HSU IT Department

Snagged this one from ladyoneill. I like it because (a) I haven't seen it before, (b) you have to think a bit to answer it, and (c) you actually learn something about the person from their responses. I mean, I couldn't care less that you prefer croutons to bacon bits but if your first kiss was your cousin Eddie, well, that tells me something about you. So here goes:

1. Who was your FIRST prom date? - Never went to a prom of any sort

2. Do you still talk to your FIRST love? - no, he invented Google Earth so he's way too important to talk to little old me

3. What was your FIRST alcoholic drink? - a banana daiquiri from my best friend's older brother, on whom I had the most comprehensive crush a 13-year-old can have. I was spending the night with her and he had a bunch of friends over to watch Monty Python and the Holy Grail and they were drinking banana daiquiris. It was also my first experience with Monty Python. To this day the Black Knight makes me think of banana daiquiris.

4. What was your FIRST job? - if you don't count babysitting, then it was working at Long John Silver's where by today's standards I was sexually harassed by my boss, but by 1980s standards I got to smooch an older guy and felt really grownup ;)

5. What was your FIRST car? - a Reliant K car, when I went to college. I wanted the license plate NCC-1864 but someone already had it. My first introduction to the fact that adults don't get everything they want.

6. Who was the FIRST person to text you today? - whoever it was I probably won't get it until Friday since my phone is always dead and I never check my texts.

8. Who was your FIRST grade teacher, tell us about them? - wow...no idea. The principle was Mr. Buonfiglio, I remember that.

9. Where did you go on your FIRST air plane ride? - to Hawaii. Don't be impressed, I was only about six months old and don't remember a thing.

10. Who was your FIRST best friend & do you still talk? - the first one I remember was a girl named either Yvette or Denise. I'm sure that tell you that no, we aren't still in touch ;)

11. Where was your FIRST sleep over? - no idea, but the banana daiquiri/Monty Python/cute older brother one has stuck with me the longest!

12. is missing, so I'll make on up...Who was your first kiss? - a boy I didn't know, at the roller skating rink, when I was thirteen. He could skate backwards, which apparently really impressed me.

13. Whose wedding were you in the FIRST time? - my aunt's, I got to be a flower girl with a really dorky hat.

14. What was the FIRST thing you did this morning? - swore at the alarm clock, as per usual. Then I let the dog out, got dressed and went to acupuncture.

15. What was the FIRST concert you ever went to? - Van Halen!!!! David Lee Roth did obscene things with a beach ball. I was in heaven.

16. FIRST tattoo? - still to come someday, if they ever go out of fashion

17. FIRST piercing? - ears, at about 14 I think

18. FIRST foreign country you went to? - Oklahoma? OK, just kidding. England, summer after my freshman year of college.

19. FIRST movie you remember seeing? - STAR WARS!!! I remember waiting in loooong lines (there was much hype back in 1977) and peeking through the gap in the doors to see a giant explosion. I was soooooo excited!

20. When was your FIRST detention? - never had detention but I was sent to the principal (Mr Buonfiglio!! see #8) in first grade due to chasing boys and trying to kiss them

22. Who was your FIRST roommate? - I had two, both fashion conscious and curvy, which intimidated me no end ("You really don't know how to accessorize, do you?") but they turned out to be very nice and we roomed together for the rest of college. They were also my first introduction to the fact that you could be smart and still a Christian. Having gotten most of my exposure to Christians from Oral Roberts and televangelists, this was a revelation (pun intended).

23. If you had one wish, what would it be? - to be a best-selling author of sci-fi and fantast novels, or a vampire so I could live forever and see what happens in 500 years. Or both.

24. What is something you would learn if you had the chance? - Aramaic and Hebrew so I could read the Bible in its earliest versions

25. Did you marry the FIRST person to ask for your hand in marriage? - no, see #2 above, but it all worked out fine because Mr Psmith is wonderful :)

26. What was the first sport that you were involved in? - um...competitive quarters?

27. What were the first lessons you ever took? - piano, and I'm still glad mom made me do it

28. What is the first thing you do when you get home? - change clothes, get on the elliptical, and then have a glass of wine (I'm not an alcoholic; alcoholics go to meetings)

Waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaahhhhh.

The other day I ran across this interesting take on the Hunger Games phenomenon. The author presents her theory as somehow related to being a Christian, but I don't think that matters -- her points stands just fine without bringing religion into it.

[V]iolence in The Hunger Games...serves a purpose: It is not gratuitous. It is not voyeuristic. But...We the viewers are not witnessing a past event. We feel like we are seeing the Games in real time, that we are part of Panem and, by virtue of sitting in the audience, part of its dysfunction. That powerful revelation encourages us to contemplate the ways that we are complicit in violence in our own world and the ways in which we do not object...[I]ronically, The Hunger Games' greatest triumph would be an empty theater and streets full of people demanding the kinds of changes needed in Katniss’ world and in our own.

