The “5 things you don’t know about me” meme
(Visited 17828 times) Misc
Dec 272006
Susan Wu tagged me and I am supposed to come up with 5 things you don’t know about me. The problem is that with all the interviews and whatnot, all sorts of things have already been said. Usually, I can pull out stuff that folks don’t expect, like “I’m fluent in Spanish” or “I have a degree in poetry,” but nowadays, this stuff is stuff all you regular blog readers know.
So this is hard. Um.
- I dropped out of junior high school. Not for very long — like two, three months maybe. I was living in Barbados at the time, and I just stopped going. Eventually, a doctor said I had mild depression and prescribed a bunch of vitamins and sunshine. I went back to school, took the finals and passed them, and got flunked on a couple of classes on general principle. Kinda ruined my high school transcript.
- I have never had a traffic ticket. It’s not because I am an amazing driver, I assure you. In fact, I didn’t learn to drive until late — Kristen had to teach me when we were in college. Damn, I could have used that one as a separate item. Oh well.
- My first job was making sandwiches at Subway. You do not want to know how the tuna is made. I worked for a Louisianan manager who used to bring in homemade gumbo for us to eat on the breaks. He was also really into Marilyn Monroe. Once, he asked me to run the late shift alone, and we got unexpectedly hit with a gigantic crowd — like, line out the door — and I didn’t manage to run the register receipts every hour. He never asked me to run the place again.
- I am fleet of foot. Or used to be, before I had this counterweight in the midsection. In grade school for a little while I held a school record for my grade in hurdles. In high school I tried out for the track team but it conflicted with my school magazine editorship so I dropped it.
- We used to breed rodents, during grad school. We started with hamsters, and had both the regular goldens and the Russians, plus one lonely Chinese hamster — I’ve never seen another one. We then acquired a gerbil, then many gerbils, then were inundated in gerbils. For a while there, you could go into most pet stores in central Alabama and find black gerbils with the distinctive white band around their paws, and know where they had originated.
OK, now I am supposed to tag five people. Susan wanted the meme to infect the gaming world. Hmm. What criteria to use…? I pick Kim Pallister. Scott Jennings. Tobold. Yehuda Berlinger. And… Matt Mihaly.
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Five things you don’t know about me I hate chain letters. But Raph tagged me with this one, and now I have to tell you 5 things you don’t know about me, and then tag 5 other people, or a terrible Egyptian curse will strike me down, or something like that. 🙂 1) I once destroyed a bus stop
I saw this meme pop up on a few marketing and web design blogs I parouse and never thought much of it. Then a week or so ago a little bit of me died inside as I watched Susan Wu pass it on deliberately, DELIBRATLY! To Raph “I have no fucking clue what Areae is myself” Koster so it could propagate here into the game blogosphere. I though that maybe, just maybe I’d escape it, but like watching that bullet you can’t avoid flying towards your face in slow motion, I got eventually tagged by
A while back I was guilty of tagging others with a ‘4 things’ meme. Karma is having it’s way with me, and now Raph has tagged me with a ‘5 Things’ meme. Ok, I’ll bite, but this time the buck stops here. I’m refusing to tag others. Thou shalt not dirty the internets and all of that. So, here goes. Five things you don’t know about me:
Better late than never, I guess. Besides, it’s “massively multiplayer gaming” at it’s best, without expensive servers or subscription costs! Incidentally, a partial lineage is: Susan Wu (who sent this into the gaming blogosphere)-> Raph Koster -> Broken Toys -> Mythical Blog -> MMODig -> Gaming Bitch -> World IV -> Li’l Ol Me. So here goes: Five Things You Don’t Know About Me. Unless you already do: #1 – I’m a hillbilly. I was born in West Virginia, and lived in a place called Tick Ridge.
