Category: NaBloPoMo

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.

Now with more Polysyllabic Nonsense

I think most of you have seen this item making its way around the bloggy world: the blog reading level score. I’ve seen it a bunch of places:

You wanna know what I got?

elementary_school.jpg

(Note that my blog shares this honor with Sassy of eye heart internet, who can even blog at the elementary school level bilingually.)

Actually, the first time I tried this, a few weeks ago maybe, I got junior high level. But apparently my writing skills are deteriorating.

What I find funniest, though, is that I also tried my other blog: The Minsitry of Silly Blogs. This is a blog I threw together on a whim to go along with a NaBloPoMo group I started. See what it scored?

genius.jpg The Ministry of Silly Blogs

It would seem that when I am making efforts to sound Officious and Pretentious, as well as Silly and Pompous, my writing appears more erudite. Even if what I am writing is Utter Nonsense. (Which is not to say that I believe that all those whose blogs scored higher than elementary school write Officiously and Pompously. But perhaps you all write Utter Nonsense?)

All in all, I find myself terribly curious about the means by which a reading level score is achieved. Is it sentence length? Average word length? Does anyone know?

What have you been up to, little girl?

upside-down.jpg

I’m terribly behind in updating the Phoebe Blog, where I try to document some of my daughter’s activities and accomplishments. That was my foray into blogging, and I still use the same software (iWeb) I started with. It’s somewhat cool in that I can compose everything on my computer and in that it links up automatically with my media files, but it has this irritating feature that doesn’t let you keep some drafts unpublished while you publish others. Since I now have about 10 drafts in various stages of completion, I’m pretty much stuck not publishing any of them till they’re all done. So the family doesn’t get to see what Phoebe’s up to.

Unless, of course, there’s an event like Phoebe’s run-in with the law yesterday morning. Then the whole family somehow learns. (Oh, right, now you want to know. Well, you know how some phones have an emergency number programmed into the speed dial? Did you know some phones have a big, pretty red button that is hooked up to such a number? Did you know that toddlers like to push buttons?)

We’re down at John’s parents for the holiday, by the way. We came down Tuesday night, to avoid the craziness of traffic that happens the Wednesday before Thanksgiving. We’ve driven up to visit John’s dad in the sub-acute care facility each day after Phoebe’s nap. There have been a lot of late nights, too. And yesterday there was a lot of cooking. (We packed up the feast to take up to John’s dad’s.) I made mashed potatoes, delicata squash (which is much safer to cut than KC’s Death Squash), and my famous stuffed pan. (I like stuffing, but not the things that tend to be stuffed with it. So I just make the stuffing.)

Also, at the moment, my feed reader folders are stuffed full of 272 unread messages. (158 of these can be blamed on people I just started reading with NaBloPoMo. Curse you, NaBloPoMoPeople. Curse yooooouuu! Oh, right. I’m guilty of this madness, too. Curse me! Curse meeeeee!) I’m not quite sure when I’ll be able to catch up. Make that “if.”

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.

11 11 bits for 11/11

It’s now 11:00. And today is 11/11. So it seems only fitting that I should bring you some 11-related content.

    1111.jpg

  1. 11:11 My favorite time to see on a digital clock. Whenever John or I notice it, we always say “eleven eleven.” (I suppose unless we are in some sort of situation where that might be inappropriate. [Insert inappropriate situation here.] )
  2. I came across this little poem when I was little. (Before I was 11, even.) Each digit should be pronounced by name. (So for any “1” say “one.”)

    11 was a racehorse
    22 was 12
    1111 race 1 day
    22112

  3. 11 is 3 in binary
  4. musical eleventh:

    In music or music theory an eleventh is the note eleven scale degrees from the root of a chord and also the interval between the root and the eleventh.

  5. Apollo 11: landed on the moon in 1969. With people in it.
  6. The movie “Ocean’s Eleven” (1960) and the (2001) remake.
  7. The Armistice ending WWI went into effect on the 11th day of the 11th month. At the 11th hour, no less.
  8. The eleventh hour: the last minute before a deadline. As in “I’m usually scrambling to get my work done up to the eleventh hour.”
  9. The eleven o-clock news: a common time, and label, for late-night TV news.
  10. Elevenses. A light, late-morning snack traditional in the UK. Now seen as a bit old-fashioned. (As if snacking could ever go out of style.)
  11. “These go up to 11.” Nigel Tufnel of Spinal Tap is proud of his amplifiers, whose volume control dials have numbers that go all the way up to 11. Not 10 like other amps. So it must be better. And this list goes up to 11, too, you know. Lists that go up to 11 are better than lists that only go up to 10.

make like a tree

I’m quite fond of trees. You might even say that I identify with them. To celebrate their arborial grandness, and to follow up on the squirreliness of last week’s list, I bring you a Themed Thing list of Trees.

  • The Lorax, by Dr. Seuss. This beloved book features Truffula trees, and is a parable (?) about the impact of excessive deforestation, industrialization and consumerism. The Lorax is a little creature who voices the warnings. “I speak for the trees.”
  • The Giving Tree, Shel Silverstein. A book about a boy, who takes serious advantage of a generous tree. The tree gives, and the boy/man takes and takes. And takes. Till all that’s left of the tree is a stump. And this is supposed to be a moving tale of generosity. An environmentalist friend of mine from college once said of it, “I think it’s misguided.”

