The Republic of T.

Remember back in 2004, when Dubya won re-election and liberals started threatening to move to Canada? Well, maybe I should have considered it. Because according to OECD’s Better Life Index, Canada is where I belong.

But, I’m still not moving to Canada.

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According to this brief quiz, that’s what I am.

Eh. I don’t know about all that. My social network activity is limited to about as many sites as I can count on both hands (with unused fingers left over). I’ve toyed with Twitter, had fun with Flickr, logged on to LinkedIn, and finally embraced Facebook, to name a few. But not much more than that. There are just too many out there.

So, What kind of Social Media User are you?

This post at The Best Article Every Day reminded me of a meme I launched years and years ago, on USENET. (I told you it was years ago.)

Let’s say you get your hands on a brand new Time Machine. Whether it’s the old-school H.G. Wells chair model, or a tricked-out DeLorean, you’ve now got to decide what you’re going to do with your new toy. But before you run off and start messing up your life, sleeping with your grandmother, and investing in Google stock before the Internet was invented, we’ve got a few ideas for you. Here are 15 moments in time, both past and future, that you may want to just witness before you go and do what you’re inevitably going to do, and ruin everyone’s universe.

I can’t claim to have invented it, since I got it the idea from a book (and apparently plenty other people have thought of it). But I thought it might be fun to launch again. (If anybody’s out there.)

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If this doesn’t bring a smile to your face and/or a tear to your eye… Well, I don’t know what to say.

Playing For Change | Song Around The World “Stand By Me” from Concord Music Group on Vimeo.

More after the jump.

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Because I’m not sure that I’m going to get around to doing any “real” writing today (though I’ve got a couple of things on tap to post tomorrow), this meme I came across via Liza looked like fun.

Eric and I recently discovered a shared fascination with the slew of impossibly named NPR hosts we listen to every day: Renee Montagne, Steve Inskeep, Corey Flintoff, Korva Coleman, Kai Ryssdal, Dina Temple-Raston.

In fact, we’ve often wondered what it would be like to be one of them. A Nina Totenberg or a Renita Jablonski. A David Kestenbaum or a Lakshmi Singh. Even (on our most ambitious days) a Cherry Glaser or a Sylvia Poggioli.

So finally, after years of Fresh Air sign-off ambitions, we came up with a system for creating our own NPR Names. Here’s how it works: You take your middle initial and insert it somewhere into your first name. Then you add on the smallest foreign town you’ve ever visited.

Uh-oh. I knew there’d be a problem. “Then you add on the name of the smallest foreign town you’ve ever visited”?

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I wasn’t tagged for this, but after coming across Jill’s post, I couldn’t resist.

Julian has tagged me with a meme: The five most embarrassing tracks on my iPod. His are pretty great/horrendous (I too remember feeling like a super-hardcore 7th grader for loving “NIN,” and I too went to several “DMB” concerts). But here’s the thing: I have tons of embarrassing music on my iPod, but the most embarrassing of the embarrassing comes from this dude who I’m currently hanging out with who has the worst taste in music possibly ever (he’s pretty sweet in just about every way, but looking at his iTunes makes me want to weep). So he may or may not have sent me songs not only by Hilary Duff, but also by JoJo and Jordin Sparks. Yeah. I also may or may not have put both songs on repeat and muted my computer so that it would look like I listened to both of them when I haven’t.

Oh boy. I have something like something like over 4,000 songs on my 30 GB video iPod. There’s plenty of embarrassing stuff there.

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I’m somewhat disappointed.

60% Geek

Created by OnePlusYou

Perhaps I would have done better if I’d watched more Star Trek.

[Via Living the Scientific Life.]

This reminds me of my days as co-director of the LGBT student group in college. Once a semester, we’d spend at least one meeting sitting in a circle, telling our coming our stories when new members showed up. We stopped after we realize we could go around the room and tell each others’ stories.

