(no subject)

[newnumber6]

Here's a few more surveys stolen from tadiera... ABCs and One Word Meme

my ABC's

[A is for age:]
28

[B is for booze of choice:]
Water. I don't drink.

[C is for career:]
Don't have one. My job is unloading a delivery truck, plus making some money off the internet in various ways.
Ideal career: Noble drifter in a post-apocalyptic wasteland.

[D is for your dogs name:]
D is also for 'Don't have a dog'. When I did have a dog, his name was Pepper.

[E is for essential items you use everyday:]
Computer, TV I guess. Probably a lot of smaller things too but they don't cross my mind.

[F is for favorite song at the moment:]
Don't really have one.

[G is for favorite games:]
MUSHes, but sadly I don't play on any right now. Need to find one where I can hang my hat.

[H is for Home town:]

Toronto I guess. But it depends on your definition... I mean, I've lived in Toronto since I was about 7 or 8, but I don't know that I'd consider it my 'home town'. Didn't live in the place I was born long enough to remember it, so I can't call that my home town, nor any of the places I lived in prior to Toronto. So I guess Toronto's closest.

[I is for instruments you play:]
I theoretically know how to play the trombone, because I managed to get through music class without failing on that instrument. In actual practice I faked it most of the time.

[J is for favorite juice?:]
Orange I guess.

[K is for kids?:]
Don't have any, or expect to.

[L is for last hug?]
Dunno exactly. Probably the last time I saw my grandmother, a couple weeks ago.

[M is for marriage:]
Not married, don't expect to.

[N is for name of your mom:]
N is for Not Authorized For That Classified Information.

[O is for overnight hospital stays:]
A few. Had a strange seizure one night that my dad took me to the hospital for (never did figure it out), and when I was 12ish I had an operation to remove a cataract and a cornea transplant, both of which I believe required overnight stays. Well, one did at least, I just can't remember for sure if they did both at once or not.

[P is for phobias:]
Public speaking, social interaction

[Q is for quote:]
"Jackdaws love my big sphinx of quartz."
"Remember, the enemy's gate is *down*."
"We live as though things were as they should be, to show them how they can be."
"To dream the impossible dream."

[R is for biggest regret:]
Too many to count, all the things I never found the courage to do.

[S is for status?]
I currently am.

[T is for time you woke up?]
About 5:20am today, to go to work. And then after work, went back to sleep (at about 10:30am) and woke again at about 12:30pm.

[U is for underwear color you have on right now:]
Yes, I have some. I can't remember the color, I dressed in the dark, and I'm not stripping for the sake of this survey!

[V is for vegetable you love:]
I don't love any vegetables. I like many of them, but love? No. Nor is there really any vegetable that stands out among the crowd.

[W is for worst habit:]
Avoidance

[X is for x-rays you've had:]
Probably a few, relating to when I had juvenile arthritis. And probably other assorted X-rays including dental ones, etc. Can't keep count.

[Y is for year you were born]
1978. You know, with simple math, you could have deduced this from question A!

[Z is for Zodiac Sign:]
Aries.




one word
Body: YOU CAN ONLY TYPE ONE WORD! NO EXPLANATIONS!

One Word Survey:

1. Yourself: Me
2. Your boyfriend/girlfriend: None
3. Your Hair: Brownish
4. Your Mother: Military
5. Your Father: Weird
6. Your Favorite Item: Booktypeishstuff(seeitsallonewordifyoumashthemtogether)
7. Your Dream Last Night: Unmemorable
8. Your Favorite Drink: Water
9. Your Dream Home: Moonbase
10. The Room You Are In: Mine
11. Your Pet(s): None
12. Your fear: Life
13. Where You Want to be in Ten Years: Absent
14. Who did you hang out with last nite: Alone
15. What You're Not: Undead
16. Your Best Friend: Commentless
17. One of Your Wish list Items: Magic
18. Your Gender: Manly
19. The Last Thing You Did: Dunno
20. What You Are Wearing: Clothes
21. Your Favorite Weather: Rainy
22. Your Favorite Book: Lots
23. The Last Thing You Ate: Timbitsish
24. Your Life: Here
25. Your Mood: Meh
26. The last person you talked to on the phone: Dad(?)
27. Who are you thinking about right now: Food


Apparently LJ thinks I have a melodius voice and wonders if I've considered sharing it with my friends list. I imagine it's confusing me with someone else.

