"Which Humor Troubles the Disposition of YOUR Body?"

Did you really need to ask?

Your humor is: yellow bile
Your personality is: choleric
Your season is: summer
Your element is: fire
Your qualities are: hot and dry
Your color is: yellow
Your organ is: the liver
Your lunar phase is: the full moon
Your opposing humor is: phlegm

When yellow bile dominates, an individual is quick to anger. Choleric personalities (cholera meaning yellow as in yellow fever) are often violent and vengeful.

Black Hellebore, which is known for its laxative properties, purges lower tracts of phlegm and choleric humors.

Avoid herbs with a bitter taste, as they are most likely to promote yellow bile.

Choler is hot and dry, begotten of the hotter parts of the chylus, and gathered to the gall. It helps the natural heat and senses.

(Muchas gracias: LAN3 at The Sound and Fury, whose humors are far better balanced than mine.)

This Big Five Personality Test is currently making the rounds, and, well, how am I going to resist a deal like that?

The Big Five Personality Test

Extroverted	||||||||||	36%
Introverted	||||||||||||||||	64%
Friendly	||||||||||	40%
Aggressive	||||||||||||||	60%
Orderly	||||||||||||||||	70%
Disorderly	||||||	30%
Relaxed	||||	16%
Emotional	||||||||||||||||||||	84%
Intellectual	||||||||||||||||	70%
Practical	||||||	30%

Take Free Big 5 Personality Test

Now go away before I have a panic attack.

Well, why the hell not? The original is here.

1) Does anybody really see a correlation between the size of a man's feet or his nose and the size of his penis?

I wear a size 14 shoe, and my glasses fit; I don't think there is any such correlation.

2) If you are a woman, would you ever get a tit-job? If so, why?

Not applicable, though if I were, I don't think I could afford a good one, and I don't think I could afford the misery of a bad one.

3) If you are a man, would you buy a bionic Roscoe if your dick quit working? If so, why?

It's not like the ol' YCB* is getting any kind of a workout anyway, so probably not.

4) Did you ever sleep with someone and wake up in the morning unable to remember their name? If not, WHY NOT?

No, because the sample size is too small to justify this level of forgetfulness.

5) Which would you rather have for a pet? A DOG or a CAT? If you answer "cat," you've got some serious explaining to do.

Cats are more like me — surly, uncommunicative, indifferent — all of which are probably good arguments for dogs.

6) Do you eat grits for breakfast?

I have before, though not lately; usually I skip breakfast altogether, on the dubious basis that I need those few extra minutes of sleep more than I need a sloshing of nutrient-like substances.

7) What is the most dumb-ass thing you ever did in your life? Was it fun or has it haunted you for years?

I actually fell for the armorer's request for a left-handed barrel stabilizer while I was a lowly E-1.

8) Do you exceed the speed limit regularly when you drive, or just do it occasionally? Don't tell me that you NEVER SPEED you lying shit! Tell the truth!

Most places I go, going the speed limit is an invitation to tailgaters.

9) Describe the happiest day you can remember living.

Working on it yet.

10) Do you believe that some things are worth dying for? If so, name one thing worth dying for and tell me why you feel so strongly about it.

When I joined the Army in 1972, it was mostly because I expected to get drafted and wanted some small say in what they did to me. But a few years of wearing the uniform convinced me that there is merit in the traditional American approach to world affairs, i.e. issue platitudes then kick ass, and if the time comes when we're all needed, well, you've already seen my platitudes.

* Yugoslavian Crotch Bugle. Don't ask.

Once again, the blogosphere has seized on a meme which I've already beaten to death, but what the hell. I mean, what's a few extra strokes to the deceased equine, anyway?

I was in a semi-jaunty mood, remarkably so considering it's cold and damp and dreary outside and the inside of my head is awash in histamine, so I went ahead and plugged the name of the Resonant Tuscan's blog into the generator, and was rewarded with A NICE HOT BUST, not to mention STOIC BANE HUT and USE BATH TONIC and THE COUSIN TAB and SNUB TO THE CIA and ESTONIA BUTCH and AUTHENTIC SOB.

I do hope she's still speaking to me. (And that goes for Shari Rae Darn at Taut Chrome Doom, too.)

Lesley at Plum Crazy passes on this insane but simple meme:

Well, okay. There are 1331 songs on the playlist on this box, mostly fairly mainstream. Let's see what happens:

  1. "Silhouettes," a case of mistaken identity in the Herman's Hermits remake.

  2. "Wonderland by Night," Bert Kaempfert's lovely instrumental with a hair-raising trumpet part.

  3. "Zip Code", the Five Americans once again turning a communications medium into a song (cf. "Western Union").

  4. "No More Mr. Nice Guy," the Alice Cooper manifesto.

  5. "Flowers on the Wall," the Statler Brothers statement on loneliness.

  6. "Loser," transmogrified from the Beck original into ultra-lounge by Richard Cheese.

  7. "Raindrops Keep Fallin' on My Head", B. J. Thomas reminding us of Butch and Sundance.

  8. "Diamonds and Rust," in which Joan Baez remembers what used to be.

  9. "Wild Thing," an example of Boston Soul from the pseudonymous "Senator Bobby."

10. "The Loco-Motion", a little bit of rhythm and a lot of soul from Little Eva.

11. "Let Me Go the Right Way," a very early Supremes track with Florence, rather than Diana, on lead.

12. "I'm So Lonesome I Could Cry," another shot of B. J. Thomas, this time channeling Hank Williams.

13. "Walking in the Rain," the Ronettes speculating about Mr. Right with help from Phil Spector's Wall of Sound.

14. "Walk Away," Donna Summer's blend of torch and dance.

15. "Kazooed on Klassics," by the Temple City Kazoo Orchestra, which I hope needs no explanation.

16. "Electric Avenue," in which Eddy Grant anticipates a department at Montgomery Ward.

17. "Courtney Love Stinks," a Bob Rivers Twisted Tune.

18. "Another Brick in the Wall (Part II)," dark sarcasm from Pink Floyd.

19. "When Liking Turns to Loving," Ronnie Dove on the cusp.

20. "Metamorphosis," a ten-minute sonata of sorts by a mid-Seventies version of Curved Air.

If nothing else, this might explain why I usually keep the radio on the classical station, or spin one of the 40 CD-Rs I store at deskside.

This started with retroCRUSH's 50 Coolest Song Parts survey, which is based on the perfectly reasonable notion that "sometimes there are pieces of songs that are cooler than the song itself." With a nod to Michele, who's already worked up a list, here are some of my favorite fragments. The criterion for inclusion is simple: does it make the hair on the back of my neck stand up, even now, however many years later? These do.

• The very last line of "Rag Doll," the 4 Seasons (Philips, 1964), in which Frankie Valli proclaims, "I love you just the way you are."

• Hal Blaine's drum break, leading into the outro to the Ronettes' "Be My Baby" (Philles, 1963).

• Roger Daltrey's scream right before "Meet the new boss / Same as the old boss" in the Who's "Won't Get Fooled Again" (Decca, 1971).

• "It doesn't matter what you wear / Just as long as you are there" in "Dancing in the Street", Martha and the Vandellas (Gordy, 1964).

• The second instrumental break (the one without the sound effects) and the outro of the Lovin' Spoonful's "Summer in the City" (Kama Sutra, 1966).

• Jimi Hendrix' extended break in the middle of "All Along the Watchtower" (Reprise, 1970).

• Diana Ross' cries of "I'll always love you" in the outro of the Supremes' "Love Child" (Motown, 1968).

• The interplay of drum and piano after Badfinger sing the title of "Day After Day" (Apple, 1971).

• The a cappella section midway through the Beach Boys' "Sloop John B" (Capitol, 1966).

• Silence, followed by a fierce drum pounding, and then "Came the dawn", twice in "I Had Too Much to Dream (Last Night)" by the Electric Prunes (Reprise, 1966).

• "One, two, three, FOUR!" The Beatles, "I Saw Her Standing There" (Capitol, 1964).

• The ersatz Wall of Sound surrounding T. Rex's "Metal Guru" (Reprise, 1972).

• The stop-time beat right before the invocation of the title, all through Lesley Gore's "That's the Way Boys Are" (Mercury, 1965).

• "At the bottom of this mine lies a big, big man: Big John." Jimmy Dean, "Big Bad John" (Columbia, 1961).

• The six-note riff that opens J. J. Jackson's "But It's Alright" (Calla, 1966).

