memeage

[rm]

I got tagged by deslea:

Once you have been tagged, you have to write a blog with 10 random things, facts, goals or habits about yourself. At the end, choose 10 people to be tagged, listing their names & why you chose them. You can't tag a person who has tagged you.

1. I've suddenly noticed that I don't eat food requiring forks very often. I eat hand foods or use chopsticks (often for things that aren't necessarily chopstick appropriate). The reason I noticed this is that when I do eat something that requires a fork, and it's a heavy utensil, it actually startles me in terms of how it feels in my hand.

2. I have to read the Wall Street Journal every day because of my desk job. Including the editorials. The editorials make me want to punch people. What blows me away the most is how often they are utterly devoid of a common sense understanding of macroeconomics. I assume that lots of readers take their crazy as truth because it's the WSJ. You all should read Barron's instead. They're snarky and sort of liberal and actually get how the economy works.

3. When I was in second grade I started The Club for Drawing Cats during recess. Everything I needed to know about how to lose friends and fuck-up leadership I learned with crayons. I'm a shitty artist too. More on this later.

4. Sometimes I feel a lot of shame about my love of and interest in in war stories, because I don't feel entitled. I feel like my narrative proclivities offend the fuck out of my pacifist friends and my veteran friends, and the fact that I take it seriously as a creator and a consumer of media somehow only makes it worse in my brain.

5. My family has a way of keeping trivial secrets that feel like a big deal. As such, I didn't find out that my father was married once before my mom until I was 19 and my birthday is either October 4 or October 1. Also, do you think someone could have told me the family cancer history at some point before I had to start getting mammograms myself? Seriously.

6. Lately, I feel like I'm living a rock star life with absolutely none of the perks. "If it's Tuesday... wait, I have no idea what state I'm in and are we sure it's Tuesday?" sums it up.

7. I have two failed vacations in my past, in that I was halfway through plans and never got there. One was to Morocco. The other was to Space Camp. I think Space Camp would break my heart now, because it wouldn't be _enough_. Still want to get to Morocco, doesn't seem important like it once did now though.

8. Every time I had my heart broken in my twenties I thought about moving to Chicago or Colorado.

9. I still really, really, secretly believe that there's magic of the most unreasonable sort out there waiting for me. I couldn't be this ridiculous if I didn't. But really. It sounds like a throwaway sentence. It's not.

10. Similarly. I do not talk about my experience of character and writing because I don't ever want to be mistaken for the crazy, eventhough I can't always tell you what makes me different from the crazy other than a bit of discretion, a lot of elegance and a fine-toothed comb.

No tagging. Drives people nuts.

Comments

[maryling.livejournal.com]

My family has a way of keeping trivial secrets that feel like a big deal.

Yeah, telling me that my father and his mother are both bipolar would have been nice if it had come earlier than three (four?) years into my experiencing such. (Note: month long depressions are not normal teenage angst.)

*sympathy*

[fleur.livejournal.com]

I want to hear more about The Club for Drawing Cats.

[franny-glass.livejournal.com]

lol, my thoughts exactly.

[schpahky.livejournal.com]

thirded

[stardragonca.livejournal.com]

Forthed.
I suspect it was live the Rod Serling Impersonators club we had in University. Anyone an learn to draw a cat/ do a Rod Serling impression. But we're a club!

[darthhellokitty.livejournal.com]

I want to JOIN the Club for Drawing Cats.

[delicatetbone.livejournal.com]

did you ever move after a broken-heart?

[rm.livejournal.com]

Nope.

[dabhug.livejournal.com]

I would love for you to delve deeper into #4. I also love war stories, war movies, etc., but I don't understand your shame. Please elaborate. If you feel like it.

So with you there on #5. I didn't find out about my geneticism or anything at all about my father until after I was diagnosed with kidney disease and I'm still wondering what else is staring at me though the barrel.

[alabastard.livejournal.com]

I can't always tell you what makes me different from the crazy other than a bit of discretion, a lot of elegance and a fine-toothed comb.

That can be said for a lot of us, and I'd have it no other way.

My family was extreme in secret keeping, even things about myself I didn't find until too late.

[askeladden.livejournal.com]

Colorado? Bleh. I'd be interested in hearing your thoughts on Montana, though. I have a feeling if you went there it would say something to you, though I'm not sure what.

reposting to fix tags

[weirdquark]

4. Sometimes I feel a lot of shame about my love of and interest in in war stories, because I don't feel entitled. I feel like my narrative proclivities offend the fuck out of my pacifist friends and my veteran friends, and the fact that I take it seriously as a creator and a consumer of media somehow only makes it worse in my brain.

If you're not familiar with Gundam, I feel I must pimp recommend watching Gundam Seed and Gundam Seed Destiny. Gundam likes presenting complicated philosophies about war and why people fight. There are many other Gundam series -- Seed is one of the more recent ones. (I've only seen the first two episodes of the most recent one, so I can't fan push that one yet.) And if Patty pays attention to voice actors, I should mention that three of the four Saiyuki boys are in it.

[nex0s.livejournal.com]

Oh, I SO identify with #9 & #10. Yes.

#10 isn't about character writing, but I don't talk about how I experience the world, because, um.... yeah. Most folk when I have? Either crazy or something else, and either way it's really uncomfortable.

N.

[rm.livejournal.com]

Yeah. See, and it is, an experience of the world. I happen to write it down, because of that process, it's all I have that's _tangible_.

