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Tagged!

zuzu

The fabulous Miss Jessica Valenti has tagged me with a meme — list five things about yourself that most people don’t know about you. For fun, she listed four things that are true and one that’s not, and had her readers guess in comments which was the fake.

So, here they are. See if you can spot the fake:

1. I’m obsessed by nose hair. Mostly my own (because I have a nose you can see into), but if I can see visible nose hair on other people, it drives me buggy. But I’m too polite to say anything, so I just try not to let people know that I can’t look away from their nose hair and desperately want to hand them a pair of scissors.

2. I’m actually really bad at confrontation.

3. Despite having lived no more than an hour from the beach almost my whole life, I’ve never actually swum in the ocean.

4. At some point, I realized that I don’t know half the bands people list on their Friday Random Tens. I don’t know when I lost touch with music. I like it, I hear songs I like all the time, but I stopped keeping up with the particulars years ago.

5. I once chased the manager of 2 Live Crew around a pole.

Now I tag: alla you. Share in comments, and share your guesses which one is the fake.

29 thoughts on Tagged!

  5. I say Linnaeus is right. You’ve been swimming in the ocean at least once.

    Here’s my five, one of which is not true:

    1) I much prefer dogs, but growing up I had a cat for nearly two decades, which I named after a neighbor that I had a crush on.

    2) The last meal my mother ever cooked was Salmon Wellington. She was dying of cancer, her attempts to expand her cooking repertoire had often been failures, and she (as always) had something to prove.

    3) I read virtually no fiction.

    4) I, my sister, and one of my sister’s former roommates have each on separate occasions been naked in a shower for sexual purposes with the same person.

    5) By the time I was thirteen, I was a blackout drunk.

  6. I’d vote 3.

    Here are my five.

    1. I have had a confrontation with the TSA regarding horse semen.

    2. I have an identical twin.

    3. I was interviewed by the FBI the other day regarding a former co-worker who has applied for a job at the DOD.

    4. My biggest childhood fear was that a volcano would erupt in our driveway,

    5. I think that bell peppers should be removed from supermarkets everywhere and restaurants should be fined for using them as garnish.

  7. What’s funny is that the more detail you can give about something, the more we think, “they couldn’t possibly have made that up!” so that’s why #3 seems most likely. For example, #1 could be false because you could be obsessed with ear hair–it would be really easy to change just that one thing.

    Still, the psychology of this is all too powerful for me. #3 it is.

    Thomas: I hope it was 13, but that’s probably too horrible to make up. Next vote is #4 (oh god!)

    e-fizz: bell peppers are awesome! still i guess to each their own. please, please, let it be the horse semen (#1).

  8. I’m going with three, as well.
    I’ve only been swimming in the ocean once. I’ve never gone back. The short version: Beach covered in garbage and debris from a heavy storm + almost drowning when feet got tangled up in seaweed + having a massive chunk of thumb removed by a crab while sitting on blanket = not a fun trip.

    As for my five- all true:
    1. When I was 6, I got angry and threw the loose middle seatbelt at my younger brother. It hit him just above his left eye, and he ended up needing six stiches to close the resulting wound.
    2. When I was 8, I wanted to see if it was true that cats are really afraid of water. I had befriended a cat in the neighborhood, and used to pick it up and pet it all the time. So, I picked up my new friend, and walked down to the beach with him. I got down to the edge of the water, and the cat freaked out, and scratched me all to hell and ran away, and would never let me pick him up again. I felt awful about the experience (and was in pretty significant pain from the multitude of scratches on my chest, arms, and face), and still feel guilty to this day (even though, I want to point out, that it was never my intention to hurt the cat, and recognize now what a mean, and thoughtless act that was).
    3. I’ve only been drunk twice in my entire life- once when I was 26 and once when I was 27.
    4. I don’t like to eat or drink after other people. This, in itself, isn’t really that strange, but my aversion to eating or drinking after other people has nothing to do with a germ phobia (I will, however, eat or drink after people that I’m dating- if I can make out with someone, I can eat after her).
    5. I once played chess at the Nationals tourny as part of a team, and we took home medals.

  10. Okay. Here’s my five.

    1) I’ve had a client slip me the number for the local Domestic Violence Hotline because of all the bruises I accumulate pursuing my hobbies.

    2) I have no nosehair whatsoever (to continue zuzu’s nosehair theme).

    3) I’m right-handed, but I can write, fence, and eat with chopsticks left-handed.

    4) I can turn a cartwheel on a balance beam.

    5) I accidentally set my hair on fire in the CIA (Culinary Institute of America) American restaurant – and didn’t even get a free drink out of the experience!

