5 Little Known Things Meme

What is this? National Meme Week or something? Blueberry got me earlier this week, right before my busy spell, so I'm getting caught up (and already got my revenge, incidentally).

The 5 Little Known Things About Me Meme (ummm deja-vu) apparently begins with a haiku now -- that's a twist. Actually Blueberry ended hers with a haiku as well. I can't promise that, but we'll see. There's also 8 more things which brings the total to 13. So if I just do 2 more things right now, that's a total of 15 which is the equivalent of doing the 5 Things Meme 3 times, right?

A love of numbers
konagod speaks in riddles
only for humor

1. In an effort to conserve laundry detergent and water, I've started wearing the same clothes over and over again, day after day, but not always several days in a row. I give them a chance to air out. If I'm going out on errands or eating out, I will often put on something clean, and then take it off as soon as I'm home and put on yesterday's clothes again. I could be wrong but I doubt anyone would notice, particularly since I rarely go out in public wearing the same shirt two days in a row. And even when I do, it's not like I'm going to the same places and seeing the same people, so who would know? And unless I stink (and I don't), then there's not a problem. This really does cut way back on the laundry duties.

2. As much as I love to drink and partake of God's herb, preferably simultaneously, I generally only do them at night. I know people who wake up in the morning and smoke a big doobie. I've known people who wake up, have a beer, or sit around drinking beers all afternoon watching football. The only time I ever have a drink in the morning is when I'm in Vegas, and I'll have a bloody mary, but only if I'm just planning to sit on my ass and gamble. And I haven't been to Vegas in probably 6 or 7 years. The only time I drink around noon is when we go to Curras Grill for lunch and I'll have a margarita. But I haven't been there in months. The only exception to this was a few weeks ago when I went out to lunch with one of my co-workers and I had two beers -- and I think that was the day we found out we were losing our jobs at the end of this month.

OK, since I'm on a roll now, I'll see if I can pinch off 3 more just to complete this meme fair and square.

3. This is something I just told the Minstrel Boy recently. I grew up in the Mississippi Delta in southeast Arkansas. Before I was born, my parents lived for a brief time across the river in Clarksdale, Mississippi: World Capital of the Blues and location of the famous Crossroads intersection of Highway 61 and 49. And yet, I never knew of the Blues genre until well after I'd started exploring rock & roll and got my boner for Led Zeppelin. I thought their shit was innovative and original. I thought that sound was British! I don't think I'd ever heard of Robert Johnson until I was in my 20s at least, and to the best of my knowledge, I never actually heard his music until this decade, unless the pot has rotted my brain. I'm serious. To this day I don't know why my father didn't teach me a little about music history, given how interested in music I was. Oh, I guess he did when he'd describe what I was listening to as "nigger music" -- only I didn't get the reference since most of the bands I was listening to were white hippies.

4. If I were asked to name the greatest technological achievement during my life, I'd have to say the personal computer. Cell phones are nice but I could honestly live without those. And GPS, why the hell do I need to be told where I am and where I'm supposed to go from some electronic gadget? We have maps for that purpose. Nintendo? Blah.

When I was starting grade school, computers were the stuff of science fiction. Enormously big scary things making funky noises and with weird lights (well, some things haven't changed, and size is relative) -- straight out of Lost in Space. I remember the first real personal computer I ever had in my house -- it was around 1976 and my dad, always having a love for the latest toys, bought one at Radio Shack. Yes, this is the same dad who got me a touch-tone phone for my bedroom around 1972-ish, and also got me a basic calculator (adds, subtracts, multiplies and divides, and that's it) for Christmas around that same time, and paid $50 for it.

This computer required a cassette player to upload software. The sounds on the cassette were not unlike two fax machines trying to copulate. And if you could see these games or other programs today after waiting 20+ minutes to upload them, you'd shit yourself laughing.

The fact that I only had to wait about 15-17 years from that moment until I was checking weather online, buying plane tickets, and doing all my banking, is quite frankly, amazing to me. Not to mention the free porn.

5. And speaking of technology and fax machines in particular, I bought my first fax machine very early in 1991. For those of you who don't remember, this was when fax machines were still sort of faddish for individuals to own. When someone would yell out in public, "I'll fax you," that was enough to turn some heads. I'm not kidding. Oh, so very coooool....

I had just hooked up with txrad a few months earlier in San Diego. I had moved to Los Angeles with a friend so I could find a job, and then txrad could move up. This was right before I got into the advertising field. Apparently, I didn't want to be inconvenienced by having to go someplace and pay them to fax my resume to various companies. So, despite being unemployed and living on credit, I paid $399 for a thermal paper fax machine. Horrid little thing that was. But I got a job in advertising. So I guess it paid for itself. (My, my, how we justify our irrational behavior!)

And as this meme began, so shall it end:

Cassette tape squealing
as it uploads the data
like impregnating

Tagged: anyone who hasn't done a 5 or 8 or 13 things meme before. You know who you are.
And you haven't lived until you've tried it.