I started to post about something else entirely but life gets in the way and I will have to save it for later. However, I want to get back to the discipline of posting regularly so here's a little bit of this and that to fulfill that impulse.

1) The Gay Rights Meme: Like Ari, I tend to resent the memes that tell you if you don't perpetuate the meme you're to be judged X, but I will state outright that I'm all in favor of securing equal rights for all people. Equal treatment for men and women, equal treatment for gays and straights (and the permutations in between), equal treatment regardless of race, equality in religion, access to basic human necessities for life like food, water, shelter, health care. I'm in!

2) Origins Awards Nominations are out (at least I received some sort of official GAMA-generated e-mail about it...in typical GAMA form (sad to say) their Origins Nominees page is as yet not updated). Three products from Green Ronin's catalog have moved on to the next round: Hobby Games: the 100 Best, our systemless setting book The Pirate's Guide to Freeport, and the Green Ronin-published edition of Firefly Games' excellent roleplaying work Faery's Tale Deluxe. On to the final round!


3)The Books Meme. I was going to skip this but I thought you all might be somewhat amused to see exactly how many books I've started and failed to finish. I'm terrible about that. Bold for the ones I've finished, italics for the ones I've started but at some point gave up on (usually more than 1/3 but less than 2/3 through...if I didn't make it at least 1/3 of the way in, I've left it marked unread). Laugh it up!

The Aeneid
The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay
American Gods
Anansi Boys
Angela’s Ashes : a memoir
Angels & Demons
Anna Karenina
Atlas Shrugged
Beloved
The Blind Assassin
Brave New World
The Brothers Karamazov
The Canterbury Tales
The Catcher in the Rye
Catch-22
A Clockwork Orange
Cloud Atlas
Collapse : how societies choose to fail or succeed
A Confederacy of Dunces
The Confusion
The Corrections
The Count of Monte Cristo
Crime and Punishment
Cryptonomicon
The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time
David Copperfield
Don Quixote
Dracula
Dubliners
Dune
Eats, Shoots & Leaves
Emma
Foucault’s Pendulum
The Fountainhead
Frankenstein
Freakonomics : a rogue economist explores the hidden side of everything
The God of Small Things
The Grapes of Wrath
Gravity’s Rainbow
Great Expectations
Gulliver’s Travels
Guns, Germs, and Steel: the fates of human societies
A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius
The Historian : a novel
The Hobbit
The Hunchback of Notre Dame
The Iliad
In Cold Blood : a true account of a multiple murder and its consequences
The Inferno (and Purgatory and Paradise)
Jane Eyre
Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell
The Kite Runner
Les Misérables
Life of Pi : a novel
Lolita
Love in the Time of Cholera
Madame Bovary
Mansfield Park
Memoirs of a Geisha
Middlemarch
Middlesex
Mrs. Dalloway
The Mists of Avalon
Moby Dick
The Name of the Rose
Neverwhere
1984
Northanger Abbey
The Odyssey
Oliver Twist
The Once and Future King
One Hundred Years of Solitude
On the Road
One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest
Oryx and Crake : a novel
A People’s History of the United States : 1492-present
Persuasion
The Picture of Dorian Gray
The Poisonwood Bible : a novel
A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man
Pride and Prejudice
The Prince
Quicksilver
Reading Lolita in Tehran : a memoir in books
The Satanic Verses
The Scarlet Letter
Sense and Sensibility
A Short History of Nearly Everything
The Silmarillion
Slaughterhouse-five
The Sound and the Fury
A Tale of Two Cities
Tess of the D’Urbervilles
The Time Traveler’s Wife
To the Lighthouse
Treasure Island
The Three Musketeers
Ulysses
The Unbearable Lightness of Being
Vanity Fair
War and Peace
Watership Down
White Teeth
Wicked : the life and times of the wicked witch of the West
Wuthering Heights
Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance : an inquiry into values

Labels: meme

Good news: I wasn't 15 minutes late for my appointment after all!

Bad news: I was 23 hours and 45 minutes early.

It's going to be that kind of day.

In that vein, I default to the Pooh Personality Test for content.

Link: The Deep and Meaningful Winnie-The-Pooh Character Test written by wolfcaroling on OkCupid Free Online Dating, home of the The Dating Persona Test View My Profile(wolfcaroling)

Labels: meme

64 words

Learn Touch Typing

Labels: meme

After a week of heavy socializing, staying overnight with friends twice, multiple heavy (and wonderful) meals, I'm home again (this time full of deep dish pizza and ice cream) and I can barely keep myself upright. Whew. Almost glad to be going back to work tomorrow. Almost.

Meanwhile, I'm jumping on the privileges meme.