I’ve been tagged! Actually, I was tagged nearly a month ago, but am just now getting to it. Tell us Five things about you that we don’t know… How this got to me: Susan Wu (who sent this into the gaming blogosphere)-> Raph Koster -> Broken Toys -> Mythical Blog -> MMODig -> Gaming Bitch -> World IV -> Rampant Coyote -> ~J –> and then ME. So, what are 5 things about me you don’t know? 1- When I was 13 I won 2nd place in the school science fair in junior high school and spent
A while back I was guilty of tagging others with a ‘4 things’ meme. Karma is having it’s way with me, and nowRaph has tagged mewith a ‘5 Things’ meme. Ok, I’ll bite, but this time the buck stops here. I’m refusing to tag others. Thou shalt not dirty the internets and all of that. So, here goes. Five things you don’t know about me:
[…] No, really. Like Raph, I’m not sure if there is anything left about me that isn’t already an open book, but let’s give it a go. […]
The fleet of foot bit is making me chuckle. It reminds me of a Seinfeld episode. Tip: Set up a race with a foil who has a poor sense of timing out of the gate. After you win, your fleetness will remain unquestioned forever.
Thanks, Raph. But I already did this meme, yesterday!
Yehuda
>We then acquired a gerbil, then many gerbils, then were inundated in gerbils. For a while there, you could go into most pet stores in central Alabama and find black gerbils with the distinctive white band around their paws, and know where they had originated.
I have an awful feeling that this concept is going to find its way into a game of Raph’s somewhere…in fact, maybe it already did! The self-replicating banded gerbil….
[…] The meme that’s been spreading through the blogosphere lately has struck me, courtesy of Raph. Thus, I’m supposed to post five things that you don’t know about me (ok, some of you will probably know most or all of these) and then tag some other people. […]
You know an (IMO) better meme would be to play “Two Truths and a Lie”. It’s a great game to play as a mixer or with people you already know. The idea’s very simple: tell two compelling truths about yourself and one lie but don’t tell which is which (if you wish you can let people guess and then tell them the answer).
For example:
* I once had a yard full of drunk German men sing Nazi school songs to me.
* I once was stranded, without water, transportation or any means of long distance communication, in the middle of a game park in Botswana.
* I once had to spend several hours in an Indian police station answering questions.
Out of curiosity, has anyone in the SL sphere been tagged?
might as well join in:
http://cliffski.blogspot.com/
@Michael
“Out of curiosity, has anyone in the SL sphere been tagged?”
Yeah, like um….someone whose name starts with P 🙂
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Hehe, seven degrees from everyone. You tagged Lum who tagged Abalieno who tagged me. Defunct site or not, I’m just not that interesting 🙂 Married with two kids making ends meet on one salary. Two aging cars needing a new driveway to park upon, standard career I’m trying different ways of advancing within. Normal stuff.
Happy New Year all!
[…] This is not my blog. I set it up, do the admin, and all that, but this is a blog for WorldForge. I also have not been tagged by anyone else in the blogosphere, where the “5 things you didn’t know about me” meme is currently going round, but for some reason I feel compelled to write this post, in the aftermath of the birthday that marks my existance on this planet for one third of a century. […]
Actually, I avoided tagging Prokofy because of this post, which I had just read.
Hmmmm, the trackback button gives me a “OK The document has moved here” error message, and nothing else. You’ll have to accept this manual link as trackback instead.
http://tobolds.blogspot.com/2006/12/five-things-you-dont-know-about-me.html
Wow, those people are really crossing the line I hope Prokofy is OK.
