocolate blog.)

If anyone else out there would like to indulge in this meme, please consider yourself tagged.

book, book, book, book

I am once again behind in my memery. YTSL tagged me for this book meme a couple of weeks ago, and it looked like fun. (Admittedly, two weeks behind is practically early for me these days.) You may see a wee bit of overlap with my earlier list of 18 favorite books, which was based on another meme YTSL tagged me for. (That one was supposed to be about a single favorite book. I had trouble following directions.) This time, the instructions mostly involve giving lists of four.

Four childhood books

  • Small Pig, Arnold Lobel. Possibly the first book I read by myself. About a pig. A small pig, even. Who likes mud.
  • The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe, C. S. Lewis. This book really captured my imagination. I think I was always hoping to stuble across some otherworldly portal in my grandmother’s house.
  • The Gammage Cup, Carol Kendall. A quirky fantasy book about individuality and evil mushrooms.
  • The Phantom Tollbooth, Norton Juster. A quirky fantasy book with lots of wordplay. Right up my alley.

Four authors I will read again and again

  • Sarah Caudwell
  • M. M. Kaye
  • Rumer Godden
  • Jane Austen

    • It’s hard to list just four here. I also considered Gregory Maguire and Connie Willis, though for each of them, there’s really only one book I tend to read over and over. (Wicked and Bellwether, in case you wondered.) Actually, I tend to reread kids’ books even more. The Chronicles of Narnia and the Dark is Rising series (Susan Cooper) get picked up often.

Four authors I will never read again

  • The Horse Whisperer dude. I can’t even be bothered to look up his name. That book irritated me beyond measure.
  • Amy Ephron. When I ran a book group, we once haplessly picked a little book called A Cup of Tea. The best thing about it was that it was short.

    • Other than that, I can’t really think of authors I hate. I don’t generally like to generalize from a single book (with the above exceptions). There have been a number of books I haven’t liked, and either I don’t remember the author’s name, or there have been other books that I’ve liked, or others that I still might be willing to give a chance.

The first four books on my to-be-read list

  • The Pirates!: An Adventure with Scientists & An Adventure with Ahab, Gideon Defoe. This the most recent book given to me as a gift.
  • Ulysses, by James Joyce. This damn book has been at the top of my to-be-read list for over a decade. It seems a shame to ever remove it…
  • Lolita, by Vladimir Nabokov. I have been commanded to read it once I listed it among my unread books.
  • The Ph0nology of T0ne and Int0nation (by Carl0s Gussenh0ven). This is actually the book I’m reading, as part of one of my degree requirements. (You may have n0ticed the zer0s here. I don’t like the idea of the author googling his name and finding…me procrastinating. That doesn’t seem quite right.)

    • Another book I’d like to read soon is actually a reread: The Golden Compass. I want to reread before I see the movie.

The four books I would take to a desert island

  • Thus was Adonis Murdered
  • Shadow of the Moon
  • The Complete Works of Shakespeare. I figure it would keep me busy. (Funny, I saw that this was also listed among the desert island picks of the person who tagged YTSL.)
  • I can’t decide.Bellwether or maybe Wicked or the Poisonwood Bible. Or maybe something new to me.

The last part of the assignment is to write the last lines of one of my favourite books. I can’t really do this just now, since I have work to do. If I could, I’d look up the last lines of Thus was Adonis Murdered. However, I gave away my copy of that, and have yet to replace it. And I shouldn’t go digging around in other books, since I have work to do. I do remember, though, that the last line of Shadow of the Moon was “And it was Alex.”

There it is. Damn, that ended up longer than I expected. Sorry about that. As for tagging, I think I have to pass, since tagging always seems to take me a lot of time. I agonize over who to choose. Please feel free to tag yourself if you are so inclined, and I’d be happy to link you up here.

unread, unread

This here is a meme (or whatever you like to think of it as) based on the top 106 unread books from Library Thing. (At least as of the date when this was started. The earliest I could find was a post from October 1st at Once Upon a Booshelf, saying the meme had been found at Lady Strange. I couldn’t find, it there though.) I myself found this at Lori’s Book Nook, and then re-found it shortly thereafter at casa az.

