As per the inevitable... 25 Random Things

You know, it figures it took until the New York Times noticed it for this to get to me. As we all know, NYT Style feature = this meme is so over.

And yet, I find it too irresistible -- half because I've been a lazy blogger lately and can't come up with anything halfway decent on my own, and half because I figure if the NYT is up on this, then most people are no longer actively engaged in it but are instead refusing to do it, so now doing it is the new not-doing it.

I'm sure you know the drill, but: Once you've been tagged, you are supposed to write a note with 25 random things, facts, habits, or goals about you. At the end, choose 25 people to be tagged. You have to tag the person who tagged you. If I tagged you, it's because I think there's a shot you might actually do this, and not just hate me for tagging you.

1) My boyfriend is irked by my perpetual misuse of the word random, and I'm perpetuating that misuse by participating in this. I use it colloquially as most people do to mean "unexpected or unusual" when really it means "one thing out of all possibilities" (or something like that -- the statistics version). In this case, I think I may actually be using it correctly, but if I'm not, sorry!

2) I got the nickname Tiny Pants in college. A friend of mine found a pair of extremely small pants in a giveaway bin in one of the dorms, thought they were hilarious, and thought they'd fit me. They did, and one day I was wearing them in the library while passing notes (which were all in the form of haiku) with a friend, and I mentioned the pants in my poem. In reply his semi-obscene haiku had me refer to myself as "Tiny Pants." It stuck.

3) All of my books are organized by color. It actually makes them a lot harder to find (especially if I misremember what a spine looks like), but I just love the way it looks. My shirts, sweaters, and shoes in my closet are also organized by color.

4) I have worn something pink every day since October 1999, so I am coming up on ten years of wearing pink. I started this not because it's my favorite color (I'm not sure what my favorite color is), but because I dress in very different styles day-to-day (moreso when I was younger, less so now), and I wanted something that would unify my wardrobe and tie all these different crazy outfits together. I chose pink because it goes with every other color, but isn't obvious or easy like black. In college I went through long phases of doing specific pairings (pink and gray, pink and green, pink and brown), but now I just do something pink. As a result, I own a crazy amount of pink stuff. When I dust my apartment, the dust is tinted pink.

5) I own every single issue of Teen Vogue ever published. Yes, all of them. I picked up the second issue (with Ashanti on the cover) at Gristede's out of curiosity and the fact that its original cover price was under $2. I immediately became horribly fascinated, and hunted all over the city to find a newsstand copy of issue #1 (Gwen Stefani). A couple of years ago, I finally gave in to what was obvious and became a subscriber. And no, I don't read adult Vogue. It's all stories about like, plastic surgery and other rich people things. Teen Vogue is pretty much about dealing with mean girls and with your parents, accessorizing the crap out of vintage and designer clothing, and whatever Marc Jacobs is doing. It's relevant to my interests.

6) I named my dog and chose what type of dog to get based on a dream I had when I was in college. This was all in an unrealistic attempt to alter my life (I was really unhappy with the job I had at the time). In the dream, I was happy, and so I decided that getting the dog was the most realistic part of the dream that I could enact. Two weeks after I got the dog, I got a new job, which actually did change my life (and in ways that didn't involve peeing on my floor or chewing up my books). But I love my dog, and look at us now, she's about to turn six.

7) The summer between sixth and seventh grades, I made it my personal goal to read at least one hundred books, and did so. When I had serious friends-making issues upon beginning seventh grade at a private school, my mom was like, "Why don't you tell the kids about how you read one hundred books this summer?" This really underscored the disconnect for me between adult values and middle-school girl values.

8) My biggest fear is the circulatory system. I can handle, if I must, blood in the like, violence sense, but I just can't do it in the physiology sense. Hearing anything about platelets, arteries, plasma... it's making me feel ill just typing it. I attribute this to a viewing of an episode of Marcus Welby, M.D. about a hemophiliac at an especially tender age (no, I wasn't the one watching it, my grandparents were).

