Because you (sort of) asked for it: The Sixteen Random Factoids Meme
Unfortunately, I don't have enough icons to support the current hot meme, which is kind of a shame, because a) it's really cute and fun and b) I have an entire folder of stolen... er... anyway, I have a lot of really nifty icons squirreled away (including a couple that actually involve squirrels) and by the time I get around to upgrading my account the meme will have drifted off.
Thus I gacked this alternate meme from kalquessa. It's not current or hot, but I figure it might be good practice for this whole 'personalised' thing, of which I've been told this journal specifically needs more. I've been concentrating so hard on removing the rambling I really haven't had time to relate the stories of meaningfulness; then again, it was hard enough coming up with sixteen short notes of interest. So this meme works out all the way around, really:
1. The reason Shoedad doesn't show up much (if at all) in these pages is because a) he died just about two years ago, and b) he had voluntarily absented himself from his family - wife, three daughters, three grandchildren, elderly parents - for about a decade before that. I mourn him now not so much as a beloved father but for the potential for same that was lost. *considers* Yeah, someday I may need to write an entire post about this.
2. There is dust all over my keyboard. I hate that. Actually, I hate dust in any form, because it is simoultaneously so revealing of what a sloppy housekeeper I am, and so easy to ignore. "It's just dust," I say to myself. "Am I really going to let a few airborne particles get in the way of genius? Or, for that matter, the new Nero Wolfe DVD?" And the next thing you know, I am the poster child for Save Us From This House. Frustrating.
3. I am the only person I know to have been kicked out of two Canadian Idol fandoms running (for Tyler Hamilton and Kalan Porter, if anybody cares). Basically, for hanging around long after it became clear I didn't fit in, and being unbearably superior about it. Still...the Dr. Phil argument was cruel and unusual provocation. And I don't think the vicious PMs were at all necessary, either.
4. I do kind of worry about this whole Computer Simulation Theory idea from time-to-time, mostly because dammit I'm sure I saw that Zorro episode before the guide says it was made, and it bugs. Then I go tell my trusted friends, and they laugh and heap scorn, and I feel much better. But I still don't like watching the Matrix movies after dark.
5. I have committed the entire Marmoset Song from Sesame Street to memory, and sing it to myself quite often.
6. I have an abiding fascination with true crime. Over the years I have made myself into something of a Jack the Ripper 'spert, then moved on to the Black Dahlia and a couple other famous cases. Over a six-month span at the bookstore, I went through the entire oeuvre of Anne Rule while on breaks in the upstairs lounge, causing passing colleages to assume mildly, but rather gratifyingly, freaked expressions.
7. Secret to successful dieting over the objections of a killer sweet tooth: Saltwater taffy. Not the icky random-Florida-tourist-shop crap, but the real stuff, in pretty much every flavour you'd ever crave, made by Taffy Town in the States and carried here by a little shop over on the Danforth. Just a far enough walk away to require real exercise. Works perfectly.
8. I have a keychain-sized Rubik's Cube in my desk, and often take it out and play with it when I'm stuck for the next sentence. When he visits, my eight-year-old nephew routinely embarrasses me by completing, like, three sides in thirty seconds.
9. By way of the ideal writer's time-wasting hobby, I spend quite a lot of time over on TVTropes. Mostly following links to pages of interest and puttering around in them as needed, often full-blown rewrites. The result, I just realised on reviewing my watchlist, is a quick-n-easy tour of my psyche: Charles Dickens, The Giver, The Red Green Show, Deadpool, Sesame Street, The Phantom Tollbooth, The Star Wars Holiday Special, The Great Gatsby, Peanuts, Watership Down, WKRP in Cincinnati, Roald Dahl, Singin' in the Rain...oh, and [ahem], Bob & Ray. Hey, somebody had to.
10. Everybody and their uncle keeps telling me I have to read Edward Rutherfurd's London. Everybody. So I borrowed a copy from a friend. 'Just remember it's our book, OK?' the friend told me, lightly. I took a little huff at this. Now, about two months later, the book is sitting on my desk unopened. There may be cat pawprints on it. I would return it, but am too mortified.