• "You're so vain / You probably think this song is about you." Carly Simon, "You're So Vain" (Elektra, 1972).

• The plodding, almost sorrowful opening to Jimmy Ruffin's "What Becomes of the Brokenhearted" (Soul, 1966).

• The spooky opening to "With You There to Help Me," the lead track from Jethro Tull's Benefit (Reprise, 1970).

• The fade of the Walker Brothers' "The Sun Ain't Gonna Shine (Anymore)" (Smash, 1966).

• Arthur Alexander's rueful "Every girl I've ever had / Breaks my heart and leaves me sad / What am I, what am I supposed to do?" in "Anna" (Dot, 1962).

• Whatever the hell that is in the middle of the Trashmen's "Surfin' Bird" (Garrett, 1963).
  

Feel free to contribute your own bits.

(Swiped from Dave.)

Act your age?  If I have to, I suppose.

Born on what day of the week?  Wednesday's child, full of woe (full of something, anyway).

Chore you hate?  Washing dishes; fortunately, there aren't many.

Dad's name?  Ged. Not with a J, but with a G. And a hard G at that.

Essential makeup item?  Does sunscreen count?

Favorite actor?  The late Gene Kelly.

Gold or silver?  Gimme silver.

Hometown?  Born in Illinois, grew up in South Carolina, wound up in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma.

Instruments you play?  I can pick out something vaguely tunelike on most piano-type keyboards.

Job title?  "System Operator and General Flunky." Okay, forget the "general."

Kids?  Two. (Gender division: one of each.)

Living arrangements?  I own my own home, or at least the 1/200th of it that's paid for.

Mom's name?  Bette. Not with a Y, but with an E.

Need?  A knee operation, and a functioning oil well to pay for it.

Overnight hospital stays?  2000, when my blood pressure dropped off the scale and random pains came in to fill the gap.

Phobias?  Certainly claustro.

Quote you like?  See "It is written" (left column, main page) for sample.

Religious affiliation?  Deist with vaguely-Christian leanings.

Siblings?  Four: two boys, who survive, and two girls, who don't.

Time you wake up?  5:55 am on weekdays, though it usually takes me to 6:01 to bestir myself. Weekends are anyone's guess.

Unique talent?  You're soaking in it.

Vegetable you refuse to eat?  Zucchini. Deal with it.

Worst habit?  Like I have good ones?

X-rays you've had?  Mostly dental, with the occasional chestal.

Yummy food you make?  I am a genuinely lousy cook.

Zodiac Sign?  Sagittarius, who never believed in those things anyway.

Lynn S. says that these are the greatest symphonic endings of all time:

An impressive set. I might suggest the following for #6 and below:

• Prokofiev's Piano Concerto No. 3 (always makes me hyperventilate)

• Ravel's Boléro (yeah, I know, we're glad it's over)

• Haydn's Symphony No. 60 (the fake ending after the fourth movement; there are two movements to come)

• Holst's The Planets (pick either the end of "Mars," which is thunderous and scary, or the end of "Neptune", which is ethereal and almost as scary)
  

Hmmm. Wonder if next we should try beginnings?

(Update, 8:20 pm: Greg Hlatky offers his Top Ten, which duplicates none of the above.)

This is what happens when I get seriously deranged and start doing quizzes, fercrissake.

Which Mozart Opera Does Your Life Most Resemble? brought to you by Quizilla

(Spurred on by Lynn S., who has successfully passed fifteen.)

The Music Meme, by way of Syaffolee:

1) What is the total amount of music files on your computer?

11.5 GB, more or less, but probably more.

2) The CD you last bought was

Overflow by Tanisha Taitt.

3) What is the song you last listened to before reading this message?

"Last Night" by the Mar-Keys.

4) Write down five songs you often listen to or that mean a lot to you:

"Runaway," Del Shannon (Del Shannon-Max Crook)

"Anyone Who Had a Heart," Dionne Warwick (Burt Bacharach-Hal David)

"Rag Doll," the Four Seasons (Bob Crewe-Bob Gaudio)

"Wichita Lineman," Glen Campbell (Jimmy Webb)

"It's One of Those Nights," the Partridge Family (Tony Romeo)

5) To whom (three people) are you going to pass this stick? And why?

It's open to anyone who wants it; I'm not going to email it or anything.

Not that I'm above silly memes, of course.

How this one works:

From Born Grown: An Oklahoma City History by Roy P. Stewart (Oklahoma City: Fidelity Bank, National Association, 1974):

"In 1976 the American Bowling Congress tournament will come to Oklahoma City for the first time, setting up its own lanes in the Myriad."

Jim Schroeder won the singles title with a 750 series. The ABC became part of the United States Bowling Congress on the first of January, 2005.

Well, you know, I hate to leave a story unfinished.

(Via Phoebe Gleeson.)

It's called, simply, where you've been.

bold the states you've been to, underline the states you've lived in and italicize the state you're in now...

Alabama / Alaska / Arizona / Arkansas / California / Colorado / Connecticut / Delaware / Florida / Georgia / Hawaii / Idaho / Illinois / Indiana / Iowa / Kansas / Kentucky / Louisiana / Maine / Maryland / Massachusetts / Michigan / Minnesota / Mississippi / Missouri / Montana / Nebraska / Nevada / New Hampshire / New Jersey / New Mexico / New York / North Carolina / North Dakota / Ohio / Oklahoma / Oregon / Pennsylvania / Rhode Island / South Carolina / South Dakota / Tennessee / Texas / Utah / Vermont / Virginia / Washington / West Virginia / Wisconsin / Wyoming / Washington D.C. /

For some reason, this made me think of an old Jack Benny radio show. There was a contest in which you were to complete the following in 25 words or less: I can't stand Jack Benny because...

WWII was going full-tilt at the time, so prizes of Victory Bonds were awarded. And one day on the show, Rochester is opening one of the bazillions of envelopes received, and announces, "Here's one from Fred Allen."

"Fred Allen?" says Jack. "He can't enter. He's a judge."

"Just the same," insists Rochester. "He says, 'I can't stand Jack Benny because...' and then he lists the reasons, alphabetically, chronologically, and geographically."

"Geographically?"

"Yeah. He can't stand you any place."

Given the amount of moving around I've done, I'm wondering if they (whoever "they" are) can't stand me any place.

Go HERE to have a form generate the HTML for you.

(Snatched from Accidental Verbosity.)

Michele's been looking for songs with numbers in their titles.

Two years ago I put together a CD-R, a foreshortened version (with some songs shuffled) of an earlier mix tape. The track list follows:

• One (Three Dog Night)
  
• Two Divided by Love (The Grass Roots)
  
• Knock Three Times (Dawn)
  
• Let the Four Winds Blow (Fats Domino)
  
• Five O'Clock World (The Vogues)
  
• Six Man Band (The Association)
  
• Seven Little Girls Sitting in the Back Seat (Paul Evans and the Curls)
  
• Eight Days a Week (The Beatles)
  
• Love Potion No. 9 (The Searchers)
  
• Ten Commandments of Love (Harvey and the Moonglows)
  
• Twelve Thirty (The Mamas and the Papas)
  
• Only Sixteen (Sam Cooke)
  
• At Seventeen (Janis Ian)
  
• Eighteen with a Bullet (Pete Wingfield)
  
• 19th Nervous Breakdown (The Rolling Stones)
  
• Twenty Flight Rock (Eddie Cochran)
  
• Twenty-Four Hours from Tulsa (Gene Pitney)
  
• 25 or 6 to 4 (Chicago)
  
• 26 Miles (The Four Preps)
  
• Forty Days (Ronnie Hawkins)
  
• Sixty Minute Man (Billy Ward and the Dominoes)
  
• When I'm Sixty-Four (The Beatles)
  
• Questions 67 and 68 (Chicago)
  
• Rocket 88 (Jackie Brenston and his Delta Cats)
  
• 96 Tears (? and the Mysterians)
  
• 98.6 (Keith)
  
• A Hundred Pounds of Clay (Gene McDaniels)
  

Incidentally, "Forty Days" is the same song as Chuck Berry's "Thirty Days." The tape version substituted Boyd Bennett's "Seventeen" and Alice Cooper's "I'm Eighteen," the Clovers' version of "Love Potion No. 9," and added Nena's "99 Luftballons" and the Drifters' "Three Thirty Three."

Playing time: 79:30. Not available on Wendex Records (111077-2).

Heavy stuff from Babs:

Right about here: ________________________

I did that because (1) I enjoyed it, lame as it was, and (2) I figure there are at least two or three readers who will accept it in the spirit in which it was given. (The Snark was a Boojum, you see.)

