Some of the most fun internet memes show up on facebook these days, and completing them has taken the place of my blogging outlet to a large extent. So I'll publish a couple of the better ones over here for the next couple of days. Feel free to play along!

a. Type your answer to each of the questions below into Flickr Search (http://www.flickr.com/)
b. Using only the first page, pick an image.
c. Copy and paste each of the URLs for the images into fd’s Mosaic Maker (http://bighugelabs.com/flickr/mosaic.php)
d. Save the image and post it on this note!

The Questions:
1. What is your first name?
2. What is your favorite food?
3. What is your favorite color?
4. Favorite drink?
5. Dream vacation?
6. Favorite Hobby?
7. What you want to be/do when you grow up?
8. What do you love most in life?
9. One word to describe you?





1. Butterfly In Celeste, 2. Maguro Tataki Sashimi, 3. Red Umbrella, 4. Ice Tea Splash, 5. Hawaii - Mauna Lani Bay and Resort, 6. Castle Bandits, 7. Fly, 8. Black Cat, 9. dreamy you

I posted this to Facebook, which is where I got tagged, but thought I would duplicate it here. I'm not going to tag anyone outside of Facebook, but if you read this blog and have one of your own, feel free to play along. :)

In case you don't know: if you're tagged in this, you are supposed to reveal 25 things about yourself, and tag 25 other people. As you see fit.

1. I don't really believe in happiness. That is, moments can be happy, but I don't think happiness as a goal is a useful concept. There is no way to achieve a perpetual state of happiness, and moreover, I don't see the point in trying. I do, however, believe in enjoying my sad, angry, bored, jealous, guilty, enraged, hopeless, and tragic moments as much as my giddy, peaceful, serene, tranquil, jolly, ecstatic, and proud ones. I enjoy the spectrum.

2. I tend to like dramas over comedies. That probably proceeds from 1.

3. If I could do anything with my life with money as no object, I would live in a Victorian-era house in Beaufort, NC, and write novels. I would rise at dawn and watch the dolphins swim into the sound. I know exactly where I would get a cup of coffee afterwards, and what I would do for my afternoon break, which would be to sit in the sun, smell the breeze, and gaze out at the inlet. I would go flounder-gigging on the weekend off Carrot Island, and take many, many photographs. I wish money weren't an object.

4. I have many vivid dreams, and I nearly always remember them. I discovered a trick to doing this at some point. You can't chase down the memory of the dream or it will elude you and evaporate. Instead, you have to not prod at it at all, but let it lurk around the edges of your day. Then suddenly, something will trigger it and it will all come rushing back in a flash. I'm not sure if this works for other people, but it does for me.

5. I am mostly self-taught in cooking, and so I lack a lot of basic skills. There are recipes I wouldn't know how to make if I had to without a recipe, such as mashed potatoes, meatloaf, corn bread, deviled eggs, pork chops, you know, stuff that "normal" people eat. Instead, I have taught myself to make curries, stir fry, non-raw sushi, egg rolls, fajitas, olive/bean salad, and other strange items. I'm not sure how good most of these things are since I almost always cook for myself alone.

6. I live in a beautiful 1935 Sears & Roebuck house in a lovely old mill town neighborhood in my favorite city in the world. I love my tall ceilings, maple floors and cabinets, wide hallways, front porch with swing, and lovely old holly and crepe myrtle trees. I am, however, the worst home owner and gardener that I know, and the entire place is reeking of neglect.

7. I am a huge fan of the Myers-Briggs / Kiersey Temperament sorter. I personally identify very strongly as an INFJ. That would be fine, but what I really do is I type people in my head. I try not to pigeon-hole people, and instead try to use this as a way of understanding and relating to them. I don't think I'm entirely successful at that, to be honest.

8. I think in my own mind I'm still in my mid-twenties. It always surprises me when I see a photo of myself as I now am.

9. I can cross one eye at a time, and switch which one is pointing inwards. I can still hear my Granny freaking out about this, which is why I learned to do it.