    My guesses on the others: #4 for zuzu, #5 for Thomas (I hope!), and #1 for evil fizz.

  11. Heh. I was in a planning meeting wherein something like this was the icebreaker – it was supposed to be tell two lies and one truth, people guess the truth, but the first person messed up and did two truths and a lie; we then realized that none of us were creative enough to come up with two good lies, so they all became two truths/one lie. Either we were all really moral and couldn’t lie about ourselves, or we’re all so full of ourselves we couldn’t resist sharing real anecdotes.

  13. I vote #1. It sounds like the beginning of a short story.

    Here are five, all true:

    1) My great-aunt was engaged to Mel Brooks.

    2) When I was 14, a bunch of friends and I stole (“borrowed”) the school truck (private boarding school). We figured not to get caught by rolling into the school parking lot with the lights out. Which we did at the exact moment that a school trip in the van was arriving back at school, with two teachers and a bunch of students all staring at us.

    3) I shared a cabin with Timothy Leary on several occasions.

    4) I get all OCD about my chairs. I have ONE chair in my kitchen that I sit in (we call it “my spot”) and ONE part of the living room couch. If a guest takes either of these chairs I get all oogly.

    5) I am not my ex-husband’s only ex-wife named Deborah.

  14. I have no idea which of your five is false, Zuzu. But I’m going to guess #4 for Thomas, #2 for Evil Fizz and Roy, and #3 for Tapetum.

    I stole this meme for a post, but because officially I’m using your tag, my five are,

    1. I used to blog under an alias, which came to know a few bloggers who now know me by my real name, and likely have no idea they knew me beforehand.

    2. When I started college, I thought I would end up specializing in something related to calculus, like differential equations, or even mathematical physics; I wavered later but still was into applied subjects. Then I discovered abstract algebra and never looked back.

    3. I’ve been heterosocial almost my entire life. Except between third and seventh grades, and to some extent second and eighth, I’ve always had more female friends than male friends.

    4. In elementary school, I’d always find a way to dodge the annoying ceremonies that teach students nothing except how to follow teachers’ exact directions without thinking – the Holocaust memorials, the Rabin memorial ceremonies, and various and sundry holiday celebrations.

    5. After 9/11, I had a stint of being more Islamophobic than the average Freeper. It got to the point that when some Pakistani student annoyed my too much in eighth grade, I told him (rough quote) “What the hell, you’re going to get seventy virgins anyway.”

  15. I say #3

    Mine?

    1. My nose is naturally crooked

    2. I had plastic surgery

    3. When I was 7, my cousin’s cat had kittens. about a month after they were born, we took them outside with us and played tag. I wasn’t looking where I was running and stepped in somethign. I was horrified to see I had stepped on a kitten adn killed it.

    4. I am an Ordained minister, and as such can perform weddings, funerals, baptisms etc.

    5. When I was 6, saome friends and I tried to kill a neighborhood girl with some friends. In legal terms, it was attempted murder in teh 1st degree

    Which one is false?

  16. Let’s see I’d say 5 for Zuzu, she seems to know music quite well. hehe

    Thomas – 3, Evil Fuzz – 2, Tapetum -2, and Alon Levy – 4- I dunno something says you had to do all the ceremonies and secretly wished you didn’t. Hehe

    As for me, one of these is not true. 🙂

    1. I absolutely cannot and will not drink / eat after anyone. Even someone I am dating. It doesn’t have to do with germs perse, but more along the lines of slobber. **shiver** I can’t even think about it with out shuddering.

    2. I have serious OCD with the top of my monitor. I am currently agonizing whether to clean it or not. The complusion is of course to clean it, but I can’t. So it currently has about 2 yrs worth of dust, spiderwebs hanging off my nicnacs. But there is a reason for this madness. I have a gargoyal cat that looks down on me from it’s crouched perch atop of my monitor. It just looks wrong “clean”. So to get it to look good, I left it. However, it didn’t match the other nicnacs. In an attempt to calm my OCD, I have let the other nicnacs aquire the same amount of dust and debris. This in turn drives me absolutely batty.

    3. When I was 10, I met Dolly Parton and Kenny Rodgers at a recording studio.

    4. When I was 16 my parents took the family to Disney World. As a going away gift my bestfriend gave me some Charcoal black hair dye. The morning after we arrived, I got up early and dyed my hair. When my parents woke up my dad nearly threw me out believing I wasn’t his daughter. Needless to say he wasn’t too happy with me for the rest of the vacation.