Here are the instructions, as found chez az:

Bold what you have read, italicize your DNFs, strikethrough the ones you hated, put *asterisks next to those you’ve read more than once, and put a + cross in front of the books that are on your bookshelf.

(Note that DNF=”did not finish”)

My Reads of the Unread

+ Jonathan Strange & M. Norrell
+ Anna Karenina
+Crime and Punishment
+ Catch-22
One hundred years of solitude
+ Wuthering Heights
+ The Silmarillion
Life of Pi: a novel
+ The Name of the Rose
Don Quixote
+ Moby Dick
+ Ulysses
+ Madame Bovary
+ The Odyssey
+ *Pride and Prejudice
+ Jane Eyre
A Tale of Two Cities
+ The Brothers Karamazov
Guns, Germs, and Steel: the fates of human societies
+ War and Peace
+ Vanity Fair
The Time Traveller’s Wife
+ The Iliad
+ *Emma
+ The Blind Assassin
The Kite Runner
Mrs. Dalloway
+ Great Expectations
American Gods
+ A heartbreaking work of staggering genius
Atlas shrugged
Reading Lolita in Tehran
+ Memoirs of a Geisha
Middlesex
+ Quicksilver
+ * Wicked : the life and times of the wicked witch of the West
The Canterbury Tales
The Historian
+ A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man
Love in the Time of Cholera
Brave new world
The Fountainhead
+ Foucault’s Pendulum
+ Middlemarch
Frankenstein
+ The Count of Monte Cristo
+ Dracula
A Clockwork Orange
Anansi Boys
+ The Once and Future King
The Grapes of Wrath
+ * The Poisonwood Bible
1984
Angels & Demons
+ The Inferno
+ The Satanic Verses
+ Sense and Sensibility
+ The Picture of Dorian Gray
Mansfield Park
+ One flew over the cuckoo’s nest
To the Lighthouse
+ * Tess of the D’Urbervilles
Oliver Twist
+ Gulliver’s Travels
+ Les misérables
+ The Corrections
+ The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay
+ The curious incident of the dog in the night-time
+ Dune
+ The Prince
The Sound and the Fury
Angela’s Ashes
+ The God of Small Things
A people’s history of the United States : 1492-present
+ Cryptonomicon
Neverwhere
+ A Confederacy of Dunces
A Short History of Nearly Everything
Dubliners
+ The Unbearable Lightness of Being
+ Beloved
Slaughterhouse-five
+ The Scarlet Letter
+ Eats, Shoots & Leaves
+ The Mists of Avalon
Oryx and Crake : a novel
Collapse : how societies choose to fail or succeed
Cloud Atlas
The Confusion
+ Lolita
+ Persuasion
+ Northanger Abbey
The Catcher in the Rye
On the Road
+The Hunchback of Notre Dame
+ Freakonomics
+ Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance
The Aeneid
+ *Watership Down
+ Gravity’s Rainbow
+ The Hobbit
+ In Cold Blood
+ White Teeth
Treasure Island
+ David Copperfield
The Three Musketeers

Notice that I haven’t crossed out any books to mean “I hated them.” It’s hard for me to say that I hate a book. The only book I can think of, off the top of my head, that I really hated was The Horse Whisperer. Piece of total crap. I wanted my time back.

On this list, there were a couple of books that I found painful to read, though I could appreciate the writing and the storytelling: Crime and Punishment and Confederacy of Dunces. I seem to have trouble with anti-heroes. I had the same problem with The Mayor of Casterbridge.

Notice also that I have marked a lot of books with a plus (+) that I have not read. This is partially John’s fault. I have marked them as “on our bookshelf”, even if they are not books that are ones that I selected. And even if they are not technically on a bookshelf. (We have a lot of books. Some of them live in stacks on the floor.)

a shocking excess of syllables

I stumbled across a couple of meme-like posts last night that sparked both my interest and my concern. First this one, which referenced this one. The task described on the blog icedmocha was to:

Answer all thirty-five questions using only one word. It’s harder than it looks. Give it a try on your blog.

