So *that's* why so few girls are willing to stand under me.

Ten facts about Heu Mihi.

1. On average, women blink nearly twice as much as heu mihi.
2. Heu mihi can drink over 25 gallons of water at a time.
3. During World War II, Americans tried to train heu mihi to drop bombs.
4. Heu mihi is the smallest of Jupiter's many moons.
5. Heu mihi will always turn right when leaving a cave.
6. By tradition, a girl standing under heu mihi cannot refuse to be kissed by anyone who claims the privilege.
7. The pharoahs of ancient Egypt wore garments made with thin threads of beaten heu mihi.
8. It is bad luck to light three cigarettes with the same heu mihi.
9. Heu mihi has often been found swimming miles from shore in the Indian Ocean.
10. If the Sun were the size of a beach ball then Jupiter would be the size of a golf ball and heu mihi would be as small as a pea.

Perhaps the best meme ever. I found it chez squadratomagico; you may generate one for yourself right here.

And now, I'm off to the Indian Ocean, where I go to avoid the ancient Egyptian weavers.

Memeage

I should be prepping, but I vastly prefer checking off lists that make me look good. Thus, I bring you the BBC Book Meme, as seen at Dr. Crazy's.

BBC Book List

Apparently the BBC reckons most people will have only read 6 of the 100 books here.
Instructions:
1) Look at the list and put an ‘x’ after those you have read.
2) Add a ‘+’ to the ones you LOVE.
3) Star (*) those you plan on reading.

1 Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen X+
2 The Lord of the Rings – J.R.R. Tolkein - X
3 Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte X+
4 Harry Potter series - JK Rowling X
5 To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee X
6 The Bible – Parts, of course, but admittedly little
7 Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte X
8 Nineteen Eighty Four - George Orwell X
9 His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman X
10 Great Expectations - Charles Dickens
11 Little Women - Louisa M Alcott X
12 Tess of the D’Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy
13 Catch 22 - Joseph Heller X
14 Complete Works of Shakespeare – Sufficient but not complete
15 Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier
16 The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien X
17 Birdsong - Sebastian Faulks I haven't heard of this one, actually
18 Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger - X
19 The Time Traveller’s Wife - Audrey Niffenegger X+
20 Middlemarch - George Eliot – X+++!
21 Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchell - seen the movie, though!
22 The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald – X
23 Bleak House - Charles Dickens - X
24 War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy – abridged! accidentally—I really thought it was complete....
25 The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams - X
26 Brideshead Revisited - Evelyn Waugh
27 Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky - X
28 Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck - X
29 Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll
30 The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame - X
31 Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy X
32 David Copperfield - Charles Dickens
33 Chronicles of Narnia - CS Lewis - X
34 Emma - Jane Austen - X
35 Persuasion - Jane Austen - X
36 The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe - CS Lewis X (Isn't this part of the Chronicles of Narnia?)
37 The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini
38 Captain Corelli’s Mandolin - Louis De Berniere - X
39 Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden
40 Winnie the Pooh - AA Milne - X
41 Animal Farm - George Orwell - X
42 The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown
43 One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez - X
44 A Prayer for Owen Meaney - John Irving - X
45 The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins
46 Anne of Green Gables - LM Montgomery - X+ (I read the first 3 volumes every couple of years—just got through them again this fall, in fact)
47 Far From The Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy
48 The Handmaid’s Tale - Margaret Atwood - * (I even have it on loan)
49 Lord of the Flies - William Golding - X
50 Atonement - Ian McEwan
51 Life of Pi - Yann Martel - X
52 Dune - Frank Herbert - X
53 Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons
54 Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen - X
55 A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth
56 The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon
57 A Tale Of Two Cities - Charles Dickens - X
58 Brave New World - Aldous Huxley
59 The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time - Mark Haddon - X
60 Love In The Time Of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez - X
61 Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck
62 Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov X+
63 The Secret History - Donna Tartt
64 The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold
65 Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas
66 On The Road - Jack Kerouac - X
67 Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy X+
68 Bridget Jones’s Diary - Helen Fielding
69 Midnight’s Children - Salman Rushdie - X+
70 Moby Dick - Herman Melville – X (maybe +)
71 Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens
72 Dracula - Bram Stoker - X
73 The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett - X
74 Notes From A Small Island - Bill Bryson
75 Ulysses - James Joyce X (all but the last 60 pages...twice)
76 The Bell Jar - Sylvia Plath - X
77 Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ransome
78 Germinal - Emile Zola - X
79 Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackeray
80 Possession - AS Byatt X+++ (one of my very favorites)
81 A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens
82 Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell
83 The Color Purple - Alice Walker
84 The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro - X
85 Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert - X
86 A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry
87 Charlotte’s Web - EB White
88 The Five People You Meet In Heaven - Mitch Albom (not gonna happen)
89 Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
90 The Faraway Tree Collection - Enid Blyton
91 Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad - X
92 The Little Prince - Antoine De Saint-Exupery - X
93 The Wasp Factory - Iain Banks
94 Watership Down - Richard Adams
95 A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole - X
96 A Town Like Alice - Nevil Shute
97 The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas
98 Hamlet - William Shakespeare – X (wouldn't this be included in the Complete Shakespeare? I'm confused by this list)
99 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl - X
100 Les Miserables - Victor Hugo - * (I started it once, in French, but didn't get very far)

