(no subject)
This meme is a fun and creative subsitute for a mundane life update:
1) I memorized a scene from Othello last summer, and now whenever I’m cold, bored, or otherwise discomfited I recite it to distract myself. It’s almost a compulsion.
2) I have three younger sisters, all of whom are taller and blonder than I.
3) People often ask me if I’m wearing color contacts, or if those are my “real eyes”. I think that’s a peculiar question.
4) When I was in first grade I got my hair cut very short. I got very upset, and wore stick-on earrings every day for the next year, to show that I wasn’t a boy.
5) My reaction would still probably be about the same, today.
6) I’m awful at running and most other physical activity, but remarkably good at running in high heels.
7) I was forced to take remedial gym in grade school. My former gym teacher still asks after me.
8) I start each day with four to six cups of coffee, and don’t usually consume much else during daylight hours.
9) I tutor a 14 year old girl who has had more sex, smoked more pot, and been involved in more illegal activities than I am likely to experience in my entire life. Even though she can’t quite read, her exploits give me a middle school-esque insecurity complex.
10) I find pennies annoying, so I always throw them away.
11) I only recently have been able to appreciate Seinfeld at all, and I still don’t think it’s all that funny.
12) After a night of drinking, I always wake up early in the morning, and can never fall back asleep.
13) My professor’s dog once ate my lip gloss.
14) I have a penchant for encouraging the playing of “Never Have I Ever” in any group situation. I even taught it to a table of children at Thanksgiving dinner.
15) The 5 year old thought it was the best thing ever, and now makes his parents play.
16) The vast majority of my work experience has been child care, or secretarial.
17) My mother is an attendance secretary at an elementary school, and I worry that I will turn into her.
18) I have a study carrel at the school library, but not because I need one for research. I don’t use it at all, but when the library gets crowded around exam time I plan on going there just to kick someone else out of my carrel. I really can’t wait.
19) I would probably make a vindictive and unhappy professor. I probably will be one, one day.
20) Outside of class (at school) I am thought of as opinionated, bordering on argumentative. In class, I am silent.
21) I don’t mind lying, except to my parents.
22) I almost never answer my phone, even if I‘m home. My answering machine message even acknowledges that fact. Sometimes (but not usually) I return messages.
23) I seldom remember to make my bed. But I did make the quilt on my bed!
24) As a child I told my parents I wanted to be a nurse. They switched our family to a female physician, just so I would understand that women could be doctors too.
25) I knew women could be doctors, I just didn’t want to have to go to school for that long.
26) Now I know that women can be professors, but I still haven’t met a female professor I truly respect.
27) I have a ridiculously poor memory. Though it’s regrettable that I’ve already forgotten the vast majority of my past experiences, it’s sometimes nice to be reminded of forgotten occurrences; the past is almost always pleasantly novel and new to me.
28) Like that character in White Noise, I find grocery stores alluring, in a comfortably postmodern sort of way.
29) Shopping malls, on the other hand, mostly fill me with rage.
30) Next year I will be sharing an apartment with two of my friends. I am excited, but also a little scared I may kill them. I’m not good at sharing living space.
31) There’s a snack stand at my school that will give you free ice cream if you get less than a 30% on a midterm or final exam, after curving. I once took a statistics exam that was eligible for ice cream.
32) I was too ashamed to collect my reward.
33) I have always really enjoyed running out of things. Right now, I am actively looking forward to using up the last of my shampoo bottles, and am carefully monitoring the daily shrinkage of my vitamin collection.
34) Most of my childhood games used to center around the theme dwindling supplies. (Barbies running out food hiding from Nazis, pioneers running out of winter clothing, etc.) I can’t quite determine what that says about my character.
35) Until this year, I almost never wore jeans.
36) I used to take dance lessons, and though I absorbed no useful skills I have retained a tendency to count “dancer- style,” grouping things into sets of 8.
37) For much of my life Scarlett O’Hara has been a major role model. Only recently have I begun to realize how misguided this was.
38) Now I’m entirely without a role model, which may be even worse.
39) I thought it was funny that my grandfather died on the Ides of March. Not ha-ha funny, and sad too of course, but I remember appreciating the irony at the time.
40) Somewhere in my possession are 3 copies of T.S. Eliot’s Collected Poems. I misplace this book the way other people lose track of socks.
41) Something about my upbringing makes me feel decidedly immoral reading books in a bookstore. I don’t mind writing down titles and then bringing the list to the library, but reading a book in the store itself seems insurmountably inappropriate.
42) I measure my growth against the height of a rosebush I planted 10 years ago. I resent it for being several inches taller than me.