An interesting challenge. A provocative proposition. The particpants I read (the first two I saw, plus this third one) had come up with some fantastic single-word responses.

The problem? The posts, and apparently the meme, are entitled “Monosyllabic.” In spite of this, I witnessed a large number of polysyllabic words. Shocking, shocking. As someone who spends portions of her professional time finding syllables, hunting them down and tracking them in the wild, I felt it my duty to round up some bonafide monosyllables of my own.

1. Where is your cell phone?     bag

2. Relationship?     yes

3. Your hair?     brown

4. Work?     sounds

5. Your sister?     cool

6. Your favorite thing?     sleep

7. Your dream last night?     strange

8. Your favorite drink?     ale

9. Your dream car?     Peel’s

10. The room you’re in?     den

11. Your shoes?     docs

12. Your fears?     war

13. What do you want to be in 10 years?     prof

14. Who did you hang out with this weekend?     Phoebs

15. What you’re not good at?     hate

16. Muffin?     please!

17. One of your wish list items?     trip

18. Where you grew up?     earth

19. The last thing you did?     work

20. What are you wearing?     pants

21. What aren’t you wearing?     socks

22. Your pet?     gone

23. Your computer?     mac

24. Your life?     whole

25. Your mood?     calm

26. Missing?     Red

27. What are you thinking about right now?     words

28. Your car?     gray

29. Your kitchen?     mess

30. Your summer?     short

31. Your favorite color?     blue

32. When is the last time you laughed?     noon

33. Last time you cried?     days

34. School?     grad

35. Love?     John

There we go. 35 monosyllables that are more-or-less true responses. Another challenging task would be to come up with monomorphemic responses to those same questions. Or to come up with 35 questions, the answers to which could all be pants.

monosyllabic1.jpg
A view of a production of the polysyllabic monosyllabic, displayed in Praat, with approximate syllabification into 5 syllables marked. (No commitment to the affiliation of potentially ambisyllabic consonants intended.)

pants1.jpg
A view of a production of the monosyllabic pants, displayed in Praat, with syllabification into 1 syllable marked.

enough about me

Okay, I lied. It’s really still about me.

A little over a week ago, YTSL lobbed a request over that I should participate in this meme activity by which I list 7 little known things (or random facts or habits, if I trace it back further.) about myself.¹ I like things. I like lists. And apparently I like to write stuff about myself.²

7 things about me that I didn’t list in that other post with 6 things about me

  1. I used to be able to get into the yoga “lotus” position without using my hands. Oh, wait. I guess I still can. It hurts a bit more than I remember, though…
  2. I once had a collection of dimes. I was maybe 8 years old. They were just dimes. I found them aesthetically pleasing. Their size, their shape, the feel of them. I brought my collection to “show and tell” once, and the teacher asked what was special about the dimes. I was a bit perplexed by the question.
  3. I often have dreams that I can fly.
  4. I have a bit of a fear of moths. They give me the eebie jeebies.
  5. I like heights. I get kind of a rush from being up high. Kind of an anti-vertigo. (Funny. There was a Mel Brooks movie made in the 70s called High Anxiety that was a parody of Hitchcock’s Vertigo. At least one scene was filmed the Hyatt Regency Hotel in San Francisco, which had glass elevators that went up quite high. I loved that building, and those elevators.)
  6. I don’t watch TV. For someone who has written 26 posts to date with the tag “TV,” this seems odd. I watched a lot as a kid, but have little idea what’s even on these days. I watch things on TV, but only DVDs. Mostly movies. Some old TV series. The only current shows I’ve watched in the last couple of years have been available as iTunes downloads.
  7. I am fidgety. I have trouble sitting still. You’ll often find me twiddling a pen, shredding a paper napkin, twisting a straw…or doodling. I’ve got some crazy-ass elaborate doodles. Doodles, dood.