Total: 56 read (if I count Ulysses but not the complete Shakespeare, the Bible, or the accidentally abridged War and Peace. I think that's fair). Two that I want/plan to read.

This is kind of a weird list, methinks, but perhaps I'm just out of touch.

One Word Meme

From Belle, because I have been such a lame blogger of late. Memes are my punishment, I guess.

The rules are simple. Copy the list, changing only the word that answers the question. One word only.

1. Your cell phone? why?
2. Your significant other? cooks!
3. Your hair? there
4. Your mother? artist
5. Your father? sailing
6. Your favorite? Gawain
7. Your dream last night? forgotten
8. Your favorite drink? scotch
9. Your dream/goal? novelist
10. What room you are in? living
11. Your hobby? yoga
12. Your fear? disappointment
13. Where do you want to be in 6 years? Languedoc
14. Where were you last night? fondue
15. Something that you aren't? Icelandic
16. Muffins? sometimes
17. Wish list item? pajamas
18. Where you grew up? suburbs
19. Last thing you did? grade
20. What are you wearing? bathrobe
21. Your TV? unwatched*
22. Your pets? boyfriend's
23. Friends? elsewhere
24. Your life? changeable
25. Your mood? satisfied
26. Missing someone? often
27. Car? dirty
28. Something you're not wearing? make-up
29. Your favorite store? thrift
30. Your favorite color? green
33. When is the last time you laughed? today
34. Last time you cried? Saturday**
35. Who will resend this? inapplicable
36. One place that I go to over and over? Mom's

*And, now, unwatchable! Hooray! Or something. Really, it's a non-issue; I have watched actual TV-TV at my house for like 40 minutes since...since July of 07, I think. (We are ignoring the TV that gets watched when I visit my mom.)

*Just a little. My sore throat seemed worse when I woke up, and I was frustrated. All better now, however! --Though I'm still pretty raspy-voiced. Let's call it "sexy."

This was actually more interesting to do than I thought it would be, because I had to curb my impulse to explain. So now, sabotaging that very curbing, I can explain! It was hard to pick a "dream/goal"; for a long time "novelist" was my goal, but I'm no longer at all sure that that's what I really want to do--I enjoy writing, but it's so easy for it to become a panic-inducing, tiresome, compulsory task that I'm not sure I'd want to do it full-time. In fact, I don't think that I do want it to become full-time (not that it will), which makes me feel a lot better about the fact that it won't and that I put so little effort into publishing my fiction. (Or writing it, for that matter.) I like the structure of academia. I like interacting with people (in limited doses). I like running things.

As for "pajamas," that really was the one thing that I could think of that I want right now and am not buying. (I have pajamas; I could just use some new ones.) I'm not buying them because, while the old ones are getting none too pretty, they're still functional, and I don't really see the point of replacing functional things. It's not like they get seen in public or anything. And in general? I've just been really non-acquisitive lately. That's an advantage of living out here, I guess, especially without TV: I am exposed to no advertising, other than on the internet. There aren't even any viable stores around here. So the desire to buy stuff starts to fade.

