25 Random Facts

This meme is quite possibly older than God. You Know the drill; 25 random facts about me:

1. I am totally and desperately in love with the Oxford comma. (That, this, and those. Spot the Oxford comma!)
2. I wish there were more opportunities in life to say “because it would hurt a lot, Warren.”
3. I’ve a weakness for men on TV/in movies cocking shotguns. I don’t particularly care for firearms in reality, but put a shotgun in Bruce Campbell’s hands, and I melt.
4. I am fascinated by the themes of physical and social castration in Gulliver’s Travels.
5. There are 2 full body fiberglass mannequins in the “office” area of my house. We call them Edy and Olivia.
6. One of my favorite possessions is a fabric shower curtain from the 70s with Frank X. Leyendecker’s “The Flapper” printed on it, which my father stretched on a frame and hung in my room when I was a child. Some kids get teddy bears and rainbows in their nursery, I got a semi-nude woman with butterfly wings.
7. I really, really miss working at the Studio Tour. Blowing out queues with hundreds of people in them was like a drug. (My area supervisor once told me that watching me stretch the queue was like watching a ballet. It must have been a very strange ballet he had in mind, because this was during Halloween Horror Nights, and I was yelling like a woman possessed and belittling the guests at the time.)
8. Robin Hood is my favorite old school Disney cartoon.
9. I think less of people who actively campaigned in support of Prop 8, especially the soccer moms who held up the big ass signs a block away from my son’s elementary school. I can neither confirm nor deny having given the PTA secretary the finger over those damn signs…
10. I love BBC America. I want to put David Tennant in my pocket and snog John Barrowman.
11. I really wish I could dance.
12. When I was a freshman in high school, I stepped on a bright yellow toothpick and broke ¾ of it off in my foot. At the urgent care, it took 4 big male nurses to hold me down so they could take it out. I kicked one of them in the face when they tried to give me local anesthetic. That fucker HURT.
13. I never learned how to ride a bike.
14. For three years during my childhood, I had a panic attack every time I tried to ride an escalator.
15. I hate people who teach or read Shakespeare as pure literature and ignore all the dirty jokes.
16. My mother used to cook a turkey (whole bird) every Saturday when I was a kid. She would always burn it. My sister and I loved eating the burnt upper meat, and would pretend we were eating bat wings, like in “The Three Amigos”. I still love the taste of burnt turkey.
17. My crazy Mormon relatives have tracked the family genealogy back to Harold Bluetooth (yes, THAT Bluetooth), a Viking king with rotten teeth. Genealogy fascinates me, but I think it is ludicrous to assume that every female through history in one’s family line has faithfully borne her husband’s children, rather than the milkman’s.
18. Twinkies make me physically ill.
19. I’m afraid that one day, everyone will realize that I’m actually a lot less intelligent than I appear to be.
20. I learned how to tell time properly from my alcoholic, man-hating high school French teacher, Madam Cohen.
21. When I was in the 8th grade, I was given a Saturday detention for yelling “Fuck You” at a friend. Shockingly, the experience did nothing to check my love of profanity. I still find that when asked to cuss less, I am taken with the perverse desire to swear even more extensively and creatively.
22. I once spent an entire weekend helping a friend tape little green army men and toy cars to her bedroom ceiling.
23. I wish I could still do plays. I miss it so much.
24. I have a kind of phobia of veins. The bulgy arm veins on bodybuilders squick me the fuck out, and I have infrequent dreams in which every vein in my body bursts through my skin.
25. I still cry like a baby when I talk about my father.
26. I’m considering opening a store on Etsy.com to sell custom paper dolls and decoupage bracelets. Fuck yes, I am lame and crafty like that.

Bite Me

From a survey on a forum I frequent: From Dr. Polidori's Lord Ruthven to Stephenie Meyer's Edward Cullen, the annals of vampire lore are filled with attractive, charming bloodsuckers. Which one would you most want to be bitten by?

You know, I'd be fine skipping the biting bit altogether and just sitting to a nice cup of tea and some chat about photography with Otto Von Chriek. But, if we must go the biting route, then I'd say Angel all the way (Spike's hot and all, but I much prefer James Marsters when he's snogging John Barrowman). Or, for a more old school tv vamp fix, Nick Knight (Is that not the worst character name ever?)

For a more literary bite, well, I'd sooner slit my own throat, or leap into a pit of sharpened sporks, than let Edward Cullen or any of Ms. Meyer's other sparkly kiddie craft project emo "vampires" anywhere near me. I'll take some wicked beautiful Lestat (only the book Lestat. Both film versions were horrid. Tom Cruise was a terrible Lestat, but Stuart Townsend was even worse). Failing that, I wouldn't refuse Louis (book or movie. I can deal with Brad Pitt).

Although really, I've been on more of a werewolf kick lately. So hell, let's throw some Oz (Seth Green on Buffy) into the mix as well.

Emo High School Poetry: The Easy Way!

I couldn't help but notice that a fair few people have posted their angsty High School poetry in their journals. Not being an aspiring poet myself, I decided to go about this whole poetry thing the easy way: with an iTunes meme. Basically, you put your iTunes (or other music player) on shuffle and create a "poem" using only the first lines of the first twenty songs that come up. The first line of the twenty-first song is the title. See how many of the songs you can identify!

Metaphor for a Missing Moment
How dare you say that my behavior's unacceptable,

take this pink ribbon off my eyes.

I been all around the world;

I shouldn't have called so late last night.

Won't you come see about me,

love, love me do.

They took the whole Cherokee nation;

big girl, you are beautiful.

Go ahead as you waste your days with thinking,

the flowers you gave me are rotting.

She's a rebel, she's a saint,

I'd appreciate input.

You chat to me like we connect,

and its love you give.

I was always the crazy one,

once upon a midnight, dearie.

Judging by the look on the organ grinder,

I'm packed and I'm hummin'.

You caught me lingering in another girl's paradise,

if I leave here tomorrow...

Huh. Well, that makes slightly more sense than I'd expected it to... also, some of those stanzas are painfully reminiscent of some of the poetry to be found in my HS's "Literary" magazine, lo these many years ago. I'm fighting the urge to explicate. :)

Seems to me, our imaginary poetess is a budding feminist, dabbling in lesbianism with a chubby girl she calls late at night (another girl's 'paradise'? If this were a romance novel, that would be a euphemism, right there...). Clearly, the chubby girl is the more cerebral of the two, and our poet is getting sick of her girlfriend's neediness, so our poetess cheats, and gets caught. So now, she's leaving. Oh, the angst!!!!!!! (According to Terry Pratchett, an excess of exclamation marks indicates poor mental health. Huh).