10. I sing really loudly any time that I'm able, and I'm pretty good at it. I sing in the shower, on the drive to and from work -- anytime in the car at all, really -- doing housework, making up silly songs to the cats or the fish, singing along to the jukebox at my favorite pool place, whenever. But I also have a fear of public speaking/performing, so I shake like a leaf when I do karaoke.

11. I dance all the time, and am not a bit abashed about dancing in public. Whether I'm good at it or not is not really for me to decide, but I love it.

12. I can be a pretty good listener, but I'm a terrible interviewer. I have never learned to properly ask leading questions to get people to elaborate on something that they're saying. My Mom is fabulous at this, so when I tell her something about someone we both know, she'll ask me if I asked about this or that, and it never even occurred to me to ask those questions. I guess I feel like I shouldn't pressure someone to give information that they didn't volunteer, but maybe it's just that I'm not curious.

13. I do a hell of a lot of navel gazing.

14. I almost never eat dessert, or crave sweets. Fortunately, this is good for my gluten-free diet. I don't miss cakes or cookies at all, or even bread. I do miss pizza, though.

15. I have a bowler hat that I wear most days that I bought in 1990. Similarly, I have a long leather jacket that I got as a birthday present in 1991. They're falling apart, but I won't part with them.

16. My eyes used to be very blue, but they're getting grayer as I age. My right one has a brown spot near the middle.

17. I am a self-taught typist. I have a very rapid hunt-and peck that I can't fully explain, and which just sort of happened over time. I can still type 75+ words per minute. If I start to pay attention to what my fingers are doing, I start messing up, so I just let my fingers do their own thing.

18. I once sat down and tried to count the number of times I have moved in my life. Not just in between different states, but within the same town. I forget what total I came to now, but I think it was in the 30s. One of the advantages of being a Navy brat is that I have no problems with moving and find it to be a fairly stress-free process. I always unpack everything within the first week. We had to do this in the military or we would have perpetually lived in boxes.

19. Because we moved around so much, I skipped large portions of grades, and didn't learn major chunks of elementary school subjects as one school system wouldn't have covered it yet, and the next already had. As a result, I have never learned cursive, and had to teach myself. I don't know a lot of basic grammar, and have never diagrammed a sentence. It was actually learning French in high school that taught me a lot of things, like what the subjunctive case is, for example. Also, my spelling sucks.

20. I guess I have finally, reluctantly, come to accept that I am from Maryland. That doesn't feel right because I lived so many other places, and my family is all from North Carolina, but I guess those 5 years during high school were enough to make me a Marylander. The fact that I am a Maryland seafood snob confirms it.

21. I love card games. I wish I had friends to play them with, especially Spades.

22. I have two power animals. I would tell you what they are, but I think I'm not supposed to.

23. The date on which I was baptized and confirmed as an Episcopalian was coincidentally my great grandmother's birthday. I like that idea.

24. I like the color red, mainly because it looks good on me. I have a definite vain streak, although you wouldn't know it from my appearance.

25. I still read tarot cards or the I Ching on occasion, even though I think it conflicts with my religious beliefs. I think I do this in an effort to control my future, which of course is illusory at best. Still, it gives me a certain satisfaction. Maybe it's a form of meditation about my life.

At least, according to 1930's standards, and this blogthing:

26 As a 1930s wife, I am Poor Take the test!

I think it was the vulgarity, the general sloppiness, and the desire to wear PJs while cooking breakfast that did it. Oh yeah, and the general outspokenness. Can't have that! Thanks to hsarik for the link. :)

Thanks to Phil at The Archer Pelican for these blogthings:

Which philosopher are you? Your Result: Aristotle   Truth does not exist in some transcendent realm. We get to truth by applying reason to the physical world. The world follows logic and commonsense. Science if done properly is not to far from philosophy. --This quiz was made by S. A-Lerer.
Early Wittgenstein / Positivists
Immanuel Kant
Plato (strict rationalists)
Nietzsche
Sartre/Camus (late existentialists)
W.v.O. Quine / Late Wittgenstein
Which philosopher are you? Quiz Created on GoToQuiz

Aristotle?? Really?? Well, i did do a lot of classical studies, so it must have affected me.

