MetaChat - 10 Things We Don't Know About You Redux

I'm not as mean as you think I am

posted by matteo 05 March | 11:16

1. I hate nudity. In all it's forms.
2. I dig Britney Spears.
3. I'm a social smoker.
4. The few constants in my life have been my car, my tunes, and my batshittery.
5. I don't date. Ever.
6. I love the smell of solvents.
7. I get random urges to destroy things.
8. I like to pick at things constantly.
9. I like things to be picked up and in their place, but you wouldn't know it if you saw my room.
10. I eat cheese and crackers for lunch 3 days a week.

posted by sperose 05 March | 11:30

1. I don't have and never have had pierced ears.
2. I know a lot about ballet.
3. I used to have a job researching baseball.
4. I like beagles.
5. I also like tropical fish.
6. I have a small tank of sea monkeys on my desk at work.
7. I never let my fingernails get long.
8. When I was a kid I collected stamps, and I still have a few of them.
9. I color my hair.
10. One of my favorite movies is Big Trouble In Little China.

posted by JanetLand 05 March | 11:32

1. I want a Malamute and I'm gonna name him Odin.
2. I love playing outside.
3. I am a hedonist.
4. I miss my dreadlocks for their looks but not for the smell (I had a very hard time keep them clean)
5. I would trade everything I own for a secluded hobby farm and keep alpacas and chickens. Possibly a goat and a horse too.
6. I dislike cities very much even though I will probably spend much of my life in them.
7. I'm developing allergies to almost all chemicals commonly found in soaps, shampoos and cosmetics. I blame the Lupus (don't have it but frequently joke that I do).
8. Fluorescent lighting gives me headaches.
9. I'm misanthropic.
10. Mainstream pop music is one of my guilty pleasures.

posted by LunaticFringe 05 March | 11:46

1. I walked the Breast Cancer 3-day walk in 2004 (20 miles a day/3 days/raised $2200)
2. My biggest single donor for the 3-day walk was Walter Cronkite. (Long story, FOAF connection)
3. My name is on a bronze tablet (with many others) in the library at University of Illinois for being in the top 1% of my college GPA wise.
4. However, I got a D in calculus.
5. I worked for two years in a Thai-Italian cafeteria in graduate school and am an accomplished cook of Southeast Asian food.
6. I am now teaching my half-Chinese husband how to cook Asian food.
7. My favorite job not on the resume: 1 day as the "official elf" for my home town school district. I'm 5'8".
8. I am hydrophobiaphobic. (Scared of rabies.)
9. Despite this, I think bats are cute critters.
10. When being official, I get to put "Ph.D., CFLE" after my name as both a person with a doctorate and a certified family life educator.
11. However, I still get startled when someone refers to me as Dr. anything.

posted by lleachie 05 March | 11:48

1. I can't do a cartwheel
2. As a kid I used to love insects and reptiles. I used to love to hold beetles (still do). I used to collect big buckets of frogs and toads.
3. I used to bite my nails but stopped about 10 years ago.
4. I have anxiety that I don't devote enough time to my children.
5. I like the movie, Sliding Doors, with Gwyneth Paltrow. I cry at the raining on the bridge scene.
6. I have a high libido and love sex.
7. I have a hard time doing two things at once.
8. I have some disdain for white female Connecticut upper-middle class types that seem to write most of the fiction that is out there.
9. I hate to see animals in a cage. Zoos are useless to me. I think they should be outlawed.
10. I don't particularly care for sushi, but it may be that I haven't tried it enough.

posted by LoriFLA 05 March | 11:57

1. I have a Ph.D. in neuroscience and a broad base of molecular biology knowledge. Nobody would have predicted that when I failed 2nd year biochem and got kicked out of our university's honours program.
2. I only cry when I'm frustrated, not when I'm sad (in real life -- I cry at sad movies and books at the drop of a hat).
3. I had some weird turn off about blue-eyed men, until I started dating mr. gaspode, who has bright blue eyes.
4. I loathe my 21 and 22 year old self.
5. People frequently think I am upwards of 10 years younger than I actually am.
6. I get anxious if I have nothing to read while I'm eating lunch at work. I have skipped lunch sometimes because of this.
7. I am having a very serene pregnancy. This may be because I am avoiding all pregnancy websites and books.
8. I really want a bassett hound.
9. I am terrified of having a girl and her inheriting all my mother issues.
10. Sour cream and onion pringles are my favourite snack.

