Tag: meme

51. Make up a definition for the following silly words…

Fruitgoogle: find a citrus.

Ambytime: sleep.

Asscactus: pain in the rumpus.

52. What was the last thing you made with your own hands?

Something with my daughter, no doubt.

53. What was your favorite toy as a child?

My Johnny Seven OMA – One Man Army

54. How many TVs are in your house?

Two, but only one is plugged in.

55. What is your favorite thing to do outside?

Riding the bicycle.

56. How do you feel when you see a rainbow?

Lucky.

57. Have you ever dreamt a dream that came true?

Not that I’m aware of.

58. Have you ever been to a psychic/tarot reader?

A couple times.

59. What is your idea of paradise?

Massage.

60. Do you believe in god and if so what is he/she/it like?

Yes. Mysterious; or to be determined.

61. Do you believe in Hell?

This plane may be it.

62. What one thing have you done that most people haven’t?

Won on JEOPARDY!

63. What is the kindest thing you have ever done?

I’m sure that the directive to do your good works in secret applies here.

64. Are you a patient person?

More than I used to be.

65. What holiday should exist but doesn’t?

Day after the Super Bowl, the Monday before the March Madness, when everyone in offices are making their picks.

66. What holiday shouldn’t exist but does?

I’ve never been big on banning other people’s holidays.

67. What’s the best joke you ever heard?

Never remember jokes.

68. Where is the most fun place you have EVER been?

Barbados.

69. Is your hair natural or dyed?

Naturally gray/white – no one would dye it this color!

70. Do you have any deep dark secrets or are you pretty much up front?

Yes.

71. What is under your bed right now?

Stuff my wife stores there; I have no idea.

72. If you were in the Land of Oz would you want to live there or go home?

Well, not go home to Kansas.

73. If you drive do you frequently speed?

The little that I have driven, I don’t think speeding was an issue.

74. What is the world’s best song to dance to?

Disco Inferno. The album version – it’s very long.

75. What song was on the last time you danced with someone?

At Last by Etta James. My wife and I dance to it every time we hear it.

 

26. Who has done something today to show they care about you?

Co-workers, folks on the bus, family.

27. Do you have a lot to learn?

Oh yeah. And then there’s the relearning of stuff I should have known.

28. If you could learn how to do three things just by wishing and not by working what would they be?

A How to speak many languages

B How to fly a plane

C How to play the piano

29. Which do you remember the longest: what other people say, what other people do or how other people make you feel?

Feel.

30. What are the key ingredients to having a good relationship?

Honesty, intentionality, communications, sensitivity.

31. What 3 things do you want to do before you die?

A Meet a US President

B Go to all 50 of the United States – 20 to go

C Go to a World Series game or the Super Bowl

32. What three things would you want to die to avoid doing?

Causing others extreme pain – stuff like that.

33. Is there a cause you believe in more than any other cause?

Justice.

34. What does each decade make you think of:

The 19…

20s: Illegal booze, Teapot Dome

30s: Depression, New Deal, the rise of Hitler

40s: WWII, A-bombs, desegregation of US military

50s: Montgomery bus boycott, Korean war, Brown v. Board of Education, red scare, Sputnik

60s: Beatles, Motown, Aretha, Beach Boys, JFK & MLK & RFK assassinations, Twilight Zone, some great Supreme Court rulings such as Loving v. Virginia

70s: College, bicentennial, punk rock

80s: Hair bands, Reagan, “Born in the USA”, “Thriller”

90s: Library school, the trips to Detroit, Cleveland, DC, Barbados, JEOPARDY!

2000s: Homeownership, the daughter

2010s (so far): Blogging

35. Which decade do you feel the most special connection to and why?

The 1960s…that time period, especially 1968, really began to define me as a person.

36. What is your favorite oldie/classic rock song?
Impossible question. Pick one at random from what I recently listened to: Since You’ve Been Gone (Sweet Sweet Baby) by Aretha

37. What country do you live in and who is the leader of that country?

US, Obama

If you could say any sentence to the current leader of your country what would it be?