I do try to shove something up here at least once a day. (In practice, it's more like four or five times a day, assuming I'm not on Tour.) And I'm not above coming up with items that will elicit responses from specific individuals who are known to frequent this site; by so doing, I create the illusion of dialogue, which may not sound impressive until you compare it to the average monologue.

As the dean kucinich of Oklahoma bloggers, I have certain responsibilities, one of which is that I should occasionally write about things in Oklahoma. I feel that I occasionally meet this standard. However, I do try to avoid the appearance of tunnel vision, especially since I am not qualified in the field of proctology. (If I were, admittedly, it would at least afford me a different perspective during my bouts of navel-gazing.)

And, of course, I blog to meet girls. This works extremely well for some people, less well for others, and by "others" I mean "me."

But beyond that, I figure once it ceases to be fun, I probably should go look for some other avocation, even though the replacement will probably cost more (at its worst, running this place runs twentyish a month) and do less to shore up my insufficiently-outsized ego.

Besides, I've run this site for almost nine freaking years. As commitments go, this has to be one of the longer ones in my life. It's certainly the one that's caused me the least dyspepsia.

Well, well, more questions. Why not?

No difference to me; I don't always work in every last possible link, nor do I expect the rest of the 'sphere to do so.

The good ones, yes. Fortunately, they are a minority.

How could they not? I figure someone could write a frighteningly detailed, spectacularly slow-selling book about me based solely upon the archives here.

Hardly. You're simply transported to another world, known familiarly as the calzone.

The ten questions asked by James Lipton on Inside the Actors Studio, originally compiled by Bernard Pivot, have now made it as far as A Small Victory, and, well, if Michele can do these, so can I.

1. What is your favorite word?
   "Wander"

2. What is your least favorite word?
   "Hegemony"

3. What turns you on creatively, spiritually or emotionally?
   The willingness to break beyond the superficial.

4. What turns you off?
   Preconceived notions.

5. What is your favorite curse word?
   Apart from the F-bomb, I tend to fall back on the Modified Savior (as in, say, "Jesus H. Tapdancing Christ!")

6. What sound or noise do you love?
   First rustle of birds an hour before sunrise.

7. What sound or noise do you hate?
   Squealing brakes.

8. What profession other than your own would you like to attempt?
   Teaching.

9. What profession would you not like to do?
   Anything that requires me to deal with self-proclaimed "sportsmen" and that doesn't involve firearms.

10. If Heaven exists, what would you like to hear God say when you arrive at the Pearly Gates?
    "I had a lot fewer doubts than you did, but you know that now."
    

Pass it on, as they say.

Make of these what you will.

I have never:

• Eaten oysters.
  
• Visited the Pacific Northwest.
  
• Dated a redhead.
  
• Owned a pickup truck.
  
• Seen Titanic.
  
• Ordered a Big Mac.
  
• Desecrated a Koran.
  
• Attended an NFL game.
  
• Gone skiing.
  
• Looked good on television.
  

(Via Accidental Verbosity.)

Dear LilRed:

I've already answered this survey.

Updates in the four months since then:

Total volume: 12 GB

Last CD bought: The Originals, Susan and the SurfTones

Last song heard: "Wingding," Thurl Ravenscroft (courtesy of Lileks)

But thanks for asking.

How the mighty have fallen. Tony Blair comes to America with hat in hand and is sent away without even the hat; Jimmy Carter is reduced to pleading on behalf of the scuzzballs at Guantanamo; and, perhaps most startlingly, Francis W. Porretto passes on a meme. What is this world coming to?

Oh, well. To the business at hand:

1. The number of books I own.
It seems churlish actually to count them, but my best guess is 1100. (There are also about 1200 magazines around here, boxed, and not particularly neatly boxed at that.)

2. The last book I bought.
Kim du Toit's novel Vienna Days.

3. The last book I read.
Laurie Notaro's memoir (or whatever it is) We Thought You Would Be Prettier.

4. Five books that mean a lot to me.

• Dodie Smith, I Capture the Castle
  
• H. Allen Smith, How to Write Without Knowing Nothing
  
• Robert Townsend, Up the Organization: How to Stop the Corporation from Stifling People and Strangling Profits
  
• Mark Twain, The Tragedy of Pudd'nhead Wilson
  
• Meredith Willson, Eggs I Have Laid
  

Pick up on it if you like; I hate inflicting these things on people.

At the request of Cam Edwards: five books I liked enough as a teen/young adult to read again as an adult.

1. Robert A. Heinlein, Stranger in a Strange Land
I picked up on this at the beginning of the Seventies, when it was considered the hip read of the times. And I suppose it's a measure of something that the one character I connected to most strongly on a personal level at the time was the curmudgeonly Jubal Harshaw, whose distaste for the foibles of the world was exceeded only by his fondness for the fair sex, but the one I ultimately found most relevant to my own existence was his secretary Anne (did she even have a last name?), an official Fair Witness, who, when enrobed and therefore on duty, was expected to give the most accurate appraisal of any given situation. Would that I could be so discriminating myself.

2. Vladimir Nabokov, Lolita
I read this mostly so I wouldn't have to see the movie, which struck me as kinda creepy. While most of the sexual references went right over my head, obsession and possessiveness were concepts I could easily grasp, concepts I vowed (not exactly successfully) to avoid in my own life.

3. Neil Postman and Charles Weingartner, Teaching as a Subversive Activity
Published in 1969 and bought by me the next year, this is a guide to getting ideas past the mossbacks on the right who were presumably in charge of the education establishment in those days, and it's nearly as useful for getting ideas past the mossbacks on the left who are presumably in charge of the education establishment in these days — provided you blow off the last chapter, which embraces moral relativism in the classic sanctimonious Sixties style.

4. Dodie Smith, I Capture the Castle
I've talked about this one before; it is, I suppose, an odd choice for a teenage boy, inasmuch as it's the journal of a teenage girl who's in love with someone unattainable and the one boy who fancies her is kind of a dork and she wouldn't have him on a bet, and — well, maybe it's not so odd after all.

5. Frank Yerby, The Foxes of Harrow
Yerby's specialty was the historical novel, often set in the American South, and this was his first: the tale of a rakish Irish fellow named Stephen Fox, or, as the folks of New Orleans were wont to call him, "Etienne Reynard," who builds (well, actually, absorbs) a magnificent spread in Louisiana and then manages to piss it away in his pursuit of a young lady of, um, dubious ethnicity. I found this fascinating, not only for Fox's ruthless attempts to achieve surface respectability, but for his willingness to risk it all for horizontal calisthenics. Having experienced none such at the time myself, I figure my own expectations were thenceforth distorted.

What this is all about can be found here. Here's the procedure:

===================================================

[My own responses are after the jump, which is also where you'll find the second set of double lines. Delete this paragraph if you're copying from me.]

Survey:

Political Compass results:

IPIP-NEO results:

Track List:

===================================================

More than you wanted to know, I'm sure.

(Snagged from Andy at WWR)

Michele is asking for personal idiosyncrasies, and I'm sure I could fill up a few hundred lines in no time at all listing some of the weirder things I do — but then I'd have to weed out things that don't really qualify as "idiosyncrasies". (My temper is legendarily mercurial, but this is part and parcel of my being, rather than an odd quirk; my disdain for clothing doesn't count because it's far too common, as most weeks I spend more hours undressed than dressed.) Still, after the first pass, there's plenty to pick from:

• When dining alone, I follow a distinct pattern: polish off the veggies first, then attack the entree. (Starches are handled according to their position: if they're under the entree — rice pilaf, say — they're treated as part of the entree, but if they're on the side, like a dinner roll, they are consumed in alternate bites with the vegetables.) Also, in those places that still offer a four-piece chicken dinner, I invariably follow this sequence: leg, wing, thigh, breast. On those rare occasions when I have actual dining companions, the veggie rule is suspended.

• I will not turn on the air-conditioner in the car until the temperature gauge has crept to the right of the C. I suppose the thinking behind this is to avoid excessive engine loads during warmup, but they have computers these days to adjust for that sort of thing.

• In a motion-picture theater, I always wind up in a seat that's about 55 percent of the way back and slightly right of center. (I attribute this to having been a regular symphony patron some years ago, and having had a season ticket assigned thereabouts.) Curiously, there is no detectable pattern in where I sit for live theater, although the venues tend to be smaller, which presumably makes for fewer choices anyway.