As for "favorite": I'm teaching an Arthurian Lit course, and Gawain is kinda my fave knight. One of my students loves Kay, though, and I'm totally down with that.

Belleville Rendez-Vous

I don't usually do memes anymore, for whatever reason (partly because I have a residual objection to this use of the word "meme"), but because I am evidently a blogging machine today and this one yielded some amusingly surreal answers, I will post it. I will not, however, tag anyone.

Picked it up at Anastasia's.

Put your iTunes or MP3 player on shuffle.

~For each question, press the next button to get your answer
~YOU MUST WRITE THAT SONG NAME DOWN NO MATTER HOW SILLY IT SOUNDS!
~Tag 10 friends who might enjoy doing the game as well as the person you got the note from. (Or don't, because who cares.)

IF SOMEONE SAYS "IS THIS OKAY" YOU SAY?
Ballet for a Rainy Day (XTC) (I don't even know this song, but it rhymes really well!)

WHAT WOULD BEST DESCRIBE YOUR PERSONALITY?
The Rose Tattoo (David Byrne)

WHAT DO YOU LIKE IN A GUY/GIRL?
A Ballad (Kate Rusby)

WHAT IS YOUR LIFE'S PURPOSE?
Djaa (Mamady Keita)

WHAT IS YOUR MOTTO?
A Night Like This (The Cure)

WHAT DO YOUR FRIENDS THINK OF YOU?
Candy Everybody Wants (10,000 Maniacs)

WHAT DO YOU THINK ABOUT VERY OFTEN?
I'm On Your Side (Carrie Newcomer) (yikes, super cheesy)

WHAT IS 2+2?
Your Birthday (Plymouth Rock)

WHAT DO YOU THINK OF YOUR BEST FRIEND?
Farewell to Nigg (Shooglenifty)

WHAT DO YOU THINK OF THE PERSON YOU LIKE?
Gouge Away (Pixies)

WHAT IS YOUR LIFE STORY?
Dear Prudence (Siouxsie & The Banshees)

WHAT DO YOU WANT TO BE WHEN YOU GROW UP?
Tout Va Bien (Cali)

WHAT DO YOU THINK WHEN YOU SEE THE PERSON YOU LIKE?
Pussycat Moan (Katie Webser)

WHAT DO YOUR PARENTS THINK OF YOU?
Twenty Bucks (The Brides of Funkenstein)

WHAT WILL YOU DANCE TO AT YOUR WEDDING?
Within You Without You (The Beatles) (Yeah, not likely)

WHAT WILL THEY PLAY AT YOUR FUNERAL?
Hesitating Beauty (Billy Bragg & Wilco)

WHAT IS YOUR HOBBY/INTEREST?
Land of Anaka (Geoffrey Oryema)

WHAT DO YOU THINK OF YOUR FRIENDS?
David (Nellie McKay)

WHAT'S THE WORST THING THAT COULD HAPPEN?
Lonestar (Norah Jones)

HOW WILL YOU DIE?
Third Eye (Black Eyed Peas)

WHAT IS THE ONE THING YOU REGRET?
Pablo Honey (Radiohead) (I don't particularly like Radiohead, actually. I know that this makes me hopelessly out of touch with my generation. Well! It is a badge that I shall endeavor to wear proudly)

WHAT MAKES YOU LAUGH?
Denko (Kante Manfila)

WHAT MAKES YOU CRY?
Fight (Art Brut)

WILL YOU EVER GET MARRIED?
? (Austin Mix) (Mystery song from my brother, actually labeled "?" on my iTunes--I was going to skip to the next one, but then this answer seemed pretty apt)

WHAT SCARES YOU THE MOST?
Good Day, Good Sir (Andre 3000)

IF YOU COULD GO BACK IN TIME, WHAT WOULD YOU CHANGE?
Boogie Man (Carrie Newcomer) (Yes! I hate this song! I would so make sure that it didn't get written. That would be my no. 1 priority)

WHAT HURTS RIGHT NOW?
Om Purnam (Rasa)

WHAT WILL YOU POST THIS AS?
Belleville Rendez-Vous (Ben Charest)

Accolades for Nothing at All

Sisyphus over at Academic Cog has deemed me worthy of this award-thing. How nice! What a lovely surprise on the morning that I was going to start planning my fall comp classes. It makes everything feel so...worthwhile.

