Eight Things (again!!)

Zounds, I’ve been tagged by PZ Myers for the “Eight Things” quiz-meme thing. I could just link the answers I gave when someone else tagged me with this a couple of weeks ago with the fine phrase from Prime Minister’s Questions in Britain, “I refer the right honorable gentleman to the reply I gave some moments ago”, but hey, that’s the lazy way out and I’m all about…well, that’s not true, I have nothing against being lazy. But anyway, eight things:

1. The first baseball game (MLB) I attended in person? 1984, I think. Phillies 2, Pirates 1, at Three Rivers Stadium. Early in the season, so it was cold and I ran my father’s wallet down by drinking a hot chocolate every inning. In college, I would discover a drinking game called “Beer an Inning”, in which you do exactly that: you must consume a beer each inning, and if the inning ends while you’ve got beer in your bottle, you must chug it. Sounds easy, but a couple of double-plays will mess you up hard.

2. The first football game (NFL) I attended in person? 1997 season at Rich Stadium. Broncos 23, Bills 20, OT. The Bills were behind 20-0 when Todd Collins got benched and Alex Van Pelt came in and nearly rallied the Bills to the win. This was about halfway through the season, so it was really cold and drizzly and unpleasant in the stadium…and the hot chocolates had to come out of my wallet, so we only had one or two. I gave up on Todd Collins as a player during this game, when he threw an interception that was returned by a 300-plus pound defensive lineman more than seventy yards for a touchdown, and all Collins did was lay down on the field and watch the guy go the distance. The Broncos went on to win the Super Bowl that year.

3. I’m done apologizing for the fact that I like to eat at Applebee’s.

4. I make pretty good fried chicken. Not that often, because you know, that stuff’ll kill you if you eat it too often and still, no matter how good your chicken is, it’s never quite as good as any that comes in a paper bucket. But still, my chicken’s pretty damn good.

5. I like rum. (OK, I used that one next time. I like Southern Comfort too, then.)

6. I have to admit that I envisioned Digby as a male, but I think that’s because I knew a guy in college whose nickname was Digby. There’s nothing particularly male or female in Digby’s blog writing, so I just went with my personal association with the name.

7. I know I linked Charlie Stross’s essay on space colonization the other day in Sentential Links, but let me just note that my general instinctive response to well-reasoned, scientifically-sound arguments that we are likely to never leave this Solar System is a very immature, “LAA LAA LA LA LA LA I can’t hear you LA LA LA LAAAAA!”

8. For lack of anything else: The Daughter just turned eight the other day. Her best friend, who lived next door, moved with her family to Alabama this morning. Unless something dramatic changes, she’s never gonna be a big sister again. Her last report card this year was excellent. She likes to read. She can’t swim yet, but she learned at age five how to run a feeding pump. She likes anime. And many are the days when she’s the sole reason why I don’t elect to elevate from this sorry plain of existence for something more to my liking.

I’m supposed to tag people, but I won’t do so specifically. I’ll just let this suffice: if you’re a Buffalo-blogger, consider yourself tagged. Heh.

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Eight Things

Lynn tags me with a meme where I’m to reveal eight things about myself, or give eight facts about myself, or reveal eight habits, or something like that. After more than five years of blogging, coming up with new stuff that I actually want to reveal here is kind of hard.

1. Remember that episode of Seinfeld where Elaine dates the guy who zones out every time “Desperado” comes on the radio? I’m the same way with Mendelssohn’s Violin Concerto and Enescu’s Romanian Rhapsody No. 1.

2. Musical instruments I feel like I should like, but which I really don’t: the harpsichord, the classical guitar, the harmonica.

3. I listen to The Daughter talk about her collection of Pokemon cards, and it hits me that this is what I sounded like to my parents when I talked nonstop about Star Wars.

4. I think there should be a national restaurant chain that does nothing but sell those regional specialties that are beloved in one place but completely unknown just fifty or a hundred miles away. I’m thinking of beef on weck, scrapple, spiedies, Maid-Rites, broasted chicken, and so on. The restaurant could be funded with Piers Morgan’s money, after the dingoes eat him.

5. I believe that rum makes the world a better place.

6. It’s been over a year since the last time I set foot in a Wal-Mart.

7. I don’t recall how it happened, but my family has now become spoiled: we can no longer consume pancake syrups like Mrs. Butterworth’s or Log Cabin. We pay the hefty price for real maple syrup, and we do so cheerfully.

8. I’m the only member of my family who enjoys the flavor of coconut. This means that I can load up on Mounds bars and not feel the slightest bit guilty for not sharing.

I’m supposed to tag people, but I’m not going to. Grab it and post away if you like, folks!