11. Speaking of the Danforth... I don't know exactly how to describe it, except to start at the beginning: When I was a boring preteen in a boring suburb, I used to spend as much time as I could possibly cadge with my aunt (Shoemom's older sister) who was then mistress of a very wealthy businessman, and lived in a luxury apartment just the other side of the Viaduct. She introduced me to a sort of fantasy version of big-city life, impossibly sophisticated, nothing but the best, all the high spots...
12. ...All that's left of that fantasy now is the Danforth as my inner child's playground. I love it from a sensible adult POV - the restaurants, the little shops, the sophistication mingled with hominess - and I also love the deep, instinctive (and, given some sections, wholly inexplicable) sense that adventure lurks just around the corner. Enid Blyton-style adventure, because nothing bad could ever happen to me there.
13. For as long as I can remember, I have been splendidly indifferent to clothes and makeup. I still don't wear any makeup, largely because I have lousy hand-eye co-ordination and end up looking like a particularly unsuccessful hooker. However, a few short years of working in a designer apparel buying office and I suddenly have a closet crammed full of classy, unique, expensive (albeit bought on sale), clothes, and a reputation among my friends as a total fashionista. This is deeply, deeply bemusing. Of course, it's also a whole lot of fun.
14. Every one of my extensive collection of tiny stuffed animals has a name, carefully selected by cuddling them for awhile until I come up with something that sounds just right. No, I will not apologise for this.
15. I am not currently in a relationship, and of two minds whether I want to be in one. On the one hand, all that yummy stuff I've gleaned from the Romance section. On the other, I am so set in my ways that, unless I were to find one of those impossibly kind, caring, tolerant characters in real life, I would probably be involved post-haste in one of those domestic-abuse cases that start from embarrassingly stupid things, like arguing over the remote.
16. I believe I've passed the age/of consciousness and righteous rage/I found that just surviving/Was a noble fight...Say what you like about Billy Joel, he did occasionally get it right. I am working on applying this specifically to my deep and abiding rage against certain comic-strip authors for wholly abdicating anything even resembling creativity or imagination just because it's easier, and am feeling at least a little better.
Thus I gacked this alternate meme from kalquessa. It's not current or hot, but I figure it might be good practice for this whole 'personalised' thing, of which I've been told this journal specifically needs more. I've been concentrating so hard on removing the rambling I really haven't had time to relate the stories of meaningfulness; then again, it was hard enough coming up with sixteen short notes of interest. So this meme works out all the way around, really:
1. The reason Shoedad doesn't show up much (if at all) in these pages is because a) he died just about two years ago, and b) he had voluntarily absented himself from his family - wife, three daughters, three grandchildren, elderly parents - for about a decade before that. I mourn him now not so much as a beloved father but for the potential for same that was lost. *considers* Yeah, someday I may need to write an entire post about this.
2. There is dust all over my keyboard. I hate that. Actually, I hate dust in any form, because it is simoultaneously so revealing of what a sloppy housekeeper I am, and so easy to ignore. "It's just dust," I say to myself. "Am I really going to let a few airborne particles get in the way of genius? Or, for that matter, the new Nero Wolfe DVD?" And the next thing you know, I am the poster child for Save Us From This House. Frustrating.
3. I am the only person I know to have been kicked out of two Canadian Idol fandoms running (for Tyler Hamilton and Kalan Porter, if anybody cares). Basically, for hanging around long after it became clear I didn't fit in, and being unbearably superior about it. Still...the Dr. Phil argument was cruel and unusual provocation. And I don't think the vicious PMs were at all necessary, either.
4. I do kind of worry about this whole Computer Simulation Theory idea from time-to-time, mostly because dammit I'm sure I saw that Zorro episode before the guide says it was made, and it bugs. Then I go tell my trusted friends, and they laugh and heap scorn, and I feel much better. But I still don't like watching the Matrix movies after dark.