But nothing comes without rules, right? So here are the rules of the award:

1. Put the logo on your blog.
2. Add a link to the person who awarded it to you.
3. Nominate at least 7 other blogs.
4. Add links to these blogs on your blog.
5. Leave a message for your nominee on their blog.

Thus it falls to me to nominate bloggers Medieval Woman, Notorious Ph.D., Squadratomagico, Maude Lebowski, Jennifer Lynn Jordan, What Now?, and Flavia. Hurrah!

Current Summer Music meme

Hilaire has tagged me for the music meme, and it seems appropriately summery and light-hearted. Here's the rules:

• List seven songs you are into right now.
• No matter what the genre, whether they have words, or even if they’re not any good, but they must be songs you’re really enjoying now, shaping your spring/summer.
• Post these instructions in your blog along with your seven songs.
• Then tag seven other people to see what they’re listening to.

So okay. My seven songs? Hm:

1. "Only Skin," Joanna Newsom. (This is just an amazing song and everyone should listen to it, closely, preferably with headphones. Yes, it's 16 minutes long. Just do it.)
2. "On the Radio," Regina Spektor.
   
3. "It's Hard to Be a Saint in the City," David Bowie.
4. "I Have Forgiven Jesus," Morrissey. (All right, so I always love this song.)
5. Track 10 of Monteverdi's Vespers of 1610. (It makes my heart hurt, it's so beautiful. And I don't know what the track is called.)
6. "Quelqu'un m'a dit," Carla Bruni.
7. "Elle m'a dit," Cali. (Two French songs about someone telling someone something. It seems like that should have some kind of significance?)
   

The sad thing is that I think I've been "into" all of these songs--except for 6 and 7--for about two years already. I probably ought to start thinking about exploring some of the other eight billion tracks on my ipod, oughtn't I?

I don't know whom to tag because I think that most of the people I know have been tagged. And for you others, I'm very shy about tagging. So, um, seven of you! Go do the meme! (Besides, seven is a lot of people to tag.)

"oh well that class"

Yeah, it's that thing that everyone's doing.

okay and i'm sure
this isn't original
but it's also

once in a day or
two off the cuff i have a
tendency to ask

hours to prep for a
t t job at this kind of
thing oh well that class

that i'm living here
maybe that's just an
inherent problem

they've published in
my head which i'd been doing
on and off for years

oof here we go what
am i doing teaching
4 classes and showing

Each one sort of takes on its own special significance, no?

Book Meme

Both Medieval Woman and Belle tagged me for the meme in which one lists five of the best books that one read in 2007. Luckily, 2007 was a year in which I reread several favorite novels, and I'm happy to promote them. So (in no particular order), here goes.

1. The Day on Fire, by James Ramsey Ullman. I know that I've mentioned this book at least once on this blog, but it's truly great, and I reread it with pleasure last winter. A fictionalized biography of Arthur Rimbaud, Ullman's novel is an engrossing account of the poet's wanderings (mostly on foot) through France, Italy, and North Africa; his time in Java; and his relationship with Verlaine. Of course, it's fiction, and Ullman fills in the blanks in creative ways, but it's really well written and just an absorbing book. Out of print, unfortunately, but readily available online.

2. Ada, or Ardor, by Nabokov. I reread this when I was in Europe last spring. I originally read it in about 1997, when I was a fresh young thing just finishing college, and I loved it--but I don't honestly think that I understood it all. Didn't think that I understood it, in fact. I confess that I picked it up again with a hint of trepidation: I barely remembered the novel, and I was afraid that it was going to be a lot of Nabokovian smoke and mirrors (although I've yet to meet the VN novel I didn't at least like). But no, it was terrific, and I loved it, and I highly recommend it. All kinds of weird musings on time and space, and it takes a really long time to figure out what world the novel is even set in, if that makes sense. And it's just incredibly satisfying to grasp it all, in the end.