43) Snakes make me cry.
44) My facebook profile is mostly arbitrary. I couldn’t decide on Favorites, so I just picked some.
45) I really like dead flowers and plants. Which is lucky, since I’m incapable of keeping them alive.
46) I fantasize idly about going to Ireland to “find my roots.” Because of this vague desire, I am envious of anyone who is studying abroad in Dublin, or knows anyone is studying abroad in Dublin. Yet I know I myself would never want to do study abroad in Dublin.
47) Sometimes I take the underground passageways between my classes, to avoid running into people and having to make conversation. The passageways remind me of the sewers underneath London and Paris, and make me imagine that I am a revolutionary, or a rat.
48) I enjoy the act of traveling. It makes me feel like I’ve accomplished something effortlessly impressive, having traversed vast distances in a single day.
49) A primary motivation to get in better physical shape is in order to cut down on the amount of time it takes me to make the last-minute dash to turn in papers before the History Office closes at 4:30. Wasting hours on exercise seems a more feasible solution than learning better academic time management skills.
50) I only write papers while listening to Liz Phair. I can’t remember what I did before I knew who she was. Probably failed, or something.
51) I bite my fingernails. Also (sometimes) my toenails. Yes, I realize this is weird.
52) I made a mix cd of songs from the Civil War. When I want to feel enthused about my future academic and career goals, I listen to it, and it always works.
53) For two months now I have owned a new pair of sneakers so darling I am unwilling to wear them outdoors, for fear their beauty will be marred. This may continue indefinitely.
54) I often feel like I’m pretending to be a real, normal girl, and not doing very well at it.
55) I don’t even pretend to be a real adult.
56) The man who runs the local convenience store (where I buy red bull and Popsicles) knows me, and I really like that.
57) I give blood whenever I am allowed to, even though I can’t explain why.
58) One of the few classes I missed this semester was on Valentines Day. The reason? I wanted to compile a cute, pink and red themed outfit, and it took so long to accomplish I missed class entirely.
59) In some respects, I am probably too stubborn for my own good.
60) Once, while wearing sandals and a skirt in the dead of winter, I was forced to wait so long outside a bar that my toes actually turned blue. I started crying, and my friend intervened with the bouncer, so it worked out frost-bite free in the end. I don’t think I learned any lesson from it, though.
61) Radiohead annoys me.
62) I’ve been living in Canada for three years now, and I still get Celsius and Fahrenheit confused. Usually I ask for clarification of temperatures- “Canadian or American?”
63) My favorite metro system is the New York Subway. It’s mostly because I like the rats, but I also enjoy imagining that the teenage mutant ninja turtles are around there somewhere.
64) Last week, I bought my very first polo shirt. And my first thong. It’s hard to say which one I find more useful, but I can’t fathom how I lived so long without either.
65) I really like having written papers, but I don’t much enjoy writing them. This is probably a statement which characterizes most things in my life.
66) My favorite time in American history is either the 1860s or the 1960s. In both cases, it’s the sense of misguided idealism that gets to me. Our generation is just too cynical for that.
67) I like the smell of paint thinner, nail polish, and gasoline. The smell of cigarette smoke reminds me fondly of childhood.
68) I broke my phone by pouring water over it repeatedly, on the way to the coffee maker in the morning. I put my new phone in the exact same spot.
69) When I’m alone, I sometimes talk to myself.
70) I like frozen yogurt, arrowroot cookies, and oranges.
71) I can touch my tongue to my nose, but I wish I could put my legs behind my head. That would be total self- actualization.
72) My favorite body part is probably the collarbone. My least favorite is definitely either the knee or the eyebrow.
73) I used to put cover-up on my knees before leaving the house. I stopped, but only because I ran out of cover-up.
74) All through middle school, I firmly believed I had irredeemably awful hair. Really, I just didn’t know what conditioner was.
75) I don’t believe in God, but when I was younger I use to pray to the Gods of Ancient Greece, you know, just in case. I had an elaborately and creatively constructed system which I followed intermittently for several years.
76) Last semester I structured a paper around this fact. And got a good grade.
77) I am taking a course all about James Joyce next semester, and am really excited. It will be the first non-major/ minor course I have taken… ever.
78) I got the wonderbread logo screened onto a sweatshirt, and I think this is the coolest thing ever, even though my friends mock me for it, and I still can’t quite decide if a shirt that says WONDER in large letters across the front is maybe sort of obtusely obscene.
79) I can’t imagine spending the rest of my life in any place but America.
80) When I was born I had a head of Shirley Temple style curls.