Then there's this one, where I end up with St. Augustine as my #1 and St. Thomas Aquinas as my #2, and Kant as a distant third. From the write-up, St. Thomas was fundamentally an Aristotelian. So maybe there's some congruity here.

I played around with a bunch of different Wordle designs for my blog. I think this is the best one:



Thanks to Joe for the example.

I'm usually not a huge fan of the Enneagram - I think it's too simplistic. Not that I don't like to reduce people to simple types a la the MBTI, but Enneagram seemed to not really ever quite "get" me. But I thought I'd post this little blogthing from Ok Cupid:

===================================

I've gone ahead and made myself an online city:

http://celestopia.myminicity.com/

I'm not sure if this will be interesting or not. If you make a city and want me to visit, send me a link!

I saw this on narcissamiss' blog and decided to try it out for myself.

Rules:
1. Load your mp3 player on your computer with the widest selection of songs you can muster, but don't add more to your computer, just use what you have already.

2. Ask each of these questions and press "shuffle." Post the title of the song that happens to come up (with the artist). Pretend that is the answer to the question.

3. Below the song title "answer," try and explain how the answers might actually apply. Enjoy the non sequitur-ness . . . and the eerie synchronicity!


Results:

1. How does the world see me?
Make My Cot Where the Cot-Cot-Cotton Grows - R. Crumb and his Cheap Suit Serenaders
Silly, old-fashioned, and slightly perverse. And perhaps badly dressed.

2. Will I have a happy life?
The Worst Joke Ever - R.E.M.
"You see there's this cat burglar who can't see in the dark.
He lays his bets on 8 more lives, walks into a bar.
Slips on the 8 ball, falls on his knife.
Says, 'I don't know what I've done, but it doesn't feel right!'"
I'm not making this up. Crap.

3. What do my friends really think of me?
Get Out of My House - Kate Bush
Ouch! This isn't going so well. :(

4. Do people secretly lust after me?
Brick is Red - Pixies
I think that's probably a yes. It's like saying the Pope is Catholic. I guess I'm flattered.

5. How can I make myself happy?
Solitude - Billie Holiday
"In my solitude
You haunt me
With dreadful ease
Of days gone by"
Hrm, this is a terribly lonely prediction.

6. What should I do with my life?
All Beacause of You - U2
"I like the sound of my own voice
I didn't give anyone else a choice
An intellectual tortoise
Racing with your bullet train"
Intellectual tortoise? Is that a profession?

7. Why must life be so full of pain?
Power of Denial - Thomas Newman.
So true. Man, I have to get some perkier songs.

8. How can I maximize my pleasure during sex?
Eternity - Siddal
A very ethereal gothic song that I adore. Maybe the title means make it last longer.

9. Will I ever have children?
Too Much Information - The Police
Is that like, "Reply hazy, try again?"

10. Will I die happy?
Cowboys to Girls - Hacienda Brothers
Remake of the Commodores classic. It's a sweet slow song. I think that bodes well.

11. What is some good advice for me?
This Charming Man - The Smiths
I think this means go get laid by a jumped up pantry boy with a nice car.

12. What is happiness?
And I Love Her - The Beatles
Yay, nice one. But since I actually am not in a love relationship, maybe this makes me unhappy.

13. What's my favourite fetish?
New Blood - Robert Cray
Erm, I don't have a blood fetish. But the song is about seeking out a new woman, so I suppose it means that I have a fetish for new people / things, which might be at least partially true.

14. How will I be remembered?
Reason To Believe - Tim Hardin
"If I listened long enough to you
I'd find a way to believe that it's all true
Knowing that you lied straight-faced while I cried
Still I look to find a reason to believe"
Perhaps I'll be remembered for being far too credulous. Makes sense, given that I'm prone to find meaning in silly quizzes like this.