3. Pride and Prejudice. I read this over the last week or two because I'm going to be teaching it next semester, and you know, I just think that Jane Austen is fun. I didn't used to like her much, but as I grow older I find myself appreciating her more and more.

4. The Time-Traveler's Wife, by Audrey Niffenegger. Two people gave me this book within the space of a couple of months. For a time-travel book, it's surprisingly satisfying. One thing that I particularly liked about it was the way in which the horror of time travel is evoked. Time travel always seems like such a neat idea--but I suspect that if spontaneous chronological displacement actually happened, it would be the way it's portrayed in this novel: suddenly finding yourself naked and afraid in an unknown place. Not too good.

5. The Road, by Cormac McCarthy. I first read McCarthy about 11 years ago, and I steered clear thereafter: Child of God freaked me out but good. Then, this fall, the student group of which I'm a sponsor decided to read the novel as a sort of book-club thing, so I read it, and it's pretty damn gripping. What I found most interesting about it was the way it made me think about the importance of human community and how, in the total absence of community, life itself would seem pretty close to meaningless. Definitely drives home the whole social-animal part of our makeup. Plus he's just a fantastic writer. I don't want to go see that new movie, though.

I'm not going to tag anyone in particular because I don't know whom to tag. But I'm interested in reading recommendations from everyone out there who reads this blog, so consider this a Blanket Tagging.

(By the way, the phone interview went fine. I think. As far as I could tell. Definitely better than the Interview of Doom, and I have a pretty good feeling about it. Of course, I've had pretty good feelings about interviews in the past, so I'm not putting too much stake in my subjective experience of the affair--but hey, at least I don't think I bombed.)

Meme, Glorious Meme

I have been tagged, not once, not twice--but thrice, yes, thrice for the Seven Things meme. It all started with Maude Lebowski, and then not a day later I was hit by squadratomagico, who was followed in short order by Kermit the Frog. So okay, people. I will do the meme. Enthusiastically!

First, the rules:

1. Link to the person that tagged you and post the rules on your blog.
2. Share 7 random and/or weird things about yourself.
3. Tag 7 random people at the end of your post and include links to their blogs.
4. Let each person know that they have been tagged by leaving a comment on their blog.

All righty. Here goes:

1. In 1998-99, I worked as an artist's model (of the naked variety). The odd thing about it was that my mother actually got me into it--pressured me, some might say--and booked me my first job. I was working full time at various other jobs during this period, but the modeling was a reasonably lucrative sideline; my most profitable month scored me about $400, which was close to my rent in those days (and in these days, come to think of it).

2. In high school I had that hair style which I've heard referred to as a "hessian"--you know, long on top but shaved in the back and sides, up to about the temples. The rest of it was usually colored with manic panic; "rose red," a kind of flaming magenta, was my favorite. Oh yes, I was one bad-ass honors student. All of my friends at this point were conservative girls who wore turtlenecks and loads of hairspray; I must have looked funny next to them, with my hair and my black eyeliner and the whole grunge ensemble (this was the early 90s: think flannel shirts, cut-offs, combat boots, the occasional fishnets). Or maybe the turtleneck-and-hairspray look was the funny one?

3. I didn't have any cavities until I was 23, and now I've had four. The fourth was filled this afternoon. Huzzah!

4. When I was about two years old, I thought that I would probably be a football player when I grew up. I already had a white bicycle helmet, so I was, I reasoned, halfway there. I imagined myself being carried out onto the field in someone's arms; evidently I was still at an age where I was carried most places. (This fantasy of mine is among my earliest memories. I have no idea why I thought I'd be a football player. My dad watched football back in those days, so I guess I just had the idea that this was something that grown-ups did?)

5. I intensely dislike having the blinds shut during the day. To me, it feels like not brushing your hair or staying in your pajamas--sloppy and squalid (although, funnily enough, I have no problem with staying in my pajamas, hair unbrushed, well into the middle of the day. So maybe that's not the best comparison. Well, I ain't changing it now, honeys).