Overpromising and underdelivering is a tough strategy to accept.

38. What’s your favorite TV channel to watch in the middle of the night?

Though I’d probably just watch DVRed stuff, sometimes I wind up watching various permutations of Law & Order or ESPN Sportcenter, neither of which do I watch otherwise.

39. What Disney villain are you the most like and why?

Gaston from Beauty and the Beast. A bit of ego.

40. Have you ever been a girl scout/boy scout?

I was in Cub Scouts, but it didn’t hold my interest. And I wasn’t very good at it.

41. If you were traveling to another continent would you rather fly or take a boat?

I’d rather travel by boat, depending on available time.

42. Why is the sky blue during the day and black at night?

Sunlight.

43. What does your name mean?

It’s a color. Oh, the OTHER name – Spear bearer.

44. Would you rather explore the deeps of the ocean or outer space?

Outer space.

45. Word association

What is the first word that comes to mind when you see the word:

Air: Breathe

Meat: Puppets

Different: Strokes

Pink: Floyd

Deserve: Star

White: Stripes

Elvis: Costello

Magic: Johnson

Heart: Damn Yankees

Clash: Strummer

Pulp: Trees

46. If you could meet any person in the world who is dead who would you want it to be?

This week, Jackie Robinson.

47. What if you could meet anyone who is alive?

US Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont.

48. Is there a movie that you love so much you could watch it every day?

I doubt there is such a movie.

49. You are going to be stuck alone in an elevator for a week. What do you bring to do?

World Almanac. And a porta-potty.

50. Have you ever saved someone’s life or had your life saved?

Yes, and possibly.

 

Sad to read about the passing of Phoebe Snow. She had a hit single with Paul Simon called Gone At Last, but she was only 58 or 60, depending on which obit one reads.

---

Apparently, there really ARE 5000 questions, but this guy only did 100, at least here, so I’ll do the same. Moreover, only 25 at a time.

1. Who are you?

Not as mysterious as I think myself to be, yet not as much of an open book as others perceive me to be. And you thought I’d go with The Who reference, didn’t you?

2. What are the 3 most important things everyone should know about you?

I get bored easily if I’m doing the same thing, so I always need to change it up. I generally DO know where things are on my desk, so if I clean it, I’ll probably file away something important. I see and hear many things as music and numbers, even if you don’t.

3. When you aren’t filling out 5,000 question surveys like this one what are you doing?

Being a business librarian, blogging, doing the domestic thing with wife and daughter.

4. List your classes in school from the ones you like the most to the ones you like the least (or if you are out of school, think of the classes you did like and didn’t like at the time).

LOVED math through trig, history, American government, and politics. HATED calculus, statistics, anything that involved rote memorization.

5. What is your biggest goal for this year?

Get closer to retirement, monetarily.

6. Where do you want to be in 5 years?

I’m OK where I am. That said, I’ve never been that good at predicting the future, especially my own.

7. What stage of life are you in right now?

Eternally on the precipice.

8. Are you more child-like or childish?

Child-like, probably.

9. What is the last thing you said out loud?

Oh, crap. (About a news story.)

10. What song comes closest to how you feel about your life right now?

You’ve Got To Have Heart from Damn Yankees.

11. Have you ever taken martial arts classes?

No.

12. Does your life tend to get better or worse or does it just stay the same?

Rollercoaster.

13. Does time really heal all wounds?

No. Most, but not all.

14. How do you handle a rainy day?

Rainy days and Mondays seldom get me down. Doesn’t really affect much.

15. Which is worse…losing your luggage or having to sort out tangled holiday lights?

No contest -losing your luggage.

16. How is your relationship with your parents?

Both deceased. I was fine with each of them at the end.

Will you miss them when they are gone?

They are. I do.