Ok, I bit:
http://kpallist.blogspot.com/2007/01/five-things.html
[…] The Obligatory "Five Things" Post Dragon tagged me with a meme that has been circulating the game-o-sphere for a few days: what are five things you don’t know about me. I would once have been able to say “1 – I don’t do memes”, but since this is my second, that’s really not going to wash. In any case, if it’s good enough for Lum, Brian, Raph*, Matt and others, then it’s good enough for me. Of course, those who know me IRL, and a few others, might know some of these. But I’ll bet that two of them are new to everyone in the world. 1 – I tried to create a mechanical flight simulator when I was ten. I had just used two computers by then – both Commodore Pets – and neither had a flight sim on it, so I don’t know exactly where the idea came from. We were building a house at the time, so I had loads of materials available, so I tried to draw a scene on the back of a long roll of heavy paper and make two winders at the top and bottom of a flat board, masked by a piece of wood with a hole for a windshield. The effect would have been a little like an isometric-view scroller, but for the fact that my utter lack of artistic ability lead me to give up in disgust. Not for the last time, my technical plans were foiled by artistic ineptitude. Me and Hitler both. 2 – I can count to any number up to 1023 in binary on my fingers faster than you can do it in decimal or out loud. 3 – When I was young – some time before 11, again – my father explained traversable circuits to me, with an example of a square with a St. Andrew’s cross, explaining that it couldn’t be traversed. Bad idea. I started tracing it out on paper, then on my hand, then in my head, and my brain got stuck. I still do it sometimes without really noticing, when reading or thinking. It’s a kinda mild OCD-type thing. Interestingly, he also explained the four-colour theorem, but I lost niterest in that after less than six months of bull-headed experimentation. 4 – Today, I had to pass up the invitation to apply for an absolute dream job. I mean, the sort of job where you don’t care what you would be doing, just to get to work there. Topical! 5 – My grandfather taught me to make a powerful depth-charge, which I once, rather unwisely, tested with some friends in the Wall’O’Kirk pool. The material needed for the charge was very easy to get, although nowadays you’d have to nick it from a school or lab. The variable timer mechanism would make you weep with its elegant simplicity. The result was terrifyingly effective, and there were soon a surprising number of dead eels on the surface of the water. I hope you don’t mind me declining to post the recipe. ———- *When I trackback to raph’s site it seems to post the entire article so, being a good citizen, the link is https://www.raphkoster.com/2006/12/27/the-5-things-you-dont-know-about-me-meme/ if you want it) posted Wednesday, January 03, 2007 4:05 AM by Endie with 0 Comments […]
[…] Like Raph Koster, I was also fleet of foot while at school: I still hold the Under 17 Welsh Championships Long Jump record which I set in 1989, the same year that I was ranked 8th in the UK in my age group for the same event. (My Under 20 championship record was broken in 2003 after 13 years.) […]
Continuing poop. I tried so very hard to make my link *not* appear as a trackback, given that the Kramer thing seems to just print the entire post instead of the excerpt or header. Ack…
Endie (ZPNM)
Endie, the system I have automatically picks ’em up whenever the inbound link is followed. Kramer does in fact excerpt it usually, but sometimes it doesn’t. If it’s too long (which this one isn’t really, you should see some of the giant ones we get sometimes) we edit ’em down manually anyway.