I was looking for a blogthing to do since I haven't posted in a bit. I was looking specifically for a Jane Austen blogthing since I'm re-watching the very good Persuasion from Masterpiece which aired last Sunday. Instead, I found this book list over on a gal named Julie Clawson's blog. These are the rules if you'd like to participate, too:

Here’s what you do:
* Bold the ones you’ve read.
* Italicize the ones you want to read.
* Leave in normal text the ones that don’t interest you.
* Put in ALL CAPS those you haven’t heard of.
* Put a couple of asterisks by the ones you recommend.
* Put ++ next to the ones you’ve seen the movie or TV show of.
I'm adding another rule:
* Put xx there if you really hated the book.

1. The DaVinci Code (Dan Brown)++
2. Pride and Prejudice (Jane Austen)**++
3. To Kill A Mockingbird (Harper Lee)**++
4. Gone With The Wind (Margaret Mitchell)++
5. The Lord of the Rings: Return of the King (Tolkien) **++
6. The Lord of the Rings: Fellowship of the Ring (Tolkien) **++
7. The Lord of the Rings: Two Towers (Tolkien) **++
8. Anne of Green Gables (L.M. Montgomery)++
9. Outlander (Diana Gabaldon)xx
10. A FINE BALANCE (Rohinton Mistry)
11. Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire (Rowling)**++
12. Angels and Demons (Dan Brown)
13. Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix (Rowling)**++
14. A Prayer for Owen Meany (John Irving)**++
15. Memoirs of a Geisha (Arthur Golden)**++
16. Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone(Rowling)**++
17. FALL ON YOUR KNEES (Ann-Marie MacDonald)
18. The Stand (Stephen King)++
19. Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban (Rowling)**++
20. Jane Eyre (Charlotte Bronte)++
21. The Hobbit (Tolkien)**
22. The Catcher in the Rye (J.D. Salinger)
23. Little Women (Louisa May Alcott)++
24. The Lovely Bones (Alice Sebold)
25. Life of Pi (Yann Martel)**
26. The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy (Douglas Adams)**++
27. Wuthering Heights (Emily Bronte)++
28. The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe (C. S. Lewis)**++
29. East of Eden (John Steinbeck)++
30. Tuesdays with Morrie(Mitch Albom)
31. Dune (Frank Herbert)++
32. The Notebook (Nicholas Sparks)
33. Atlas Shrugged (Ayn Rand)++
34. 1984 (Orwell)
35. The Mists of Avalon (Marion Zimmer Bradley)++ (the mini-series was awful, though.)
36. THE PILLARS OF THE EARTH (Ken Follett)
37. THE POWER OF ONE (Bryce Courtenay)
38. I KNOW THIS MUCH IS TRUE (Wally Lamb)
39. The Red Tent (Anita Diamant)
40. The Alchemist (Paulo Coelho)
41. The Clan of the Cave Bear (Jean M. Auel)++
42. THE KITE RUNNER (Khaled Hosseini)
43. CONFESSIONS OF A SHOPAHOLIC (Sophie Kinsella)
44. The Five People You Meet In Heaven (Mitch Albom)
45. The Bible [ although I cannot say I've read it from cover to cover ]
46. Anna Karenina (Tolstoy)++
47. The Count of Monte Cristo (Alexandre Dumas)
48. Angela’s Ashes (Frank McCourt)++
49. The Grapes of Wrath (John Steinbeck)**++
50. SHE’S COME UNDONE (Wally Lamb)
51. The POISONWOOD BIBLE(Barbara Kingsolver)
52. A Tale of Two Cities (Dickens)
53. Ender’s Game (Orson Scott Card)
54. Great Expectations (Dickens)++
55. The Great Gatsby (Fitzgerald)**++
56. THE STONE ANGEL (Margaret Laurence)
57. Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets (Rowling)**++
58. The Thorn Birds (Colleen McCullough)
59. The Handmaid’s Tale (Margaret Atwood)**
60. THE TIME TRAVELER'S WIFE (Audrey Niffenegger)
61. Crime and Punishment(Fyodor Dostoyevsky)
62. The Fountainhead (Ayn Rand)
63. War and Peace (Tolstoy)
64. Interview With The Vampire (Anne Rice)**++
65. FIFTH BUSINESS (Robertson Davies)
66. ONE HUNDRED YEARS OF SOLITUDE (Gabriel Garcia Marquez)
67. The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants (Ann Brashares)++
68. Catch-22 (Joseph Heller)
69. Les Miserables (Victor Hugo)
70. The Little Prince (Antoine de Saint-Exupery)
71. Bridget Jones’s Diary (Helen Fielding)**++
72. Love in the Time of Cholera (Gabriel Garcia Marquez)
73. Shogun (James Clavell)
74. The English Patient (Michael Ondaatje)++
75. The Secret Garden(Frances Hodgson)++
76. THE SUMMER TREE (Guy Gavriel Kay)
77. A Tree Grows In Brooklyn (Betty Smith)
78. The World According to Garp (John Irving)++
79. THE DIVINERS (Margaret Laurence)
80. Charlotte’s Web (E.B. White)**++
81. NOT WANTED ON THE VOYAGE (Timothy Findley)
82. Of Mice And Men (Steinbeck)
83. Rebecca (Daphne DuMaurier)++
84. WIZARD'S FIRST RULE (Terry Goodkind)
85. Emma (Jane Austen)**++
86. Watership Down (Richard Adams)**++
87. Brave New World (Aldous Huxley)
88. THE STONE DIARIES (Carol Shields)
89. BLINDNESS (Jose Saramago)
90. KANE AND ABEL (Jeffrey Archer)
91. IN THE SKIN OF A LION (Michael Ondaatje)
92. Lord of the Flies (William Golding)
93. The Good Earth (Pearl S. Buck)
94. The Secret Life of Bees (Sue Monk Kidd)
95. The Bourne Identity (Robert Ludlum)++
96. The Outsiders (S.E. Hinton)++
97. White Oleander (Janet Fitch)++
98. A Woman of Substance (Barbara Taylor Bradford)
99. The Celestine Prophecy(James Redfield)
100. Ulysses (James Joyce) [ I've read small bits of this, though ]