How gay am I? How gay are you? Well, it’s anybody’s guess. But there’s a questionnaire that, while it won’t provide an answer, seems like an interesting diversion on an afternoon when I’m running on about two hour of sleep. I found it at Put ‘Em All On an Island, who got it from HiStoriesOfSex, who got it from wonder boy, who got it from addaboy, and after that I lost the thread.

Still, I’m too brain dead to think of anything serious to blog about. So, I’m joining the daisy chain. Check the questions after the jump, and feel free to chime in.

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Damn. I thought my score would have been higher than this.

Created by OnePlusYou

It guess it’s because I’ve been watching my language. Starting around the time Parker learned to talk.

[Via Respectful Insolence.]

Nothing like a blog meme to get you back into gear when you’re recovering from a huge conference, like the one I worked at earlier this week. So I have Dana to thank for getting me back to blogging, by tagging me for this rather interesting meme.

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I have to agree with Auguste, this is perhaps the best time waster ever. I won’t say how long I spent playing with it last night after everyone went to bed. It was time I probably should have spent sleeping. But it was the most undirected, unfocused time—time that’s not dedicated to doing what someone else needs or wants me to do—that I’ve had in a couple of months.

The rules are:

Here’s what you do: The article you get when you click this link is your band title.

The last four words of the last quote on this page is your album title (you will probably need to reload the page if you do more than one, if you’re like me.)

And the third picture, the upper right hand, will be your cover photo.

I’m adding a rule that you have to square off whatever picture you get, so that it’s a realistic album cover.

I did several of these last night, and these are the best of what I ended up with.
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You Are Vixen

Sexy and sultry, you’re the one all the other reindeer dream about. Why You’re Naughty: That fur pulling spat you got into with Dancer over Santa. Why You’re Nice: Because even when you’re nice, you’re still delightfully naughty!

I guess today is Lazy Blogging Day for me. This and the previous quiz come via Living the Scientific Life.

Your Holiday Personality is Social

For you, the holidays are all about spending time with people you love – and even those you kind of like. Host your own party – maybe even a few. Get people together for baking cookies, watching movies, and playing holiday charades.

Sounds about right. I’m busy making baked good and other stuff to give as gifts. This year it’s either White Chocolate Hazelnut and Cranberry Fudge or Milk Chocolate and Peppermint Fudge Topped with Candy Cane Pieces. In a pinch, I might whip up some Semi-Sweet Chocolate Orange and Hazelnut Fudge. If necessary.

I often complain about having seen so little of the world and not done so many things. I think it started when my best friend in high school spent senior year as an exchange student in Denmark, and I wished it could have been me. I vowed then that I’d travel later, that I’d see Europe and a bunch of other places. Here it is 20 years later, and I haven’t done it yet. And it’ll probably be years before I do it.

I’ve been to Canada, so I’ve been out of the country. And I’ve been to Hawaii, so I’ve been off the continent. But there’s still a lot of the world I haven’t seen, and at times it frustrates me. As a writer, I feel it limits me. How can I write about places I’ve never been? The novel I wrote for NaNoWriMo sits on my shelf, waiting to be revised, but I hesitate, because the plot I’d like to go with requires my characters to travel to countries I’ve only read about myself. Right now, the action doesn’t much beyond the D.C. area. Neither, for that matter, do I.

What made me think of all this was reading legalmoose’s “Stuff I’ve Done” post. After dwelling on stuff I still haven’t done, I thought I’d see how much I have done.
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I’ve never really called myself an atheist. But I don’t believe in a god; the Christian god or any other. And I don’t believe in a supreme being, an “intelligent designer,” a divine “watchmaker” or anything else. So what does that make me?

According to this test, a “spiritual atheist.”

Well, I was brought up in an organized religion, and as a result I definitely have baggage. Much of which is encapsulated in one of the questions on the quiz: “I was hurt deeply by religious people and have never forgiven them.”

