Friday Fives

1. Can you dance?
I am not an inspired dancer. I have been told I am a decent dancer, but I am not comfortable on the dance floor.

2. Who is your current crush?
Van Morrison, I suppose.

3. Tell us about a dream you remember.
LAst night I was in the middle of hiring frenzy at work and stuck in the middle of our reorganziation working some sort of help desk where employees got to go to complain about things. I always hate it when I have dreams that take place at work.

4. Do you live with anyone, or do you live by yourself?
For economics and familiarity sake, I share an apartment with my sister.

5. When is the last time you bled from an injury?
I am always pick at my hang nails – and that can result in s light paper cut and eventual bleeding. I guess the last time was earlier in the week.

The Friday Fives

1. What is your preferred trusted news source?
Lately it is Google news, which is really just a collection of all the news sources on the web. And the UK Guardian. I really don’t read newspapers anymore. For television, I am keen on CNN headline news as background noise whilst running around the house.

2. What is a news source that you will never trust?
Fox news. They have a bad reputation for being biased and dumbing down the facts. It is so true. Watch them a bit and you will see what I mean. They definitely are driven to tell their side of things.

3. What is the news topic during the last calendar year that you feel got the worst coverage?
Well, most news, especially with the television news cycle that it seems everyone else must keep up with, everything get little to naught in coverage. However, that being said, I would say news out of Africa and Asia gets little coverage. Driving home from work late at night I will often tune in BBC World News on NPR. I am always amazed at how deep and rich their news reports are and the vastness of their scope – Africa, Asia, cricket, they all get equal play.

4. What news item do you feel got too much coverage in the last calendar year?
Brad, Jennifer and Angelie. Yawn. Who cares.

5. If you had complete control of your favored news source(s) (answer to question 1), what would you do with it that is not already being done?
Open up new bureaus once again in areas where there is a dirth of coverage, in order to help give Americans a better view of the world that exists outside its navel gazing borders.

Friday Fives

1. What happened the last time you got furious in traffic?
A power cord was down at the exit ramp to I 25 and Yale. Cars were driving over and under the down line and there was traffic behind me as well. No real way to get out of the situation. I crept through the mess and then called 911 before someone hit the line and got zapped. But it was a real dillema with no real way out of the quagmire.

2. What is your favorite “wintertime” song?
When it snows and is sunny, at the end of the day, I usually turn to the Eagles. Good skiing music. Something like “Best Of My Love.”

3. I dig office supply stores. What is your favorite office supply?
3X5 cards. Yep, index cards rock. I recently found index cards made by Post Its! How great is that. I am also always on the look out for the best pen. I am getting close – but spend too much money on pens in my frantic Research and Development – I buy any kind of gel roller ball i can find and give them a trial run. I hate ball points and as a left hander fountain pens are just too messy, so it comes down to a gell ink roller ball, but the quality and consistency between brands can be a real crapshoot.

4. First time you threw up in someone else’s toilet?
Jamie Creasy was living at the Dickinson’s house on Steele street during his senior year of High School. A whole house to himself, and no parents. (He normally lived way out in the National Wildlife Reserve about 40 miles or so north of town.) Many parties were thrown at that house and I am sure I tossed my cookies in that toilet. Since I was 16 or 17 years old, I imagine it was my first guest toilet.

5. What is the most adventurous food you’ve ever tried?
Well, I have never gone full “Fear Factor” and eaten worms or grubs. I suppose in this day and age, any food eaten at a restaurant can be considered adventurous. I will go with Beef TarTar at the old Queen Of Sheeba Ethiopian restaurant. Eating raw beef. That’s adventuous.

The Friday Fives

1. What’s your worst landlord story.
My landlord in college was a professor at the school and she owned this little house that had three apartments. She was a total wack job and the house was a bit of a pit. She was concerned that a house of college students was playing the stereo too much and had too many televisions and computers going – not for the reasons you might assume – distractions, takes you away from your studies, etc . .. , but instead, she thought they used too much electricity and we should probably try to go without. College students, going without music, television and video games. Wacky lady.

2. What canceled tv show do you miss?
Sports Night – an Aaron Sorkin show with amazing, crisp writing. And the X Files – what a fun premise. Mulder is still out there, looking for the truth.

3. Tells us a little about your home country. (Question stolen from an ESL study site. What fun this will be.)
Messovania – A less than tiddy, but completely harmless country, cluttered across the hills of southeast Europe. We speak the language of vodka and beer and serve cookies and leftovers for breakfast.

4. What are your top five traffic rants?
The tendancy to come to a complete stop before making a right turn!
No use of blinkers when changing lanes, especially in freeway traffic.
That overpolite old guy at a stop sign who insists on waving other folks through, rather than going through himself.
No alleys in suburbs! Where the hell are the short cuts! (I also hate alleys in the city that are fenced off from traffic.
Parking lots with direction markers to herd the cars into parking places with one way traffic.

5. A person who does not like you and would have something to say, might say what?
Roy is flippant, will say just anything and talks to damn loud! It wouldn’t kill him to do a sit up!

Friday Fives

1. What was the last dream you remember?
Last night, I dreamed about this big meeitng we are going to have at work today. And we had to rearrange a lot of the conference rooms, because a huge contingent of Marines was marching over to participate in the meeting. Very odd.

2. Do you believe in Dog?
The family dog, Bruno could be a diety. I think I could believe in him and his spirit, certainly. When he barks, I listen. I obey.

3. What is the most expensive item you have ever broken?
I am sure something from my clumsy, clumsy teenage boy past. I worked on the high school stage, running lights and the facility for folks who rented the hall. Once I spilled water on the old, electrical light board – causing it to instantly weld – and I am pretty certain when all was said and done, that it was broken forever.

