Meh. Why Not?

Via Billville via docsrock. Again, yes.

1. What bill do you hate paying the most?
The mortgage. So I am officially old now.

2. Where was the last place you had a romantic dinner?
A romantic dinner? What, with candles and mood music? We don't go for that kind of thing here in Enoch. You're from out of town, ain'tcha?

3. Last time you puked from drinking?
I don't remember anymore. Now I'm more likely to get a bad bout of diarrhea. (Hey, you asked.)

4. When is the last time you got drunk and danced on a bar?
You crazy kids with your questions. At this point, I'm most likely to get drunk and call the person dancing on the bar a douchebag.

5. Name of your first grade teacher?
Was it Mrs. Gilmore? No, I think I had her for 3rd grade. I do remember that she let me read to the class, because I was so bored.

6. What do you really want to be doing right now?
Sending in my final grades and being done with the semester.

7. What did you want to be when you were growing up?
In a different home.

8. How many colleges did you attend?
As a student? Going on three.

9. Why did you choose the shirt that you have on right now?
It was next up in the rotation, and I didn't think anyone would see me in it today.

10. GAS PRICES?
Don't expect them to go down until you change your lifestyle. I'm talking to you, Hummer drivers.

11. If you could move anywhere and take someone with you?
Fairbanks, Alaska, with the missus, to watch the world die.

12. First thought when the alarm went off this morning?
I usually wake up before the alarm and wonder why the radio only comes in when I move away from it.

13. Last thought before going to sleep last night?
"This article is boring."

14. Favorite style of underwear?
Form-fitting.

15. Favorite style of underwear for the opposite sex?
Spaghetti straps and/or buttons.

16. What errand/chore do you despise?
Sorting the newspapers. Don't judge me.

17. If you didn't have to work, would you volunteer?
I do a lot of work with unwed mothers.

18. Get up early or sleep in?
Get up early and finish reading whatever I fell asleep to the night before, unless it was boring.

19. What is your favorite cartoon character?
Bullwinkle.

20. Favorite nonsexual thing to do at night with a girl/guy?
Argue about art.

21. Have you found real love yet?
Real is love.

22. When did you first start feeling old?
When I started teaching students who didn't grow up with Star Wars.

23. Favorite 80's movie?
Better Off Dead.

24. Your favorite lunch meat?
Roast beast.

25. What do you get every time you go into Sam's Club?
I don't shop at Sam's Club, but I usually pick up a book or two when I visit CostCo.

26. Beach or lake?
You're more likely to step on something interesting at the beach.

27. Do you think marriage is an outdated ritual?
Only after the first ten years.

28. How many people do you stalk on livejournal?
I'm too fond of the one person I know on livejournal to stalk her.

29. Favorite guilty pleasure?
Superhero comics.

30. Favorite movie you wouldn't want anyone to find out about?
I don't know the name of it. It's a Japanese monster movie involving giant robots (not the Transformers, punk).

31. What's your drink?
Micah has turned me on to Scotch. Neat.

32. This question appears to be missing.

33. Cops or Robbers?
Whoever is being oppressed at the moment.

34. Who from high school would you like to run into?
There was a girl I worked with on the newspaper who tried to ask me out to the prom. I always wondered what happened to her and if she ever raised her standards.

35. What radio station is your car radio tuned to right now?
XM Channel 47: Ethel

36. Norm or Cliff?
Cliff. He was in The Empire Strikes Back.

37. The Cosby Show or The Simpsons?
Dude.

38. Worst relationship mistake that you wish you could take back?
I made a girl who was getting clutchy think that I hated her.

39. Do you like the person who sits directly across from you at work?
I like her fine, but her friends are fucking obnoxious. Blah blabbity blah.

40. If you could get away with it, who would you kill?
One life for 3,377 seems fair to me.

41. What famous person(s) would you like to party with?
I'd like to follow Courtney Love around for a day and she what kind of shit she gets into.

42. What famous person would you like to sleep with?
What's in it for me?

43. Have you ever had to use a fire extinguisher for its intended purpose?
If its intended purpose is as a propellant, then yes.

44. Last book you read for real?
For real? It's so hard to distinguish from the books I only imagine I've read.
I got about halfway into W.G. Sebald's Austerlitz before I "got it" and had to start over again.