I'm rather shocked at myself for never getting around to reading the Bronte sisgter novels, War and Peace, or Catch 22.  In any case, it's an interesting list to remind myself of books I could get.  Not that I don't still have about 5 on my nightstand that I'm in the middle of reading.  And several more that I haven't cracked yet.

I think the main thing I can gather from this list is that I'm really not terribly well-read.

Link: The Which Spice Are You Test written by jodiesattva on OkCupid Free Online Dating, home of the The Dating Persona Test

Thanks to Phil for the quiz link. :)

As someone who is pretty much a pacifist, this is a very disturbing blogthing:

11

I guess I got that high based on my previous martial arts experience and my ability to kick very high. The moral repugnance doesn't seem to matter as much as I'd like.

In Medieval times, I would have been a Shepherd, at least according to the Kingdomality Personal Preference Profile:

Your distinct personality, The Shepherd is to tend to your human flock. You understand the needs of those for whom you are responsible. Shepherds are vigilant and reliable. You realize your obligation and commitment to the well being of those entrusted to your care. Shepherds are very dependable. You engender a feeling of comfort and stability to those within your charge. On the positive side, Shepherds can be empathic, caring, understanding, practical and realistic. On the negative side, you may be manipulative, close-minded and sentimentally rigid. Interestingly, your preference is just as applicable in today's corporate kingdoms.

I wish these sorts of tests would show other possible results/descriptions.

I just love personality quizzes. Especially because I'm fairly familiar with myself and so usually am looking at how the design of the test captures information about me and processes it. Which is why this Personal DNA blogthing from hsarik confuses me:

The blogthing's script tags aren't working on livejournal, but basically, I'm a: Benevolent Idealist

This is the first personality test that ever had me pegged as an extrovert. It's true that I open up and become much more social with people once I know and like them, but as I've pointed out before, if you put me in a room full of people that I don't know I tend to clam up. Also, I've been working in my current job for four years, and I still don't know most of the people on my floor. That makes me an introvert, if you ask me.