Actually, I’d say I was deeply hurt by religion and have never forgiven it. People tend to use it as a weapon. I suppose I could apply the “Guns don’t kill people. People kill people.” Except my response to that is usually “Guns don’t kill people. People kill people, with guns.” And if you’d been shot a few times, you’d probably steer clear of guns and the people who tend to carry them.

Like I said before, I carry a bit of a grudge.

You Scored an A

You got 10/10 questions correct.It’s pretty obvious that you don’t make basic grammatical errors. If anything, you’re annoyed when people make simple mistakes on their blogs. As far as people with bad grammar go, you know they’re only human. And it’s humanity and its current condition that truly disturb you sometimes.

The It’s Its There Their They’re Quiz

Well, my English degree finally pays off.

Technorati Tags: memes

About You?

To be honest, I have no idea what this means.

What Your Hands Say About You

You are logical, analytical, and rational. You have good verbal skills. Idealistic and dreamy, you tend toward the impractical. You have a knack for getting yourself in sticky situations. Brainy and intelligent, you are intellectual to the point of being incomprehensible. Your emotions tend to be relaxed and uncomplicated. You don’t read too much into things.

Logical? Analytical? Rational? Isn’t that kind of the opposite of idealistic and dreamy? As far as being incomprehensible, some people have told me I am. If I can write that off to intelligence, I’ll take that. [Via Living the Scientific Life.]

Ramone is asking “When was your first gay kiss?”

The world as I knew it completely changed after my first gay kiss. I mean, I’d kissed girls before, but my first kiss with a guy confirmed all of the feelings I’d had buried inside for so long. It was almost like a fairy tale, especially since the guy was someone I’d had a crush on for a very long time. It was after that special moment with him at 17 that I started to dream of building a life with another man—a home, kids and all kinds of pets.

When was your first kiss?

Does it have to be the first time? Why not the first best time? I guess I ask because I’m one of those people who doesn’t have the fondest memories of the first guy I ever kissed.

Technorati Tags: gay, sex, sexuality

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How much of a man are you? A better question would be how much time (and lives) are wasted trying to answer that question, guys, to our own satisfaction, not to mention others. Right? Well, if you needed a handy yardstick, Popular Mechanics has kindly supplied us with a list of 25 skills every man should have?

Here at PM, where we at least try to do everything, we spent weeks fine-tuning our list of “25 Skills Every Man Should Know,” debating over whether certain items were too basic, too challenging or just too obscure. You can find a full how-to rundown of each one in the October issue of Popular Mechanics, which just hit newsstands. But for now, check out our carefully selected list below, then offer your own arguments and suggestions in the comments section below, or tell us how to perform your must-know skill by writing to us here…

How many do you have? I’ve made bold the ones I can claim.

Technorati Tags: current events, gender, masculinity, memes

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The Queen is dead. Long live the Queen. Of mean, that is. Leona may have gone to that great tax-shelter in the sky — though not before one last slap, leaving $12 million to her dog and strangely conditional trusts to her grandchildren — but there may be a new contender for the crown. While shopping for jewelry, Condoleezza Rice was heard to say to an exasperated clerk:

Condoleezza Rice may be willing to compromise at a Middle East negotiating table – but not at a jewelry counter.

Coit Blacker, a Stanford professor who is one of the secretary of state’s closest friends, recalls going into a shop where Rice asked to see earrings. The clerk showed her costume jewelry. Rice asked to see something nicer, prompting the clerk to whisper some sass under her breath.

Blacker remembers Rice tearing the woman to shreds.

“Let’s get one thing straight,” he recalls her saying. “You are behind the counter because you have to work for minimum wage. I’m on this side asking to see the good jewelry because I make considerably more.

I don’t know that an annual salary of $183,500 puts Condi in Leona’s bracket, but then again I also don’t know how much her total assets add up to. I do know that she’s serious about her shopping. There was that woman who scolded her for buying Ferragmos in the midst of the Katrina aftermath. She got dragged off by security.

Those two stories, plus one or two others I’ve read lately, have brought up one question in my mind: What is it about power/money/success, that it seems to come with a license to treat other people badly?

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