Lori - I can't do a cartwheel either! But I love sushi...

posted by gaspode 05 March | 12:20

1. I am terribly embarassed by the occasionally misogynistic thoughts that I have about the possibility of a woman president. I am all the more embarassed and bewildered by these thoughts as I am a liberal, independent woman with a career.
2. I have an awful fear of choking.
3. I have hairy fingers and toes but you would never know because I shave them.
4. I wish I had a good singing voice.
5. I think I used to be smarter.
6. I was born with an in-turning shin (internal tibial torsion), and grew up sitting in a W position, which apparently a lot of kids with this do because I think it's more comfortable. I tried sitting that way the other day, and at 32 I still can.
7. I also had to wear a cast on my leg as a baby due to the above, and a stranger in a store once accused my mother of beating me and breaking my leg.
8. I am embarassed to bring people to my parents' house because it's so messy.
9. As a result of the above, I am kind of a neat freak about my own place.
10. I yell at other drivers on the road. Not so they can hear me, though.

posted by amro 05 March | 12:30

1. I'm phobic about needles, injections and bruises being ruptured.
2. My college fund was a cow on my grandparents' ranch.
3. I know how to fly a plane pretty well but I don't have my license yet. My stepdad's gonna teach and certify me. :D
4. I can recognize most people by smell.
5. I have a great singing voice but awful rhythm.
6. I totally torture my cats with smushings and pokings and tauntings. They're used to it.
7. I am exploring polyamory at last, with certain boundaries. I'm so, so happy about this.
8. I have size 11 or 12 feet. :(
9. I have never broken a bone, had an operation, been pregnant or fainted.
10. I love to get wasted and I do it kinda often.

posted by Ambrosia Voyeur 05 March | 13:16

1. I'm sad most of the time, but would like to be happy (actually I think I've covered that one before)
2. My house is messy as hell, but I'm super organized at work
3. I trip a screening test for an STD, but I don't really have it. This is why I can't give blood, though I really want to.
4. I know I used to be smarter. I could do math like lightning and just do things. Now I'm bogged down in my baggage, though it's less than it used to be.
5. I never get ear-bugs. I have music in my head running all the time. If I don't like what's playing, I change it. Right now it's Barber's "Adagio for Strings"
6. I fell in love with a priest once.
7. I wanted to be a priest at one time.
8. I'm afraid my kids will be as messed up as me, no matter what I do.
9. I buy my "nice" clothes at thrift stores so I don't have to care about them.
10. Technically, I am an ordained minister but don't know what to do with it yet.

posted by lysdexic 05 March | 13:44

1. I don't think of it that way, but, yeah, kinda often.
2. I want to start taking piano lessons, but fear that I'm too old.
3. On the one hand, I'd like to take up homebrewing. On the other hand, the only thing I need less than another expensive hobby is another obscure food preference (along the same lines: headphone amps).
4. I like going to karaoke, but not singing.
5. Like pretty much everybody past their mid-20s, I used to be smarter. I also used to be meaner and more impatient.
6. Most of my undergraduate career was spent laboring toward the goal of becoming a creative writing professor.
7. I try, fairly but not completely successfully, to buy almost everything secondhand.
8. Lately a little bit obsessed with change ringing.
9. There are a few things that I'm really enjoying lately, but I feel like I don't have anyone to recommend them to. This bothers me, just a little.
10. Showing Rush Hour 3 at the library tonight. Why did I agree to this?

posted by box 05 March | 13:53

1. I am surprisingly confrontational after two glasses of wine.
2. I want a Shiba Inu
3. I read the New Yorker religiously
4. When I stress, I clean my house
5. I have two insane sisters, I am the only one of the three who actually lives a relatively normal and productive life
6. If I don't exercise everyday, I wake up in the middle of the night and cannot fall back to sleep
7. Sushi is pretty much my favorite food in the world.
8. My favorite dessert is mango sticky rice
9. I cannot watch violent scenes in movies or on television, I have to leave the room, as I become physically ill.
10. I have a fondness for other people's babies. I like the fact that I can snuggle and coo over them, but I don't have to get up and feed them at 3 am.

posted by msali 05 March | 13:53

1) I am a candy junkie.
2) I got married for the first time and had a baby at age 44.
3) I used to be a Big Cheese producer on the Today Show
4) I still sometimes drive like an impatient New Yorker, even though
we live in the Chicago suburbs now.
5) I have no idea what they're talking about in nearly all the
computer-related posts on AskMe.
6) I loathe the very sight of a mushroom.
7) I love to cook.
8) I have Parking Karma, the best of anyone I've ever known.
9) I cannot stand watching any kind of violence on tv or in movies.
10) I am the luckiest person ever.