• I buy deodorant from the Avon lady in bulk, five or six (lately, eight) little plastic bottles at a time. She is always surprised when I buy something other than that, which happens on about every third or fourth order.

• If there's a place to sit down in a public rest room, I'll take it, even if the function to be performed can be done while standing.
  

That should do for openers.

Now here's a scary premise, courtesy of New World Man:

Apart from putting Condi's home phone on speed-dial? Let's see:

1. Offer the United Nations $3 billion a year in perpetuity to move to some place like Chad and stay there.

2. Push for legislation — a Constitutional amendment, if necessary — that would require that a minimum of two old laws be scrapped for every new one passed.

3. Find a useful job for the nation's Drug Czar. (How about guarding the borders? God knows not enough of that is getting done.)

4. Appoint Jeff Goldstein to the position of White House Press Secretary.

5. Drive up to Cindy Sheehan and wave.
   

And after all this strenuous work, I'll need a vacation.

Here's what Dan wants:

Okay, then:

1. The HP printer at my desk at work tells me it's low on ink at just about the point where I can squeeze 50 or 60 more pages out of it before the quality starts to deteriorate. This is a blatant ploy to sell more ink cartridges. My HP at home keeps its mouth shut, which is one reason I still use it.

2. Why would anyone need to wear more than one toe ring? Simultaneously, I mean.

3. Good intentions, apart from paving the road to hell, count for naught; if you run me down with a truck, my condition is unaffected by whether you meant to or not.

4. If you get on a busy urban freeway and then leave at the very next exit, I've got to wonder why you even bothered to get on in the first place. (This obviously does not apply in rural areas, where exits are many miles apart.)

5. Any Windows software designer who contrives to have his application Always On Top deserves to be buried alive next to a diseased yak.

6. Houses are numbered, which is fine; however, this task calls for actual numbers, not some godawful script lettering that reads something like "Forty Six O Four."

7. So this guy faked up an email address, wrote up a bogus paragraph to get past your spam filter, and you're still going to buy drugs from him? You deserve to be poisoned just as much as he does.

8. Surely it can't be coincidence that all the commercial radio stations run their advertising blocks at exactly the same time. It certainly isn't in answer to any listener requests.

9. Who gets to determine objectionable content, anyway?

10. I nominate for a Nobel the guy who invents a hybrid grass that will not grow within 1.5 inches of concrete or brickwork.
    

As Otis once said, "Your turn."

Rules: Pick seven songs that you're into right now, list them. Pick seven friends who have to repeat this process, list them.

So saith Phoebe. Hmmm. What have I been playing a lot of lately?

• Suspicion (Terry Stafford, 1964)
  
• Too Bad (Doug and the Slugs, 1980)
  
• Bach: Brandenburg Concerto No. 3 in G major (Wendy Carlos, Moog synthesizer, 1968)
  
• Up the Ladder to the Roof (The Supremes, 1970)
  
• Apache (The Incredible Bongo Band, 1973)
  
• Soul Twist (King Curtis and the Noble Knights, 1962)
  
• I Only Want to Be With You (Dusty Springfield, 1964)
  

On the other hand, these things spread rapidly enough without my having to specify someone to take them off my hands.

This has been all over the place, and I suppose I've stalled long enough.

The rules:

1. Go to musicoutfitters.com and, in the search box provided, enter the year you graduated high school.

2. From the search results, click the link for the top 100 songs of that year.

3. With the resulting list:
   1. bold the songs you like
      
   2. strike through the ones you hate
      
   3. underline your favorite
      
   4. and ignore the ones you don't remember/don't care about.
      

And now, buoys and gulls, the top 100 of 1969, below the fold. (I mention in passing that of these 99 songs — for some reason one is on the list twice — I own copies of 94.)

1. Aquarius/Let The Sunshine In, Fifth Dimension
2. Sugar, Sugar, Archies
3. I Can't Get Next To You, Temptations
4. Honky Tonk Women, Rolling Stones
5. Build Me Up Buttercup, Foundations
6. Dizzy, Tommy Roe
7. Hot Fun In The Summertime, Sly and The Family Stone
8. I'll Never Fall In Love Again, Tom Jones
9. Everyday People, Sly and The Family Stone
10. Get Together, Youngbloods
11. One, Three Dog Night
12. Crystal Blue Persuasion, Tommy James and The Shondells
13. Hair, Cowsills
14. Too Busy Thinking About My Baby, Marvin Gaye
15. Love Theme From Romeo And Juliet, Henry Mancini and His Orch.
16. Crimson And Clover, Tommy James and The Shondells
17. Grazin' In The Grass, Friends Of Distinction
18. Suspicious Minds, Elvis Presley
19. Proud Mary, Creedence Clearwater Revival
20. What Does It Take (To Win Your Love), Jr. Walker and The All Stars
21. It's Your Thing, Isley Brothers
22. Sweet Caroline, Neil Diamond
23. Jean, Oliver
24. Bad Moon Rising, Creedence Clearwater Revival
25. Get Back, The Beatles
26. In The Year 2525, Zager and Evans
27. Spinning Wheel, Blood, Sweat and Tears
28. Baby, I Love You, Andy Kim
29. Going In Circles, Friends Of Distinction
30. Hurt So Bad, Lettermen
31. Green River, Creedence Clearwater Revival
32. My Cherie Amour, Stevie Wonder
33. Easy To Be Hard, Three Dog Night
34. Baby It's You, Smith
35. In The Ghetto, Elvis Presley
36. A Boy Named Sue, Johnny Cash
37. Baby, Baby Don't Cry, Smokey Robinson and The Miracles
38. Only The Strong Survive, Jerry Butler
39. Time Of The Season, Zombies
40. Wedding Bell Blues, Fifth Dimension
41. Little Woman, Bobby Sherman
42. Love (Can Make You Happy), Mercy
43. Good Morning Starshine, Oliver
44. These Eyes, The Guess Who
45. You've Made Me So Very Happy, Blood, Sweat and Tears
46. Put A Little Love In Your Heart, Jackie DeShannon
47. Do Your Thing, Watts 103rd Street Rhythm Band
48. I'd Wait A Million Years, The Grass Roots
49. Touch Me, The Doors
50. More Today Than Yesterday, Spiral Starecase
51. I've Gotta Be Me, Sammy Davis Jr.
52. Lay Lady Lay, Bob Dylan
53. Atlantis, Donovan
54. Traces, Dennis Yost and The Classics IV
55. It's Getting Better, Mama Cass Elliot
56. This Magic Moment, Jay and The Americans
57. Run Away Child, Running Wild, Temptations
58. Hawaii Five-O, Ventures
59. Galveston, Glen Campbell
60. I'm Gonna Make You Mine, Lou Christie
61. Gitarzan, Ray Stevens
62. Can I Change My Mind, Tyrone Davis
63. Time Is Tight, Booker T and The MG's
64. This Girl's In Love With You, Dionne Warwick
65. Color Him Father, Winstons
66. Black Pearl, Sonny Charles and The Checkmates, Ltd.
67. Indian Giver, 1910 Fruitgum Company
68. Mother Popcorn (Part I), James Brown
69. Twenty-five Miles, Edwin Starr
70. Things I'd Like To Say, New Colony Six
71. When I Die, Motherlode
72. That's The Way Love Is, Marvin Gaye
73. Everybody's Talkin', Nilsson
74. Worst That Could Happen, Brooklyn Bridge
75. Chokin' Kind, Joe Simon
76. Smile A Little Smile For Me, Flying Machine
77. Polk Salad Annie, Tony Joe White
78. Ruby, Don't Take Your Love To Town, Kenny Rogers and The First Edition
79. Games People Play, Joe South
80. You Showed Me, Turtles
81. Come Together, The Beatles
82. Oh, What A Night, Dells
83. Something, The Beatles
84. This Girl Is A Woman Now, Gary Puckett and The Union Gap
85. Tracy, Cuff Links
86. Mr. Sun, Mr. Moon, Paul Revere and The Raiders
87. I'm Gonna Make You Love Me, Diana Ross and The Supremes
88. I Heard It Through The Grapevine, Marvin Gaye
89. Gimme Gimme Good Lovin', Crazy Elephant
90. Hang 'Em High, Booker T and The MG's
91. Your Good Thing (Is About To End), Lou Rawls
92. Baby I'm For Real, Originals
93. You Showed Me, Turtles (obvious duplicate — what gives?)
94. Love Me Tonight, Tom Jones
95. Ramblin' Gamblin' Man, Bob Seger System
96. Laughing, The Guess Who
97. My Whole World Ended (The Moment You Left Me), David Ruffin
98. Soul Deep, Box Tops
99. Hooked On A Feeling, B.J. Thomas
100. Sweet Cream Ladies, Box Tops

Which is seven by seven, as wrenched from Rachel.