6. Also when I was two years old, Jimmy Carter patted me on the head and said that I was a very cute little girl. This, I don't remember.

7. I didn't wear a bra for most of my college years. At times, I fervently wish that I could go back to those earlier ways, but I cannot. It is unimaginable to me to go out in public without a bra (unless I'm wearing some hugely bulky coat and just running to the grocery store or something). This saddens me, as I despise the accursed things, with their straps and their totally unnecessary (in my case) "support" and little poky lacy bits. Ugh. Ugh!

And that about does it, I think.

Oh right! The tagging. Since everyone seems to have been tagged at least once by now, and I'm highly self-conscious about tagging anyway (it seems like such an imposition), I shall do what all the other slackers are doing and let anyone who wants to be tagged consider him/herself such.

A challenging meme

This is incredibly hard. Not the logistics--because I'm just following what Squadratomagico, my tagger, did--but the questions. Lord. What is "classic fiction," anyway? Okay, here's my best shot (preceded by the rules):
----------------------------------------------
There is a set of questions below, all of which are in this format:

"The best [subgenre] [medium] in [genre] is . . . ."

Copy the questions, and before answering them, you may modify them in a limited way, carrying out no more than two of these operations:

*You can leave them exactly as is.

*You can delete any one question.

*You can mutate either the genre, medium, or subgenre of any one question. For instance, you could change"The best time travel novel in SF/Fantasy is . . . " to "The best time travel novel in Westerns is . . ." or "The best time travel movie in SF/Fantasy is . . ." or "The best romance novel in SF/Fantasy is . . . ."

In addition, you can add a completely new question of your choice to the end of the list, as long as it is still in the form "The best [subgenre] [medium] in [genre] is...."

*You must have at least one question in your set, or you've gone extinct, and you must be able to answer it yourself, or you're not viable.

Then answer your possibly mutant set of questions. Please do include a link back to the blog you got them from, to simplify tracing the ancestry, and include these instructions. Finally, pass it along to any number of your fellow bloggers. Remember, though, your success as a Darwinian replicator is going to be measured by the propagation of your variants, which is going to be a function of both the interest your well-honed questions generate and the number of successful attempts at reproducing them.

Here's my genealogy:

My great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great grandparent is Pharyngula.
My great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great grandparent is Metamagician and the Hellfire Club.
My great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great grandparent is Flying Trilobite.
My great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great grandparent is A Blog Around the Clock.
My great-great-great-great-great-great-great grandparent is Primate Diaries.
My great-great-great-great-great-great grandparent is Thus Spake Zuska.
My great-great-great-great-great grandparent is k8, a cat, a mission.
My great-great-great-great grandparent is Monkeygirl.
My great-great-great-grandparent is DancingFish.
My great-great-grandparent is Brazen Hussy.
My great-grandparent is Bad Ass Turtle.
My grandparent is Belle.
My parent is Squadratomagico.

Here are my mutated statements.

The best TV in SF/Fantasy is: Firefly, followed closely by Buffy. (Joss is, apparently, the man.)

The best classic hardboiled detective movie in film noir is: The Thin Man.

The best cult religion in classic fiction is: I delete this question! It is too hard.

The best high-fat food in Mexican cooking my house is: a carton of mint chocolate chip ice cream.

The best publication writing-related words I ever received from a scholar are: "Your dissertation was a pleasure to read."

The best everyday lie in academic life is: Good question--I'll cover that in our next class.

------------------------------------------
(I think you're only actually supposed to change up to 2 questions--the rule has become a little hazy. But since I can't answer any of the three questions I've changed without changing them, I'm just not going to follow that rule too closely. Oh, I guess I could leave the Mexican cooking question intact, but it's kind of boring.)
------------------------------------------
And I tag...if you're interested and haven't been tagged...Sisyphus! Dance! Belle! And Flavia!

Keep the line alive.... No pressure, though!

I need to post this before I forget!