posted by Kangaroo 05 March | 14:03

1// I can't whistle. When someone new learns this about me, there is always an impromptu whistling lesson until they realize that I really can't whistle.
2// I brush my teeth in the shower. It's become so much of a habit that if I take a shower I feel like my teeth are incredibly dirty if I don't also brush them.
3// I want to rescue every stray dog I see. Every single one of them. A few have spent a night in my home until I either found their owner or reluctantly brought them to the vet - I'd much rather keep them.
4// I've only ever kissed two boys.
5// I really want to go back to school and get a degree but feel paralyzed because I can't decide what I want my degree to be in. Should I finish my chemistry degree? Go into nursing? Labratory work? Forget science and go into design? English and become an editor for a wildly successful publishing company? What Do I Want To Be When I Grow Up?
6// I have a hard time convincing myself I'm worth nice things.
7// I need my kitchen to be clean and my sink empty. The rest of the rooms I don't care about as much, just please don't let dishes "soak" for two days or I will stab your eyes out.
8// I'm super nervous asking strangers if I can take their photo.
9// I sunburn like nobody's business.
10// I miss family dinners with my giant and crazy family, miss the commotion of a house filled with my siblings and their families.

Lori - I also have a high libido and love sex! It was one of the bigger problems between my ex and I, as crazy as that may sound.

gaspode - I haaate eating in a restaurant alone. The only way I can is if I have something to read or a journal to write in. I'd rather eat in the car or not at all than sit alone in a restaurant with nothing to do.

posted by rhapsodie 05 March | 14:06

1. My "family business" is "criminal."
2. I get crazy anxious on planes, so I take Amtrak on long trips.
3. I don't consume pornography, but am fascinated by the industry and would gladly work behind the scenes.
4. When I was in my early twenties, I would frequently get mistaken for being in my early thirties. Now that I'm in my early thirties, people often think I'm in my early twenties. I have no idea how this works.
5. I have been a contestant on two nationally-televised game shows.
6. I used to be a nudist, and would not wear clothes (except for shoes and possibly a fanny pack) if it were at all practical.
7. I wear a hard plastic brace on my left leg, and walk with a cane.
8. Even though I don't drink that often, I have the highest alcohol tolerance of anyone I know. My girlfriend has never seen me drunk.
9. I read constantly. In the bathroom, during meals, while getting stoned on the back porch, before bed, upon waking, while my gf is watching tv, constantly.
10. I am jealous of people who have close, good relationships with their families.

posted by jtron 05 March | 14:09

1. I am not a baby, but I do sometimes use the word baby in a faux-hipster style: “Metachat, Baby!”
2. I can tolerate onions but not garlic.
3. I have a strange little crush on Prince William.
4. I have almost no contact with my family of origin.
5. I’m clumsy, I break things and can’t fix them, and I’m a terrible cook.
6. I like to wear high heels – about 3 ½ inches on the heels is perfect, but I can go a little higher or a little lower. I can’t stand the sight or the very thought of sensible pumps.
7. I have a graduate degree – an MFA.
8. I can do a cartwheel and a backbend, but I only have one split left (right leg front). I used to have all three splits.
9. I really distrust authority and assume when I see a Cop that they are looking to get me for something. I see law enforcement immediately as the bad dudes, not protectors. I don’t know if this is instinctual somehow, if my past and present is just checkered enough to cause this, or if it’s one of those residual raised Catholic guilt type things.
10. I wish I could travel more.

posted by rainbaby 05 March | 14:34

1. I have to completely consume a fortune cookie (including the stray bits that stick in my teeth) before I can read the fortune. Otherwise, it will not come true.
2. To quell occasional episodes of anxiety, I count things in my head.
3. I was the runner-up in the Maine State Spelling Bee in 1981. The word I tripped on was "capstan." Ironically, my prize was a stereo radio/LP/cassette player.
4. I have rowed a gondola-size boat under the Rialto Bridge on the Grand Canal in Venice, Italy.
5. I was on Jeopardy! in 1997. Continuing my competition trend, I came in second.
6. I have visited a Russian monastery. (In the US, but still ...)
7. I find it soothing to chop fruits, vegetables and meats. I make amazing salads.
8. I sometimes daydream about being an auto mechanic. At an earlier time in my life, I often daydreamed about being offensive coordinator for the Miami Dolphins. I have never wanted to be a princess.
10. I collect copies of The Little Prince in languages other than English.

posted by initapplette 05 March | 14:40

1. I'm constantly reading. I will read the toothpaste tube and the cereal packet if there's nothing else.
2. I just got my first fillings :(
3. I've never really been single.
4. I can speak in tongues.
5. I used to spraypaint ants in different colours so I could track them.
6. I can do the splits both ways, and put my ankles behind my neck.
7. I was a Hare Krishna (ISKCON) for a few minutes. It was fun, but I wanted a female guru and was told that women were gurus to their children only. That was that, hare bol!
8. I can play 12 different musical instruments.
9. I am always moving - jiggling and wiggling and doodling and just stimming in general. Smoking is also associated.
10. I was a bit of a klepto when I was 11-12, and couldn't go into a shop without nicking something. I got caught a couple of times and had to do community service, mowing old people's lawns. That is the extent of my criminal record.