    5. When I was 4 my Aunt left me at a theme park called Lagoon in UT. I was there for 6 hours straight, screaming and crying for her to come back and get me. I was so mad at her for this betrayal I have never acknowledged any gift, word or overture from her since. It’s been 30 yrs.

  17. Here’s my five, one of which is false:

    1) I was born by c-section with a finger under my eyelid. According to my mother, I would stick a finger under my eyelid while sleeping for most of the first year of my life.

    2) I was REALLY anti-choice in high school . . . I’ve even been to the annual March for Life three or four times. (But I had what you could call a conversion experience . . . don’t worry!)

    3) I’m part of a discernment group of people considering entering the Catholic deaconate and priesthood.

    4) I was named after the Bob Dylan song “Visions of Johanna”

    5) I got my nose pierced after my first anti-war rally. My father dealt with this infraction by pretending (to this day) that it’s not there.

    My guesses are: zuzu 3 or 5, thomas 5, evil fizz 5, Tapetum 2, Deborah 3, Alon 2, EAV 3, Loosely Twisted 5. Phew!

  18. Hmm – for EAV I’m guessing #3, for Loosely Twisted #5, and for johanna – #2

    Are you going to let us know sometime, zuzu?

    I won’t say until zuzu does – but nobody’s gotten mine right yet.

  20. Okay, I’ll bite.

    1. I’m related to former corrupt, mob-tied mayor of Philadelphia Frank Rizzo.

    2. I’m also related to Generoso Campos Marquetti, who was the first Black elected official in Cuba, and also was involved in the Cuban Race War of 1912

    3. My vision is so bad I’m legally blind.

    4. As an atheist, I hate Christmas.

    5. Despite having brown-eyed parents, my daughter has blue eyes.

  21. Yeah, this will be fun.

    1) Despite the fact that I carry a fully loaded 9mm around all day, I’m a really sensitive guy and cry very easily.

    2) I’m an athiest, yet I’m pretty pissed that Gawd doesn’t exist. Fawk! Life is over too quick…

    3) I smoke cigarettes. Hack, hack..

    4) I dropped high school after completing the 9th grade. GED-toting in the hizzouse, yo.

    5) I hold a B.A. in Sociology/Political Science.

  22. 1) I have a bookshelf entirely devoted to foreign language dictionaries. despite this, the only country outside the US I’ve ever been to is a non-Francophonic section of Canada.
    2) I have three years training as a classical tenor.
    3) I have slept with a woman whose fetish was Nancy Drew role playing. It was quite a lot of fun, honestly.
    4) When alone, I will frequently adopt the persona of some utterly fictional person and deliver a soliloquy.
    5) In spite of frequent hyperbolic threats made in comically exaggerated anger, I don’t think I could ever bring myself to even wish harm on anyone.

  23. It’s really hard to tell a lie, really it is for me, so 5 is only partially true.

    It happened only I was 6, and yes they did leave me at the log flume for 6 hours. (my entire family lost me.) But I don’t blame my Aunt. I dunno how I got separated from them, so yeah. hehe

    I was one scared puppy.

  24. Vanessa, I think you don’t actually hate Christmas. Thomas–5? Marksman–1? Not a lot of professions where you can get away with packing heat all day, and you’ve never mentioned being a cop, I don’t think.

    Here’s some for me:
    1. When I talk about “the Family Business,” I actually mean witchdoctoring.
    2. I grew out of anemia, heart problems, and every food allergy in the book. I’m not sure how this happened.
    3. I had a really hardcore Goth phase in my teens, and always had a little notebook full of bad poetry with me at all times.
    4. It took me just about until junior high to learn to ties my shoes and read an analog clock, but I was already reading Shakespeare, Homer, and Dante for fun.
    5. I actually voluntarily eat and enjoy taro root.

  25. Tapetum- actually, 2 is true for me. Sad, huh? Thankfully a dose of Reality solved that problem.

    Marksman- if your 4 is true, that would actually make two of us. 🙂

  26. Since zuzu let loose, I’ll cop. #4 is my falsehood. I could turn a cartwheel on a blance beam – 20 years ago. I’d break my neck if I tried it today.

  27. Mine’s #3. That happened to my fiance, not me. For those who were achingly curious about the horse semen, I worked for a courier service which specialized in such products. While trying to ship a package via cargo, airport security wanted to X-ray a specimen. I strenuously objected (it would have killed the sample), was presented with a box cutter, told to open the box. I have never seen three very large grown men back away from a box looking so green in my life.

    They apologized and gave me duct tape to reseal the box, making sure that the box was very well sealed.

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