Seven things I plan to do before I die:

1. Visit the four states of the Lower 48 I haven't yet.
   
2. Add on to the back of my house. (Mainly, I want a bigger bathroom.)
   
3. Drive the full lengths of US 52 and 62.
   
4. Own every record I ever wanted from 1960 to 1972. (I am almost there.)
   
5. Learn how to get a good night's sleep again.
   
6. Buy a new stereo. (Don't laugh; the one I have is 31 years old.)
   
7. Become less inept at general handyman tasks.
   

Seven things I can do:

1. Produce a decent scan of an LP jacket.
   
2. Beat the estimated gas mileage on most cars.
   
3. Build a PC from a box of parts.
   
4. Write 50,000 words a year, none of them at all connected.
   
5. The work of three people, if my annual vacation is any indication.
   
6. Throw my old 1967 paper route from memory.
   
7. Turn a cracked record into a decent music file.
   

Seven things I cannot do:

1. Watch more than a couple hours of television a week.
   
2. Roll my tongue with any degree of alacrity. (My Spanish is horrible.)
   
3. Watch from the side while someone else drives.
   
4. Swim worth a darn.
   
5. Wedge myself into a sports car.
   
6. Reload a string trimmer properly.
   
7. Let go of some things I never actually had.
   

Seven things that I find really attractive about the opposite sex:

1. Bright (they can be dark-colored, but they must shine) eyes.
   
2. One knee crossed over the other.
   
3. The taper of fingers.
   
4. Curvature in silhouette.
   
5. Knowing one's ideal skirt length (everyone has one).
   
6. An abundance of facial expressions.
   
7. The ability to look really good in really insubstantial shoes.
   

Seven things I say the most:

1. [general F-bombs and variations thereof]
   
2. "Be that as it may"
   
3. "Don't throw things until I finish"
   
4. "What is it this time?"
   
5. "This can't possibly be good"
   
6. "How is it that [name] is still walking around unshot?"
   
7. "She will never want you no matter what you do"
   

Seven books I love:

1. Dodie Smith, I Capture the Castle
   
2. Max Shulman, Barefoot Boy with Cheek
   
3. H. Allen Smith, The Great Chili Confrontation
   
4. Gabriel García Márquez, Love in the Time of Cholera
   
5. Meredith Willson, Eggs I Have Laid
   
6. Allan Sherman, The Rape of the A*P*E* (American Puritan Ethic)
   
7. William Safire, On Language
   

Seven people I would like to see take this quiz:
It's wholly up to you. I have qualms about foisting these things off onto people.

(Should I rename this "Days of 42?")

If there is more than one America, there's no reason to think, as does seemingly every talking head on television, that the total number is only two: in fact, Joe Sherlock has identified eight.

I don't quite fit into any of Joe's pigeonholes. The pigeons are no doubt grateful. In the meantime, here's the description for my version of America:

Daily driver: Mid-sized, innocuous sedan.

Vehicle color: Beige, with beige interior. (See "innocuous," supra.)

Bumper sticker: None. (Clashes with the beige.)

Drive-time listening: Whatever CD I remembered to throw in before I left.

Today's entrée: To be determined, but yesterday's was an Arby's Super Roast Beef.

Most recent arrest: Not applicable.

Political theater: You're soaking in it.

(Andrea Harris saw this before I did.)

But you sure can't tell it much.

Five questions, swiped from ms7168:

1. Who is your mobile phone provider, and how many minutes are in your plan?

T-Mobile; 575 minutes. (I think the most I have ever used has been 206.)

2. What program do you primarily use for instant messaging?

Usually AIM, with an occasional foray into ICQ.

3. Who do you send and receive text messages from most?

I get maybe two text messages a year, so "most" is not meaningful. (Fifty are included with the wireless plan.) IMs are another matter.

4. What area code do you live in?

405. (This is one of only a handful of codes that dates back to the establishment of NPAs in 1949, though its size has been much diminished; 918 and later 580 were carved out of it.)

5. What year did you first get an e-mail address and do you still use it?

1985. It was from MCI Mail, the first independent commercial email service: you could use it anywhere you could find a dialup. The estimable Vint Cerf, inventor (with Bob Kahn) of TCP/IP, was the lead engineer on the project. It cost $35 a year to maintain a mailbox (I had two), and half a buck to send a message to another user. (Reading one cost you nothing, and yes, you could send mail to a non-user if you had his postal address: MCI would print it and drop it into snailmail for you.) In 1989, MCI Mail was ported over to the Internet and given @ addresses; I had dropped my account by then, inasmuch as CompuServe was setting up a mail gateway of its own.

Erica's Audience Participation regimen:

I duly shouted out, and this is what came back:

In answer to #7, it was a combination of three factors: accumulated Wanderlust, which I hadn't been able to work on because of ongoing motor-vehicle issues and low cash flow; scoring a third vacation week at 42nd and Treadmill; and finally, my acquisition in the fall of 2000 of my first new car, ever, which made for even less cash flow but eliminated the vehicle issues.

So, after a decent break-in period, I hit the road. Running.

(I posted this as a comment to her original thread, and decided that it wouldn't hurt to take advantage of #8, even if she did cross it out. Oh, and it's this Dean.)

Now this is scary:

I am nothing if not incredibly foolhardy gutsy.

1.  For Jay and Deb of Accidental Verbosity, the Beatles' "Two of Us," from Let It Be:

2.  Sam Cooke speaks for me:

3.  You mean it's not already a steaming mass of putrid refuse?

Go rent Tom Hanks' That Thing You Do! One of the Wonders' Play-Tone labelmates is a girl group called the Chantrellines, who do a lovely little pseudo-Spector number called "Hold My Hand, Hold My Heart." Acting credits go to Darlene Dillinger, Julie L. Harkness and Kennya J. Ramsey, who probably didn't actually sing on the song, but I'd love to see who did.

From The Clog Almanac:

Besides the actual desk itself, there are five pieces of wooden furniture in this room, a room small enough to enclose them all within a twelve-foot diameter. Clockwise from north-by-northeast:

1) The box itself sits upon a small end table, not quite two feet off the ground. There is a lower shelf, which contains a power strip and whatever happens to get thrown there.

2) The remains of a video rack — the swinging doors disappeared years ago — support my scanner (which is legal-size, so it needs a lot of support), my answering machine (which is downright tiny), various tools, and a twenty-year-old cassette deck, should I decide to dub a tape to CD.

3) A small drop-down desk (there was a matching chair, but the operative word is "was") contains everything pertinent to paying the bills, which, given the number of bills I have, is quite a lot.

4) A bookshelf reaches nearly to the ceiling, and is almost completely full.

5) An old chest of drawers, painted white, holds up my small shelf system and a Cambridge SoundWorks Model 88 radio (one of two I own). In years past, this chest held about four hundred tapes, but at the moment, only one drawer is full; it contains about ten years' worth of photographs and the attendant ephemera.

What all these have in common, besides the fact that they circle my chair, is the fact that I got none of them new. The end table and the video rack were garage-sale purchases; the desklet once belonged to my ex, but was passed to me with the rest of the second-best furniture at breakup; the chest was salvaged from the woodchipper, or some similar fate; and the bookcase was presented to me by a friend who now has built-in book storage — which she should max out any day now, if she hasn't yet.

Not exciting, perhaps, but this is not a room wherein a great deal of excitement takes place, as those who saw my dubious television appearance may recall.

Following Julie Neidlinger's lead, a list of Ten Sort Of Vaguely Unclean Secrets:

1. There is a product called MICR-Shield which dissolves the magnetic encoding imprinted on checks during the processing stage. Nasty stuff. In an office prank, I once feigned drinking an entire 6-ounce bottle of it.

2. I spanked my daughter once. I think I cried for longer than she did.

3. During the days when I had occasion to drive through the Mojave Desert, I carried extra jugs of engine coolant, and occasionally sold them to stranded motorists at a profit.

4. I had a heck of a lot more sex before the vasectomy than afterwards.

5. Only once did I ever try to ice-skate: in a parking lot in central Massachusetts in mid-January. The results — well, I'm grateful they didn't have mass-market portable video in those days.