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Well, that’s a head-scratcher….

I’ve been remiss in living up to the obligations I’ve incurred in being named by Teflon Jedi as a recipient of the “Thinking Blogger” award — in fact, I’ve been so remiss that I’ve now been tagged twice with this award, this time by Samurai Frog. Aieee! By the rules, when you’re tagged with this award, you’re supposed to then tag five other bloggers who make you think. So now, it seems that I’m now tasked with tagging ten blogs of such repute!

So here are blogs that make me think:

Sean: I seem to be disagreeing with him more and more, but that’s still thinking. And way back when, he made me think, “Hmmm, I should get a blog myself!”

Attempts by Stephen Frug always has very thoughtful commentary, even if he’s planning to embrace the sporadic.

I’m going to brazenly cheat here: No Fear of the Future is a group blog, so I’m using it to take up six of my nominations, one for each of its contributors! Heh! In your face, Flanders! (Now, how the award works with respect to Group Blogs isn’t clear — I think that each contributor to No Fear should have to nominate at least three thinking blogs of their own. Ha!)

Pratie Place is a very thoughtful place, indeed.

Finally, since I’m always linking him anyway in Sentential Links, I’ll give the award to Lance Mannion. He makes me think a lot about politics and movies and why I can’t stop watching Studio 60 even though, in all honesty, it blows.

OK, that’s it for that, and if I ever get the award again, I’ll nominate an entirely new set of blogs.

UPDATE: Oops, I forgot one of the rules for the Thinking Blogger award: to link the original source of the award. That would be The Thinking Blog.

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A quiz thing

Haven’t done one of these in a while. This is via Electronic Cerebrectomy.

1. I’ve come to realize that my last kiss… has exited my brain. Seriously. Don’t remember it.

2. I am listening to… the wind in the trees. Nothing going on right now, no music playing, no teevee droning.

3. I talk… in iambic pentameter. OK, not really. But it would be cool.

4. I want… to rewind the calendar of my life back to, oh, August 10, 2004 and see if it all plays out differently.

5. My best friend(s)… is at work right now, if she’s got the same work schedule this week that she usually does.

7. The weather is… stunning: sunny and low humidity. Bite me, all you “I hate Buffalo weather” dweebs.

8. I hate it when people… act like people, instead of acting like persons, if that makes sense.

9. Love is… when your default reaction to something terrible happening is fear that the other may not make it through.

10. Marriage is… kept from gays for absolutely no good reason that I’ve ever heard.

11. Somewhere, someone is thinking… “Wow, I could really go for some Cheetos and Mallomars.”

12. I’ll always… want just one more chicken wing or slice of pizza.

13. I have a secret crush on… Mirna from The Amazing Race. Actually, this isn’t really secret, but then, I don’t keep my crushes secret. I advertise ’em, front and center.

14. The last time I cried was… sometime in the last day. I can summon up tears on command now.

15. My cell phone is… out there somewhere, waiting for me. I don’t own one. Don’t need one.

16. When I wake up in the morning… I either lazily lay in bed a while, or I utter a curse before lazily laying in bed a while. This depends on the hour and how well I’ve slept.

17. Before I go to bed… I clean out the old sinuses with the Neti pot. Hey, you asked.

18. Right now I am thinking about… why I can’t live a life of romance and derring-do like d’Artagnan.

19. Babies are… for other people, apparently.

20. I go on MySpace… once in a great while. I set up a profile there in case anyone on MySpace was looking for me; the only purpose it serves is basically to direct people here. However, I’ve never yet seen a referral show up in my SiteMeter stats. I generally think MySpace is pretty useless. It bugs me that I have this awesome 2006 computer with a DSL connection that I can use to look at MySpace pages that look like the personal websites I used to see when I was on my 1996 Compaq Presario surfing my dial-up connection.

21. Today I… took The Wife to a medical appointment, where I read thirty pages of The Three Musketeers in the waiting room; went food-shopping; and went for a long walk while listening to the Revenge of the Sith score on my personal CD player.

22. Tonight I… will take The Family Whose Number MUST NEVER EXCEED THREE out for dinner at our favorite road-side burgers-and-hot-dogs joint. Then we’ll come home, watch TV, read, put The Daughter to bed, and call it a night.

23. Tomorrow I… will finish up some reviews for GMR and start writing again. It’s time once again for my fictional children to step up and do their surrogate duty.

24. I really want to… know what exactly it is that some people think is so “intelligently designed” about the human body.

25. Someone who will most likely repost this? Nobody, probably — my bitter tone here will probably scare them off. Time to go get some food, I think.

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