sheep sheep

And I still need to do the 20 random facts I was tagged for, but it's hard coming up with crap I haven't told you all already.

1. australia:
   Gee, haven't you all heard about that to death? I miss it every day and spend a decent amount of my fantasy time thinking about taking my girlfriend there.
2. classical literature:
   I'd forgotten I had this as an interest. I'm not even sure what I was thinking of at the time. I am a recovering Classics nerd though, so there you go.
3. distopias:
   With all this living in a disaster movie shit lately, I may need to rethink this, but it's something that really drives and interests me creatively and it's a lens through which I view everything. In a way Moulin Rouge, Gattaca and Velvet Goldmine are all distopias, although only one fits the sci-fi assumption of the word. My reading habits are even more canted this way.
4. grace:
   I mean a lot of things here. I mean movement, I mean politics and I mean spiritual serendipty, for lack of a better thing. I think those are all things we sort of channel or harness from the same place though, which may be a little creepy, I'm not sure.
5. marketing:
   My father works in advertising. I love advertising. I love my childhood spent loitering at my father's agencies, I love the chills I get when I see a good ad, I love seeing the infamous Apple 1984 moment as it happened. Most of the time marketing stunts the world, but sometimes it changes and reinvents it. I also think it's one of the most important skills any person could have. And, oh yeah, I used to do it professionally.
6. new york:
   Hi, I live here. I love it's 19th Century personality, but more and more I'm pissed at it for not being comfortable with its potentials.
7. pilgrimage:
   Ah, this is in a way the theme of the essay I am working on. It's a thing very in my nature, and probably comes from being surrounded by the religious manias of my family as a child. But sometimes there are places I need to go, things I need to see, stone I need to touch. And these are religious journeys for me, but not in a sense most would consider appropriate, and perhaps more importantly not always for the reasons that seem obvious. Australia being an excellent case in point.
8. sewing:
   Man I wish I were a better sewer. Currently i'm working on my dress fo rthe Assembly and helping Kali with her's -- I'm not sure how much of it I'll actually wind up doing, and will probably be based on time (because I know she wants to do hers, but at the end of the day, I might be the one with more time). I wish I could tailor though. And truly design. This is something I'll always be an amateur at, but I revere those who stick people with pins for a living -- although I'm keener on costumers than designers as a rule -- the fashion industry grosses me out.
9. theater:
   Hi, um, it's like this thing I do.
10. work:
    That should have a capital-W.
    Work is the prayer. Even if it's the thing you do to just get your rent paid, if you can get it to have a capital W in your head at least sometimes, do something else.
    And when people ask you to talk about yourself, don't fucking spit out your name and your lowercase work. You're not your job. If you're lucky, maybe you get to define or refine what it is you do. You know?

Enter your LJ user name, and 10 interests will be selected from your interest list.

(no subject)

Decensus is on teh move again. There will be a new chapter up by the end of the weekend.

And we are soooooooooooo relieved. This one kicked our asses.

more sheep sheep

20 random facts about me:

1. I have two different high school diplomas, as I spent my last high school semester doing a program through another school but was still enrolled at my school. I suppose I should add the second of those schools to the already ridiculous list in my profile.

2. I got in huge trouble once as a kid when my dad busted me taking communion at a mass my kiddy acting group had performed at. My father is Catholic, but I'm not. MOstly he was upset because it would make my mother (who is Jewish) cry.

3. When I was in third grade I told everyone my middle name was Aurora. Worse, I put A as my middle initial on the bubble sheet for the ERB and caused all sorts of chaos. I don't have a middle name.

4. My mom was my Brownies troop leader once when I was a kid. This was bad. We did Peter Pan as a play and I was merely one of the Lost Boys, my mother said it wouldn't be fair if I got a good part, but I suspect she either had no faith in me or was worried she'd be bullied by the other moms. She only did the job for a year.

5. Of the many stupid acting gigs I have had, my favourite was when I had to writhe around in a pit of calculator tape while dressed as a Tax Nerd. It was for Yahoo! Taxes and we were in Tax Hell. It went on for hours and among othe rhtings we obsessively sharpened pencils, screamed for mercy and beat each other with large calculators. I am so cool.

6. Robert Redford once hit on my mom.

7. I have recurring nightmares about tornados. While I was in one terrible storm once (while camping!) where we saw lots of funnels descend from the main storm cloud, none of them touched down. I have no idea what this is about.

8. I was a teen pageant contestant.

9. Pat Buchanan uses a crappy essay I wrote when I was 20 about the Vietnam Wall on various websites -- without my permission. The battle is ongoing.

10. Veal piccata is my favourite food. Yes, I know I'm going to hell. Little moo!

11. When I was a pre-teen I used to write to celebrities and asked for autographed pictures. Successful acquisitions I recall: Marc Singer (I know, so embarassing, my my best friend and I were obsessed with V) and Sam Neil (who is an utter mensch).

12. I saw all sorts on legends on Broadway as a kid, including: Richard Harris, Jerry Orbach and Peter O'Toole.

13. My Orson Welles obsession comes directly from my mother. She used to read me biographies of him when I was a child. Or rather, excerpts about insane precocious things he did as a child.

14. I am most often told, including by my own family, that I look like dead, ugly famous people. This includes Oscar Wilde and Frida Khalo.

15. I do not have a cold; I have a deviated septum and chronically (and permanently) inflamed sinuses.

16. Sad but true, the first fanfiction I ever wrote was Star Trek (TNG). Let's not talk about it, okay? Ever. Thanks.

17. I went to Stuyvesant because I had a 107 average in Chemistry at Hewitt and thought that's what I wanted to do for a living. Ask my mom. This is not revisionist, post-HP personal history.

18. My parents have this unspeakably hideous single line self-portrait I had to do for art class in 7th grade on their wall.

19. When I was a kid, the pipes in our heaters broke and flooded our apartment with a foot of boiling water. It destroyed all of my mothers water colors, and seveal days later the cabinate that we also used a coffee table in which they were kept had to be hacked open with an axe because the water had made the wood swell. I hid in my parents bedroom and put my hands over my ears and cried, because I anthropomorphized everything and they were _killing_ it.

20. The song My Only Sunshine makes me horribly depressed and uncomfortable for reasons unknown, and I do everything I can to avoid it at all costs.