    • the_lorax.jpgthe_giving_tree.jpg

  • A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, a coming of age novel by Betty Smith.
  • The Tree of Man, a novel by Australian Author (and winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature), Patrick White.
  • tree-hugger: A term used to refer to environmentalists, especially those who look to protect forests. Sometimes used pejoratively, but embraced by others.
  • Arbor Day A holiday for planting and caring for trees. And maybe for hugging them. In the US, it’s celebrated in April. (The next one is April 25th, 2008. Only 168 shopping days left.)
  • Christmas Tree A possibly Pagan-derived holiday tradition of decorating a tree with ornaments and lights and such. Usually a pine tree.

    • lost_pants_tree.jpg

  • syntactic trees (tree structures) Diagrams representing hierarchical structure are often described as trees. People studying syntax spend a fair amount of time drawing tree diagrams of sentences.
  • family tree The tree is used as a metaphor to describe relationships within a family, especially when drawing a diagram of relatedness.
  • Trees are prominent in mythologies and foklore from many cultures, including many variations on a mystic Tree of Life.

    • family_tree.jpg yggdrasil.jpg dryad11.jpg
    A German woodcut of a family tree, the Yggdrasil, and The Dryad by Evelyn De Morgan

  • Dryads, tree nymphs (or wood nymphs) from Greek mythology. They are among the magical creatures to be found in the Chronicals of Narnia. See also “The Dryad”, a story be Hans Christian Anderson
  • In Greek Mythology, Daphne is turned into a laurel tree while trying to escape the clutches of an amourous Apollo.
  • The Ents, from the Lord of the Rings trilogy by J. R. R. Tolkien. Big tree people.
  • “Shaking the Tree”, an album by Peter Gabriel. Also a song with Youssou N’dour. [YouTube]
  • “barking up the wrong tree” An idiom alluding to a dog chasing a cat up a tree, but mistaking the location of said cat. It means “acting based on some mistaken impression”
  • “can’t see the forest for the trees”An expression to describe when someone is too caught up in the details to understand the larger context.
  • Then there’s the playground chant:

    X & Y sitting in a tree
    K-I-S-S-I-N-G

    • The Call of the Pants

    pants.pngBecause the world needs more things with pants, and because I promised to write more posts with pants, I bring you pants. Following the success of the great moments of pants cinema, and in the tradition of the legendary Star Wars pants list, I bring to you a list of literary pants classics.

    Great Works of Classic Pants Literature.

  • All the King’s Pants, Robert Penn Warren
    A story of politics, pants, and politicians’ pants.
  • A Farewell to Pants, Ernest Hemingway
    Even pants don’t last forever.
  • The Return of the Pants, Thomas Hardy
    Laundry lost, laundry found.
  • The Pants and the Fury, William Faulkner
    A tale told by an idiot. Signifying pants.
  • A Tale of Two Pants, Charles Dickens
    They were worn, they were washed. It’s a short tale.
  • Around the World in Eighty Pants, Jules Verne
    About a man who did not know how to travel light.
  • Peter Pants, J. M. Barrie
    A whimsical, magical pants tale
  • The Canterbury Pants, Geoffrey Chaucer
    Tales of pilgrimages and pants.
  • The Pants of Monte Cristo, Alexandre Dumas
    Justice. Vengence. Pants.
  • Little Pants, Louisa May Alcott
    The heartwarming saga of sisters and pants.
  • The Wonderful Wizard of Pants, L. Frank Baum
    A young girl and her companions embark on a quest for pants.
  • The Strange Pants of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, by Robert Louis Stevenson
    Two men share a pair of pants. It’s not pretty.
  • The Man in the Iron Pants, Alexandre Dumas
    That just can’t be comfortable.
  • Journey to the Center of the Pants, Jules Verne
    Discover the mysteries that lie deep within the pants.
  • A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Pants, by Mark Twain
    This story may not be suitable for children under age 13.

    • New Life Form Discovered in Eastern United States

    Biologists the world over are expressing cautious excitement over reports of the discovery of a new species of animal life that was discovered last Friday.

    Reports were received of a number of small furry creatures residing in the refrigerator of a Massachusetts family’s home. Animal control officers on the scene then reported the hitherto unidentified animals to the scientific community.

    The Chenopodiaceae Beta Fuzzae, or Fuzzae Beet as it has been nicknamed, appears to thrive in the dark, chilly ecosystem of the vegetable drawer, and requires only as much light as is offered by the little lightbulb that goes on when the refrigerator door is opened. It resembles a common beet root in appearance, but with a coat of downy fur, and is believed to be part vegetable and part mammal. It was observed roaming among the piles of arugula and turnip greens, and exhibited signs of rudimentary intelligence. “One of them looked right at me, and I was sure it was going to start speaking,” said Bob Loobsteele of Animal Control, who was first to arrive on the scene.

    A family of the Fuzzae Beets have been extracted from the rest of the colony their natural habitat, in order that their behavior may be studied under more controlled conditions.

    The implications of this discovery are far-reaching. “With so many other species being threatened by climate change, it is heartening to find that new life is evolving,” says Dr. Frank Murgentroober, head of the Springfield University Department of Paranormal Vegetable Phenomena. “We think it’s only a matter of time before more life forms are found lingering in the depths of neglected vegetable drawers, or even emerging from pizza boxes left under the bed in college dorm rooms.”

    Dr. Wilma P. Snodgrass of Large Urban University, however, is a dissenting voice among the excited scientific community. “We think this may well turn out to be a hoax, or the twisted delusions of someone who has far too many vegetables on their hands.”

    ———–

    This improbable report is brought to you hot off the presses of this week’s Monday Mission, which solicited posts in the style of a news article.