45. Do you have a teddy bear?
No, I have a tiger pillow.

46. Strangest place you have ever brushed your teeth?
In a cave on Brontitol.

47. Somewhere in California you've never been and would like to go?
I've always wondered what those douchebags in Hollywood do all day. But seriously, I'd like to check out this place.

48. Do you go to church?
No, I let the Utah Legislature bring church to me.

49. At this point in your life, would you rather start a new career or a new relationship?
I'd like to give full-time writing a try, if only I could assure myself that I wouldn't spend my entire day answering questionnaires like this.

50. Just how old are you?
Waving my thirties goodbye.

Channel Zero

I've been meaning to do this for a while, and am only doing it now as a means of avoiding grading final papers. Hooray for the internet!

via Billville via docsrock:

Before reading the questions, name your top six favorite TV shows:

1. Lost
2. Doctor Who
3. Battlestar Galactica (2003 edition)
4. Heroes
5. The Sopranos
6. House


The Questions
1. Who is your favorite character from #2?
Well, the Doctor, duh. My favorite portrayals of the Doctor are, in order of preference:
Christopher Eccleston (#10, who revived the program in 2005)
Tom Baker (#4, the actor with the longest run on the series)
David Tennant (the current version)
William Hartnell (the first)
Peter Davison (#5)
Patrick Troughton (#2)

My favorite companions include Rose Tyler, Leela, and Romana II.

2. Who is your least favorite character from #4?
Matt Parkman, the cop who can read minds, mostly because I'm bored with his angst and he doesn't seem to do much with his otherwise remarkable ability.

3. What would a crossover between #1 and #5 include?
Tony Soprano choking evil-Others leader Ben with a wire he pulls up from the beach. Sawyer fucks Meadow and becomes Tony's point man. Adriana comes back to life and becomes an unwitting tool of the Others, who convince her to enact revenge on Christopher. A.J. and Charlie form a band. Tony's crew whack the Others and start a distribution ring with leftover supplies from the Dharma Intiative.

4. Who is your favorite ship from #6?
Following Billville's interpretation of this question as one about relationships, I live for any hint that House loves Wilson as much as he, despite himself, loves House.

5. If you were to set one person from #3 and one person from #6 on a blind date, who would they be?
I would like to see how Starbuck might bring Wilson out of his shell and help him to become more assertive. I would also pay hard cash to see how long House and Caprica Six could mind-fuck one another before one of them explodes.

6. If you could meet one person from #4 and spend the day with them, who would it be, and what would you do?
I'll spare you my impure and possibly illegal thoughts about spending the day with Claire Bennet and go for the simpler pleasures of hanging out with Hiro and enjoying his infectious earnestness about using his power responsibly.

7. If you could change one thing about #2’s plot line, what would you change?
There are clearly a lot of ghosts in the TARDIS closets, as indicated by the some of the Doctor's contemplative moments in the latest seasons of the show. I'd like to see him confront some of them: finding out how Susan, his grand-daughter, is faring on a post-invasion Earth, or how Jamie, his Scottish chum, copes in a pre-industrial age with his knowledge of the universe, or saving Leela's descendants from the destruction of Gallifrey. Nothing too heavy.

8. Explain a relationship between two people (not necessarily romantic) from show #5, and why you like the relationship between them.
Tony reminds me of the speaker in Randy Newman's song, "Marie." He loves his wife, but can't bring himself to tell her unless he's drunk. It is fascinating to watch how they modify their behaviour toward one another as their marriage is alternately threatened or reaffirmed. Reminds me of home, in a sick way.

9. If the lead title characters (first name in the credits) from #1 and #3 were both drowning, and you could only save one, who would it be?
Fuck, dude, Adama has to save the human race! Those people on the island are all doomed, anyway.

10. If you could change the title characters’ order in the credits for #4, what order would you choose?
I envision a badass spinoff involving Future Hiro's samurai adventures in 2025. Sort of like a post-apocalyptic Lone Wolf and Cub.

11. If you were able to add a new character, any kind of character you wanted, to the storyline for #6, what would the character be like, and what would their role be?
I would bring in a manipulative sexbomb to fuck with the male staff and set them against one another in fits of jealousy and lust. House, uncharacteristically non-plussed, would be put in the position of saving his staff from themselves. That, or a bartender that House could periodically confide in.

