meme: eight things you don't know about me

Like I told Nic, I thought I had made it to home base without being tagged in this particular game of the poetry blogosphere, but, you know, you can run but you just can't hide when you are a cog in the industrial complex of blogging poets. Anyway, this is an alright meme, and being tagged "it" is half the fun, so here are eight things you don't know about me. (Nicole's is hilarious, though, so hers is a tough post to follow.)

1.) I am a statistics geek. In college I was down right competitive about being chosen to be the statistics teaching assistant (not realizing this was not a job that EV-ER-EE-ONE coveted), like some stereotypical, prototypical, made-for-the-movies bratty high-school girl vying for the title of homecoming queen. And I still loooove quantitative data, research methods, correlation, regression, ANOVAs, academic journals like Personality and Social Psychology, ranting to the television when anyone on a news (or a so-called-news) program makes some assumption based on anectodal evidence or some assertion based on incorrect interpretation of stats, etc., etc., etc. Yes, it's true, I have even been known to run statistical analyses on various data I've collected -- to, um, yeah, try to maximize the output of my submission efforts: charts and charts of magazines' %acceptance rates, response times, circulation or webhits, rated prestige, and on and on and on, and then interpreted statistically. One might say obsessive, I say scientific, practical, okay, obsessive.

2.) I once had a crush on Subcomandante Marcos.

3.) I've never been stung by a bee.

4.) I am terrified of frogs and toads. I have recurring nightmares about being in the dark and not being able to see, and not being able to move or step anywhere because all I hear is ribbit ribbit ribbit ribbit, ribbits into infinity.

5.) One of my favorite and overused words is anthropomorphize. And this is a two-for-one something-you-don't-know-about-me: I anthropomorphize so much that I never leave a single ice cube alone in the tray, because I think oh, it must be so cold and scared in there all alone like that in the dark.

6.) When I was about seven or eight, I started to sell my Halloween candy and give the money to charity. My interest in politics began when I realized my efforts did not seem to end poverty or eradicate racism. Seriously.

7.) By eight or nine I branched out beyond the Halloween candy and incorporated all of my businesses into "Fancy Freddie's, Inc." Before that, there were all the independent companies: the weekly Daily News, published by Fancy Freddie Press, Fancy Freddie's restaurant, Fancy Freddie's radio (WFFR), which was broadcast into a tape recorder with me as the dj (using all of my older siblings' albums until liner notes started to go missing or vinyl records started to show scratches), and Fancy Freddie's Pizza (Ritz crackers, ketchup, and parmesan cheese).

8.) I founded the now-defunct, two-person, secret (hush hush) organization called GVEC. If anyone can guess what that means I'll start it up again. (Hint: G stands for Group for the) But ssshhh, don't tell the FBI or NSA. grin

Now if you're in the mood for an intelligent and actually-important blog-post, read "Why Poetry?" on Amy King's blog -- even if you're not a poet, or even that interested in poetry (how could you not be?! -- but, anyway --) this collection of a few brilliant essays on language and its powerful relationship with culture and politics will most likely entertain and inform you a lot more than anything that has been on my blog, or many others, in quite a while.