6. I once was a bowling-league secretary, and put my own name in for the Least-Improved trophy.

7. When I was six, two of us first-grade boys had crushes on the same blonde girl; I was actually fool enough to propose a time-sharing plan.

8. For some reason, I got it into my head that the sexiest possible female foot has a second toe longer than the big one. I say "for some reason" because I have no idea where the idea came from, and because I've never dated anyone meeting that description.

9. I scored a couple of detentions for possession of a dummy grenade in Latin class.

10. My ex once hosed me down with Malathion. She swears it was an accident. All I know is that I've never had any problem with Mediterranean fruit flies.
    

Feel free to go and do likewise. Post a list, I mean.

Cut, then pasted — it would be silly to do it the other way around — from Accidental Verbosity:

American Snapshot

According to this book, a majority of Americans:

• Eats peanut butter at least once a week
  
• Prefers smooth peanut butter over chunky
  
• Can name all Three Stooges (and two Alternate Stooges)
  
• Lives within a 20-minute drive of a Wal-Mart
  
• Eats at McDonald's at least once a year (maybe twice)
  
• Takes a shower for approximately 10.4 minutes a day (more like 7 minutes a day)
  
• Never sings in the shower
  
• Lives in a house, not an apartment or condominium
  
• Has a home valued between $100,000 and $300,000 (but wait until next year)
  
• Has fired a gun
  
• Is between 5 feet and 6 feet tall (missed me by this much)
  
• Weighs 135 to 205 pounds (missed me by THIS much)
  
• Is between the ages of 18 and 53 (but wait until next year)
  
• Believes gambling is an acceptable entertainment option (not for me, anyway)
  
• Grew up within 50 miles of current home
  

No stick: steal if you like.

This looks like it has potential:

The following have come to mind:

• Solitary Refinement
  
• Love in the Time of Cauliflower
  
• Daisy Petals: Divisible by Two
  
• Blocked by Google Print
  
• Wednesday's Child Is Put Up for Adoption
  
• 500 Internal Server Error
  
• The Agony and the Eczema
  

It will, of course, be hard to choose.

(Via this ass-kickingly-cute Midwestern sports dyke.)

Hmmm. Record-jacket art, eh? Okay, I'll play.

Most recognizable (by general public) album cover:
Probably Pink Floyd's Dark Side of the Moon; after all, it did spend something like fifteen years on the charts, and I read somewhere that one out of every 20 persons under 50 in this country owns a copy. I'm no longer under 50, but I still have my LP (and, for traveling purposes, the CD). And the hair stands up on the back of my neck when those infernal clocks go off in "Time," even now.



Personal favorite album cover:
I think perhaps It's a Beautiful Day: I never quite get tired of looking at it, and the LP itself still gets spun now and again — to me, at least, it sounds better than the CD, even after thirty-seven years and the occasional click. (The original session tapes, I am told, are tucked away at Sony somewhere, and allegedly a lovely remastering job was done, but nothing ever came of it.)




Sexiest album cover:
I had to think about this one for a moment, and when I did, I realized it had to be a gatefold. For those who don't recognize it, which should be most of you, this is Mauriat Magic by Paul Mauriat and His Orchestra; this is the album which followed Blooming Hits, whence came the lilting "Love Is Blue." Magic had one smallish single — "Même si tu revenais," with the arbitrary English title "Love in Every Room" — and a rather revealing (for 1968, anyway) Victor Skrebneski photo. Then again, it doesn't reveal that much.

Top Ten album covers of all time (personal favorites):
Besides the three above, in no particular order:

• The Rolling Stones, Their Satanic Majesties Request (that weird lenticular thing)
  
• The Mothers of Invention, Weasels Ripped My Flesh
  
• Judy Collins, Wildflowers
  
• The Beatles, The Beatles (a.k.a. The White Album)
  
• The Who, Who's Next
  
• Joni Mitchell, Ladies of the Canyon
  
• Jethro Tull, Thick as a Brick (the fake newspaper)
  

And at any moment I'm sure I can think of ten or twenty others which deserve to be up here.

So the question is, "Have you ever....?"

Smoked a cigarette or tried it: Never touched the stuff.

Crashed a friend's car: No.

Stolen a car: No.

Been dumped: This implies being in a position from which dumping is possible. (As a rule, however, I tend to flee first.)

Shoplifted: No.

Been fired/laid off: Not lately, but yes.

Been in a fist fight: No.

Snuck out of your parent's house: Yes.

Been arrested: No. I have had some interesting encounters with the police, but none got to this point.

Gone on a blind date: Yes. To make sure I didn't come back, she left town.

Lied to a friend: If I had, it was for something utterly trivial.

Skipped school: More than I should have.

Seen someone die: If you mean "at that exact moment," no.

Been to Canada: Missed it by one block or the width of an inlet.

Been to Mexico: No.

Eaten Sushi: No. There's something disquieting about it.

Met someone in person from the internet: Dozens.

Taken pain-killers: Almost daily, it seems.

Had a tea party: Not since I was five.

Cheated while playing a game: Not intentionally.

Fallen asleep at work: Sometimes I do my best work under those conditions.

Used a fake ID: No.

Felt an earthquake: Yes. I did not enjoy it much, and said something unkind about Carole King afterwards.

Touched a snake: Yes. What's more, one or two of them tried to return the favor.

Been robbed: Break-in about five years ago.

Petted a reindeer/goat: When I was very, very young, maybe.

Won a contest: I won a football pool at work once. (Well, okay, twice.)

Been suspended from school: Yes.

Been in a car accident: A petroleum tanker drove over me in 1985.

Had braces: No.

Eaten a whole pint of ice cream in one night: Almost did a quart once.

Witnessed a crime: No.

Swam in the ocean: If you want to call my haphazard thrashing "swimming," then yes.

Sung karaoke: I have performed; I hesitate to call it "singing."

Paid for a meal with only coins: Once, but it was like $2.69.

Laughed until some kind of beverage came out of your nose: Not during this, but yes.

Been kissed under mistletoe: No, which is particularly galling, since it's the state flower.

Crashed a party: I seldom go even when I'm invited.

Worn pearls: Not my style.

Jumped off a bridge: No.

Ate dog/cat food: No.

Kissed a mirror: No.

Glued your hand to something: No, which surprises me.

Done a one-handed cartwheel: Not even with two hands.

Talked on the phone for more than 6 hours: I think my record is about 4:20.

Didn't take a shower for a week: No way.

Pick and ate an apple right off the tree: Yes.

Been told by a complete stranger that you're hot: No. Nor by acquaintances or friends, either.

Been drafted by the A's: They would have told me, wouldn't they?

(Via Tinkerty Tonk; the last item is not part of the original meme.)

I was going to pass this one by, but Diane asked, and, well, Diane is swearing off one of those horrid drugs these days — it's the one that involves sticking burning leaves in your mouth — so I don't want to get on her Bad Side, assuming she has a Bad Side. So here come the Fours, and none of them are in any particular order:

Four jobs you've had in your life:

1. Flunky at Mickey D's. To my surprise, I was a fairly accomplished grillperson, though I was not especially good at the front taking orders. I attribute this to being still adolescent and very, very shy.

2. Mimeograph operator. This was during my last year in the Army, when not only did I have to type up thousands of pages of orders, but reproduce them for distribution to the ten or twenty places that got a copy of each page.

3. Taco tucker. Filthy as this may sound, it was simply a fast-food job.

4. Equipment surplus specialist. Actually, I don't know what the full-fledged title for this was — it was a temp job, and a brief one at that — but it was way cool. The cable company feared that old converter boxes might fall into the wrong hands and ultimately cost them some money, so they paid half a dozen of us to load up the vans and cart them off to an auto-salvage yard. As they moved the remains of vehicles into position in the crusher, we'd dash in and drop converter boxes on top of the seats.
   

Four movies you could watch over and over:

1. West Side Story. Yeah, I know, it's just Romeo and Juliet in New York, but I really like Romeo and Juliet. And New York.

2. Airplane! Surely you can't think of a funnier film. (I can't. And don't call me Shirley.)

3. Goldfinger. Of all the 007 films, this is the one where they reached the perfect balance of suspense and silliness.

4. Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. Because once I see it twenty or thirty times, I might actually understand all the twists and turns.
   

Four places you've lived:

1. Waukegan, Illinois. The first place I lived; I remember almost nothing about it, but I did make a point of visiting the town a few years back.

2. Corpus Christi, Texas. When I was sevenish. If we actually went to the beach, I don't recall it; since at the time I couldn't swim, this bothers me very little.