posted by goo 05 March | 15:10

1. Against my will, I am newly single.
2. I bike an average of 30 miles a day (when not injuring myself, anyway).
3. I lost 100 pounds between the ages of 18 and 21, and I've been ±15 ever since.
4. As you might therefore imagine, I have massive body-image issues.
5. In the last six months, I've gone from being informally spiritual to a devoted (if not devout) servicegoer.
6. I ran into Spalding Gray at a restaurant in NYC about a decade ago, but he denied that he was Spalding Gray.
7. I learned to read off of record album covers.
8. I put out my own first musical release at ten years old (my first CD was ten years later).
9. I support the decriminalization of MDMA.
10. I once auditioned to drum for Pere Ubu via e-mail, but was disqualified because I wasn't from Cleveland.

posted by mykescipark 05 March | 15:21

I had to go back to the original thread to ensure that I didn't repeat myself.

1. I am obsessive and I am compulsive, but I don't have OCD.
2. I'm generally pretty untidy, but there are some things that I'm somewhat fanatical about keeping neat. The shower curtain must always be closed and the lawn must always be mowed, else I get really fidgety.
3. My dad worked on the development of the stealth bomber -- which I loathe -- but it put me through college.
4. I have extreme anxiety when it comes to money issues. I'd like to get over this.
5. In my entire life, I've never lived up to my potential. I'd like to change this too.
6. In my 20s, I came very close to marrying an ex-boyfriend so that he could become a citizen. Fortunately, he met another girl and fell in love and got married two months later. (We've lost touch, but last I heard they were divorcing.)
7. When I was 11 or 12, a friend of mine and I were playing with BB guns in the back 40 and we shot the hell out of my dad's old Volkswagen (which had been parked back there for years). He didn't notice for a few years, and he assumed it was one of the neighbor kids; I didn't correct him. Shortly after he noticed the damage, he came across one of those neighbor kids in the backyard with -- yep -- a BB gun, and scared him off. He logically assumed that he'd found the culprit. A short time later, that neighbor kid was accidentally killed while playing with a rifle. My parents tsk-tsked about the kid and his guns and his Volkswagen-damaging ways. I never confessed.
8. If I use the same public restroom more than once, I will almost always use the same stall every time.
9. I have double-jointed toes.
10. Unlike others here, I only feel like I've only gotten smarter as I've gotten older. About information, though, not about living. I feel like I just get stupider about living my life.

posted by mudpuppie 05 March | 15:34

1. I think everyone here is waaaay more interesting than I am.
2. I can't pronounce the words "cinnamon" or "synonym." They both come out "simnim."
3. I spent the first half of my life longing for change and the second half trying to avoid it all costs.
4. I once broke up a girl fight by grabbing each girl by the hair and pulling them to the ground.
5. I rarely hold onto handrails on buses/trams because I like to show off my sealegs.
6. I have danced on a rooftop in Budapest.
7. I hate jeans and am absolutely perplexed that anyone finds them "comfortable."
8. I still talk to most of my exes.
9. Despite the fact that I come from a very close-knit family, I can't remember the last time my parents or one of my siblings hugged me or told me they loved me. It's just not what we do.
10. I find adult life absolutely baffling. Like I was absent the day that everyone got the rulebook that told them how often to dust or what to do with all your grass clippings.

posted by jrossi4r 05 March | 15:36

8. If I use the same public restroom more than once, I will almost always use the same stall every time.

OK, seriously, I actually thought about writing that. I do exactly the same thing.

posted by gaspode 05 March | 15:42

1. I got engaged the day before my first date with my present spouse. (Yeah, some of you already know that. But still.) We're gonna hit the 25th anniversary this year.
2. I am actually certified to teach Johnny G. Spinning. But that runs out in April and I probably won't reup.
3. I went to Ringling School of Art for three semesters.
4. While there, visiting a gay bar with friends, I had an encouter with God. Which led to me darkening the door of a church the very next week...and the rest is history.
5. I've gained back 20 of the 35 pounds I lost a couple of years ago. I'm still exercising but I eat too dang much. I blame my husband. ;-)
6. I'm the only child of an only child.
7. Either people lie to me on a regular basis or I look a lot younger than my present age of 49.
8. If I hear it, I can play it. (Flight of the Bumblebe does NOT count.)
9. I like to have a glass of scuppernong wine occasionally. Good thing I'm not a Southern Baptist-but it is certainly evident I am no conossieur either.
10. I can wiggle my nostrils. Like a bunny.