81) My hair is still curly, if left to its own devices. Just not in a good way.
82) I spend a possibly inordinate amount of time imagining what it would be like to live in the 1800s.
83) I worry that I would have supported the Confederacy in the Civil War. I might have voted for Strom Thurmond, too.
84) I have a hard time not finishing a book, once I’ve begun it. Even if I truly hate it, I feel guilty.
85) For this reason among others, I never intend to begin reading the Bible.
86) It really annoys me when people use incorrect grammar in written communication, particularly if it is formal. Failure to correctly use apostrophes is particularly grating.
87) I study better around other people than I do on my own, probably as a result of having grown up with siblings.
88) It’s a pathetic fantasy of mine to study by myself, at a bar. I think it would be fun, but I can’t quite work up the nerve to try it out.
89) The money management habits instilled in me by my parents operate only for purchases I would have made in high school. I’m judicious in my spending for clothing and books, but have no idea how to efficiently purchase such “adult” items as computer equipment, kitchen appliances, and winter wear.
90) As a result, following a budget has not worked well for me.
91) Most of the time I’m awake and in my apartment, I have a movie or an episode of a tv show playing on my computer. I’ve already seen it, and I’m not watching it, or really listening, but I like the background noise so I “watch” the same things over and over. I end up knowing a small range of media extremely well.
92) I have stepped on both a three legged dog and a blind kitten with herpes. Not at the same time, and both were entirely accidental.
93) I like winter best as a season, though it’s probably the time when I’m consistently the least happy.
94) As a child I would cry at bedtime in the summer, because I was sacred of being unable to sleep because of the heat.
95) I still feel panicked at the notion of sleeping when it’s hot, but now I own my own air conditioner.
96) I earnestly and non- ironically enjoy the color pink.
97) Except for a day trip to Chicago and a short excursion to California as an infant, I’ve never been off the East Coast. This doesn’t bother me at all.
98) Growing up, my mother would read to me at breakfast and my father would read to me before bed every night. The knowledge I acquired from that reading is something I find myself frequently going back to, when taking exams or writing essays.
99) I don’t know if that means my parents taught me a lot, or that I just haven’t learned very much since then.
100) I’m surprised at both how much and how little this meme says about me.
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"At twenty years old, all you know is that you're twenty. Everything else is a mist that swirls around this fact." - Don Delillo
1) I memorized a scene from Othello last summer, and now whenever I’m cold, bored, or otherwise discomfited I recite it to distract myself. It’s almost a compulsion.
2) I have three younger sisters, all of whom are taller and blonder than I.
3) People often ask me if I’m wearing color contacts, or if those are my “real eyes”. I think that’s a peculiar question.
4) When I was in first grade I got my hair cut very short. I got very upset, and wore stick-on earrings every day for the next year, to show that I wasn’t a boy.
5) My reaction would still probably be about the same, today.
6) I’m awful at running and most other physical activity, but remarkably good at running in high heels.
7) I was forced to take remedial gym in grade school. My former gym teacher still asks after me.
8) I start each day with four to six cups of coffee, and don’t usually consume much else during daylight hours.
9) I tutor a 14 year old girl who has had more sex, smoked more pot, and been involved in more illegal activities than I am likely to experience in my entire life. Even though she can’t quite read, her exploits give me a middle school-esque insecurity complex.
10) I find pennies annoying, so I always throw them away.
11) I only recently have been able to appreciate Seinfeld at all, and I still don’t think it’s all that funny.
12) After a night of drinking, I always wake up early in the morning, and can never fall back asleep.
13) My professor’s dog once ate my lip gloss.
14) I have a penchant for encouraging the playing of “Never Have I Ever” in any group situation. I even taught it to a table of children at Thanksgiving dinner.
15) The 5 year old thought it was the best thing ever, and now makes his parents play.
16) The vast majority of my work experience has been child care, or secretarial.
17) My mother is an attendance secretary at an elementary school, and I worry that I will turn into her.
18) I have a study carrel at the school library, but not because I need one for research. I don’t use it at all, but when the library gets crowded around exam time I plan on going there just to kick someone else out of my carrel. I really can’t wait.
19) I would probably make a vindictive and unhappy professor. I probably will be one, one day.
20) Outside of class (at school) I am thought of as opinionated, bordering on argumentative. In class, I am silent.
21) I don’t mind lying, except to my parents.
22) I almost never answer my phone, even if I‘m home. My answering machine message even acknowledges that fact. Sometimes (but not usually) I return messages.
23) I seldom remember to make my bed. But I did make the quilt on my bed!