9) I've never mastered the rabbit-through-the-hole method of shoe-tying. Yes, I actually do the tie-the-two-loops-together thing. This possibly explains why I rarely wear shoes with laces.

10) I am hopelessly addicted to all the self-serve frozen yogurt places in San Diego (even if Adam Platt says froyo is so yesterday), especially Yogurt World. Especially the one in Mira Mesa. Anyway though, rather than being truly creative and mixing all the flavors and toppings together, I very carefully stratify my yogurt into layers -- yogurt, topping, yogurt, topping. Why? Because for me, the beauty of self-serve fro-yo (besides that it's delicious and cheap as all get out) is that I don't have to make a decision about what to get! I can just get it all, so it doesn't matter that I'm a ridiculously indecisive person. My most frequent combinations: Vanilla custard + cookie dough, cookies & cream + Oreos, original tart + raspberries, chocolate custard + yogurt chips, cappucino + Heath Bar. I then eat each layer verrrry carefully so they don't mix.

11) I'm realizing a lot of these are about me being obsessive or organizing things in specific ways ... which I guess also counts as being obsessive. This whole foods-not-touching obsession was actually worse when I was a little kid. I begged my mom to buy plates with dividers (she didn't), and often would try to get out of eating food which other dishes on my plate had touched. As a result I really wasn't into sauces -- I didn't eat gravy or really any condiments until I was in my 20s. The good news is, now I happily mix my foods and slather on the sauces... except when I'm eating frozen yogurt.

12) I'm proud of my ability to nurture house plants bought at mass retailers. Most people consider buying such plants to be the equivalent of like, taking them to a hospice or letting them die at home. I give my store plants a new lease on life! I have an IKEA jade plant that's nearly a bush and has been going for a few years, a robust hibiscus plant from Home Depot that I've brought back from near death several times, and a cyclamen from Trader Joe's that's on it's second flowering.

13) I try to only buy secondhand clothing. Why? One, it's cheaper. Two, I don't feel like I need to support companies churning out tons of new clothes that people don't need. Three, because of two, people are constantly getting rid of perfectly good clothing (clothing by Marc Jacobs even!). Now I know that buying used clothes is still semi-supporting the new-clothes industry, since these secondary markets wouldn't exist without primary ones, but I don't like the main alternative -- having all handmade clothes -- because that seems like a rich person's solution. Supporting places that sell used clothing seems more ethical to me. I've gotten lots of great stuff at (in descending order, from most expensive to least expensive): Buffalo Exchange (especially in SD and NY), Crossroads (especially in SF and Seattle), Value Village (in Seattle), Out of the Closet (in LA), and Goodwill (in Poughkeepsie!). (Also no, that doesn't mean I buy used underwear.)

14) I'm woefully monolingual. I took six years of Latin and two years of classical Greek, so while that means I've got lots of old-school cultural capital plus a big vocabulary, it also means I've never even studied a spoken language. Multilingual people amaze me.

15) I'm currently reading the newest Gossip Girl book (You Just Can't Get Enough, the second Carlyles one), and so far my favorite parts have been the art-freak girl using the word "heteronormative," a Vassar shout-out, and a Hegel reference. I'm also in theory currently reading this genuinely horrible Thomas Hine book and Discipline and Punish, both of which I've been stuck in for over a year and for about five months, respectively. I always read books in their entirety, regardless of how long it takes -- the only book I've ever started and chosen not to finish is The Devil Wears Prada, which I'm not even sure I made it through the first chapter of. Just thinking about it makes my blood boil! Honestly, I'm not a violent person, but if I ever meet Lauren Weisberger, I will punch her in the mouth. "I don't care about fashion! I went to Brown!" Errggghhh!

16) I have always wanted to be in a spelling bee but have never been. When I was in third grade, either a teacher or a teacher's aide tested my spelling, and after I had spelled every word correctly, she started picking random words and then words from a dictionary, trying to find one I'd get wrong. After I correctly spelled pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanoconiosis she gave up.

17) When people mistake me for an undergrad, I almost never correct them.

