Jan 4th 2007 10:33 pm Five things you didn’t know about me
Because rAchel can get me to do just about anything. I don’t follow too many personal weblogs anymore, and I know for certain that very few people follow mine, so the tag will stop here. If you’re reading this and want to keep it going, you are free to do so. Edit: I can at least tag Collin on this one, since he recently resurrected his weblog.
For a long time I have believed in behaving in a way that, were anyone to ask me any question about myself, I would be able to answer, and answer honestly. It has been a long time since I have believed that shame was a worthwhile emotion, so it’s hard for me to come up with things that few people know about me. The following are not particularly juicy or shocking, and for that I apologize. I’m going to have to work on this in the future :)
- I have been a diehard Final Fantasy fan since the days of the original Nintendo game which, despite its near total lack of organization and truly unfortunate translation, fascinated me. I played Final Fantasy I through V or VI, X, and X-2, even composing and submitting to Nintendo Power for publication a horrifying poem about (I believe) Final Fantasy II, ringing in at eight pages, 79 four-line stanzas. (It was thankfully not published) Certain people—rightly—do their best to not let me forget this sad period of my life. More recently, between university and grad school, I became hopelessly addicted to the MMORPG Final Fantasy XI, clocking many months of play hours over the period of one year on two separate characters, and making some friends with whom I still keep in touch. It took six weeks traveling around Mexico to bring myself to quit. To summarize: you are far from the only serious geek around here.
- If there is a deadline, 99% of the time I will meet it and do a good decent job. No matter how early I begin work, though, I am entirely incapable of not working up until the very very very last minute (typically approximately half an hour before it is due and several days or weeks after I "planned" to finish). Nothing I have found can solve this: not other more interesting projects, not potential social engagements, not travel prospects, not anything. It is, for me, the lowest common denominator between my natural perfectionism and my attempts to be rational about how perfectionist I can reasonably be in an environment like grad school without sacrificing things I am unwilling to sacrifice. This, unfortunately, means that, though I have given myself three weeks to write a 15-page paper that should reasonably take one week to research and write, I will instead start a week later than I meant to and take 300% of my projected time to actually complete it.
- If I had to name one thing that qualifies as a “pet peeve”, it would most definitely be insinuation (with guilt trips being a close second). I am very intolerant of insinuation in my personal relationships. The need to insinuate something almost always refers to something negative: a complaint, a disagreement. To quote the Dixie Chicks: “Come on baby, say it, do you think I’m gonna cry?” And then there is the good kind of insinuation: interest, attraction. I could use more of this in my life but, again, up to a point. Past that point, just say it. We’re all adults here, and I have always subscribed to Shakespeare’s “An honest tale speeds best, being plainly told” (Richard III, IV.4). Guilt trips, on the other hand, don’t make me guilty. They just make me angry, and are not an advisable course of action.
- I have very uncommon tastes in the way of physical attraction (for my age, culture, and socio-economic background). I don’t like blonde and skinny, I like brunette and full (though curly hair trumps everything). I tend to think people look their best when they’ve just woken up and are lazily dressed in sweatpants and a t-shirt, hair disheveled, eyes scarcely open. I detest makeup. I don’t like people to look like models or mannequins, because the former are rarely real people and the latter are MADE OF PLASTIC. People shouldn’t look like they’re made of plastic. While I appreciate the time and technique involved in “preparing” oneself, and am perfectly capable of appreciating the results, I typically find that people look better without the investment.
- I have fatally horrendous taste in women. As I get older my taste grows inexorably worse, which makes a great deal of sense since, the older those around me get, the more serious their own relationships become. In middle school and high school it was always the rare smart, pretty, and (inevitably) popular girl. At university it was first the girl with a long-distance boyfriend, then the physically present boyfriend, then the fiancé, then the husband. More recently, the emotionally unavailable recent divorcées (note the plural), since they seem to be the only people I meet who are not undergraduates, who themselves grow younger every year. I don’t think it can get much worse than this, so let’s hope things are looking up.