This is one of those things where I’m supposed to tag others. I’ve considered tagging people I don’t know at all, like, say, Kevin Smith or someone else who’s used the tag pants. Or a blog I hit by using the “next blog” function on WordPress, that gives you random blog after random blog. (And hey, if any of you, Kevin, pants person, or even more randomly selected person would like to play along, please consider yourselves tagged!) Or I can play by the self-selection, tag-free rules, as exemplified by the extraordinary KC. Anyhow, if you are reading this, consider yourself tagged. Like a polar bear or sea turtle that scientists are tracking. (Don’t worry. The tranquilizer will wear off soon.)

————————————————–

¹ I also owe another meme to her. Plus I got tagged by NotSoSage for a different meme the same day. Woohoo. Meme me, baby. (I’ll get to that one at some point, too, Sage.)

² As we all know, writing about oneself is the prime motivation for 98.725% of bloggers.³

³ I made up that statistic. But anyone want to prove me wrong?⁴

⁴ Huh? Huh?

6 weird things about me

In exchange for getting YTSL of Webs of Significance to subject herself to the 5 questions meme, which she has graciously already posted about, I have offered myself up to be tagged by her for the 6 weird things meme. (Yes, I realize these are not your traditional meming behaviors. However, I don’t expect we’ll be fined by the International Meme Police. I do sometimes worry about being persecuted by the International Mime Police though. My “walking against the wind” is appallingly bad.*)

Anyhow, here is a list of 6 weird things about me.

  1. I was a weird kid, and had a variety of colorful fantasies. I’m sure most kids did, but somehow, I think mine may have been a bit weirder than normal. For example, when I was around 9 or 10 years old, I used to imagine that as an adult, I’d choose to regularly wear full blown Victorian-style gone-with-the-windian hoop-skirted dresses. Because as an adult I’d have full choice over what I’d wear.

    2. artichokes.jpg

  2. My favorite food is a vegetable. I love artichokes. Not to say that I don’t have other food loves. But artichokes are tops. I’m talking fresh, steamed, prickly, spiky, alien-looking thistle buds. My deep, abiding love for artichokes dates back to my youth, and was considered to have been no_pizza1.jpg

    3. decidedly odd by other kids. When other American kids were asked for favorite foods, they’d almost universally answer “pizza.” But me, I’d answer “artichokes.” I actually didn’t even like pizza as a kid. (Yes, another weirdness. I got over it.) I remember a school project once where the kids of my 5th or 6th grade class had to put together a newspaper. As a new kid at the school, I was interviewed. The “editors” chose to put the headline for the resulting article on the front page: “Girl Likes Artichokes”. It almost could have been a Weekly World News article.

  3. I once lost my sense of smell. I don’t remember for how long. Might have been a couple of weeks. It came back gradually. When it first came back, I could smell only one thing: cherry scones. (I’ve been meaning to write this story, but I think I’ll save the details for later.)
  4. I can sing a bunch of TV theme songs for shows that I’ve never watched. For example, “77 Sunset Strip” and “Flipper”, or one of my favorites to sing, “Surfside 6“. (Keep in mind that the indented parts are sung in my best bimbo voice.):

    Surfside 6
           What’s that?
    Surfside 6
           an address?
    Surfside 6
           for a houseboat?
    Surfside 6
           and where is it?
    In Miami Beach
    da da da, da da da
    cha cha cha
    cha

  5. My name is spelled in Esperanto. (In a way that speaks more to the weirdness eccentricity of my parents than of myself…) In case you haven’t heard of Esperanto, it’s an artificially created international language. Much like the dodo, it is most frequently referenced in jokes about obsolescence, obscurity and extinction.
    cf:

    Esperanto is a joke. It’s for cranks. You can tell it’s for cranks because, on the few occasions you hear about it, you hear that it is “not just for cranks”.

    or

    cynics have mocked it as an idealistic cult for linguistic weirdos.

  6. I can get quite compulsive about my hobbies. And I have a weird sense of humor. This is a combination that some people have found disturbing. For example, consider this incident from a recent visit to the in-laws. John and my mother-in-law and I were sitting at the kitchen table late at night, talking. I noticed a “Clipper magazine”, a hideous thing made up entirely of ads, with coupons to clip. When I saw the magazine sitting there, with me sitting around with my hands unoccupied, I had this overwhelming urge to clip the letters. I thought I could make a banner for the blog. When I asked my mother-in-law if I could cut up her magazine, she asked why. As I have felt it best to hide the existence of my blog from her, I had to come up with a plausible reason: “I need to write a ransom note.”

    scissor.jpg

Okay, them’s my 6 weird things. Others might claim that there are additional weird things about me. John says my little toes are weird. So I suppose they could have been items 5 and 6.

