8 random facts meme
A while ago now, Aspazia tagged me for the 8 Random Facts Meme. The idea is for bloggers to disclose eight previously uknown facts about themselves to their readers, and then tag others. I’ll start with:
1. I don’t usually do memes. Actually, this may be implicitly known to my readers, since I haven’t posted many before. But now it’s out in the open. Boy, does that feel good.
2. I was an engineering major for a semester. Not only that, but I did two internships at the United States Naval academy, one in fluid dynamics and the other in electrical engineering. For the first one, I was preparing a module to go up in the Space Shuttle (it never did) and the second one I was evaluating some EE software on the basics of electrical circuits. This brings me to:
3. For my day job, I program in Visual Basic for the AS/400 and WRQ Reflections. That probably doesn’t mean much to most of you (it didn’t to me when I started with my company), but in a nutshell I make MS Excel and MS Access “talk” to a “green screen” and make the cursor move, enter data and scrape information from the screen. Yeah, it’s that exciting.
4. In a possible world I am an architecht / linguistics professor / comparative lit prof / marketing manager for a publishing company. Those are all careers I’ve considered over the span of my short life, the last two most seriously.
5. I am a musical eclectic with no good reason for my listening choices. Unlike a lot of people (who I admire) in my new hometown, I don’t know much about emo, indie rock or the up-and-coming latest. I listen to FM Radio and browse Rhapsody, which means I love Bach’s fugues for organ, Rage Againt the Machine, Tori Amos, The Indigo Girls, Nine Inch Nails, The Decemberists…and a guilty pleasure, Barbara Streisand.
6. I am the least musical person in my family. My mom plays the organ and piano (hence my love for Bach), my dad plays piano and can improvise a decent tune with it, and my sister also plays the piano quite well. I can bang out “Chopsticks” or the top half of a hymn (whatever those notes are called up there!) and I play guitar a little bit, but yeah…not so much with the music.
7. There is also a possible world where I am an artist. Believe it or not, before my left brain got massively overdeveloped, I was an aspiring short-story writer and painter. I took several art courses in high school where we painted on site (one of those sites was Greece, which was an amazing experience). I even got a small scholarship in art from my county…which I applied to my short-lived engineering degree. I still have my supplies, but spend my energy doing photography instead.
8. I am spending a few weeks trying to eat vegetarian. The ethical arguments for not eating meat have started to get to me, instilling severe cognitive dissonance when I eat it, especially at places like Taco Bell or restaurants where I don’t know how the animal was treated. I’ve avoided becoming vegetarian becaues 1) I like a good steak, brat or hamburger every now and then; 2) I’m afraid I’ll start on the slippery slope to a raw food, vegan, fair-trade liberal hyper-guiltified life; 3) I am unsure of whether I should include fish in my diet and 4) I wonder about the connection between vegetarianism on ethical reasons and a moderately pro-choice stance on abortion. But at least number one seems to be overcome by creative cooking…and I don’t miss meat so far.
There you have it. I won’t tag anyone else, but readers are welcome to self-disclose in the comments or their own blogs as they’d like.
August 24th, 2007 at 5:04 pm
1. I find memes to be vulgar accessories, as David Sedaris notes, much like boa constrictors and Planet Hollywood t-shirts. However, a person can only be John Kerry so much and particularly on his/her blog.
2. I have no interest whatsoever in engineering, possibly because I am a chronically right-brained sort of person whose math skills rank him as woefully below-average.
3. For my day job, I teach community college students the virtues of correct grammar and the beauty of a sentence properly punctuated. The class is totally internet based, so I have never heard my students speak or even seen their faces. An introvert’s dream job.
4. In a dream, I would be a successful rock musician, however I have the talent and not the connections–the latter of which is what it takes to be successful–nothing more, nothing less.
5. My taste in music is both very broad and very specific. I have a hipster’s taste in music though I do try to take myself a lot less seriously then your average music geek.
6. I am the most musical person in my family. I play guitar–rhythm and lead, have occasional noodling on the bass, can play Meg White style drums adequately, sing frequently, and knock out inconsequential melodies on right hand piano.
7. I am a short story writer, poet, and aspiring novelist–though I don’t really have the patience or the inclination to write anything over twenty pages long at this stage in my life.
8. I enjoy meat products a little too much to ever be a vegetarian. I have a sister who is a radical vegan who has soured me on the whole idea.
4.
August 24th, 2007 at 5:23 pm
I have to admit that a confluence of events led me to eat meat for lunch. In large part, it was my fault for not planning–getting vegetarian food on the fly is pretty difficult, unless you want to eat chips.
Thanks for the self-disclosure, Kevin. It’s nice to know a little about the folks who stop by here.
August 26th, 2007 at 12:51 am
I’m sad to say that while Tori’s music remains incredibly strong (love her most recent album) almost none of the students I teach in college knows who she is anymore. Reminds me of my old age and how many artists I love that made there mark on the 90s. Anyways, hope life finds you well.
August 26th, 2007 at 2:33 am
Hey, Dwight, good to hear from you. I haven’t heard Tori’s latest album, though I’ve heard good things about it. I’ll have to check it out on Rhapsody. But yes, I made a few cracks in a religion class about Nirvana & Kurt Cobain, while we were doing Buddhism, and got blank stares and one slight chuckle!
Ditto to you on life–I’m enjoying Chicago quite a lot right now, and I hope your classes are treating you well:)
August 27th, 2007 at 8:26 pm
[...] reading the comments at CK’s post on 8 Random Things, I felt a little isolated. College aged students who don’t know who Tori Amos or Nirvana are? [...]
August 27th, 2007 at 8:40 pm
I commented on this at my blog, but wanted to add: I have Barbra Streisand in my Nano. I especially love that live version of “Happy Days Are Here Again.”