12. What happens in your favorite episode of show #2?
Jesus, only 30+ years of episodes to choose from, huh? Of the most recent series, I'm fond of the early episode where the Doctor takes his new companion to witness the end of the world from an orbiting space platform. The occasion is styled as an upscale celebration, complete with a working jukebox (misidentified by one of the futuristic aliens in attendance as an iPod) that plays Britney Spears and Soft Cell, and the last remaining human, who has had so much cosmetic surgery that all that's left of her body is the outstretched skin of her face. Everything I love about the show is contained in that episode.

Of the "classic" series, I like:

• the one in which the Doctor is offered the opportunity to destroy one of his greatest enemies at the moment of their conception, but realizes they serve a larger purpose in the universe and must be allowed the right to survive
• the one in which the Doctor is haunted by a ghost-like being who warns him of upcoming trauma and who turns out to be the future incarnation of the Doctor himself, who "dies" in the episode
• the one in which the newly regenerated Doctor slowly unwinds his trademark scarf to find his way around his own ship
• the one in which the Doctor makes fun of the Cybermen for their bad grammar
• any of the episodes written by Douglas Adams

13. If you could kill off one of the characters in #1, who would it be and how would you do it?

Well, the writers of the show are pretty good about killing the characters off by themselves, but I would like to see Jin go out in a blaze of sacrificial glory, not because I don't like him, but because he is one of the characters who truly wants and needs to find redemption on the island. A more interesting question for this show might be: who would I like to see survive? I think it will be Locke, who will be driven insane, and Hurley, who will find his purpose.

14. If you got the chance to visit the set for either show #3 or show #5, which would you choose?

I wonder if the sets for Galactica are as claustrophobia-inducing as they appear to be.

15. If you could date anyone from any of these shows, which show and which person?

I've always been drawn to sad women who put up a brave face to the world, and disguise their vulnerability through drink and/or bad relationships, and Kate from Lost is pretty much the perfect version of that woman.

SITE UPDATE: Stay tuned for more frequent postings as spring semester winds to a close and summer unemployment looms.

Five Things You Don't Know About Me

Well, this will help get things started up again. Answering the tag from Billville:

1. I have written several incomplete novel manuscripts, which are safely hidden away, hopefully forever. (I can't quite bring myself to destroy them.)

2. I buried a small personal item in the ground near Stonehenge.

3. While working at a meat-packing plant in Hyrum, Utah (now-infamous site of a Homeland Security crackdown), I spent the better part of 9 months whacked out on speed and alcohol.

4. Periodically, I have disturbingly vivid dreams about future events that later become real. Among them: images of what I think is my own death, and a "revelation" that I will become well-known for something I have written (hopefully, not one of the aforementioned manuscripts).

5. I cried during the final scene of Episode III: Revenge of the Sith.

Age and Experience

This meme is all the more timely for me since my optometrist recently recommended that I start wearing bifocals. Since I'm so fucking old, this meme gives me an opportunity to share the wisdom of my advanced years.

Meme originated here. Thanks, Gloriane!

7 Ways Age and Experience Have Changed Me

• I don't care as much anymore that I be universally liked, or liked at all.
• I have less frequent moments of intense rage.
• I no longer believe in God or "life" after death.
• I write more prose than poetry.
• I no longer wear my Doctor Who scarf regularly.
• Politically, I lean further to the left every year. (Sometimes, every day.)
• I am less obsessive about my overall appearance, though I am still a gorgeous specimen of the male physique.

7 Ways Age and Experience Haven't Changed Me

• I am a major procrastinator. (Hello, dissertation!)
• I don't like to throw anything away.
• I want to understand everything.
• I am more articulate in my writing than my speaking.
• I still like listening to the Beatles.
• If I ever win/steal/earn a million dollars, the first thing I will buy is a house for my mother. OK, first I will build a home theater system, then I will buy a house for my mother.
• What he said.

Wikipedia Celebrates My Birthday, or The Me! Me! Me! Me! Meme

Here's how to play, courtesy of Lone Dissenter:

1. Go to Wikipedia.
2. In the Search box, type your birth month and day (but not year).
3. Choose three events that happened on your birthday.
4. Choose two important birthdays and one interesting death.