Now I believe I’m supposed to tag 6 other people, according to the rules:

People who are tagged should write a blog post of 6 weird things about them as well as state this rule clearly. In the end, you need to choose 6 people to be tagged and list their names. Don’t forget to leave a comment that says ‘you are tagged’ in their comments and tell them to read your blog.

Okay, this is definitely the hard part. Maybe I should just go around to random blogs and leave the “you are tagged” bit. Or maybe I’ll just go around leaving comments telling random people to read my blog. That would be oh-so-smooth. Or I could send notes with cut up letters telling people to read my blog…or else.

So, I think I’ll go with some people I haven’t attempted to tag before, but believe to have some weirdness to them. (And I mean that as a compliment.):

  • jeanerz of Jean Crawford, Starr Linguist
  • KC of Where’s My Cape?
  • NotSoSage of NotSoSage
  • Jaŋari of Matjjin-nehen

    • and

  • Lori of Celebrating the Absurd

    • And since she’s seemed moderately amenable to this sort of thing in the past,

  • jenny of baggage carousel 4.

    • If any of you don’t want to play, I can untag you. Or you can just ignore the tag (which is what often happens). If someone out there does want to play (either this game or some future one) please let me know.

    ——————————–
    *I’m trying to figure out a way to throw in this quote about miming by Paula Poundstone, who said:

    The saddest thing about me talking all the time is that I am a gifted mime. I could have had a brilliant career. I just couldn’t shut up!

    and

    Look at me, I’m in a box!

    I asked for it

    There’s a thing going around whereby folks ask each other questions, and then write some answers. In response to an offer to spread this thing, I requested questions, and The Amazing KC from Where’s My Cape? answered with some questions. Below I’ve answered the questions. Perhaps you will question my answers.

    1. How did you get to live in rural Massachusetts? Is there anywhere else in the country you’d like to live?

    We moved up to Massachusetts from Providence once we’d both finished college. John had been working in Massachusetts for several years already while in school, and during time off from school. We started off in a somewhat more suburban area, in a town next to the one where John worked. Then, when it was time to buy a house, we couldn’t find anything we liked in our price range close to Boston. (Things were run-down, on very busy streets with no yards, or hideous 70s split levels with flood-damaged basements.) We kept looking further and farther out. Our realtor was from this town, and tolds us of the charms and history of the small town. He encouraged us to look at houses here. When we did, we suddenly could afford nice houses. With yards and trees. It was the trees that got me. We live in the woods. It’s quiet. The air is clean. The snow stays white as snow until it melts.

    I love the physical location of our house, but I wish we could be closer to civilization. Most of my friends live closer to Boston, and I love the city. I love the culture, the food, the activities. Museums, restaurants, indie movie theaters, concerts. I love the mixture of cultures and ethnicities. I’d love for Phoebe to go to school in a city. And I know that I could do more in the city. I would love to do away with this commute, which eats up time and energy, and keeps me from doing things I’d like to do.

    My sister is always trying to get me to move back to California, but I’m resistant. For one thing, I’ve become attached to this area, have a lot of friends around. For another, I like seasons. I actually like winter. Plus it’s so crowded out in the Bay Area, where she lives. And so expensive. (I know, Boston is crowded and expensive, too.) Then again, my mother lives out in California now, too…it would be nice to be close to family.

    2. You’ve graced the cover of American Hovel Magazine. What’s another magazine you would like to be on the cover on and what would be story about?

    So you’ve seen the latest AHM? That’s right, you probably have a subscription.