3. Charleston, South Carolina. Most of the 1960s. Back then it was a sleepy Southern town; it's no longer sleepy.

4. Oklahoma City, Oklahoma. Where I live now. When I first came here, in the 1970s, it was a sleepy Southwestern town; it's starting to wake up.
   

Four places you've been on vacation:

1. Lake Buena Vista, Florida (1980). The de rigueur trip to the House of the Mouse. I discovered that there are two ways to do this: spend a lot of money, or spend a lot more money. Sweating is mandatory either way.

2. Cleveland, Ohio (2001). Mostly because people will not believe that anyone goes to Cleveland willingly. I've been back twice since.

3. Fargo, North Dakota (2004). For people who love the idea of Minnesota but don't actually want to live there. Incredibly nice in the summer. I won't get within 800 miles of the place in the winter.

4. Augusta, Maine (2005). Because I suppose I'm a Mainiac at heart, and because I loved the idea of going to a place where seafood is king — and then not ordering any.
   

Four blogs you visit daily: More like forty-four, but here are the first ones I usually hit:

1. James Lileks' The Bleat

2. BatesLine

3. The Dawn Patrol

4. Donnaville
   

Four of your favorite foods:

1. Southern-fried chicken. Doesn't have to be from Kentucky — there are places in Maryland, fergoshsakes, which can do the job.

2. The classic hot-fudge sundae. I see it on a menu and I cringe, knowing resistance is futile.

3. Stuffed grape leaves. Actually, we were broke growing up, so we used cabbage; it's an old family recipe, which I can't duplicate to save my life. (My brother, the rotter, apparently can.)

4. Fajitas. Beef, chicken, pork, for all I know they can make them out of carpet strips; just save some for me.
   

Four places you'd rather be: This involves company, rather than locations, and I don't think I want to get too awfully specific. Sorry.

Four albums you can't live without: Assuming compilations are forbidden:

1. Abba, Waterloo. More hooks than your average workbench pegboard, and before they started drifting into We Are Pop Stars territory.

2. Mike Oldfield, Tubular Bells. For some reason, it never seems to sound the same twice.

3. King Crimson, In the Court of the Crimson King. The Godfather of prog rock, and as menacing as the description implies.

4. Led Zeppelin, Led Zeppelin II. Highest gold-to-dross ratio known to man; even the songs that suck ("The Lemon Song," mostly) don't suck very much.
   

Four vehicles you've owned:

1. 1966 Chevrolet "Chevy II" Nova. Anvil-like straight six, two-speed Powerglide, and sheet metal the general thickness of Puffs, and not Posh Puffs either.

2. 1975 Toyota Celica GT. I drove this thing for over a decade; to this day my back hurts. On the other hand, this is where I learned how to double-clutch.

3. 1984 Mercury Cougar. Absolutely the best interior, and absolutely the worst powertrain, of anything I've ever driven for more than one day.

4. 1993 Mazda 626. Probably saved me from an old age filled with Crown Victorias and the like.
   

Four people to be tagged: Take it if you want it. I'm not one to be pushy.

As suggested by Jay, the first twenty songs out of the Winamp shuffle (out of 1,544):

1. Faron Young, "Hello Walls"
   
2. Johnny Horton, "North to Alaska"
   
3. George Harrison, "What Is Life?"
   
4. Frijid Pink, "House of the Rising Sun"
   
5. Paul Simon, "Me and Julio Down by the Schoolyard"
   
6. Aimee Mann, "Momentum" *
   
7. Creedence Clearwater Revival, "Susie Q"
   
8. Janis Joplin, "Mercedes Benz"
   
9. Roger Miller, "Engine Engine #9"
   
10. Janet Jackson, "What Have You Done for Me Lately"
    
11. Doris Day, "Pillow Talk" +
    
12. John Cougar Mellencamp, "Jack and Diane"
    
13. Tommy Roe, "Jam Up and Jelly Tight"
    
14. Herman's Hermits, "There's a Kind of Hush"
    
15. Mason Williams, "Greensleeves"
    
16. Wilson Pickett, "Funky Broadway"
    
17. Madonna, "True Blue"
    
18. Runt (Todd Rundgren), "We Gotta Get You a Woman"
    
19. The Cake, "Baby That's Me"
    
20. The Mindbenders, "A Groovy Kind of Love"
    

* From the soundtrack of Magnolia.

+ From the soundtrack of Pillow Talk. (Duh.)

And there's only one way to stop them:

Answer all the questions in advance.

(Steph, did I mention you're brilliant?)

Dr. Weevil, acting on that blogdom-wide urge to make sense of one's iTunes collection, has hit on the idea of sorting the titles alphabetically and then listing the last track for each letter.

Why I haven't done the same: I sort my music files by performer, which isn't as useful as you might think, since if the act works as a single, the sort is by first name.

That said, though, I went through the 2489 files on my F: drive (there are others, but this is the core of the collection) and picked out the first, the last, and every 100th file in between. Make of this what you will.

1. 10cc: "Donna"
   
100. Art and Dottie Todd: "Chanson d'amour"
     
200. Bee Gees: "Jumbo"
     
300. Bob Rivers: "Walking 'Round in Women's Underwear" *
     
400. Bull Moose Jackson: "Big Ten-Inch Record"
     
500. Clint Holmes: "Playground in My Mind"
     
600. Dead Kennedys: "I Fought the Law"
     
700. Donovan: "Mellow Yellow"
     
800. The Emanons: "Blue Moon"
     
900. The Four Tops: "Still Water (Love)"
     
1000. Glen Campbell: "Brenda"
      
1100. Honey Cone: "One Monkey Don't Stop No Show"
      
1200. Jefferson: "Baby Take Me in Your Arms"
      
1300. Johnny Tillotson: "Jimmy's Girl"
      
1400. Lenny Dee: "Plantation Boogie"
      
1500. Manfred Mann's Earth Band: "Blinded by the Light"
      
1600. Moon Mullican: "I'll Sail My Ship Alone"
      
1700. Oosik Music Company: "The Cheese Boogie Deluxe"
      
1800. The Pointer Sisters: "Fire"
      
1900. Ringo Starr: "It Don't Come Easy"
      
2000. The Sanzini Brothers: "The Tibetan Memory Trick" **
      
2100. Stephen Lynch: "Jim Henson's Dead"
      
2200. The Temptations: "Don't Look Back"
      
2300. Toni Basil: "Shopping from A to Z"
      
2400. Warren Zevon: "Excitable Boy"
      
2489. ZZ Top: "Tush"
      

* A "Twisted Tune".

** This is actually Flo and Eddie, aka Howard Kaylan and Mark Volman, ex-Turtles.

Devra asks:

And by "someone (something?)," she means Amazon.com, which is constantly serving up "recommendations." Lynn thinks this could be interesting, so I'm putting up my list of recommended items and rating them on the classic American Bandstand 35 to 98 scale, where 98 = "I'd actually run up the mileage on the Visa card to get this right this minute" and 35 = "I wouldn't take this even if you had Aisha Tyler deliver it to me in person."

The Flaming Lips: The Fearless Freaks DVD: 85. Added to Wish List.

Hard To Find 45s on CD, Vol. 2: 1961-64: 60. Of the 20 tracks, I have 19 already, and I don't particularly like Joe Dowell's "Little Red Rented Rowboat." Like all ERIC Records product, it's done extremely well, but I don't need this one.

Hard To Find 45s on CD, Vol. 5: Sixties Pop Classics: Not rated, I already have it.

Half a dozen different Mystery Science Theater 3000 episodes: Average of 87. (I don't know if I can sit through Red Zone Cuba, though.)

Brian C. Anderson, South Park Conservatives: The Revolt against Liberal Media Bias: 70. This isn't as blatant a play for attention as Rod Dreher's "Crunchy Conservatives" shtick, but it's probably not a great deal more meaningful either.

John Lewis Gaddis, The Cold War: A New History: 85. Added to Wish List.

Robert Spencer, The Politically Incorrect Guide to Islam (and the Crusades): 80.

Erin J. Shea, editor, Tales from the Scale: 65, simply because I doubt it's as funny as Wendy McClure's I'm Not the New Me, my purchase of which brought on this recommendation.

Glenn Reynolds, An Army of Davids: How Markets and Technology Empower Ordinary People to Beat Big Media, Big Government, and Other Goliaths: 86. Added to Wish List.

One Kiss Can Lead to Another: Girl Group Sounds Lost and Found: 90. Added to Wish List.

