Meme-a-palooza

Raphael Alexander at Unambiguously Ambidextrous thoughtfully tagged me for the latest meme making the rounds. Meme: Share six non-important things/habits/quirks about yourself. Well allrighty then, here goes.

(1) I wear 3 diamond rings, all of highly sentimental value. Having had my house broken into and lost other such irreplaceable jewelery, I never take them off except to clean them.

(2) I've been in 3 motor vehicle accidents that put me in the hospital: one while on foot (jaywalking, hit by a car), one as a passenger on a motorcycle (the bike rear-ended a car that was already stopped because it was in an accident), and one while commandeering my own motorcycle (I tried to pass a truck turning right, except at the last minute it turned left). I didn't give up riding or jaywalking, but I'm doing well so far at breaking the accident habit -- almost 10 years accident-free! (Not including minor fender-benders.)

(3) I have a Celtic wreath tattooed on my right wrist. I drew the design myself and had the tattoo artist recreate it.

(4) I rarely drink real coffee because it makes me too twitchy. I get my caffeine from that "International Coffee" instant stuff ("Swiss Mocha"), which is more like hot chocolate. I blame it on years of owning a DeLonghi espresso machine... I just got coffee'd out.

(5) I go for a quick run with my dog most mornings at dawn (unless I'm working an early shift). I do 100 crunches a day, every day, without fail. ("Go ahead, punch my stomach!")

(6) I am strung out on dark chocolate, but don't care for milk chocolate at all.

And now I'm obligated to be a Pain In The Ass and tag six others, so... Bruce at Canuck Attitude (because I know he loves memes :p), PSA at Canadian Cynic, Prole at A Creative Revolution, Debra at April Reign, Montreal Simon, and SUZANNE at Big Blue Wave. Six un-important things, let's have it, you guys.

Now it's time for my run:)

Pharyngula meme

Okay, Ellroon at Rants from the Rookery tagged me for the Pharyngula "Mutating Genre" Meme, a bloggy experiment in Darwinian somethingsomething...

There are a set of questions below that are all of the form, “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…”.
• 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.

My great-great-great-great-great-grandparent is Pharyngula.
My great-great-great-great-grandparent is Metamagician and the Hellfire Club.
My great-great-great-grandparent is Flying Trilobite.
My great-great-grandparent is A Blog Around the Clock.
My great-grandparent is archy.
My grandparent is Why Now?
My parent is Rants from the Rookery.

The best time travel novel in SF/Fantasy is: Slaughterhouse Five, by Kurt Vonnegut

The best “bad” movie in scientific dystopias is: Mad Max

The best sexy song in rocknroll: Stray Cat Blues, by the Stones

(I left the first two questions un-mutated and gave my own answers. I mutated the genre of the last question from "music" to "rock and roll" and gave my own answer.)

Copy the instructions and list of blogs (adding a "great" where applicable) -- I'm your parent, Rants from the Rookery is your grandparent, etc. Okay guys (don't kill me, hahaha) play if you want to:

Prole at A Creative Revolution

Dr. Dawg (Dawg's Blawg)

April Reign

the Rev. at the Woodshed

and last but not least, Impolitical

I'm curious to see what PZ does with this.

Tagged!

Ellroon at Rants from the Rookery and the Eternal Gaijin from the eponymous blog of the same name (Dept. of Redundancy and Redundancy here here) have both tagged me for the "8 Random Things About Me" meme. The rules be:

"1. All right, here are the rules. 2. We have to post these rules before we give you the facts. 3. Players start with eight random facts/habits about themselves. 4. People who are tagged need to write their own blog about their eight things and post these rules. 5. At the end of your blog, you need to choose eight people to get tagged and list their names. Don’t forget to leave them a comment telling them they’re tagged, and to read your blog."
I'm not sure I'm "8 things"-worthy, but here goes.

(1) Fact: I have a 6" scar on the outside of my left knee, from being hit by a car (while jaywalking - urk!). I think it's pretty cool-looking; I usually tell inquiring minds that it's shrapnel from 'Nam.

(2) Habit: I can't just "turn off" the ignition key in my truck when the CD player is in the middle of some really outstanding music by some idol of mine (ie. Hendrix). First I have to gently turn the sound down until it's inaudible. Then, and only then, can I turn off the vehicle. Anything less would be disrespectful. (If, on the other hand, I happen to be listening to O'Reilly on the radio, I just yell "Shutup!" and turn the key off while he's in full rant.)

(3) Fact: I had "cartilege rings" on my upper ears at least 10 years before they became popular (it was a biker/punk thing in the 80's).

(4) Habit: I ritually visit the same five sites, in the same order, every morning: Canuck Attitude, Canadian Cynic, Harper Valley, Dependable Renegade, Progressive Bloggers (where I go from there is anyone's guess).

(5) Fact: In 1983, I drove from Toronto to Vancouver, then down the west coast of the US, down the Baja and ferried over to Mazatlan, where I stayed for a couple of months. (Fact 5(b): It was sweet.)

(6) Habit: First thing in the morning I surf by laptop while I watch the news, just in case *something exciting* is happening. Later I switch to my desktop.

(7) Fact: I had an abortion, but secretly... I'm really fucking glad I did!! Hahahaha!

(8) Habit: I love to see the fundies clutch their pearls. (It's a "positive addiction".)

So that's it! And now, it's Ladeez' Night! I'm tagging all girls: Harper Valley, April Reign, Hope & Onions, Politics & Poetry, Thought Interrupted, Red Jenny, skdadl at pogge and In The House & Senate. Take it away, grrrls!