17. Do you tend to be aware of what is going on around you?

I’m of the opinion that I am more so than most other people, who seem to be oblivious to their surroundings. I’ll give you a very recent example: there was a woman getting out of the back seat of a cab while holding a toddler. I thought she might need assistance getting out, though the cabbie was unaware. I asked, she said yes, and I let her pull herself up, using my arm as a support. She thanked me, but at the same time, she thought the driver should have picked up on this.

18. What is the truest thing that you know?

Life isn’t always fair.

19. What did you want to be when you grew up?

A lawyer or a minister. I am neither.

20. Have you ever been given a second chance?

A bunch of times.

21. Are you more of a giver or a taker?

I see myself as a giver, but that could be ego.

22. Do you make your decisions with an open heart/mind?

Generally yes.

23. What is the most physically painful thing that has ever happened to you?

It’s a tossup among root canal, my broken rib, and a toe infection that nearly killed me (literally).

24. What is the most emotionally painful thing that has ever happened to you?

It involved affairs of the heart.

25. Who have you hugged today?

My wife and daughter. And maybe you, if you were around.

 

A couple of links, first off.
Arthur and Jason’s 2political podcast makes mention of my article re the Triangle Shirtwaist Fire.
Recent articles on my Times Union blog include the old YMCA becoming a church, the collective wisdom of the bus, and me asking if it is the job of a news organization to change behavior.

---

From Thursday Thunks, and this was the order of the questions; I don’t know why.

1. There is a song out there about you… it’s on the radio, the video is on tv (just not MTV) and everybody in the world knows this song is about you. Who sings it?

For some reason, I’ve had stuck in my head, for a couple of weeks, Whatcha See Is Whatcha Get by the Dramatics, which got to #9 on the pop charts and #3 on the soul charts in 1971. My daughter has been singing, “Some people are made of plastic; You know some people are made of wood”. Then instead of “Some people have hearts of stone; Some people are up to no good,” she makes up something else. It’s something basically honest, and therefore comforting, about WYSIWYG.

4. Have you ever sneaked..snuck…snucked…what is the right word? into a movie?

Actually no, and this proved to be a source of a rather heated discussion. My sister’s dopey then-boyfriend, who always had an angle, boasted how he’d pay for one movie but then see two or three. He was so proud of himself. “Everybody does it,” he proclaimed. “I never did,” I replied and my wife responded likewise. It was also the weekend he went on about what a superior Christian he was. Meh.

3. Déjà vu; meaning “already seen”, is the experience of feeling sure that one has already witnessed or experienced a current situation, even though the exact circumstances of the previous encounter are uncertain and were perhaps imagined. Thoughts on what it is? Have you experienced it?

I don’t know what it is, but I remember quite distinctly the first time I recall experiencing it. I was working at a summer camp when I was 17, mowing the acres of lawn on the boys’ side of the camp, then the girls’ side. I was walking down the dirt road that led from one side to the other, when I had the distinct impression that I had traveled that road before, though, at least in this lifetime, I had not.

2. Stick it to me, baby. What is the last bumper sticker you saw and why do you remember it?

There’s one I see all the time in my neighborhood: “Well-behaved women rarely make history”; seems to be true.

10. Ever wonder what fish think about?

Their school lessons, no doubt.

8. If you could paint President Obama’s fingernails any color, what would it be?

Yellow, for the cowardice he’s shown in a number of issues.

7. Do you have seat covers on your car seats? What do they look like?

No.

6. For the rest of your life you can eat one spice and one spice only (on whatever food you want, of course), what spice do you choose?

Allspice. If you’re going to be a spice, might as well be versatile

9. If you could slide down a rainbow, which side would you slide down?

The outside.

5. So a mom is suing her kids’ preschool because it failed to prepare the child for the kindergarten entrance exam… did you eat paste in preschool?

I’m fascinated by how much homework my daughter had in kindergarten and has in first grade. (I never went to preschool; not sure it’d been invented yet.)