4.The Stockshow is in town. Let’s contemplate. Would you have a problem eating horse meat and why or why not? How about goat.
The idea of horse meat repulses me. Don’t really know why. I imagine it as tough and greasy. I have had goat and it is a lot like lamb. Doesn’t mean it is automatically good. Like lamb, it ihas to be prepared delicately, but it can be wonderful.

5. What is your favorite time of day?
I like mornings. The calm, the quiet, the reenergized spirit. About 5 or 6 am when all is well in the world.

Friday Fives (Or For This Week, Six.)

Last week’s Friday 5’s got me to thinking about karma, and good versus bad bahavior. Thus, I’m posing some follow-up questions about what does or doesn’t constitute the building of good karma. I’ve been kicking these around in my mind this week, so please review and discuss: (submitted by Rev_Ed.)

1. If you perform a good act, but with bad intentions (i.e., you’re angry or hateful about doing it), does it still count as good karma?
I say no. Karma is all about intentions.

2. If there’s an accidental good outcome to something you did, can you count it in your karma column? Is there truly such a thing as an accident?
That is not a Karmic act, that is a result of Karma – Karma came in for you in the clutch.

3. What about white lies? Is it bad karma to say something you don’t mean–knowing that it’s nicer than what you were thinking?
Intentions once again. If your intent, through the white lie was to do good, I think it would “count” in the good karma category.

4. Is a bad intention at all on the same level as a bad act? (For example, is thinking “I’d like to see him killed,” on the the same degree as ‘pulling an MJ?’) Christianity, and some criminal statutes seem to think so, but I don’t happen to agree.
Yes. See above (Don’t you folks watch Earl on NBC? Weekly Karmic life lessons, y’all.)

5. Is it good/bad to stick up for yourself, knowing that doing so will inflict harm on others?
I think sticking up for self is a selfless act of preservation and part of the karmic balance. Yes, you can defend yourself. The strength of the karmic “bump” would in how you choose to defend yourself. Using words over a shotgun would perhaps give a more nuanced flow to the ying and yang of the karmic web.

6. What obligation, if any, do we all have to look out for each other?
That, my friends, was the Buddha’s greatest lesson. For that matter, Jesus and Mohammed as well all taught that the secret of life and soiety is to step back from personal gain and instead take time to look out for each other. Getting back to that message and away from the inevitable greed is part of the great Karmic puzzle.

The Friday Fives

1. What word irks you every time you hear someone say it?
Irregardless

2. What is your favorite word?
Lately, I am smitten by “Whilst”

3. Name three words you think other people overuse:
I am a Republican

4. What is your opinion on karma?
I think that certainly a case can be made that there is a Karmic balance in the world, that one action is balanced by another.

5. If you take the good and you take the bad, what do you get? (Not too obscure teevee theme song referencing the circle of life.) Are there other karmic koans to be found in our media?

Outwit, outplay, outlast ( from Survivor A koan,yes. Karmic, perhaps not?)

Friday Fives

1. What is your most prized material possession?
I think its my Bose stereo. I love the sound, I love the convenience. I have never given this much thought until now.

2. What item, that you currently own, have you had the longest?
I have a few books that I have owned since high school days. There are some knick knacks that I have had around all my life. BUt saying that, I can’t quite put my finger on them exactly. Probably this childhood picture of me when I was four. That is the oldest personal belonging I think.

3. Are you a packrat?
Yes, I am. I have way too much stuff and dread throwing anything away.

4. Do you prefer a spic-and-span clean house? Or is some clutter necessary to avoid the appearance of a museum?
Do you even know me? Clutter is unfortunately part of my inate gene pool. I know no other way.

5. Do the rooms in your house have a theme? Or is it a mixture of knick-knacks here and there?
See above. Lots of knick knacks and a thematic mixture.

Friday Fives

Random mix:

1. Write the most boring sentence ever.
When approaching a stop light, begin to depress the brake pedal slowly, and depressing the clutch in a manner that allows you to shift the gear box into a lower gear – whereby the car will come to a timely halt at the intersection, allowing the driver to assess the proper traffic sequence and determine whether it is safe to continue through the intersection, or instead, await for safe passage as other cars motor through.

2. If you life were a “Law and Order” episode, who would play who in the cast?
It would be Lenny, that is a given, what with the wisecracks and all. Ed would have to be my crime fighting partner. Julz, the Lt. But who will be the victim. Dohhhm, Dohhhhm.

3. In 50 words or less, describe your childhood.
Idyllic bliss in a nieve village full of coal and cold. 1970s, small town, black and white television and snow. So much snow.

4. What is/are your (non-sexual) turn on(s)?
Raspberries. Oh my do I delight at Raspberries.

5. In six degrees, what famous person are you related to?
No one living that I know of. I am told by familiy lore that we are related to Brigham Young and Butch Cassidy.

Friday Fives

1. What did you want to be when you grew up?
In High School, I had visions of becoming a director or some sort of behind the scenes job in theater. When I returned to college after the army, I intended on becoming a teacher.

2. Did you follow through? If not, what happened?
Neither happened, but I don’t know why, really. Various circumstances, of which some made sense and others didn’t. I am now just a a corporate middle manager – making a decent wage but not necessarily living the dream.

3. Is your life turning out the way you thought it would when you were a kid?If not, is it better or worse?
I am happy living in the city and surrounded by tons of friends and family. I never had the dream to be married with 2.5 kids and living in in a little house surrounded by a white picket fence. Mostly, I am happy.

4. Paradoxes aside, if you could time-travel back to when you were 10 years old, what would you tell your 10-year-old self
Go to law school. Pay more attention when the pretty girls flirt with you.

5. Do you think the child you were, would like the adult you’ve become?
Since I am not necessarily that mature, I think my child self would fine me lots of fun.