posted by bunnyfire 05 March | 15:49

Here's the second thread. 659 comments! Dag. I'm spending waaaay too much time googling to find these but oh, it's fun.

posted by mygothlaundry 05 March | 15:49

1.We had a 10-acre “city-farm” when I was growing up, hence, was the only kid in my school that brought mallard ducks in for show and tell.
2.I used to work in a machine shop. Not on the technical/expensive equipment, just the hand grinders, optical trace machine, etc.
3.I used to work in a fabric store. I can tailor from scratch a three-piece suit.
4.I have raised and trained horses.
5.I learned to scuba dive.
6.I used to paint and sculpt. I’d like to again some day.
7.I couldn’t understand algebra until I decided it was just a way of describing social grouping. Then I understood it. I still cannot figure out percentage.
8.I have very little self-worth. I have no idea why; my childhood was idyllic.
9.My nephew and I are restoring an old car. In our very spare time. He’s doing all the mechanical stuff; I’m doing the bodywork. It will take about 5 years….if we’re fortunate and don’t have to buy much.
10.Oh, I was a bank teller for one summer during college. NOT a good fit. See #7, above.

posted by mightshould 05 March | 15:51

1. I hate apostrophe abuse.
2. I used to do a cartwheel.
3. I am an MFA - a motherfucking animal - at parties.
4. There is no number four.
5. Blondes love me*, but I can't stand 'em. (*or they did when I was in college, go fig)
6. I'm one of jrossi's exes. (Hi!)
7. I have considered entering the clergy of three different religious denominations at one time, but the only one I followed through with was the Universal Life Church.
8. Pasta fazool.
9. I invented both "ka-ching!" and the gunfingers.
10. I like the sound of breaking glass. If you don't believe me, why did you ask?
11. I have only ever broken one finger. The middle finger on my left hand. First grader with middle finger in a splint = free license to flip the bird and doing so "accidentally" at every opportunity.

Wait, I thought we were doing ten truths and a lie. Oops.

posted by Eideteker 05 March | 15:56

Five things.

posted by mygothlaundry 05 March | 15:56

I refuse to look at any of those prior threads because I'm sure I'll find that I've repeated myself and then I'll feel like an idiot.

posted by amro 05 March | 15:59

1. Ten
2. Nine
3. Eight
4. Seven
5. Six
6. Five
7. Four
8. Three
9. Two
1. Blastoff!

posted by Eideteker 05 March | 15:59

Sorry, I'm being completely silly, so I'll excuse myself from the thread.

posted by Eideteker 05 March | 16:00

More! I will stop now, I promise. It's all mudpuppie's fault. Anyway, I can't think of 10 things y'all don't know about me. Metachat knows more about me than I know about myself at this point, I think.

posted by mygothlaundry 05 March | 16:06

11. Pretty much everything is my fault, always.

posted by mudpuppie 05 March | 16:17

I'm one of jrossi's exes. (Hi!)

I always thought you seemed familiar.

11. Pretty much everything is my fault, always.

That would totally explain why I was diagnosed with Mudpuppie-Induced Endometriosis.

posted by jrossi4r 05 March | 16:23

A. I have trouble counting.

posted by eamondaly 05 March | 16:59

1. Even though I do a lot of yoga, and it's really important to me, and my current teacher has probably influenced my outlook on life more than almost any other person I've known, I hate talking about it to people because I fear that I sound like a woo-woo New Age weirdo.

2. I laugh. A lot. Like, all the time. And when I'm not laughing, I'm almost always smiling. It's only recently that I've come to suspect that this aspect of my personality does not come through online.

3. I have green-copper hazel eyes that sometimes look green, sometimes blue, sometimes gray. They're my favorite feature.

4. I hate conflict. Intellectual arguments are fine, but I get sick to my stomach when people start yelling at each other. And I define yelling as any sort of raised, annoyed, or exasperated voice; my tolerance for other people's anger is extremely low.

5. Point #4 is probably the number-one reason why I could never see myself living in New York, and a large part of why I left Boston.

6. I won poetry contests in second, third, and fourth grades. My mother helped me with most of the poems, probably extensively enough that they shouldn't have counted as my own. I don't remember what the poems were about.

7. I used to ride horses, and did show-jumping. I won a lot of trophies. My favorite horse was called Pumpkin, but her show name was "Ain't No Sunshine."

8. I try to talk to every dog I pass on the street, even if only in my head. I tell friends and family about the dogs I've met that day.

9. I am a total klutz, in large part because I'm big and strong enough that I don't pay that much attention to my physical safety. My hands are currently covered in scratches because I barged into the rose hedge in the backyard and started pulling out the dead wood, without thinking to put on gloves or be careful of thorns. I do that sort of thing a lot.

