It's a Facebook meme. Thought I'd share it here as well. Obligation free.
0. In the world of memes, I am the anti-meme. I am where memes go to die. That said, I am also not against cherry-picking a command or two from our meme overlords from time to time ... especially when the vector of said meme is so delightful ... John Remy!!! ... Joe LeBlanc!!!
1. As a kid I developed an unhealthy addiction to Dr. Pepper and Doritos that still haunts me -- though, sadly, the stuff doesn't taste nearly as good as it once did.
2. As a kid I wanted to be a fighter pilot and astronaut. As a teen I wanted to be anyone but me. As a young adult I told people I wanted to be a doctor. As a mid-life crisis I want to be a scientist of ambiguous trade who sails the world in a 41' Hans Christian.
3. In some very significant ways I was much more mature as a kid than I am now.
4. I have an estranged relationship with death and dying.
5. I too am in that elite class of US citizens who voted for Ross Perot in '92. At the time I felt he was the compromise candidate and might have preferred Bo Gritz. Yes, it's true -- at one point in my life my past crescendoed into political lunacy.
6. The same year I voted for Perot I also married Laurie, who changed my heart in many ways not least of which was setting my internal liberal free from the chains of inherited fundamentalist conservatism. Thank you, Laurie.
7. It's been many, many years since I've had dreams like I did as a kid. I was raised in a tradition where dreams have literal connections and meaning in the waking world. Sometime along the way I stopped having these dreams. Sometime later I stopped believing in them. I sleep much better now.
8. I've always loved animals. Having a closer bond of caring and compassion for human beings has been a challenge, though marriage and family has made this much more natural. In both cases, caring so much has often led me to cruelty. I find this facet of my nature profoundly disturbing.
9. There's still a place in my heart for god, if there is a god, but this place has become like a bedroom kept for a lost child.
10. I once joined the military because ... because, I'm not sure. It's complicated. There was the excitement of going airbourne, of the elite, of camaraderie arising from surviving the most mundane and exotic trials as a team. But in the end I learned one key lesson: I could be trained to kill with passion and this scared the bejesus out of me.
11. I have three children who perpetually confound my emotions. I often wonder how I could be their father. It's entirely too much to take-in and so I'm just taking it one day at a time while desperately wishing it were possible to fully comprehend.
12. I love introspection. It seems to me that thinking about and examining self is the only truly consequential laboratory. And I get very annoyed when folks bristle against self-awareness, using terms like "navel-gazing", "mental masturbation", etc. I mostly blame religion for the idea that self is sin.
13. And I love people. I'm fascinated by human society. If I'm allowed the space to interact and communicate in my own way then I'm able to spend a great deal of time and effort on being social. Twitter seems to fit my social mind most truly.
14. I've had several occasions where I might have easily been killed. For a good part of my life I was certain that this was because god had a work for me--some great and profound contribution to his plan. Now I realize that I've just been very, very fortunate. Life is precious and death is beyond anyone's will.
15. Among my earliest memories are those of watching Apollo mission reports on television. Also of sitting in my great-grandmother's lap, looking out the front window, counting cars as they drove by. This woman crossed the American continent by wagon and witnessed men walking on the moon. I also long thought that 'the olden days' were in black and white. Thank the history of video technology for this. Yet, I still often think of life on earth before color television as black and white. Very strange.
16. My first car was a red Toyota Celica. I remember telling my mother that I loved to have shiny, red objects, but preferred to wear blue clothes. I think inside I'm blue in every way and perhaps this explains my attraction to red externals. Heh. Now that's a very strange flow of thought.
17. Buying certain books makes me feel smarter and as if I'm moving toward a goal -- but I very often fail to read these books.
18. I'm supposed to be working right now but am doing this list instead. That's me in a nutshell.
19. I have a natural and undying affinity for blue-collar, underdog, over-achievers. I'm always looking for and cheering for these types. But then I covet the lives and works of the world's elites. I think I might have been an active participant in the French Revolution had I been French and living at the time.
20. In my mind, all those so-called "founding fathers" pale in comparison to Thomas Paine. I think it's an embarrassment that Paine gets so little credit in traditional American history curricula. And I think there are few greater ironies than the modern American conservative's worship of that band of domestic terrorists known through the victor's lens as "the founding fathers."
21. I'm often inclined toward using words that I've read but may not necessarily fully understand or even know how to pronounce. This has led to many awkward moments, including that time when I pronounced "paradigm" as "pear-ah-digg-um". Ouch.
22. Sam Harris really pissed me off when he more or less obliquely defended torture in his book "The End of Faith". Some pills are too bitter to swallow even if wrapped in sweetness.
23. Don't follow me, follow @Tweepl!
24. I'm a fan of the idea of counting from 0. If for no other reason than that it somehow feels like cheating.
2 comments:
I think you like to count from zero because denying the null its place anti-nihilist!
Did you know that homo sapiens didn't invent the cipher until ca 1750 BCE ?
Well, that's a good point. I don't believe there's such a thing as nothing. Nothing/Something thinking seems related to the human mind's tendency toward binaries.
What's your point about ciphers?
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