Yesterday morning, James Bow tagged me with a meme. What sort of meme? “Share six non-important things/habits/quirks about (my)self.”
1) My eyes change color. They can go from a pale green to a dark grey, with stops in-between at brown and blue. I’ve sometimes wondered if it’s diet. Or, in my stranger moments, I wonder if my consciousness has slipped into a parallel universe. I wrote a Deep Space Nine short story for the Strange New Worlds contest based on the latter premise a few years ago; then I read Jonatham Letham’s “Five Fucks,” and decided Letham had done that story better than I ever could.
2) Sometimes when I wake at night, I feel like my body isn’t mine. It’s not shaped right. Maybe my hair is wrong, or my arms are in the wrong places (or I don’t have enough arms). It’s a strange feeling, due probably to the brain being in one place — deep REM sleep — and the body in a different place.
3) I think sequels to 1980’s movies that were probably never intended to have sequels would be a good idea, and feed into Hollywood’s nostalgia kick. I have plots in mind for sequels to Dead Poets Society and Three Men and a Baby/Little Lady, for instance. In the former, it’s a school reunion some twenty years after the events of the film. In the latter, Mary goes off to college. And I think the latter film is viable; I mean, just what are Ted Danson, Steve Gutenberg, and Nancy Travis doing this days, hmm? It’s not a bad writing trick; take an old movie, and imagine what the characters are doing twenty years later.
4) I have never read Watchmen. Oh, I’ve started Watchmen, I’ve started Watchmen many times, and I find that I. Just. Don’t. Care. I honestly blame the writing, not the artwork. I think Dave Gibbons’ artwork is fine and evocative. There’s something about Alan Moore’s writing that doesn’t click with me. Take From Hell. I’m quite iffy on From Hell, but I may have gone into the book with mistaken intentions. I thought Moore was writing a serious look at the Jack-the-Ripper murders, so when he takes what is roundly considered to be the least plausible theory of the murders (so implausible that the writer who came up with the theory admitted years later that it was all a hoax), it’s difficult to take the story at all seriously. Moore is obviously brilliant, but his brilliance doesn’t work for me. I probably wouldn’t have liked his issues of Radioactive Man, either.
4) I’ve never drunk a Budweiser. With so many different beers to choose from in the store, I never gravitated that way. Today, I’d probably look at a Bud and say, “But I can see through that! It’s obviously not dark enough! How can anyone drink that?” Same with Coors and Miller, though I did sample both of those in college.
5) When I went to work for EB Games, I didn’t own a video game console. And I didn’t — for eighteen months. Which meant that I didn’t play the games I was selling — because I couldn’t play the games I was selling.
6) I didn’t like The X-Files. I’d watch it, but… I didn’t like it.
Anyone who wants to play, feel free. Six random factoids about you. 🙂