10. I am addicted to really bad girly tv. Lately I cannot stop watching The Pussycat Dolls: Girlicious, Rock of Love II, and reruns of Charmed.

posted by occhiblu 05 March | 17:28

2. I can't pronounce the words "cinnamon" or "synonym." They both come out "simnim."

I can't pronounce the word "thousand." It comes out "thoulsand."

posted by jtron 05 March | 17:46

1. I carry a cloth handkerchief, and feel as if I've forgotten something if I'm without one.
2. Children ages 8-12 frighten and irritate me. It's like they're almost real people, but not quite. Spooky.
3. I would love to design and build a dollhouse.
4. Every night as I fall asleep, I start plotting a novel in my head. I never remember much of them later. Many involve spaceships.
5. OK, keep this one under your hat: I read Dean Koontz books NOT because I like them but because I'm studying his techniques because I want to get paid piles of cash to write crap, too.
6. I have never had the opportunity to take mescaline, and I would very much like to try it.
7. I've always been slightly ashamed of my slender, girlish wrists.
8. I do not own sandals or sunglasses. I have no desire to go to the beach.
9. I own exactly one pair of jeans without a hole in them, and I wear them all winter. They're about to get a hole in one knee.
10. I have taken procrastination to the level of performance art.

posted by BitterOldPunk 05 March | 18:01

1. I am no good at these things. Writing down things about myself in a listish way makes me a little squicky, but not enough to not do it. I feel implicated by what I have included and what I have left out.
2. I count stairs, pretty much always.
3. My dream bedroom would be totally dark and totally quiet and very very small. I sleep under a massive pile of comforters which occasionally put the tops of my knees to sleep.
4. I couldn't live in a house without a bathtub.
5. I miss my dreadlocks because I think not having dreadlocks may send the wrong message when people look at me. And yet, I couldn't keep swimming and have them, so they went.
6. If I'm eating alone I need to be either watching something or reading something. I can almost not eat without my eyes engaged.
7. I have almost no toenails.
8. Angry people freak me out. I swear working at MeFi is some sort of desensitization therapy for me.
9. For someone who knows as many people as I do, I am often alone. I'm pretty ambivalent about this, though it always reads like an "oh woe is me" lament when I write it out.
10. I nearly died of a drug overdose in 2000 (accident, not suicidal) and really do have that "every day is a gift" perspective from it. Stopped doing drugs too; works for me pretty much.

posted by jessamyn 05 March | 18:57

1) I feel like an impostor almost all the time.
2) I'm writing a novel
3) I love slaving away in the kitchen - it makes me more happy than almost anything else
4) I speak fluent Cat - I suspect it's from a past life as a fat housecat.
5) I'm too scared to put a funky colour in my hair in case my parents disapprove.
6) I have two friends and four relatives that I couldn't do without. The rest of the world scares me and I keep it as far away as possible.
7) I used to be a pagan but I find it harder and harder to believe in anything. I wish with all my heart that this wasn't so because faith is comforting.
8) I am addicted to Coke. And, to a lesser extent, cheesecake.
9) If I could have any superpower, I would like to be able to teleport.
10) I love horror movies. They used to scare me but now I find them amusing because my head is a much more frightening place to be.

posted by ninazer0 05 March | 20:24

5. I miss my dreadlocks because I think not having dreadlocks may send the wrong message when people look at me.

Sometimes I feel the same way.

posted by box 05 March | 20:45

Man, I don't even know 10 things about me. How am I supposed to come up with 10 things you lot don't know?

posted by richat 05 March | 20:47

1. People don't believe it, but I'm not very spontaneous. I love having everything planned out, and find it hard to change things on the spot. This is one reason I hate surprises.
2. I am a reforming picky eater. There are still things I don't eat (and may never eat!), but I'm getting a lot better about trying something before I decide I don't like it.
3. I change my hair a lot, and I think I do it partly because I'm disatisfied with my face.
4. I've been on a orange soda kick for a few months, after years of not drinking it.
5. I love, love, LOVE a good flameout. Clap my hands, jump up and down at my house, refuse to leave my computer LOVE.
6. I have over 100 feeds on my Bloglines, and yet I still often find myself with "nothing to read" on the internet.
7. The more spending money I have, the less I want to spend it.
8. No one can make me laugh like my family.
9. I dream of owning real estate, and I don't even know why- I hate cleaning and all other areas of home maintenance and repair. Having a landlord to take care of my problems makes me hap, hap, happy (and even then, I'm too lazy to call him half the time).
10. I'm very thrifty/frugal/cheap- on most things. That way, I have extra money to spend on the things that really matter. When I made half of what I made now, I was still buying Kiehl's shampoo.