18) If you read this regularly, you probably wouldn't think I have any guilty pleasure songs, since a) I'm into sincerity and b) I admit regularly to thoroughly enjoying music that the majority of people find utterly reprehensible, so it would be surprising to find any music I enjoy that actually embarrasses me. However, this is not the case. My guilty pleasure songs include "Butterfly" by Crazy Town, "Rumpshaker" by Wreckz-N-Effect, and (the shame! the shame!) "Hollaback Girl." For the latter two, I can fall back on the fact that they're both produced by Pharrell Williams, but there's no excuse whatsoever for the first one.

19) Yes, I did read a lot of YA when I actually was a young adult. Or a tween, kid, whatever. I read Sleepover Friends starting in about second grade, a friend got me hooked on Sweet Valley Twins when I was in third grade, I quickly moved on to the Baby-sitters' Club, and in sixth grade or so, Sweet Valley High. I also liked horse-oriented series like the Saddle Club and even obscure ones like Riding Academy. I always thought any book with photos on the cover (Sunset Island, Freshman Dorm) was too cheesy to read so I didn't (I was right about the former, but the latter's a little bit awesome), and given how lame the game was, couldn't stomach the obvious pandering that was the Girl Talk series (yes, I was probably more cynical than the average ten-year-old). But my favorite series was The Fabulous Five. I loved that they made no apologies for being a ridiculous clique originally formed around ostracizing another girl (and even reified it with that nickname!), all had great hair (except for Beth), and with the possible exception of their super edition Caribbean vacay, always seemed to have relatively realistic things happen to them. My favorite of the five was Katie Shannon, because she had the best hair of all, was opinionated (okay, was judgmental), and was constantly torn between her mom's feminism-lite ideals and slumming it with Tony Calcaterra.

20) Yes, reading all of that back in the day is what inspired my interest in contemporary YA series. I actually started reading current YA books because of the controversy surrounding them -- having read so many of the books from the 80s/90s, I was curious whether the newer books were really that different (they are, but in significant ways other than the ones people make a big deal about). Considering I didn't like series books that had a thriller or mystery aspect to them growing up, weirdly the YA series I've enjoyed most as an adult both do: Pretty Little Liars and Private. I read a lot of other YA series (though very few single-title books) just to keep up with what's going on. And even though I do at this point have a terrifying and massive collection of 80s/90s YA, I don't read any of it unless I have to.

21) I always leave the web browser on my computer open to my current favorite image on the main page of Cute Overload. Corny, I know, but it's a nice little pick-me-up every time I go to my computer. I particularly favor images of rodents having birthdays.

22) I got glasses when I was eight years old. The first day that I had them was Halloween, and all the kids thought they were meant to be a costume. Sadly, they were very much not a costume. I still get that a lot though -- people think I'm wearing glasses to be fashion-y. I really wish I were. My vision is incredibly horrible, and I am always afraid of it getting worse.

23) I try really hard not to eat meat, but I don't always succeed. I love meat, but have a really hard time dealing with it morally. Also, by meat, I mean anything that had eyes -- I will never understand people who don't count fish (or worse, poultry) as meat. The day that meat without feet becomes a reality will be an extremely happy day for me. Until then, thank goodness for soyrizo and the like.

24) If I'm home alone, I always sing in the shower. I realize my neighbors can probably hear me through the vents, but given how much they slam their front door, this doesn't trouble me that much. Lately I've been favoring "You Are Everything" by the Stylistics (skip to about 2:30) and "I Get Weak" by Belinda Carlisle.

25) I've spent the morning doing this when I should have been going to the gym, reading for my field papers, or ideally both. I did however manage to do most of the other things I do every morning: Drink a cup of English breakfast tea with milk, eat a small bowl of vanilla yogurt with granola, and check my email, Facebook, the New York Times, Mediabistro, and I Can Has Cheezburger.

Damn, that was long. But if you're the kind of person who reads this blog anyway, this probably wasn't that different from my usual drecch, so I don't feel that bad.