Random Access Random

I don't really like to get involved with memes for the same reason I don't like to comment back on other blogs to gain internet popularity or publish "what do you think?" posts in an effort to get maximum comments (though, actually I might have one of those brewing.). The problem is that I take myself way to seriously. I have a tendency to fall into that pretentious I am a WRITER trap and we all know that serious writers, the kind that get offered book deal and guest spots on morning TV programs to add some quirky internet presence so that my Grandma and her friends in Wisconsin can shake their heads in a "those crazy kids" sort of way, they do NOT care about comments or subscriber counts and they certainly cannot be expected to respond to gimmicky things like a meme. Of course real writers also have ideas that are publishable not just 15000 Google docs full of unusable notes and a bunch of "I haven't written something worthwhile in MONTHS" guilt. They probably also do not devote entire posts to cooing about how cute their niece is (they also do not have a niece as cute as mine so really this is a moot point). They also probably don't have a friend as nice and devoted and willing to put up with YEARS worth of email describing the minutia of their dating follies using phrases like "doomed for life" and "totally going to die alone" but I do -- and if Mike wants me to mem it up I will. My book deal be damned.

Anyway, the meming goes like this:

1. Link to the person who tagged you.
2. Post the rules on your blog.
3. Write six random things about yourself.
4. Tag six random people at the end of your post by linking to their blogs.
5. Let each person know they have been tagged by leaving a comment on their website.
6. Let your tagger know when your entry is up.

Now on to the random Brianna generator.

1. My youthful vigor and amazingly perky breasts aside there is a proper pants suit wearing 75 year old woman living in my soul (My inner Emily Gilmore). She makes me send out hand written thank you cards (actually that might have been my mom...) and refuses to let me out of the house in brown shoes and black pants and her little alcoholic liver demands to be fed whenever I enter a bar. It is because on her that my drink of choice is a vodka gimlet.
2. I l have next to no ability to appreciate visual art (go ahead, judge me, I put my thoughts on the internets so I pretty much asked for it). When wandering around a museum (because I have guests visiting and they demand culture or because I'm in a foreign country and god knows I will never hear the end of it if I don''t log a visit to whatever famous museum the country lays claim to) I am usually reduced to glancing at the art and quickly averting my eyes to read every paragraph of the author bio. There is one exception to this rule -- I love color block art, esp uniform blocks/pixels of different colors, double especially if they're organized in some sort of gradient progression from one color to another. Basically the color picker feature in Photoshop speaks to me.
3. I think I look awful in purple. Or rather I think I should think I look awful in purple based on one statement made by my mother roughly 15 years ago. ("Brianna, Purple is not your color.")
4. I have small feet and I am inexplicably proud of this as if I had something to do with creating my tiny tootsies and as if having small feet is some sort of valuable trait. Embarrassingly I suspect this is me bowing the the social expectations that women be petite and dainty. For a while the only part of me that I felt fit into this definition was my feet and so to this day when, at the bowling alley picking up my rented shoes my co-bowlers or the shoe rental lady exclaim that I have "such tiny feet!" I glow a little bit inside and then blush a bit on the outside for being so shallow/easily manipulated by the patriarchy.
5. My first "boyfriend" was a boy named Ben who lived next door to me in 2nd grade. We did a lot of playing together and my friend Jolene was "dating" his twin brother. Once he drew me an adorable picture of us holding hands on the beach which I can to this day picture with amazing clarity(me in blond pigtails and a blue bikini, him in red swim trunks, waves in the back ground and a wooden sign that says "beach" least there be any confusion), the picture probably still lives somewhere in my childhood bedroom. Ben and I had a falling out sometime early in 3rd grade and I went on to become queen of the Geeks and he to actual real life popularity leading my high school friends to speculate that if only I hadn't broken up with Ben 6 years ago perhaps I could have been popular too as if boyfriend alone could have made up for my membership in mathletics.
6. I failed my driver's test the first time for driving on the wrong side of the road. In my defense this was right after doing a 3 point turn and seriously, anyone could make that mistake. I went home and CRIED for hours (someone doesn't handle failure well...) and then my dad bought me flowers and gave me the patented Horst Klemm "This will not matter when you grow up and realize how awesome you are" speech (that dad dude was smart). I passed on the second try a couple of weeks later and that same day accidentally drove on the wrong side of the road AGAIN. Luckily I didn't kill anyone or get caught. I have managed to over come my obviously British driving roots and mostly stay on the right side of the road these days.
   