posted by ThePinkSuperhero 05 March | 21:18

Okay, I made sure I read all of them, and used some for inspiration:

1. I hate rodeos. I'd like it if we left horses alone now that we have a good handle on the horseless carriage.
2. I'm a pretty good cook. I tossed together a caramelized onion/asiago/spinach lasagna a couple weeks ago, hashing the ideas out over IM with my kid brother in Paris.
3. I am VERY susceptible to songs that can get stuck in your head.
4. There doesn't seem to be much that I REALLY enjoy lately. I'm working on it.
5. Beer can make me a little surly, but rye whiskey makes me affable.
6. While I seem to be pretty immune to movie violence, I have a really hard time with some real life stuff. Big Stuff. Like the Holocaust. I can't think about that stuff as a result. I tend to feel a little guilty about that.
7. I keep trying, but I seem to accumulate credit card debt. Not the super scary kind, but still.
8. Oddly, at almost-38, I still get asked for ID at the beer store sometimes. I don't mind. I guess they don't see the grey.
9. I like many of you a lot. I'm not sure if I should name names.
10. Oh, and I didn't realize that occhiblu laughs that much.

posted by richat 05 March | 21:56

One more:

11. I'm often a thread killer.

posted by richat 05 March | 22:13

1. I am an alcoholic, but have not had a drink since 1993.
2. I smoked cigarettes for 30 years, but quit in 2001.
3. I was married for 18 years. Have now been divorced for six.
4. I am in love with a woman who lives 2000 miles away. We have communicated by phone nearly every night for six years.
5. I finally learned how to let my fingernails grow, just in the past two years. Still working on toenails.
6. I have moved six times since 2002. Hopefully I will stay put for awhile.
7. Somewhere along the way I became a neat freak. Total opposite from early adulthood.
8. I held the same job for 28 years, but have now had five since that one.
9. I've had both shoulders operated on in the past 13 months.
10. I'm not much of a conversationalist, so coming up with ten wasn't easy.

posted by netbros 05 March | 23:02

1. I was a devout Catholic until I was about 25. I'm now devoutly agnostic, with vaguely buddhist leanings.
2. Paul Weller is not actually my longest-standing crush (though he is certainly my most ferocious). That honor is actually shared by Neil Finn and David Bowie, both of whom I have lurrrved since 1980 (I discovered Weller a year later).
3. I am my parents' favorite. It makes things easier in some ways (i.e., I don't get into fights with them as much as my sister), but seriously sucks in others (i.e., I'm stuck in the middle mediating said fights).
4. I forged my birth certificate at age 15 in order to get my first job to work at a concession stand at a movie theater (I needed to prove I was 16).
5. I almost married a friend in England when I was there for my junior year of college, just so I wouldn't have to come back to the U.S. Sometimes I still wish I'd done it.
6. About 6 years later, I almost married a friend so that he could stay in the U.S. rather than go back to Canada.
7. I was born in Stevens Point, Wisconsin. I have never met another person who was born there.
8. I'm actually kind of a shy introvert. The fact that almost no one believes me is proof that I probably should have been an actress.
9. I correspond regularly with a prisoner who was formerly on death row in Illinois (we met when I used to visit death row in the course of volunteering on the cases of several wrongfully convicted men who were later released).
10. My chicken dijon is the motherfuckin' bomb.

posted by scody 05 March | 23:39

Oh, one more:
11. I have a weird, deep fascination for the Mayerling incident, and have pretty much read everything that exists in English about it.

posted by scody 06 March | 00:21

Oooh, mysterious deaths. I know what I'm gonna be reading about for the next several hours.

posted by jtron 06 March | 02:13

Fun facts about the new girl...

1. I cannot taste carbonation -- fizzy drinks taste flat to me. This is a side effect of medication I'm on to prevent migraines, and it had the added benefit of breaking my formerly extreme addiction to Coke and Mountain Dew.
2. I stopped biting my nails, only to find out that I hate having nails, so I let myself start biting them again.
3. I used to hate exercise (especially running), until one day about 18 months ago, when a switch flipped in my head or something. Now I like exercise (even running). I don't know how it happened, but I'll take it.
4. My parents enrolled me in ballet classes when I was 5 because I was literally walking into walls. I studied dance for 10 years. I still occasionally walk into walls.
5. My mother is my best friend in the world. We live 700 miles apart, but will spend entire weekends together watching Joss Whedon shows on DVD whenever we can.
6. Although my own parents are awesome, I strongly suspect that I am a better parent to my beagle than I ever could be to a child. I hope I'm wrong.
7. I am an only child married to an only child. That we will never have nieces and nephews saddens me.
8. I, like scody, am an introvert who apparently fakes it very well, because nobody believes me either. (I'm an INFJ, if you buy that sort of thing, and apparently we're rather rare.)
9. I went to a performing arts high school. Sadly, we did not dance on the cafeteria tables at lunchtime like in "Fame." I was not a dancer, anyway... I was a singer. La.
10. I adored books about natural disasters as a kid -- couldn't get enough -- but they gave me nightmares if I read them right before bed. So I had to read them with a Winnie the Pooh chaser. One chapter of a.a. milne in between tornadoes and bedtime would usually suffice. Sometimes two, if the carnage was excessive.