An interesting thought. What if they released Grand Theft Auto or Call of Duty and no one bought it? What if not a single person paid to see Saw [insert any roman numeral]? What if the audiences for Maury Povich, Bridezilla and Hoarders dropped to zero? What if we simply stopped being complicit in the cheap nastiness and ugliness that's marketed to us in the guise of entertainment?

I'm not saying it has to all be fluffy bunnies and puppies, because yuk. But we don't have to mindlessly suck up the worst of what's on offer either. More thoughtful choices: Why am I watching this? Is it truly entertaining, or does it feed my own sense of superiority or my wish to mock others? Am I gaining my pleasure from someone else's pain/problems/weakness? When you put it in those terms, it doesn't sound nearly as harmless.

Columnist George Will wrote a great essay on this back in 2001, which I still have tacked up on my fridge. Among other things, he says this:

The historian Macaulay famously said that the Puritans opposed bearbaiting not because it gave pain to the bears but because it gave pleasure to the spectators. The Puritans were right: Some pleasures are contemptible because they are coarsening. They are not merely private vices, they have public consequences in driving the culture's downward spiral.

Full column is here. Something to think about.

It was in the 80s last week. The next few days the highs will be in the mid-40s and the lows in the 20s and 30s. Curse you, fickle spring!!

However, since it IS spring, I'd like to share one of my favorite spring poems. I discovered e e cummings ages ago, back when I was writing bad angsty woe-is-me teenage poetry (a habit I thankfully dropped, in no small part because I discovered good poets like cummings, Countee Cullen, John Donne and others). I fell in love with his work because of its creativity, its liveliness and loveliness, the way he plays with words and language. No matter the subject, there's always an undercurrent of joy; reading this one aloud you naturally fall into a cadence almost like singing.

sweet spring is your
time is my time is our
time for springtime is lovetime
and viva sweet love

(all the merry little birds are
flying in the floating in the
very spirits singing in
are winging in the blossoming)

lovers go and lovers come
awandering awondering
but any two are perfectly
alone there's nobody else alive

(such a sky and such a sun
i never knew and neither did you
and everybody never breathed
quite so many kinds of yes)

not a tree can count his leaves
each herself by opening
but shining who by thousands mean
only one amazing thing

(secretly adoring shyly
tiny winging darting floating
merry in the blossoming
always joyful selves are singing)

sweet spring is your
time is my time is our
time for springtime is lovetime
and viva sweet love
    e e cummings

Also, third and last call for free books! You don't even have to pay shipping, that's how much I want to find good homes for them. (No, none of them look like the books in the icon, and yes, you have to provide your own beverage.)

KU 60 NCState 57
>whew<
::lies panting in exhaustion and relief::

I did this last year (through a different venue, not LJ) and it worked pretty well, so here we go again. I have weeded my bookshelves and have the following items FREE to good home(s)! All you have to do is comment naming the book(s) you want and I'll send them to you. You don't even have to pay shipping, that's how much I love giving books away. All are paperback except the starred ones, those are HB.

First come, first served, so post away :)

Fiction
The Lord Next Door (Cullen) - trashy romance, signed by author (oooooooh)
*Everything on a Waffle (Horvath) - YA, humor
Flan (Tunney) - kind of weird F/SF
Shutter Island (Lehane)
*The Sirian Experiments (Lessing) - aka Canopus in Argos III; literary sci-fi
Harry Potter and the Sorceror's Stone (um...Smith LOL?)
The Folk Keeper (Billingsley) - YA, fantasy
Heart of Gold (Shinn) - SF
Gateways (ed. by Hull) - SF short stories, various authors
Aftershock& Others (Wilson) - mild horror/sci-fi

Non-fiction
Reframing Bodies (Hallas)
Stick Figure (Gottlieb) - YA, anorexia (has wine stains, sorry!)
Why Girls Can't Throw (Symons)
*How to Never Look Fat Again (Krupp) - clothing/fashion; my mother gave me this...is there a subtext, do you think??
Microsoft Visual Basic 5 - no idea whether this is obsolete; probably
Ugly War, Pretty Package (Jaramillo) - how CNN and Fox sold the Iraq War as a
high-concept media event; really excellent if a bit disturbing

A proposed law in Arizona would apparently allow ANY employer, not just religious-affiliated institutions, to deny contraception coverage and possibly even fire female workers for using birth control pills for a "non-medical" purpose. The Republican-backed (oooh, color ME surprised) HB 2625 bill would allow bosses to ask female employees whether they are using contraception and request proof they are using the pills for non-sexual reasons, if the employer is morally or ethically or religiously opposed to...well, to sex, I guess. It doesn't mention any exemption if you're married, meaning it can't be premarital sex they object to, so it must just be sex in general. WTF???