[…] Raph Koster tags Broken Toys tags Mythical Blog tags MMODig tags Gaming Bitch tags WorldIV — and there is some interesting genealogy of the whole thing here. […]
[…] This darn blog chain letter just hit me. I’m supposed to tell you all 5 things you don’t know about me, then tag 5 other people to do the same. My tag comes courtesy of Krones at Plaguelands, who was tagged by Abalieno at Cesspit, and keep on going up the chain ultimately leads to Raph Koster. That’s where it leaves the game blogosphere, but this has been bouncing around for a while. Pretty amusing. Ok. So I talk about myself all the time on this here blog, but I have to think of novel things to share. Hmm. […]
[…] I actually spotted this meme the other day on Jeff Freeman’s blog, but he got it from Lum, who got it from Raph Koster. […]
[…] I actually spotted this meme the other day on Jeff Freeman’s blog, but he got it from Lum, who got it from Raph Koster, and it spread from there it seems. […]
[…] Home · About · News · Podcast · Blog · Forum · Login · Register 5 things you don’t know about me Jan 04, 2007 18:44:19 This dreaded chain has infiltrated the gaming blogs and it seems that I’m up. Raph tagged Tobold who tagged Relmstein who tagged Lauren who tagged me. (Looks like Heartless tagged me too so I’m doubly tagged.) I’ll play along. Here is my list. 1. I hate rubber bands. While I do not exactly run in fear, I do have this constant fear that rubber bands will snap and hit me in the eye. I do not recommend shooting rubber bands at me. It gets ugly. If I’m wearing sunglasses or something, no biggie, but shoot a rubber band at me without allowing me to don proper eye protection and I tend to boil over. This is weird, I know. 2. I started my first game company at age 19. It was one of those now antiquated strategy play-by-mail games. (Yes, by snail mail.) The company never put a dime in my pocket but it sustained itself for about 3 years before we decided to fold it up. This was a far better education than college was. 3. I’m a vegetarian. This doesn’t mean I have an agenda and think everyone who eats meat is evil. People ask me why I’m a vegetarian and all i can say is, “Pick a reason” because all the potential reasons you might come up with are probably somewhat true and yet no single one is an overarching reason for me. This makes eating out surprisingly difficult, but I manage. I break down about 4 times a year and have a huge burger or steak. 4. I’m not as calm as I sound. All of my adult life people have regarded me as being relatively laid back and I never could understand that. I feel like a high strung spaz, but apparently it doesn’t show. When I told a friend of mine that I feel like a spaz he told me, “The voices on the inside don’t count.” That is an interesting observation that I never understood until I started podcasting. There’s nothing like listening to yourself talk every week to open your eyes to the truths of your own personality. I do sound laid back on the podcast and week after week I’m shocked by that, because inside my head I feel quite excitable, or rather I am quite excitable, it just doesn’t show and I’m not sure why. This continues to baffle me. 5. I don’t believe in fantastical things no matter how attractive they might sound. This includes ghosts, reincarnation, time travel, deities of any kind, magic, moderate politicians, light beer, the Burning Crusade, country music, newspapers, Angelina Jolie and the stock market. And now I must tag 5 more bloggers. Here we go: Renata, Ryan Shwayder, Steve Danuser, Cyan Bane, and John Smedley. Submitted by prognosticator on Jan 04, 2007 18:44:19 CST (comments: 2) Comments: ‘Very Fun Read…’ by Saylah Submitted on 2007-01-04 22:48:00 CST I’m one of those people that think you sound so laid back. I think we discussed it once and I’ve even mentioned it to Brenden. Funny how that works. The rubber band thing really had me laughing. I’d forgotten my own irrational fear of balloons. I’m always terrified they’re going to pop. ‘dude?!’ by darrenl Submitted on 2007-01-05 07:36:55 CST Angela Jolie…come on??!! Seriously though, good stuff. Yeah, you do sound very laid back. I use to be like that waay back in university. I remember one friend asking me, "nothing seems to phase you". Little did he know that inside I was panicking 24/7 🙂 To post comments, please login. VirginWorlds Blog Entries [Jan 04] 5 things you don’t know about me […]
[…] Jay posted the lineage of this meme. I thought it was really interesting, so I’ll do the same. The history goes: Susan Wu » Raph Koster » Broken Toys » Mythical Blog » MMODig » Gaming Bitch » World IV » Jay Barnson » Me. […]
[…] so now I'm supposed to spread the meme, staph-like, across the intertubes. (You just know Raph's going to make a cloud thing when […]
[…] Raph, sé que hablas castellano con fluidez, así que si pasas por aquí déjanos un comentario, que nos hará […]
[…] know about me This dreaded chain has infiltrated the gaming blogs and it seems that I’m up. Raph tagged Tobold who tagged Relmstein who tagged Lauren who tagged me. (Looks likeHeartless tagged […]
[…] this meme the other day on Jeff Freeman‘s blog, but he got it from Lum, who got it from Raph Koster, and it spread from there it seems.Like Tony, I don’t really like calling too much attention […]