Because Hilaire will be sending ME a present, I extend the memely offer to the generalized blog-o-sphere (forgive me; I've been grading). The deal is this:

If you'd like to receive a gift from me before the end of the calendar year, be one of the first five people to leave a comment, and ye shall receive! Just email with your RL address [heumihi at yahoo]. You just have to put out the same call on your own blog, and send out five gifts yourself.

I promise to send fabulous yet absurdly inexpensive gifts, possibly ordered from one of the retailers who advertise in the back pages of Bust magazine, and therefore supporting some independent female crafty person. (Possibly. Can't be sure. Some of that stuff is expensive.)

And I assume that it's okay to receive presents from more than one person? Cause the internet circles in which I move are rather small...so maybe you can sign up with me even if you've already signed up with someone else? I'd hate to only send out FOUR presents!

Memity meme

Hilaire has tagged me for the quadromeme--so here goes!

4 first names of crushes:
1. Andy (I was 5. I have no real memory of this, but my mom swears I was in love with him.)
2. Jesse (First big post-attainment-of-the-age-of-reason crush! And oh! The pining!)
3. Mike (Early high school. We finally went out, in a rather chaste and embarrassed way, for a couple of weeks. Then I saw him in shorts and his hairy legs freaked me out.)
4. Ryan (I never actually talked to him. I think I knew all along that if I talked to him, the illusion of his coolness would be utterly destroyed.)

4 Pieces of Clothing I wish I still owned (and/or that still fit):
1. The jeans that wore out last year. They were really comfortable and I currently lack truly comfortable jeans.
2. A one-piece polyurethane number comprising ultra-short shorts, a big belt, a flashy sleeveless upper bit and a zipper that goes all the way down. It's shiny and blue and insane. I still have it, actually, only the zipper broke one time when I was trying it on, alone, in my room (I swear!). I only wore it once and never even got the chance to take off my coat--that's a long and embarrassing story....
3. A flannel shirt that I bought sometime between college and grad school and donated in a misguided fit of professionalizing my wardrobe. It was soft and I liked the colors.
4. A pair of combat boots that a girl in my high school history class gave me for some reason. They were brutally uncomfortable but super cool--the big steel-toed kind that laced almost up to my knees. I wore them with cut-off jeans and a Pixies tee-shirt and was bad.ass.

4 names I've been called at one time or another:
1. Binky. This was in the seventh grade. It irritated me to no end, and my friends never told me where it came from.
2. Fingo
3. Ja
4. Bean Brains (thanks, Mom)

4 professions I secretly want to try:
1. Ornithologist
2. Engineer
3. Bookbinder
4. Novelist (like, a real novelist)

4 musicians I'd most want to go on a date with:
1. Uh, Morrissey? Like you even need to ask.
2. David Byrne
3. David Bowie (I love me my David B's)
4. the woman from El Perro del Mar--she seems odd enough to warrant an evening out

4 foods I'd rather throw than eat:
(This is a difficult category. I'll try to keep it vegetarian, since to do otherwise would be a cop-out.)
1. peas (I like peas OK, but they seem like they'd be fun to throw--you could chuck a really good handful all at once, and they would just go everywhere, wouldn't they?)
2. durian!--although it would be a little dangerous. (Remind me to tell you sometime about durian, the fruit that offends all five senses!)
3. licorice
4. figs, maybe? I don't know. I guess I like most foods.

4 things I like to sniff:
1. late roses
2. really ripe grapes on the vine
3. beech trees (or whatever those trees are with the peeling bark that smell like autumn all year long)
4. church air

4 people I tag:
1. sisyphus
2. fretful porpentine
3. tiruncula
4. you!

Inexplicable

Because I can't be bothered to pack, I decided to do this quiz that I saw linked on New Kid's blog. Here are my results:

Your Score: Older Futhark

You scored

Language of the Norse, Older Futhark! Thirty symbols, all told. And no hardier, more warrior-like tongue has ever graced the longships of the Viki or left the Celts and Saxons in such quivering fear. There's only one drawback, that being you died 800 years ago.

Link: The Which Ancient Language Are You Test written by imipak on OkCupid Free Online Dating, home of the The Dating Persona Test

Oddly enough, this is what NK scored, too.