My birthday is June 20.

EVENTS
1214 - University of Oxford receives its charter.
1837 - Queen Victoria succeeds to the British throne.
1977 - Oil begins to flow through the Trans-Alaska Pipeline System (TAPS).

BIRTHS
1942 - Brian Wilson, American popular music composer and singer; founder of The Beach Boys
1967 - Nicole Kidman, Australian actress

DEATHS
1947 - Bugsy Siegel, American gangster (whacked)

Cards and gifts acknowledging these important milestones will be accepted by me year-round.

Meh. Why Not?

Apparently, it helps to be bored before you engage with this meme. So while I'm waiting for some student to visit me in the next 40 minutes, I will engage you with my witless responses to the following questions.

Via Billville!

1. Elaborate on your default icon.
Um, I don't know what this means. Maybe this isn't the meme for me.

2. What's your current relationship status?
I have one partner and approximately 125 post-pubescent children.

3. Ever have a near-death experience?
I came close last night while listening to a college DJ detail the functions of his laptop for close to 30 minutes.

I've had a few near misses, but nothing I would call an "experience."

4. Name an obvious quality you have.
My short attention span and child-like susceptibility to lame memes like this.

5. What's the name of the song that's stuck in your head right now?
"Back in Time" by Huey Lewis & the News. I just got word of NASA's new launch vehicle, and was thinking of writing a post on it, and started thinking of a clever title for my post ("Back to the Future"), and started thinking about the film, and started hearing the theme song incessantly. But was it BTTF2 or BTTF3? Please, someone, help me.

6. Any celeb you would marry?
I'm guessing that most celebrities are at least as shallow as I am, so I see it as more of a tempestous fling than a yearlong commitment, but let's go with Scarlett Johansson for now, since she's in that new Dylan video that I can't stop myself from watching.

7. Has anyone ever said you look like a celebrity?
I seem to recall some unflattering comparisons to Meatloaf.

8. Do you wear a watch? What kind?
I have a largish collection of Fossil watches, but have never bothered to replace the batteries once they wear out. Now I just use my phone.

9. Do you have anything pierced?
My ears are pierced daily by the singing of the woman in the office next to mine.

10. Do you have any tattoos?
One, which I had done on the same day and at the same parlor where two of my dear friends got their tattoos.

11. Do you like pain?
Well, I have a tattoo and I'm a PhD candidate and I teach composition and I am a liberal living in Southern Utah. You decide.

12. Do you like to shop?
Last night, on the eve of my first substantial payday in three months, I dreamt I was gathering books, magazines, and action figures in a large warehouse-like store devoted to selling objects only of interest to me.

13. What was the last thing you paid for with cash?
I gave a cash tip to one of the cooks at a Mongolian BBQ. He was awesome.

14. What was the last thing you paid for with your credit card?
I bought a copy of Mark Helprin's new novel.

15. Who was the last person you spoke to on the phone?
My mother, oddly enough. She has two new kittens. And dozens of unfulfilled dreams.

16. What is on your desktop background?
This.

17. What is the background on your cell phone?
A soft but persistent voice that tells me to kill you.

18. Do you like redheads?
I'm with Springsteen on this one. Though I find redheaded men almost universally obnoxious.

19. Do you know any twins?
Just the gum-chewing blondes on bikes who sell me heroin.

20. Do you have any weird relatives?
Weird, verging on sociopathic.

21. What was the last movie you watched?
Werner Herzog's Fitzcarraldo. It's fucked up and disturbing and beautiful.

22. What was the last book you read?
Fiasco: The American Military Adventure in Iraq by Thomas E. Ricks

You Are Who You Quote

Via kottke.org:

Go here and look through random quotes until you find five that you think reflect who you are or what you believe.

Here are my five:

• "Everything you can imagine is real." (Pablo Picasso)
• "Education is the ability to listen to almost anything without losing your temper or your self-confidence." (Robert Frost)
• "Do I contradict myself?/Very well then I contradict myself/I am large, I contain multitudes." (Walt Whitman)
• "It is necessary to try to surpass oneself always; this occupation ought to last as long as life." (Queen Christina, of Sweden)
• "Emergencies have always been necessary to progress." (Victor Hugo)