Ultramundane: It’s Just Not Natural

Who was your first celebrity crush?
Submitted by Glory.

It wasn't really a crush, but it's embarrassing so I'll blog about it. I had a *cough* well-worn copy of People magazine as a teenager which had shirtless pictures of both Vince Neil and David Lee Roth in it. They both had hairy chests in the waxed-and-shaved 80s. Like I say, calling it a crush would glamorize it more than it was.

For me I have to know someone personally before I can have a "crush" on them. Otherwise I'm just lusting after their body. And that list of celebrities would be far too long to list…

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How do you pass the time during a flight?  What do you bring in your carry-on?

I always over-pack. I usually bring along two books, an iPod, a Nntendo DS with multiple games, a sheet of sudoku puzzles, notepad and pens…and then, if we're flying on JetBlue, I end up watching the Food Network or HGTV for the entire flight and ignore all of it.

That's not that much in your carry-on, you might say. But you didn't know about the toothbrush and toothpaste, the first aid supplies, the mints, the travel pillow, the spare shirt, the spare underpants (if I'm feeling particularly skittish about my luggage), the earplugs, the bottle of water, the snack, the camera, the umbrella, a file with every piece of information about our trip and the destination I could find. I really wish I could be one of those people who lives out of a single bag or a carry-on bag for a month or two but I'm getting better.

Either that or my arms are getting stronger.

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What's your favorite Thanksgiving dish?
Submitted by Brennan.

Please, for the love of all that is holy, use vegetable broth in some of the stuffing that you cook outside the bird. Unless you want to see a grown man break down and cry at your Thanksgiving table (and not get invited back next year.) Thank you.

**begins to salivate**

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Did you dress up today?  See any good costumes?

Today at work I'm dressed in earth-tones, in a linen shirt and vest…and I have a yellow balloon tied in the shape of an exclamation mark sticking up above me from a headband…I'm a Quest-Giving NPC from World of Warcraft.

Alternately, I am the biggest nerd ever.

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What is your earliest memory? 
Submitted by Megan.

Memories are funny things; they can seem so real, and yet are completely ephemeral.

I think I am about three years old; I'm standing in front of my parent's house in the late morning or early afternoon holding my mother's hand. She's dressed in a very pretty outfit, and my father, who's also dressed nicely, is standing down the walkway next to the El Camino taking a picture of us. While he is trying to compose the photo, I remember seeing at the Japanese Maple trees and the sky framing him as he framed us.

Neither of my parents can recall this event. And no picture like it has ever surfaced. Every time I think of it, I feel like I could reach out and touch the trees, or my mother's pant leg. But the truth of it dissipates like smoke. Did I dream it? Is it an amalgam of memories that never happened together? I will never know for certain.

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What song or lyrics are stuck in your head at the moment?  What album is it from?
Submitted by Lox Ly. 

I didn't have anything stuck in my head until I saw this. Now I've got Kylie Minogue's "Can't Get You Out Of My Head" stuck in there. Damn. Thanks a lot, Vox.

Update: actually a number of songs cycle through my head, all the time. I once made a double CD of songs that had stuck in my head for a week-long period. Which only helped to reinforce all those songs getting stuck in my head again.

But really, at the moment the song that's running in my head is "Down in the Park" by Gary Numan (or Tubeway Army, to be specific), off of Replicas. I just caught him in concert last week and am feeling slightly bolstered in my Gothness. (Even if I am wearing khakis again today.)

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What is your browser's default home page set to?
Submitted by Kelev T. Cat.

about:blank, baby. Nothing says "home" like clean white sheets.

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What’s the nerdiest thing about you?

I actually tend more towards the geek portion of the geek-nerd-dork trianglation. Nerd implies concentrated focus at the expense of another positive trait, such as hygiene or social skills. I have a bunch of geeky interests, I work in a geeky industry, My friends are mostly geeks–the nerds being the ones too busy with their Gundam models or solving Pi to 2 million digits to bother (or the folks whose phone calls I avoid.)

But for all the bad talking I’m doing about “nerdiness”, these are also the people who understand some topic so deeply, so completely as to block out everything else, at least for a while. Instead I’m just a geek of many flavors, master of none.

Though it’s pretty nerdy to use the word “triangulation” in a sentence.