[nex0s.livejournal.com]

I used to make art about it, that was engineered to try and trigger the same experience in other people. Sometimes it worked. My landscape work is partially to do that as well, but because I work for other people right now, there's a lot that gets lost in the collaborative process. Secretly though, that's what's happening when I design a place - a machine for triggering a specific kind of experience.

Like words. Less portable though! :)

N.

[used_songs]

#5 is like the story of my life. Everything is a huge secret in my family; my sister and I are always comparing notes on what we've found out either through snooping or else through someone inadvertantly letting something slip.

Of ncourse, some of it is pretty amazing stuff. For instance, I discovered a photo album once that had pictures of one of my great aunts dressed in men's clothing with her arms around women. That was pretty cool.

[dskasak.livejournal.com]

My contribution to #7 is two-fold. The first happened in 1979, during the one school year I lived with my aunt and uncle and two cousins in Minneapolis. We all piled into my uncle's yellow VW bus to spend a weekend in Duluth, but due to some convention, all the hotels were booked. We immediately turned around and headed back. The second vacation-that-never-was happened in the summer of 1993, when I was visiting my grandparents at their temporary home in Spokane; we were either going to head up to the Canadian Rockies or to Seattle & Vancouver. I chose mountains, being from Chicago. I still would like to visit Duluth, along with Seattle & Vancouver as that could have been my current location had I taken a different grad school path.

[laurel]

I was in high school IIRC when I learned my Mom had been married before she married my Dad. It was mentioned in passing or something and I was stunned. My Mom insisted she'd told me some time ago and I insisted I would've remembered that! Was very odd. Definitely one of the bigger WTF moments in my life.

[nex0s.livejournal.com]

When would you recommend that a kid hear about an early marriage that had no children? I just got married for the second time, no kids from the first marriage so.... a lot of people I know are freaked out by this when they find out about their parents previous marriages. They feel like secret was kept from them. So. When? How?

I'm planning on having kids with my husband, so it's of interest to me.

N.

[rm.livejournal.com]

For me, the objection was that both my parents actively said that it was a first marriage for both of them line. I was freaked because of the overt (and subsequent sloppy backpedaling.

(also, I was told in an argument. I had pissed my father off and he said "you're just like my first wife.")

As an only child, no one exists to corroborate my childhood as I experienced it, as siblings can do for each other. The amount of manipulation and self-doubt this leaves me open to because my parents are erratic and unreliable makes essentially trivial things like this very disturbing.

[nex0s.livejournal.com]

I don't think it's actually a trivial thing. Most people I know who made this exact discovery, were really freaked out by it!

Being that I have been married once before, I'm not sure how to bring it up. I mean, it's not like my first husband has an effect on my life - no kids, we don't keep in touch, so it's not like it will be casually known. :/

That's a crappy thing for your Dad to have said. :(

N.

[stardragonca.livejournal.com]

Having siblings doesn't help as much as you might think...
DOH!-now I have to comment further.

[marzipan-pig.livejournal.com]

You might be surprised by how little corroboration a sibling (even one similar in age) can provide.

[feyandstrange.livejournal.com]

I read The Economist weekly (and not just for the snark), but Barron's is a distinct possibility to add. Do you happen to know if BusinessWeek sucks?

The difference from the crazy is how functional you are. High-functional crazy holds jobs, sells books and fakes sanity for fancy occasions, even if it's wearing a mask to do so.

I often threatened to move to Alaska when things went wrong. It was far enough away and had more men than women, and I'd never lived in a place like that. But really, I would have gone to London or Paris or New York. I'm a city girl at heart.

Morocco is beautiful. I'm glad I got to see as much of it as I did when I was a girl, and I'd love to go back someday.

[rm.livejournal.com]

BusinessWeek SUCKS. Not smart, not in depth, not interesting writing. Some practical retirement fund advice, but eh.

[feyandstrange.livejournal.com]

Saves me from having to check it out. I was looking for a cheaper option than Barron's (since the Economist and New Scientist have eaten the magazine budget) but not a stupider one. Thanks!

[stardragonca.livejournal.com]

1-Pass the nah.8D
2-Is the desk job the one where there have been difficulties arising with matters overseas?
3-So must hear about this sometime!
4-I could have written that paragraph complete, if I wrote as well as you.
5-My family does the more passive aggressive forms of this: they just *forget* to mention things. I was 15 or sixteen before I learned my older sister was the daughter of my mother's first husband-an Irish pilot in the RAF, who died after the war when his plane went down. Whom I had never heard of before.
And it was only a couple of years ago that I found out that I'd had plastic surgery on my ears when I was an infant.
This is completely different from thinking my mother's paternal grandmother (Australian side of the family) was a Kelly, when in fact it was O'Kiefe. "Did I say Kelly? I meant O'Kiefe." My mother often calls me Susy, so that a completely different problem.
This is also different from her being unable to recall her children's ages or years of birth.
9-I believe this of both of us. Destiny picks on the gullible.
10-We don't talk about that. And all I have is the comb.

[darthhellokitty.livejournal.com]

In the vague vicinity of 5: I have no memory before age 12 - I told my mother a couple of years ago, and she said she didn't either, and it was because being a kid was very boring. I think the whole lot of us came out of an egg.

[deslea.livejournal.com]

No tagging. Drives people nuts.

*blushes* It's only because I like seeing you post, honest!

Also, I so would have been in the Club for Drawing Cats with you.

[rm.livejournal.com]

Hahah, oh I wasn't annoyed. But I always manage to tag the cranky! Also it's good for me to be forced to write things that aren't about fandom.

[sociallyawkrd.livejournal.com]

I so want to be in the Club for Drawing Cats.