5. I have committed the entire Marmoset Song from Sesame Street to memory, and sing it to myself quite often.
6. I have an abiding fascination with true crime. Over the years I have made myself into something of a Jack the Ripper 'spert, then moved on to the Black Dahlia and a couple other famous cases. Over a six-month span at the bookstore, I went through the entire oeuvre of Anne Rule while on breaks in the upstairs lounge, causing passing colleages to assume mildly, but rather gratifyingly, freaked expressions.
7. Secret to successful dieting over the objections of a killer sweet tooth: Saltwater taffy. Not the icky random-Florida-tourist-shop crap, but the real stuff, in pretty much every flavour you'd ever crave, made by Taffy Town in the States and carried here by a little shop over on the Danforth. Just a far enough walk away to require real exercise. Works perfectly.
8. I have a keychain-sized Rubik's Cube in my desk, and often take it out and play with it when I'm stuck for the next sentence. When he visits, my eight-year-old nephew routinely embarrasses me by completing, like, three sides in thirty seconds.
9. By way of the ideal writer's time-wasting hobby, I spend quite a lot of time over on TVTropes. Mostly following links to pages of interest and puttering around in them as needed, often full-blown rewrites. The result, I just realised on reviewing my watchlist, is a quick-n-easy tour of my psyche: Charles Dickens, The Giver, The Red Green Show, Deadpool, Sesame Street, The Phantom Tollbooth, The Star Wars Holiday Special, The Great Gatsby, Peanuts, Watership Down, WKRP in Cincinnati, Roald Dahl, Singin' in the Rain...oh, and [ahem], Bob & Ray. Hey, somebody had to.
10. Everybody and their uncle keeps telling me I have to read Edward Rutherfurd's London. Everybody. So I borrowed a copy from a friend. 'Just remember it's our book, OK?' the friend told me, lightly. I took a little huff at this. Now, about two months later, the book is sitting on my desk unopened. There may be cat pawprints on it. I would return it, but am too mortified.
11. Speaking of the Danforth... I don't know exactly how to describe it, except to start at the beginning: When I was a boring preteen in a boring suburb, I used to spend as much time as I could possibly cadge with my aunt (Shoemom's older sister) who was then mistress of a very wealthy businessman, and lived in a luxury apartment just the other side of the Viaduct. She introduced me to a sort of fantasy version of big-city life, impossibly sophisticated, nothing but the best, all the high spots...
12. ...All that's left of that fantasy now is the Danforth as my inner child's playground. I love it from a sensible adult POV - the restaurants, the little shops, the sophistication mingled with hominess - and I also love the deep, instinctive (and, given some sections, wholly inexplicable) sense that adventure lurks just around the corner. Enid Blyton-style adventure, because nothing bad could ever happen to me there.
13. For as long as I can remember, I have been splendidly indifferent to clothes and makeup. I still don't wear any makeup, largely because I have lousy hand-eye co-ordination and end up looking like a particularly unsuccessful hooker. However, a few short years of working in a designer apparel buying office and I suddenly have a closet crammed full of classy, unique, expensive (albeit bought on sale), clothes, and a reputation among my friends as a total fashionista. This is deeply, deeply bemusing. Of course, it's also a whole lot of fun.
14. Every one of my extensive collection of tiny stuffed animals has a name, carefully selected by cuddling them for awhile until I come up with something that sounds just right. No, I will not apologise for this.
15. I am not currently in a relationship, and of two minds whether I want to be in one. On the one hand, all that yummy stuff I've gleaned from the Romance section. On the other, I am so set in my ways that, unless I were to find one of those impossibly kind, caring, tolerant characters in real life, I would probably be involved post-haste in one of those domestic-abuse cases that start from embarrassingly stupid things, like arguing over the remote.
16. I believe I've passed the age/of consciousness and righteous rage/I found that just surviving/Was a noble fight...Say what you like about Billy Joel, he did occasionally get it right. I am working on applying this specifically to my deep and abiding rage against certain comic-strip authors for wholly abdicating anything even resembling creativity or imagination just because it's easier, and am feeling at least a little better.