I really don't understand what's going on around here. How can anyone not think this is absolutely nuts? And why can't the GOP go back to focusing on the economy and leave all this moral stuff to people's individual consciences???

There's more here and here, if you can stomach it.

Optimistically overlooking my inability to crank out acres of fabulous words for SSIAW, I've signed up for luciusbigbang. Eek. I have no plot bunnies gamboling about, no drafts lurking in drawers awaiting rescue, no idea what I will do, so it's anybody's guess what the outcome will be. (Sadly, I've already written my Modern Major Death Eater piece, so that's out.) I like Lucius as a character but I find him more difficult to write than Severus, possibly because he's not as complex a character. Of course, as we all know, "It does not necessarily follow that a deep or intricate character is more or less estimable..." etc etc etc.

Other Notes of Note:

SSIAW week 3 is in full bloom, but my buds thus far remain tightly furled, alas. What with words like "doxy" "perdition" and "inoculate" staring me in the face, it's going to be a hard slog. (The moderator CLAIMS she chooses the words randomly, but one can't help but wonder...)

Wrote to my newspaper today as they have cruelly disappointed me by bailing on the Doonesbury/ultrasound story arc. They ran Monday's and Tuesday's, which got my hopes up ("Yay, my hometown paper has GUTS!"), then suddenly replaced today's with a re-run from months ago. Grrrrrr.

Fab article in the New York Times about "the slam-bang world of pulp magazines" exhibit. Since pulps were the original publishers of science fiction, fantasy, and speculative fiction they hold a special place in my heart, so I really enjoyed this piece. Hope to get to NYC in the next few weeks (Alan Rickman, my love, I know you're waiting for me!!) and maybe see it.

If you're having difficulty persuading your friends to celebrate St. Patrick's Day with you, try the following:

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I did the rainbow meme and it came out totally inaccurate, so not even bothering to post it. Have been engrossed the past few days in re-reading Sharon Shinn's Samaria series; I literally did not get off the sofa all day yesterday, just slurped cup after cup of tea and devoured page after page after page. Such an excellent mix of fantasy, high-tech SF, sociocultural commentary, and just plain damn good story-telling.

Then we went to dinner (scallops, gnocchi w/wild mushrooms, nom nom nom) and to see Red, a play about artist Mark Rothko. I'm of two minds about abstract art. On the one hand I quite like some of the pictures, they're like big splashy colorful rugs you hang on the wall. On the other hand, it irritates me because it seems like the artist couldn't be bothered to make his point clear, instead relying on the viewer to supply the meaning. If it engenders an emotional reaction in the viewer/listener, does that mean it qualifies as art? What if the reaction is annoyance? Also, so many of the abstract artists seem terribly pretentious and self-important; if you don't understand their work it's due to some flaw in you, some lack of refinement or spirit. "If you don't understand what it means, I couldn't possibly explain it to you." Um, if you can't explain the meaning, isn't that a failure of communication on your part? Or perhaps because it's meaningless?

For example, John Cage's "composition" which consists of nothing but silence, or the one created by rolling dice. Is there musical skill and effort in that? Creativity? He may be making a statement about music, but is it actually music, or some sort of music criticism that makes you debate the question of what music is? In the same way, is a giant canvas covered with blocks of red (Rothko) or splatters of random paint (Pollock) art? Or is an illustrative form of art criticism that makes people think about what art is?

Still, the play was quite entertaining, especially Rothko's rant about things being "fine":

ROTHKO: (Explodes) 'Pretty.' 'Beautiful.' 'Nice.' 'Fine.' That's our life now! Everything's 'fine'. We put on the funny nose and glasses and slip on the banana peel and the TV makes everything happy and everyone's laughing all the time, it's all so goddamn funny, it's our constitutional right to be amused all the time, isn't it? We're a smirking nation, living under the tyranny of 'fine.' How are you? Fine.. How was your day? Fine. How are you feeling? Fine. How did you like the painting? Fine. What some dinner? Fine... Well, let me tell you, everything is not fine!! HOW ARE YOU?!... HOW WAS YOUR DAY?!... HOW ARE YOU FEELING? Conflicted. Nuanced. Troubled. Diseased. Doomed. I am not fine. We are not fine. We are anything but fine.

Now that's brilliant. If his art said that to me, I'd love it. Sadly, it doesn't; all it says to me is "Hi, I'm a giant canvas with quadrilaterals on," like some sort of geometry exercise. If I want to see cleverly and skillfully assembled quadrilaterals in pretty colors, I'll look at an Amish quilt, thank you very much.