    You know, I don’t really know too many magazines. I don’t really read them. So I’d have to go for something generic or fictitious. Maybe a general news magazine. Time or Newsweek or some such. Or maybe Amazing Stuff Quarterly. I’d like it to be for some accomplishment I’ve done. Some unspecified achievement. Definitely for an intellectual achievement. Maybe something language oriented, or for some ingenious solution I’ve come up with that will address social issues or improve the quality of life of some group of people. I’d like it to be about “the woman who revolutionized X” or “who initiated Y” or “who solved Z.” (I’d really rather not be the person “who slept with X” or “who survived Y disaster.” I wouldn’t even care to be the one “who dazzled Z audience.”)

    3. What are the top 3 things you want to accomplish over the next 10 years?

    1. Get the PhD.
    2. hmm…
    3. well….

    Um…It’s hard for me to come up with a list beyond that. Continued family development will be involved. There will need to be some sort of job at the end of grad school. I have lots of activities I’d like to get back to and/or develop further, but I don’t have specific goals. I mean, take the violin. I want to keep learning, but there is no specific target for how much or how good I’d like to get. I’d like to get back to painting, jewelry-making, martial arts. I’d like to get back to some sort of volunteer work. I’d like to travel. How odd to realize that my goals are overall somewhat vague right now. Hmm…

    4. You seem to like pants. If you were a pair of pants, what kind would you be (details please)?

    Ah, yes. Pants. I am actually fairly ambivalent about pants. I like pants. The word, more than the article of clothing. I like to say “pants.” Pants are functional, and more practical to wear than dresses. (I do like dresses and skirts. My tastes can be quite girly in spite of my tendencies to wear men’s clothing.) I actually hate shopping for pants. I shop the sale racks, and buy what fits, as long as it’s fairly plain. Jeans are comfy, but I wouldn’t consider myself to be denim. So, if I were to be a pair of pants, I’d probably be made of some sort of woven cotton blend, durable yet soft. I’d need to have pockets, because it’s important to have a place to put stuff. (I’m not a purse person.) Deep pockets. I’d have simple lines, and hopefully wouldn’t be falling down, tripping the wearer, or exposing the butt crack. I’d be fairly fitted, not actually tight, not really baggy, hopefully flattering to the butt, even for butts of varying sizes or shapes. I’d be loose enough or stretchy enough that the wearer could sit cross-legged comfortably on the floor.

    I’d be of a style that wouldn’t reflect the latest fashions, whatever they may be, so I wouldn’t look too dated when you’d wear me years after you bought me. I’d be machine washable, tumble dry low. But if you wanted to line-dry me, I’d be okay with that. I’d be made in a dark color like black or charcoal gray, in part so I’d be stain-resistant, or at least forgiving of stains. (I know things can get messy.) I’d be fairly wrinkle-resistant, so that I’d be good to pack or wear on a trip. I probably wouldn’t be totally wrinkle-free, but you certainly wouldn’t need to iron me. I would be moderately priced, accessible, so that any who wanted to wear me could.

    5. You are a superhero. What are your superpowers? What is your Kryptonite? Who is your arch villian?

    You’re trying to trick me! You’ve discovered my secret identity!

    This is actually a question that I’ve enjoyed playing with since childhood. (I remember daydreaming about being a superhero in kindergarden.) I’d definitely have the power of flight. Telekinesis would be handy. I’d also like to be skillful at some martial art. A showy one. Plus I would have the power to befuddle my enemies with my superior wit. Or perhaps render them helpless with laughter. (Laughing due to my wit, not my clumsiness…But hey, whatever works.)

    My Kryptonite? Uncomfortable shoes? No stilettos or pointy toes for me. Or some sort of dissonant or excessive noise. I can’t stand hearing more than one form of music at the same time.

    My arch villain? That’s a tricky one. I don’t really like having enemies. They’d have to be bizarre. Absurd. I like Casanova Frankenstein from Mystery Men.

    ……..

    Okay, there are my answers. So I guess I should continue this thing by offering to give questions to anyone who’s up for being asked. Answer, and you shall be asked.

    [Note: jenny of baggage carousel 4 and ericalee of something bookish and bluegrass in my pocket have both requested questions. You can see jenny’s answers, and follow along with those who in turn asked her for questions. Stay tuned for ericalee’s answers…]