Careful what you ask for

So the other day I sort of implied, or suggested, that I'd like to be tagged for squadratomagico's Eight Wonderments meme, in which you're supposed to list eight things that you wonder about. And Medieval Woman subsequently tagged me. So here goes--sort of a mix between the semi-significant and the extremely insignificant. Enjoy!

1. Why is it that there isn't a more concerted, public effort to make significant changes in US policy and administration? Maybe there is, and I just can't see it from where I am, but as far as I know there hasn't been much in the way of rallies or marches since something like 2003 or '04. There's been a lot of online activism, obviously--as my frequent updates from MoveOn and PFAW remind me--but that's not the same. And so, a related wondering: Is online activism sort of replacing public action and activism? Online activism is obviously not a bad thing, but it's so much easier to sign an online petition and feel like you've "done something" than it is to actually show up at a public event. And while it is doing something, it's doing something in a fairly invisible way, and it's a mode of activism that is denied to a large segment of the population. So I wonder if a) it is the case that online activism is replacing public activism, and b) if there aren't some major drawbacks to that trend.

Of course, it could just be that I'm oblivious and there's plenty of public action going on; that's entirely possible.

2. Why is it that I put off or simply don't do tiny, slightly annoying things that would nonetheless save me significant annoyance in the long run? Like, for example, moving my box fan to the window of the room that I am in rather than always leaving it in the kitchen. True, it's kind of a pain to move the fan because I've got bars on the bedroom and living room windows, but once I've set it up and it's running in the room where I'm working my life is SO MUCH BETTER.

3. Will I ever get a second tattoo? I sometimes try to design them for myself, but I never come up with anything I'm willing to commit to. I got my first one when I was 19, without giving it a great deal of thought beforehand, and I'm glad I did it that way--I probably would've talked myself out of it otherwise. Of course, I also got it in a usually invisible location (the middle of my back), so that's gone a long way towards preventing regret.

4. Since when do children need to be entertained with electronic gadgetry every single minute of the day? I despise the whole DVD-player-in-the-back-of-the-SUV trend, and I promise you, the blogosphere, that I will never succumb to it, no matter how irritating my future children may be. You can hold me to that. Seriously, when I was a kid, we just stared out the windows on long car rides and daydreamed and stuff. I'm sure we whined plenty, too, but I still remember some of my daydreams from those days. I think that that's important. Kids need to learn to entertain themselves, don't they?

5. Is there even a remote chance that I'll finish a draft of my conference paper before the fall semester begins?

6. Why is this kind of thing, that I'm doing right now, called a "meme"? My understanding of memes (which were explained to me a couple of years ago, in a different context) doesn't explain it to my satisfaction. Hence, I will label this post ""meme"", rather than "meme."

7. When did "different than" become an acceptable phrase? And how can I stop its creeping into my own speech?? I try to use only "from," but sometimes "than" just jumps out of my mouth. Curses!

8. What would life have been like if I had gone into the Peace Corps after college, as I originally planned? I got pretty far along in the application process, but there was some holdup with my medical records (nothing wrong with me medically; they just didn't look at my records until more than 6 months after I'd sent them in, at which point they were all expired and needed to be redone, and by then I'd found a job and an apartment and all that). I sometimes regret not sticking with it and going off to Africa, which was where I was headed, but then I certainly wouldn't be exactly here, right now. I'd probably be somewhere equally good (or so I like to think), but I can't even imagine where, or what I'd be doing. Maybe I would've had a much more exciting life. But would I really trade in what I have right now on that kind of gamble? No, I don't think so. Which raises another wondering: Why do we regret anything, if we're happy with our current lives? It's incoherent to want to have done something differently when the only way we can get to our current position is by doing everything exactly the way that we did it, and yet regret seems perfectly natural, in some contexts. Just further evidence of the irrationality of our brains, I guess.

Hmm.... Whom to tag? I think that the following people occasionally read this blog and weren't in the original tagging: Sisyphus, Bardiac, Dr. Virago, and Another Damned Medievalist. Anyone else?