People Whom I Encourage To Be Random

Under Consideration and Montague because they are new blogy friends who you guys should check out
I Don't Think It's Going to Rain because Lisa will write about anything
Kajal's World on a Page because if she posts any more baby stories I'm going to die from the cute
Amy's Magical Place because she needs to write more.
Ultra Fine Flair because Gillian is really good at being random

Ten Books (Really Just Nine)

Lisa tagged me on this a week ago but I’ve been putting it off. Despite feeling pretty passionate about books in general I’m having a ridiculously difficult time answering these questions. I think this is supposed to get at what my favorite books are but it doesn’t do that at all – I had nowhere to put Middlesex or Carter Beats the Devil or A Short History of Nearly Everything. The books I finally settled on listing here don’t really seem important enough for a stint on my blog (you’ll note that I usually write about very important stuff). I guess part of the problem is that I want my book selection to somehow explain who I am and so I feel like I have to make the best selections to show everyone just how awesome I am. That’s a tall order for a silly internet meme.

1. One book that changed your life?

See? How am I supposed to answer this? Changed my life? Do people often feel like books change their life? I mean I guess I was very affected by reading things like The Demon Haunted World and The Beauty Myth and A Revolution from Within but I have a hard time pinpointing something as life changing – it just seems like such a tall order.

2. One book you have read more than once?

I reread The Great Gatsby a year ago. My first reading had been junior year of high school and I hadn’t been that impressed. I got through it and didn’t actively hate the book (which is much more than can be said about The Scarlet Letter or Frankenstein) but it didn’t seem like that big of a deal. As a goody goody teen my only form of rebellion had been to roll my eyes at most assigned text, I loved to read but I hated almost every book that was forced upon me by a teachers. I’m older now and supposedly more open minded and every hipster in the city raves about their love for Gatsby so I thought I’d give it another go. My god are the people in that book shallow and annoying.

3. One book you would want on a desert island?

Like a true dork I immediately jumped to the survival guide answer but I think that’s probably antithetical to the purpose of this survey. Then I thought “well, ideally something really big that I haven’t yet read so it will at least get my mind off of things for the first few weeks.”

4. One book that made you laugh?

Man. I don't read a lot of funny books and the ones I do read are so cliche (I refuse to put a David Sederis book here, I am MUCH cooler than that.). I laughed a fair bit in the "you must be kidding!" way while reading Under the Banner of Heaven but probably that just makes me a huge jerk.

5. One book that made you cry?

God-Shaped Hole. I’m not even sure that I think this is a very good book but it’s very pretty and there’s love and death and it all feels very important. I read it when I need to cry (post break ups mostly) and it serves as a comfortable little trigger for the tears.

6. One book you wish you had written?

The Partly Cloudy Patriot by Sarah Vowel. She does such an amazing job making serious topics (her father’s mortality, 9/11) hilariously funny. I wish my writing could hit that sweet spot more often but when I try to write about serious things they come out sad and I mostly don’t post them on my blog because I don’t want my readers worrying about me. I really just wish I could be Sarah Vowel, I’d gladly learn to live with the weird voice for a chance to be on This American Life.

7. One book you wish had never had been written?

My immediate thought was “The Bible" which is horribly cynical of me (I blame The End of Faith, which I just finished). I don’t actually think that eliminating the bible would change the world much – we’d still have plenty of silly religions to kill people over.

8. One book you are currently reading?

King Dork is a young adult novel written by Frank Portman, the lead singer for The Mr. T Experience. I’m about ¼ of the way in and so far I’m enjoying it – but probably not as much as I would be if I had been an awkward teenaged boy instead of an awkward teenaged girl. It reminds me of the book Youth in Revolt which I read the summer after college and which touched me more because I think it was the first time that I realized that boys had it tough too (I was a little slow).

9. One book you have been meaning to read?

The World is Flat which is right not taunting me from the bookshelf. “You are such a slacker,” it says, “I’ve sat here since January waiting to educate you about the new economy and instead you choose to gorge yourself on young adult fiction, loser – you deserve to have your job outsourced, Indian girls LOVE reading about global economics.”


10. Now tag five some other people...

See? this question is not about books, so really only 9 book questions in this meme -- silly title that can't count. I'm going to pass on tagging people -- which just means I'm going to spare Mike, because everyone else I know already filled this out.