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the dreaded "25 things" virus
Those of you who have logged into Facebook in the last few weeks have very likely witnessed the wildfire spread of the "25 Random Things" meme / virus. I wasn't going to do it, and then last night I abruptly caved in and did it. I was fairly happy with the results so I thought I'd post them here as well. 1) In general, I like people and I like the world. 2) I enjoy making lists, and I spend more time than I probably should tracking data about my own life. For instance, I maintain a database of all the films I've ever seen (you can see the last 20 here) 3) I like having conversations, but I don't really like talking on the telephone. 4) I do, however, like text messaging, and I send several hundred text messages a month. 5) I like "experimental" music, film, writing, comics, and games, but really that just comes from liking music, film, writing, comics, and games so much that I want to experience them in the full variety of their forms. Put another way: I try not to be a snob. 6) I like collecting music, thinking about my music, and organizing and arranging my music. For a period I was buying at least one new CD a week. I've slowed down a bit lately, in part because I'm now involved in trading a lot of music with friends. 7) I am cripplingly dependent on iTunes, especially because of its rating feature, and the way it tracks Play Count and Date Last Played. My music listening is increasingly dictated by the interplay of these particular data-sets. 8) I like to dance, and I like almost anything that qualifies as dance music, from Beyonce to Mouse on Mars. 9) In the mid-1990s, I taught myself how to rap, and I still have a few fairly lengthy raps committed to memory. I intended it to be tongue-in-cheek, but I have actually come to believe that it is one of my more impressive talents. 10) I've been in two bands, and performed music live on stage somewhere around 30 times, although I have no musical training and generally consider myself to have no actual musical talent. 11) I use humor as a sort of social lubricant, and don't believe I could really be friends with someone who didn't think I was funny. 12) I would rather be thought of as attractive than be thought of as smart, although I put WAY more energy into being smart than I do into being attractive. 13) I enjoy flirting, sexual tension, and sexual confusion. If I'm not experiencing two out of three in any given week I will begin to make ill-advised decisions. 14) I think of sex as only one form of a larger category of intimacy, and I think that people who think sex is a particularly unique or special form of intimacy are engaged in a conceptual error. I am not immune to making this error myself, at times, although I try to catch myself. 15) I detest money, and I detest the things people must do to get money. The fact that I care as much as I do about money is one of the things I dislike about myself. 16) I do, however, enjoy teaching, and I believe that I am good at it. 17) I am fascinated by violence, and representations of violence. I don't ENJOY movies that depict torture and violence but I am unquenchably curious about them and will eventually end up seeing them all. (They're always worse in my imagination, just FYI.) 18) From roughly age 12 to age 18, I participated in a program called "Cinekyd," which taught young people the basics of film and television production. I spent most of my Cinekyd time in the "Graphics and Minatures" department, learning about special effects. This is undoubtedly part of where my love of science fiction and horror films comes from. 19) My immediate family has an endearing interest in grotesque stories about things like bodily functions. Hearing a story of this sort around the dinner table is one of the ways that I can tell that I am "home." 20) I don't believe in the afterlife, but I do believe that places can be haunted. I make no real effort to reconcile this apparent discontinuity. 21) I don't really believe in magic, but in the spirit of experiential knowledge I performed a few "spells" just to see what would happen. The results were... interesting? 22) I have many fond memories of playing Dungeons and Dragons, and I still have my polyhedral dice nearby should someone drop by and want to fire up a game. 23) I spent many hours as a young child playing the Atari 2600, and will still occasionally load up a Web-based replica of the old 2600 game "Adventure," a game in which your "character" is simply an unadorned rectangle. 24) I am one of those people who has Opinions About Fonts. 25) I am seldom bored, and am usually at my happiest when engaged in mutiple projects. An old friend once told me he wished that I could have 36 hours in every day, and I still count that as one of the nicest things anyone ever said about me.
Monday, January 26, 2009
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