posted by somanyamys 06 March | 15:15

Hi, somanyamys! I'm also an INFJ, and no one believes that I'm an introvert, either. Silly peoples.

posted by occhiblu 06 March | 15:34

1. Right now, my cat is spooning my butt.
2. We have been spooning a lot lately.
3. Last night was her first pretty successful leash walk. She's so darn cute in her harness outfit.
4. When it is finally spring, i'm going to dress like Donna Reed and take her out in a cat stroller i know is unused.
5. This means i have to learn how to do a Marcel wave and make a poofy skirt.
6. Still not as goofy as past election day outfits as they involve gloves.
7. She's so nice about wearing things i am tempted to dress her for her birthday on Easter.
8. i'm not really a crazy cat lady but it's so easy to play on the internet. "Don't mind her. She's just one of those cat people, she's harmless."
9. Muhahahahahah.
10. If i had access to a big private space, i'd be pretty happy and invariably would be found doing something odd in it.

posted by ethylene 06 March | 15:41

1. I am related to a president, though not a terribly interesting one (William McKinley).
2. I am a social misfit. I have learned to a certain degree to hide it but it takes a lot of energy for me to be sociable to people and in situations I am not very familiar with.
3. I used to work at a strip club as a (clothed) cocktail waitress. It was an eye-opening job.
4. I try to be highbrow with my books, music, movies, but I really enjoy the lowbrow things just as much.
5. I am in AA. I think it saved my life.
6. I am a snob about manners, grammar and spelling, despite my repeated faux pas, mistakes and typos.
7. I am not happy in my life right now.
8. When I was in my early teenage years, I was never the type that got crushes on pin-ups like Kirk Cameron or Sean Astin but I wanted to fit in so I pretended to like Michael J Fox.
9. If I won the lottery, I would open a dog sanctuary.
10. I moved to this city several years ago and still have not made many friends outside of casual work friends. I wish I had more friends here as I am becoming reclusive.

posted by triggerfinger 06 March | 16:32

oh my god, I think somanyamys, occhiblu and I need to start a band called the Secret Introverts! Our first album can be called "The Women From I.N.F.J.," and can feature us in cute little spy outfits.

posted by scody 06 March | 17:42

Yay, cute little spy outfits! We'll sing songs like, "I like you, just not all the time," and "No, seriously, I'm just good at asking questions."

posted by occhiblu 06 March | 17:56

I'm too ~~busy~~ lazy to come up with my own, so I'll choose some from the above lists that apply to me:

1. I can't do a cartwheel
2. I like the movie, Sliding Doors, with Gwyneth Paltrow. ~~I cry at the raining on the bridge scene~~ (real men don't cry)
3. I think I used to be smarter
4. I'm afraid my kids will be as messed up as me, no matter what I do
5. I can't whistle. ~~When someone new learns this about me, there is always an impromptu whistling lesson until they realize that I really can't whistle.~~
6. I need my kitchen to be clean and my sink empty. ~~The rest of the rooms I don't care about as much,~~ just please don't let dishes "soak" for two days or I will stab your eyes out
7. I wish I could travel more
8. I think everyone here is waaaay more interesting than I am
9. Pretty much everything is my fault, always
10. I count stairs, pretty much always
10a. I feel like an impostor almost all the time
10b. I like many of you a lot. I'm not sure if I should name names.
10c. I am a social misfit. I have learned to a certain degree to hide it but it takes a lot of energy for me to be sociable to people and in situations I am not very familiar with
10d. I am not happy in my life right now

posted by dg 06 March | 23:37

"No, seriously, I'm just good at asking questions."

hee! I am totally getting that on a t-shirt.

posted by scody 07 March | 02:38

I go home, I go to sleep, I wake up, and now I'm in a band! with other INFJs! and we have cute little spy outfits! Schweet.

Most of our fans will probably be INFJs too... we'll all have a great time and rock out, but afterwards everyone will go home feeling totally drained and needing to be alone for two days.

posted by somanyamys 07 March | 11:24

Most of our fans will probably be INFJs too... we'll all have a great time and rock out, but afterwards everyone will go home feeling totally drained and needing to be alone for two days.

I call guitar!

posted by lysdexic 07 March | 11:54

05 March 2008