From What Privileges Do You Have?, based on an exercise about class and privilege developed by Will Barratt, Meagan Cahill, Angie Carlen, Minnette Huck, Drew Lurker, Stacy Ploskonka at Illinois State University. If you participate in this blog game, they ask that you PLEASE acknowledge their copyright.

1. Father went to college
2. Father finished college
3. Mother went to college
4. Mother finished college
5. Have any relative who is an attorney, physician, or professor (my brother is in med school now)
6. Were the same or higher class than your high school teachers.
7. Had more than 50 books in your childhood home.
8. Had more than 500 books in your childhood home.
9. Were read children's books by a parent
10. Had lessons of any kind before you turned 18 (ice skating lessons)
11. Had more than two kinds of lessons before you turned 18
12. The people in the media who dress and talk like me are portrayed positively
13. Had a credit card with your name on it before you turned 18
14. Your parents (or a trust) paid for the majority of your college costs
15. Your parents (or a trust) paid for all of your college costs
16. Went to a private high school
17. Went to summer camp (band camp, once)
18. Had a private tutor before you turned 18
19. Family vacations involved staying at hotels
20. Your clothing was all bought new before you turned 18
21. Your parents bought you a car that was not a hand-me-down from them (my dad bought me a used car for $750 when I got my license)
22. There was original art in your house when you were a child
23. You and your family lived in a single-family house (I lived in more than a dozen houses, some of them single-family rentals)
24. Your parent(s) owned their own house or apartment before you left home (owned, lost, owned again)
25. You had your own room as a child (I shared a room with my brother until I was 11)
26. You had a phone in your room before you turned 18
27. Participated in a SAT/ACT prep course
28. Had your own TV in your room in high school
29. Owned a mutual fund or IRA in high school or college
30. Flew anywhere on a commercial airline before you turned 16
31. Went on a cruise with your family
32. Went on more than one cruise with your family
33. Your parents took you to museums and art galleries as you grew up
34. You were unaware of how much heating bills were for your family


Despite not scoring as particularly privileged on this, and despite being well aware that we lacked a lot of luxuries, I did also grow up with some awareness that there were people who were worse off than we were. I never went hungry. My parents were smart, praised education, and had high expectations for me. My daughter lives a much more privileged life than I did but it's most important to me that she understand how privileged we are compared to so much of the world even if we're not so much when compared to our immediate neighbors.

Labels: meme

I was resisting this one but Patrick wore me down. When my band name was Found a Peanut I had to see it through.

Go to the Wikipedia home page and click random article. That is your band's name.
Click random article again; that is your album name.
Click random article 15 more times; those are the tracks on your album.

Found a Peanut have released a new album of original material and cover songs. For the first time anywhere, we're proud to present the track listing for National Salvation Junta:

1. Socratici viri
2. Higashimatsuura District, Saga
3. Tokaj-Hegyalja
4. If This World Were Mine
5. Taqueria
6. Château de Choisy
7. Blake Woodruff
8. Push Switch
9. Rainmaker
10. Earl Marriott Secondary School
11. Thank U
12. Nevus of Ota
13. Bose-Hubbard Model
14. Dukes of Swedish Provinces
15. RIFE

Found a Peanut brings the world-aware folk stylings of Billy Bragg through the funk-elctro-world beats of Velalla Velalla and wraps it all in a crunchy peace-punk shell, with sprinklings of Crass and Propaghandi. Dig it.

Labels: meme

Labels: Kate, meme

Haven't done one of these in a while, so...

Link: The Greek Mythology Personality Test written by Aleph_Nine on OkCupid, home of the The Dating Persona Test

Labels: meme

I've taken these accent tests before and gotten some wacky results. This one nailed it; at least, it nailed my birthplace (and where I learned to talk). I don't think I sound particularly like I'm out of the movie Fargo or anything, especially when compared to my step-mom who totally does but I did find that I blended in pretty well when I moved to Canada. The only time I was caught out as an American by the way I spoke was when I said "roof" (which my Canadian friends all tend to draw out "oooo" while I say it closer to "ruhf").

Nice work, test makers!

Labels: meme

Your Brain is Purple

Of all the brain types, yours is the most idealistic. You tend to think wild, amazing thoughts. Your dreams and fantasies are intense. Your thoughts are creative, inventive, and without boundaries. You tend to spend a lot of time thinking of fictional people and places - or a very different life for yourself.

Labels: meme

My ruthless friend JD tagged me for the six word story meme.

My official contribution: He died still wondering, "What if...".

Bonus triplet:

Writing, she laid her soul bare.

Never pithy enough she gave up.

Six word story? Too much trouble!

Labels: meme, writing