24) As a child I told my parents I wanted to be a nurse. They switched our family to a female physician, just so I would understand that women could be doctors too.
25) I knew women could be doctors, I just didn’t want to have to go to school for that long.
26) Now I know that women can be professors, but I still haven’t met a female professor I truly respect.
27) I have a ridiculously poor memory. Though it’s regrettable that I’ve already forgotten the vast majority of my past experiences, it’s sometimes nice to be reminded of forgotten occurrences; the past is almost always pleasantly novel and new to me.
28) Like that character in White Noise, I find grocery stores alluring, in a comfortably postmodern sort of way.
29) Shopping malls, on the other hand, mostly fill me with rage.
30) Next year I will be sharing an apartment with two of my friends. I am excited, but also a little scared I may kill them. I’m not good at sharing living space.
31) There’s a snack stand at my school that will give you free ice cream if you get less than a 30% on a midterm or final exam, after curving. I once took a statistics exam that was eligible for ice cream.
32) I was too ashamed to collect my reward.
33) I have always really enjoyed running out of things. Right now, I am actively looking forward to using up the last of my shampoo bottles, and am carefully monitoring the daily shrinkage of my vitamin collection.
34) Most of my childhood games used to center around the theme dwindling supplies. (Barbies running out food hiding from Nazis, pioneers running out of winter clothing, etc.) I can’t quite determine what that says about my character.
35) Until this year, I almost never wore jeans.
36) I used to take dance lessons, and though I absorbed no useful skills I have retained a tendency to count “dancer- style,” grouping things into sets of 8.
37) For much of my life Scarlett O’Hara has been a major role model. Only recently have I begun to realize how misguided this was.
38) Now I’m entirely without a role model, which may be even worse.
39) I thought it was funny that my grandfather died on the Ides of March. Not ha-ha funny, and sad too of course, but I remember appreciating the irony at the time.
40) Somewhere in my possession are 3 copies of T.S. Eliot’s Collected Poems. I misplace this book the way other people lose track of socks.
41) Something about my upbringing makes me feel decidedly immoral reading books in a bookstore. I don’t mind writing down titles and then bringing the list to the library, but reading a book in the store itself seems insurmountably inappropriate.
42) I measure my growth against the height of a rosebush I planted 10 years ago. I resent it for being several inches taller than me.
43) Snakes make me cry.
44) My facebook profile is mostly arbitrary. I couldn’t decide on Favorites, so I just picked some.
45) I really like dead flowers and plants. Which is lucky, since I’m incapable of keeping them alive.
46) I fantasize idly about going to Ireland to “find my roots.” Because of this vague desire, I am envious of anyone who is studying abroad in Dublin, or knows anyone is studying abroad in Dublin. Yet I know I myself would never want to do study abroad in Dublin.
47) Sometimes I take the underground passageways between my classes, to avoid running into people and having to make conversation. The passageways remind me of the sewers underneath London and Paris, and make me imagine that I am a revolutionary, or a rat.
48) I enjoy the act of traveling. It makes me feel like I’ve accomplished something effortlessly impressive, having traversed vast distances in a single day.
49) A primary motivation to get in better physical shape is in order to cut down on the amount of time it takes me to make the last-minute dash to turn in papers before the History Office closes at 4:30. Wasting hours on exercise seems a more feasible solution than learning better academic time management skills.
50) I only write papers while listening to Liz Phair. I can’t remember what I did before I knew who she was. Probably failed, or something.
51) I bite my fingernails. Also (sometimes) my toenails. Yes, I realize this is weird.
52) I made a mix cd of songs from the Civil War. When I want to feel enthused about my future academic and career goals, I listen to it, and it always works.
53) For two months now I have owned a new pair of sneakers so darling I am unwilling to wear them outdoors, for fear their beauty will be marred. This may continue indefinitely.
54) I often feel like I’m pretending to be a real, normal girl, and not doing very well at it.
55) I don’t even pretend to be a real adult.
56) The man who runs the local convenience store (where I buy red bull and Popsicles) knows me, and I really like that.
57) I give blood whenever I am allowed to, even though I can’t explain why.
58) One of the few classes I missed this semester was on Valentines Day. The reason? I wanted to compile a cute, pink and red themed outfit, and it took so long to accomplish I missed class entirely.
59) In some respects, I am probably too stubborn for my own good.
60) Once, while wearing sandals and a skirt in the dead of winter, I was forced to wait so long outside a bar that my toes actually turned blue. I started crying, and my friend intervened with the bouncer, so it worked out frost-bite free in the end. I don’t think I learned any lesson from it, though.