Addendum: Actually, if you look at the numbers down at the bottom of the report, it turns out that "Average Extroversion" means I'm in the middle of the scoring range with a slight bent toward Introversion, which is accurate. So I rescind my complaint.

So apparently, OkCupid does a "Match Me" test for you automatically. I wasn't aware of this until I was alerted that I had an OkCupid message - I haven't updated that site in over a year.

Anyways, this is my Match Me test. FWIW, I scored 25% match with myself. Weird.

So I took the Belief-O-Matic quiz over at beliefnet and had some (mostly predictable, sometimes interesting) results:


1. Mainline to Liberal Christian Protestants (100%)
2. Liberal Quakers (87%)
3. Orthodox Quaker (75%)
4. Unitarian Universalism (74%)
5. Reform Judaism (62%)
6. Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints (Mormons) (60%)
7. Bahá'í Faith (60%)
8. Mainline to Conservative Christian/Protestant (59%)
9. New Age (54%)
10. Neo-Pagan (52%)
11. Theravada Buddhism (51%)
12. Secular Humanism (50%)
13. Taoism (50%)
14. Mahayana Buddhism (50%)
15. Christian Science (Church of Christ, Scientist) (49%)
16. Jehovah's Witness (46%)
17. New Thought (44%)
18. Seventh Day Adventist (42%)
19. Sikhism (38%)
20. Jainism (36%)
21. Scientology (34%)
22. Orthodox Judaism (33%)
23. Eastern Orthodox (32%)
24. Roman Catholic (32%)
25. Islam (31%)
26. Nontheist (29%)
27. Hinduism (23%)

At times I really feel torn between the Episcopal Church and the Friends, and so sometimes I will drop in on the Durham Friends Meeting. I love their services, and find them very fulfilling, except that I also still really like the ritual and the hymns at the Episcopal service.

I think it's a little bizarre that I'm 60% LDS, though. I don't know much about their faith. There was some Mormon on my grandmother's side, come to think of it.

Ok, jhv sucked me in with this one.

Brainworks: How does your brain work?

Your Brain Usage Profile:

Auditory : 42%
Visual : 57%
Left : 36%
Right : 63%

etselec, you possess an interesting balance of hemispheric and sensory characteristics, with a slight right-brain dominance and a slight preference for visual processing.

Since neither of these is completely centered, you lack the indecision and second-guessing associated with other patterns. You have a distinct preference for creativity and intuition with seemingly sufficient verbal skills to be able to translate in any meaningful way to yourself and others.

You tend to see things in "wholes" without surrendering the ability to attend to details. You can give them sufficient notice to be able to utilize and incorporate them as part of an overall pattern.

In the same way, while you are active and process information simultaneously, you demonstrate a capacity for sequencing as well as reflection which allows for some "inner dialogue."

All in all, you are likely to be quite content with yourself and your style although at times it will not necessarily be appreciated by others. You have sufficient confidence to not second-guess yourself, but rather to use your critical faculties in a way that enhances, rather than limits, your creativity.

You can learn in either mode although far more efficiently within the visual mode. It is likely that in listening to conversations or lecture materials you simultaneously translate into pictures which enhance and elaborate on the meaning.

It is most likely that you will gravitate towards those endeavors which are predominantly visual but include some logic or structuring. You may either work particularly hard at cultivating your auditory skills or risk "missing out" on being able to efficiently process what you learn. Your own intuitive skills will at times interfere with your capacity to listen to others, which is something else you may need to take into account.


I rather like that, and think it's pretty accurate.

Get your Simpsonized Self here.

Grabbed from Joe:

57%How Addicted to Blogging Are You?

Although you wouldn't know it from this past week or two. I'll get back to posting more regularly again shortly. At the moment, I'm trying to catch up on a few real-life things that I haven't done in far too long, like taking car of the car, the yard, and some overdue chores. In fact, I'm thinking of taking a couple of weeks' worth of personal vacation / hiding out from the world, while still going to work. Because the big employment change didn't happen, I feel like I need some other way to reset myself and get back into some good habits like working out, attending church more regularly, eating right, etc.

I'll be back eventually, though.