Book Foo! Finished: The Speed of Dark by Elizabeth Moon and The Last Unicorn by Peter S. Beagle. Thoughts, not terribly spoilerish, behind the cut:
I'll start with The Last Unicorn because it's simplest. It's very much like the movie, except without the songs. Sure, there's slight differences, and one section cut out presumably for time, but it's mostly the same. I was relieved to find that almost all of my favorite lines were directly from the book (there's only one I couldn't find: "There are no happy endings because nothing ends.") I'm glad that it was a faithful adaptation for the most part, although I was kind of hoping to be a little more surprised. There was a slight difference in tone... in the movie they talk about things like happy endings, and so on, but in the book it reads a lot more like they're almost half conscious of being in a fairy tale. Which really isn't to my tastes, actually. Still, glad I read it at least once.

The Speed of Dark disappointed me a little. There were certainly some interesting aspects and it was interesting to read Moon's interpretation of the point of view of an autistic person (her son is supposedly autistic, so one would hope it's at least not completely out of left field), but the plot kind of fell a bit flat for me, as did the ending which felt a bit abrupt.

I've always sort of wondered if I was a little on the autistic side. I don't mean this in a 'I'm 1/23rd Cherokee!' type way, there's just certain tendencies that I've heard described that make me wonder if I was, not autistic, but at least a little closer to that spectrum than the average person, and that it might explain certain things I've noticed about myself. In the book I identified some of these sort of tendencies though I couldn't really tell if they're necessarily at all indicative or not, since clearly there's enough that doesn't mesh up with myself.

One of the big issues of the novel of course was, once one was available to him, should he seek a cure for his condition. Which sort of resonates with me because it's a question I often consider in terms of my many social 'issues'. If I could take a treatment and suddenly not be so shy, and be able to know how to interact with people and carry on an extended face to face conversation, would I? To be honest, I don't know. The quality of 'me'-ness is very faint as it is. I suppose on one level, a gut level I have my doubts that a treatment could really do any of that at least not without totally changing what makes me me. Then there's the other worry, that even if it didn't, I wouldn't be able to hold onto myself. I'm not saying that people who are much more social beings are prone to changing themselves to suit others, but I worry that with me that would be the case, that if I ever became too willingly social I'd quickly chuck aside vital parts of myself in a desire for acceptance. When one doesn't really hang out with peers, how does one learn to resist peer pressure? ;). Anyway, they're probably baseless worries, like the
worries that plague the social awkwardness themselves, but I can't help but think on them.

Anyway, I've drifted off topic. SoD was a Nebula award winning novel (2003), so I had to read it eventually of course. Not bad, but not one of my favorites.

Started: Alas, Babylon by Pat Frank, and Battle Royale by Koushun Takami
Haven't gotten new books in a while, so I'm doing rereads for both, and really felt kinda like rereading both of them again. For those who don't know, AB is a somewhat upbeat 50s book about the aftermath of a nuclear war focusing on a small community in Florida that luckily survives most of the impact. BR is a tale of a totalitarian japanese government that, every year, selects one grade 9 class randomly, puts them on an island with weapons and a few supplies, and tells the kids they have to kill each other until there is only one survivor, or all will be killed remotely. Well, actually it's the tale of one of those classes, rather than the government itself, of course.

I was idly considering trying to do an alphabetical reread list. Alas Babylon, Battle Royale, Something I haven't Thought of for C, Dune, Ender's Game, something with F I haven't thought of yet, and so on, and rereading them all in order. But nah. Plus I don't think I have too many options for certain letters like Z.

Again no social interaction to report. Looks like that shift change was permanent. Ah well.

Oh, and I'm getting a new computer. Well, not really. But a newer computer. My Dad upgraded, so he passed on his old one to my brother and me, which we're splitting as follows. He gets the actual computer part which is better than his, and gives me his old which is better than mine. We each get one of the 80GB HDs and one of the DVD burners. Not that it'd be used too much probably, but still, nice to have a little bit of a better system.

What else? S'a big season finale night, what with the series finale of West Wing (I know they won't, but I'm still hoping they end the series with definitive contact with extraterrestrial life. Hell, the show's already pretty much fantasy anyway what with people of good conscious doing the best they can and people in Washington standing by their convictions rather than blindly following votes, why not throw in aliens?), and Malcolm in the Middle, plus of course part one of the Grey's Anatomy Season Finale (that continues tomorrow). Oh, and Survivor. I've actually been watching Survivor this season, mainly cause nothing else has been on Thursdays, but I don't care enough about what happens to watch the finale over some of the other stuff on tonight. Was gonna watch a rerun of SGAtlantis that I liked (Letters from Pegasus) but there's too much to do the whole 'tape one thing, watch another'.

It's Mothers Day, so I sent my Mom an e-mail saying something to the effect of "Happy Mother's Day". That's about it. Take care of yourselves, all!