61) Radiohead annoys me.
62) I’ve been living in Canada for three years now, and I still get Celsius and Fahrenheit confused. Usually I ask for clarification of temperatures- “Canadian or American?”
63) My favorite metro system is the New York Subway. It’s mostly because I like the rats, but I also enjoy imagining that the teenage mutant ninja turtles are around there somewhere.
64) Last week, I bought my very first polo shirt. And my first thong. It’s hard to say which one I find more useful, but I can’t fathom how I lived so long without either.
65) I really like having written papers, but I don’t much enjoy writing them. This is probably a statement which characterizes most things in my life.
66) My favorite time in American history is either the 1860s or the 1960s. In both cases, it’s the sense of misguided idealism that gets to me. Our generation is just too cynical for that.
67) I like the smell of paint thinner, nail polish, and gasoline. The smell of cigarette smoke reminds me fondly of childhood.
68) I broke my phone by pouring water over it repeatedly, on the way to the coffee maker in the morning. I put my new phone in the exact same spot.
69) When I’m alone, I sometimes talk to myself.
70) I like frozen yogurt, arrowroot cookies, and oranges.
71) I can touch my tongue to my nose, but I wish I could put my legs behind my head. That would be total self- actualization.
72) My favorite body part is probably the collarbone. My least favorite is definitely either the knee or the eyebrow.
73) I used to put cover-up on my knees before leaving the house. I stopped, but only because I ran out of cover-up.
74) All through middle school, I firmly believed I had irredeemably awful hair. Really, I just didn’t know what conditioner was.
75) I don’t believe in God, but when I was younger I use to pray to the Gods of Ancient Greece, you know, just in case. I had an elaborately and creatively constructed system which I followed intermittently for several years.
76) Last semester I structured a paper around this fact. And got a good grade.
77) I am taking a course all about James Joyce next semester, and am really excited. It will be the first non-major/ minor course I have taken… ever.
78) I got the wonderbread logo screened onto a sweatshirt, and I think this is the coolest thing ever, even though my friends mock me for it, and I still can’t quite decide if a shirt that says WONDER in large letters across the front is maybe sort of obtusely obscene.
79) I can’t imagine spending the rest of my life in any place but America.
80) When I was born I had a head of Shirley Temple style curls.
81) My hair is still curly, if left to its own devices. Just not in a good way.
82) I spend a possibly inordinate amount of time imagining what it would be like to live in the 1800s.
83) I worry that I would have supported the Confederacy in the Civil War. I might have voted for Strom Thurmond, too.
84) I have a hard time not finishing a book, once I’ve begun it. Even if I truly hate it, I feel guilty.
85) For this reason among others, I never intend to begin reading the Bible.
86) It really annoys me when people use incorrect grammar in written communication, particularly if it is formal. Failure to correctly use apostrophes is particularly grating.
87) I study better around other people than I do on my own, probably as a result of having grown up with siblings.
88) It’s a pathetic fantasy of mine to study by myself, at a bar. I think it would be fun, but I can’t quite work up the nerve to try it out.
89) The money management habits instilled in me by my parents operate only for purchases I would have made in high school. I’m judicious in my spending for clothing and books, but have no idea how to efficiently purchase such “adult” items as computer equipment, kitchen appliances, and winter wear.
90) As a result, following a budget has not worked well for me.
91) Most of the time I’m awake and in my apartment, I have a movie or an episode of a tv show playing on my computer. I’ve already seen it, and I’m not watching it, or really listening, but I like the background noise so I “watch” the same things over and over. I end up knowing a small range of media extremely well.
92) I have stepped on both a three legged dog and a blind kitten with herpes. Not at the same time, and both were entirely accidental.
93) I like winter best as a season, though it’s probably the time when I’m consistently the least happy.
94) As a child I would cry at bedtime in the summer, because I was sacred of being unable to sleep because of the heat.
95) I still feel panicked at the notion of sleeping when it’s hot, but now I own my own air conditioner.
96) I earnestly and non- ironically enjoy the color pink.
97) Except for a day trip to Chicago and a short excursion to California as an infant, I’ve never been off the East Coast. This doesn’t bother me at all.
98) Growing up, my mother would read to me at breakfast and my father would read to me before bed every night. The knowledge I acquired from that reading is something I find myself frequently going back to, when taking exams or writing essays.
99) I don’t know if that means my parents taught me a lot, or that I just haven’t learned very much since then.
100) I’m surprised at both how much and how little this meme says about me.
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"At twenty years old, all you know is that you're twenty. Everything else is a mist that swirls around this fact." - Don Delillo