shark bytes

1. Leave me a casual comment of no particular significance, like a lyric to your current favorite song, or your favorite kind of sandwich, maybe your favorite game. Any remark, meaningless or not.
2. I will respond by asking you five personal questions so I can get to know you better.
3. Update your LJ with the answers to the questions.
4. Include this explanation and offer to ask someone else in your own post.
5. When others respond with a desultory comment, you will ask them five questions.

yhlee asked:
( some questions (with answers) )

I like that this one is self-tagging, since I really dislike the whole concept of "tagging" people to respond.

I quote: This is a twist on the Letter Meme. Instead of coming up with ten items for a certain letter, you come up with five song titles for a certain letter and explain why you picked them. If interested then leave a comment. I'll give you a letter. You post this blurb in your journal along with your list.

theodosia gave me "V".

1. "Video Killed The Radio Star", The Buggles

Today is the 25th anniversary of MTV, and back when they still showed videos, they started off with this one. Yes, not only am I so old I remember when MTV showed videos, I'm so old I remember before MTV showed videos.

1a. "Voices Carry", 'Til Tuesday

Another 1980s song well known for its video, though Aimee Mann continued to have a singing career, while Trevor Horn went behind the scenes as a producer instead.

2. "Verb: That's What's Happening", Schoolhouse Rock

See above for note on my age. Yes, this list is dating me something fierce. I'm of the cohort who can hear the word "conjunction" and immediately get earwormed.

3. "Verdi Cries", 10,000 Maniacs

I discovered the Maniacs while in college, and was lucky enough to buy In My Tribe before they pulled "Peace Train" off the disc over the Yusuf Islam/Salman Rushdie fatwa problem. As many people do, I discovered a lot of music during my college years.

4. "Valjean Arrested/Valjean Forgiven", Les Misérables (Broadway Cast)

Another college experience was seeing Les Mis. I'd worked tech for a couple plays in high school, so I wound up spending time admiring bits of lighting design and scenery construction when I should have been paying more attention to the show, but hey.

5. "Vancouver", They Might Be Giants

I still remember buying Flood at the Newbury Comics in Harvard Square, lo these many years ago. Perhaps one of these days I'll get to a TMBG live show. The Venue Songs album is quite good; it reminds me of the writing prompts that many of the writer-folks on my flist take and run with, producing great stuff from a small seed.

Something extremely silly to start the weekend with, run twice for extra silliness:

( click or treat )

( trick or cleat )

(meme via lots-o-folks)

From fairmer (and pnh and athenais and jmhm), the "bold the ones you've met in person" meme. I'll also use fairmer's "italics indicate proximity without a real meeting" addition; most of those are "were both in the same very large room at the same time at some con". Apologies for any mistakes I've managed to make on this list; as pnh put it, feel free to give me a whap upside the head. Some people are posting this as a pre-Interthingy post; I'm not, since I won't be there. (This keeps my unbroken string of always attending any Worldcon I can walk to, and never attending one that I can't.)

( this list will not be added to at Interthingy )

When tagged by fluffcthulhu, a proper Minion must respond.

( free meme inside )

Yes, I have finally succumbed to the lure of the Ten Things list meme.

This is really hard when your long-time SO/spouse is on your friends list....

Ten things I've done that I don't think anyone on my friends list has done:
1. Visited the cockpit of Concorde, in flight, at Mach 2.
2. Been quoted on the front page of the Wall Street Journal (above the fold).
3. Repeated a grade in school, then six years later skipped two grades (in the same school district).
4. Spent a year and a half commuting to a different school district that wasn't even adjacent to the one I lived in (in between the repeat and skipping incidents).
5. Graduated high school with an official class rank of "0".
6. Taken 4 AP tests in 3 days, scoring two 4s and two 5s. (This is the one I consider most likely to be matched or beaten.)
7. Broken three bones in my foot jumping off a 4' high chain-link fence.
8. Lived in the same town for 10 years while in an active-duty military family.
9. Ridden in a Boeing 929 Jetfoil.
10. Been a co-author on a paper in Nature.

In other news, my Boskone reports are up over at dirac_angestun: Friday, Saturday, Sunday.

Via feorag, the airports I've visited.

( the cut-tag is for loading and unloading of passengers only )

Normally I don't bother posting "your friends list as a Star Trek crew" type memes, because randomly assigning roles is generally boring and irrelevant. This one was more amusing than most, especially given some of the casting choices.

( don't click if you hate these )

First spotted via wcg.

1. Stop talking about politics for a moment or two.
2. Post a reasonably-sized picture in your LJ, NOT under a cut tag, of something pleasant, such as an adorable kitten, or a fluffy white cloud, or a bottle of booze. Something that has NOTHING TO DO WITH POLITICS.



3. Include these instructions, and share the love.

[My notes: I haven't been posting on politics either here or on dirac_angestun, though I have been commenting. I hope people enjoy the picture anyway.]

(acquired via topaz_munro)

A book you own that no one on your friends list does: Sysadmin/technical books are likely to be out there (unless I go back to Beneath Apple DOS, and I wouldn't be too surprised if that showed up). SF&F? Yeah, right. Aviation or other transport related books? I'd worry about feorag there, if nobody else.

I'll have to go for Town on the Sound: Stories of Steilacoom on the grounds that nobody on my friends list is from there, as far as I know.

A CD you own that no one on your friends list does: I can think of several candidates for this one, since my iTunes library is particularly rich in the bizarre. The Stairways to Heaven collection from "The Money or the Gun" is my first thought, though Brent Spiner's Ol' Yellow Eyes Is Back is another possibility, or When Pigs Fly: Music You Never Thought You'd Hear. (That last includes Don Ho's cover of "Shock The Monkey".) Picking one, I'll say Stairways.

A DVD/VHS tape you own that no one on your friends list does: The Return of Captain Invincible.

A place you've been that no one on your friends list has been: the cockpit of Concorde, in flight, at Mach 2. (I suspect feorag will be irritated to hear that.)

Go to my userinfo page and choose someone from my friends list. Post their username in a comment and I'll tell you what I know about them, or how I came to know them. You are allowed to ask about yourself if you are curious.

( An explanation of whence this meme came, and other musings, which may be more interesting than the actual meme results )

Seen on redbird's LJ, but modified since I don't have a name for my LJ.

My journal is called _____ because _____.
My subtitle is _____ because _____.
My friends page is called _____ because _____.
My username is ____ because _____.


My blog is called Dirac Angestun Gesept because it seemed right. It's taken from Eric Frank Russell's classic SF novel Wasp, where it's the name of the Sirian Freedom Party (in Sirian, of course); it's really just James Mowry and his bag of tricks.

The subtitle "One blog against an entire planet." is of the same provenance.

My friends page is called "friends" because I am boring.

My username is ckd because they're my initials, and that's been my online identity since I got my first Unix account in 19mumblemumble, and because it wasn't taken yet.