Sideways (Widescreen Edition): 85. Added to Wish List.

Lynn's conclusion on her own list: "Overall, fairly accurate but relatively little that I'm very excited about." I can say just about the same.

Disclosure: While looking over this list, I was distracted by $58.83 worth of other stuff, which presumably will be reflected on the next group of recommendations.

Poached from Donna:

1. Two favorite colors: purple and green (God forbid I should wear this.)

2. Two least favorite colors: yellow and pink (God forbid, etc.)

3. Favorite fast food restaurant: Braum's, though they're not exactly everywhere; if I'm way out of town, I seek out Arby's.

4. Favorite day of the week: Sunday. Day of rest, yadda, yadda.

5. Least favorite day of the week: Thursday. Other than its proximity to Friday, it has nothing to recommend it.

6. Best thing about your significant other: Not applicable.

7. Least favorite thing about your significant other: Still not applicable.

8. Your significant other's favorite thing about you (without
   asking them): Still not applicable, and "them" is the wrong pronoun.

9. Your significant other's least favorite thing about you
   (again, without asking them): See above, and change the subject fercrissake.

10. Black or white? Black, except maybe in mid-July.

11. Red or blue? Blue.

12. Day or night? Night. I am not a morning person unless 11:55 am counts.

13. Favorite part of your body: The one knee that works semi-regularly.

14. Least favorite part about your body: Everything else.

15. Do you like walking in the rain at times? It has its charms.

16. Do you have a tattoo? Not a one.

17. "Short and sweet" or "long and hard"? I think this meets the criteria for "Not applicable."

18. Favorite kind of car: One with both extravagant performance and utterly unnoticeable looks.

19. Favorite kind of ice cream: Rocky Rococo Road.

20. Trix or Lucky Charms: I consider all cardboard essentially interchangeable.
    

Feel free to swipe.

From Verging on Pertinence by way of the Fire Ant Gazette, a chance for delicious self-immolation:

I tend to think of my teenaged years as ending in 1969, but I actually turned twenty in 1973, so I figure I can allow for stuff up through 1972 in the compilation of this list.

In order of release:

• Simon and Garfunkel, "Mrs. Robinson" (1968)
  This was so irresistibly catchy that I didn't notice it was getting played seemingly every freaking hour on the radio, and of course I would have been delighted to have been seduced by one particular neighborhood Older Woman, had I had any idea what that might have entailed; now it just makes me lunge for the tuning knob. Not even the return of Joltin' Joe can change the way I feel.

• Carpenters, "(They Long to Be) Close to You" (1970)
  Karen Carpenter sang this so beautifully, and the arrangement was so subtle, that it took me years to realize how annoying the song's extended similes truly were.

• Bread, "Make It with You" (1970)
  This was a year when even the slightest attention from a girl drew a lost-puppy look from me, and I was laboring under the delusion that this sort of greeting-card sexuality might actually work. Wrong.

• Don McLean, "American Pie" (1971)
  Another case of horrid overexposure: I swear that they play this on the radio more now than they do when it was new. And by now, due to overanalysis, this song has no secrets to give up anymore; it's an instant button-push before "Long, long time ago" is over.

• Chuck Berry, "My Ding-A-Ling" (1972)
  I justified this because (1) it was Chuck Berry, fercrissake and (2) it spoke at my own level of barely-post-adolescent smuttiness. Eventually I grew up.
  

Deep, dark secrets: I bought all five of these, and they all made #1 in Billboard.

As swiped from Phoebe Gleeson:

"Interesting," of course, is in the eye of the beholder, but here goes:

1491 - The siege of Granada, last Moorish stronghold in Spain, begins.

1863 - American Civil War: At Missionary Ridge in Tennessee, Union forces led by General Ulysses S. Grant break the Siege of Chattanooga by routing Confederate troops under General Braxton Bragg.

1950 - The "Storm of the Century", a violent snowstorm, paralyzes the northeastern United States and the Appalachians, bringing winds up to 100 mph and sub-zero temperatures. Pickens, West Virginia records 57 inches of snow. 323 people die due to the storm.

Born 1920 - Noel Neill, American actress

Born 1944 - Ben Stein, American actor, game show host, and political consultant

Died 1920 - Gaston Chevrolet, Swiss-born race car driver and automobile pioneer (b. 1892)

Now let's try it for the 9th of April, the birthday, as it were, of this Web site:

1413 - Henry V is crowned King of England.

1865 - American Civil War: Robert E. Lee surrenders the Army of Northern Virginia (26,765 troops) to Ulysses S. Grant at Appomattox Courthouse, Virginia, effectively ending the war.

1959 - NASA announces the selection of the United States' first seven astronauts which the news media quickly dub the "Mercury Seven".

Born 1926 - Hugh Hefner, American editor and publisher

Born 1928 - Tom Lehrer, American musician and mathematician

Died 1997 - Laura Nyro, American singer and songwriter (b. 1947)

Feel free to expropriate.

Jan requests half a dozen "weird facts/things/habits", and asking me this is something like asking a porcupine to scratch your back, but what the heck. (Besides, I've already gone public with more than four dozen such things, but since you didn't read them, or anyway she didn't read them, I'm engaging in the oft-debased art of repurposing content.)

• The Army originally planned to make a chaplain's assistant of me.
  
• I put on the left sock, then the left shoe, then the right sock, then the right shoe.
  
• I have every issue of Entertainment Weekly.
  
• I have been known to dun creditors for failing to bill me on time.
  
• Some people can play music but can't read it; I can read it, sort of, but can't play.
  
• I have worn the same watch (a cheap Casio electronic) since 1980.
  

And she wants half a dozen other people tagged with this, but I demur: the world's going to end next month anyway and we'll all have to kiss Andrea's, um, ring.

This got from LilRed to Jan and then all the way to Michael Bates, and for some reason there seems to be a desire to see it here.

Anyway, answering the questions for me today, Mr. Francis Albert Sinatra.

Are you male or female? "I Forget to Remember" (Reprise, 1969)

Describe yourself. "I've Got the World on a String" (Capitol, 1953)

How do some people feel about you? "It Never Entered My Mind" (Columbia, 1947)

How do you feel about yourself? "I Fall in Love Too Easily" (Columbia, 1944)

Describe your ex: "I Should Care" (Columbia, 1945)

Describe your current significant other: "The One I Love (Belongs to Somebody Else)" (Capitol, 1959, not released until 1973)

Describe where you want to be: "This Town" (Reprise, 1967)

Describe how you live: "My Way" (Reprise, 1969)

Describe how you love: "Strangers in the Night" (Reprise, 1966)

What would you ask for if you had just one wish? "The Nearness of You" (Columbia, 1947)

Share a few words of wisdom: "(How Little It Matters) How Little We Know" (Capitol, 1956)

Now say goodbye: "Don't Like Goodbyes" (Capitol, 1957)

I trust this meets the requirements of the meme, and if not, well, that's life.

That's twenty-five, isn't it?

5 things in my fridge:

• Dr Pepper (2 liters, minus about half a glass)
  
• Lettuce (approximately ¼ head)
  
• Tazo tea ("Tazoberry")
  
• Potter's Sausage Biscuits (microwavable)
  
• 1 lb ground sirloin (thawing for tomorrow's otherwise-unplanned dinner)
  

5 things in my closet:

• Wooden box containing shoeshine gear
  
• Old comforter
  
• Two pieces of (overly) soft luggage
  
• Four wire racks for shoes
  
• Ancient Dopp kit
  

5 things in my briefcase:

• Bottle of acetaminophen
  
• CD (for automotive amusement)
  
• Tomorrow's lunch
  
• Cell phone (will be removed later)
  
• Checkbook (ditto)
  

5 things in my car:

• Dollar coins (for toll basket)
  
• Last eleven insurance verifications
  
• Cord to recharge cell phone
  
• Remote control for garage-door opener
  
• Small paper towels (just in case)
  

5 people I want to torture with this meme:

• (fill
  
• in
  
• your
  
• name
  
• here)
  

(Imported through Rocket Jones.)

The breakdown follows:

TEN pairs of socks in regular rotation.

NINE years' worth of email archives.

EIGHT steak knives.

SEVEN CDs by Debbie Deborah Gibson.

SIX trees and/or shrubs in the front yard.

FIVE ice trays, should the icemaker in the fridge fail.

FOUR windows in the garage door.

THREE grandchildren.

TWO children.

ONE life to live.

ZERO girlfriends.

(Swiped from Eric "Fire Ant" Siegmund.)