25 Interesting Things

From the very popular Facebook note phenomenon:

"Rules: Once you've been tagged, you are supposed to write a note with 25 random things, facts, habits, or goals about you. At the end, choose 25 people to be tagged. You have to tag the person who tagged you. If I tagged you, it's because I want to know more about you."

Wow, this one is popular. Anyway, I'm doing it because it seems more interesting. I wrote it a while ago, but my Internet was done and couldn't post. So here she be.

Yeah, you don't have to do it if I've tagged you. Just saying that up front. But I'm a genre convention maniac and if the genre demands tagging 25 people, I will tag 25 people. And if you're tagged and you're wondering why, it could be because you wrote one of these and I read it.

1) I am addicted to Diet Coke. No, really. I’m sure it’s all psychological, but I am addicted nonetheless.

2) I apply critical theory to most things out of habit.

3) I generally do not expect euphoria or joy, but have become fairly content with being content.

4) I do not know whether #3 is maturity or ossification.

5) I cannot brush my teeth, wash my face, or shave if the toilet lid is up, because I’m afraid I’m going to drop something in the toilet. Also, I have to wash my hands after I put down the lid.

6) I generally use serials commas, and I truly believe that they improve clarity in writing.

7) I wanted to put down, “I find thinking of 25 interesting things about myself difficult,” but then didn’t. Also, I tend to say that I was going to say something but didn’t, thereby saying it anyway, only with a failed censorship alongside it. I also make unnecessary comments that you could have inferred anyway, like the second sentence in this entry. Or the third. Or the fourth. Or the fifth... (Notice how I refrained from pointing out that that’s an infinite regress? (I am hopelessly meta. (Have fun with this entry.)))

8) I do not download music, even though it’s legal, but I have no problem pirating security software or word processors.

9) I have difficulty eating butter or onions without being sick. This is truer of cooked onions than raw onions.

10) I find the most honest, hopeful, grounded time for artistic conception is during worship service. I stop paying attention to the lyrics and just let the stories come to me. I used to feel guilty about this, but since I've begun to remember how much authors talk about being channelled and thought that maybe that's what's happening to me. (Navs folks: recall that quiz we did last week.)

11) Dogs are awesome.

12) One of the best things about my Christmas break is that I got to hold a giant Madagascar hissing cockroach, and I don’t understand why no one else finds this cool.

13) I contemplated not including #13; if I only gave 24 explicitly stated facts (the final numbered 25 but actually coming 24th because of the omitted 13), I would still actually be giving 25 facts; the missing one would be that I am the sort of person who would omit #13. Of course, I am not that sort of person. Rather, I am the sort of person who thinks about other people’s superstitions sympathetically. Hence this entry.

14) I am being published. W00T!

15) I am fascinated by weird things; particularly, I am fascinated by people that violate standard concepts of human individuality and identity, such as conjoined twins, cyborgs, hybrids, the possessed, people with DID, tripartite gods and goddesses, and Triplicate Girl from DC Comics.

16) I enjoy elitist webcomics that presume its readers have a knowledge base that I don’t have (xkcd, Questionable Content, Penny-Arcade).

17) When reading fiction that employs dialect, I sometimes pick up the speech patterns of the characters, even when those dialects are fictional constructions of the author, do ya ken?

18) The fictional characters that move me most are those tragic villains who seem to destroy themselves as much as their enemies: Darth Vader (especially re-imagined through the prequel trilogy), the Phantom of the Opera, Captain Hook, Dr. Horrible (of the Sing-Along Blog). I am drawn to brokenness.

19) I like swamps and badlands as much as mountains and forests.

20) The one thing that prevents me from properly disciplining children I am supposed to be supervising is that I sometimes laugh when they misbehave. This has made my role as coach/friend/disciplinarian in the Running & Reading program highly ambiguous, but way more fun.

21) When I find dead fruit flies or aphids or spiders in my food, I pick them out but eat the rest anyway.

22) When I was a kid, I taught myself very patchy Latin and Greek by deducing the components of dinosaur names through cross-comparison. According to my book, “Pachycephalasaurus” means “thick-headed reptile” and “Pachyrhinosaurus” means “thick-nosed reptile”; therefore, pachy must mean thick, cephala must mean head, and rhino must mean nose (I already knew what saurus means). I went through my entire dinosaur book this way.

23) I am almost always early. I see being late as an indication that you care only about yourself. Obviously I know that's harsh, but I fail to see how it could be any other way.

24) I spend my summers working in strange conditions in Fort McMurray; last summer, I sometimes worked alongside convicts from the penal labour camp that used to be in Ft. Mac, and two summers before that I got to enjoy walking to work when it was raining ash.

25) When I am feeling afraid of heights, or am even thinking about people being high up, I get a tightening, tingling sensation in the soles of my feet.

26) Not only do I intentionally break genre conventions, but I just noticed now that a song from the Chronicles of Riddick computer game is very similar to the music of Pirates of the Caribbean. I have to wonder whether there was artist collaboration.