Everything we do tonight is wrong, wrong, wrong

[sovay]

From kraada, a meme. I will be out of town for the weekend and potentially AWOI (absent without internet), so my replies may take a few days, but—

Comment and I will:

1. Tell you why I added you to my friends list and/or why I keep you there.

2. Associate you with something. A song, a color, a work of art, a character in a play, a piece of fruit. SOMETHING.

3. Tell you something I like about you.

4. Tell you a memory I have of you/us.

5. Associate you with a character from a book or a film.

6. Ask something I've always wanted to know about you. (Or else I'll just ask a random question. I reserve that right.)

7. Tell you my favorite user pic of yours.

8. In return, you must spread this disease in your LJ.

Comments

[shirei-shibolim.livejournal.com]

Hit me.

[sovay]

1. I consider you one of my more awesome friends: therefore, even if I rarely manage to speak to you twice in the same month (for which I have no real excuse: I am a lousy correspondent), at least this way I can keep some tabs on you and in the process appreciate the always informed and quirkily intellectual weirdness that your brain seems to run on.

2. A kiwi fruit. I will contemplate why.

3.You made bread at odd hours of the night and chanted the Kaddish with voiced glottals and emphatic consonants and announced your engagement with such conversational deadpan, it was almost lost in the cumin seeds.

4. The "Volga Boatmen" retrograde inversion.

5. Gilgamesh Wulfenbach, from Phil and Kaja Foglio's Girl Genius.

6. What language would you most like to hear spoken?

7. "You crazy mammals!"

[larryhammer]

If it weren't for #8, I'd be in.

---L.

[sovay]

If it weren't for #8, I'd be in.

You can make it up in memic karma.

1. You invented a Greek myth. Dude.

2. The Mountain Goats' "The Anglo-Saxons."

3. You are evaluating The Canterbury Tales on a scale of ninjas. I repeat: dude.

4. You provided excellent conversation about Princess Tutu. Of which I still need to see the second half.

5. Hexel Barr, from Patricia McKillip's Song for the Basilisk.

6. Which verse form do you most wish you could write straight off the top of your head?

7. In practice, I have only ever seen the stick figure Some Guy. But looking at your page of icons, I strongly approve of the sexy Enceladus.

[zdenka]

Mrreow?

[sovay]

1. With your interests in opera and supporting characters, it would be extremely unintelligent of me to ignore you.

2. Bob Dylan's "Sad-Eyed Lady of the Lowlands."

3. You speak cat.

4. This year at Halloween, you carved the most classical pumpkin I have ever seen.

5. Adam Wayne, from G.K. Chesterton's The Napoleon of Notting Hill.

6. What role—in the theatrical genre of your choice—would you most like to perform?

7. It used to be "But why is the tea gone?" (And, of course, now the icon is itself gone.) I therefore vote for the radish that knows no Greek.

[cucumberseed.livejournal.com]

Sure.

Shoot.

[sovay]

1. The way you put together words, whether in poems or stories, is like reading another language, where all the allusions and triggers and even the basic import of images are vastly different: I'm trying to learn its grammar. And even if I don't, I'll keep reading.

2. The Squirrel Nut Zippers' "Wash Jones."

3. Reading your political posts is like pocketing razorblades. I mean this positively.

4. You sent me CDs, for no binding reason, and I really liked them.

5. Keller, from Lloyd Alexander's Westmark Trilogy.

6. If you had to describe yourself in lyrics, which song?

7. The slice of watermelon, now that I know the nightmare behind it.

[schreibergasse.livejournal.com]

What the heck, I'm in. I'll get round to putting it on my page eventually.

Though now I'm trying to figure out what piece of fruit you are...

Everything we do tonight is wrong, wrong, wrong

Seconded.

[sovay]

1. You are a polymathic geek of the first water. I think our brains pick up some of the same radio static. I have just lost my license to mix metaphors.

2. The kumquat.

3. More than occasionally, you react to particularly interesting information with an approving headbang and sign of the horns.

4. On observing me to bite the end off an ice cream cone and vampirize out the remainder of the ice cream, you declared that I must be your long-lost, alternate-universe twin.

5. Telemain, from Patricia C. Wrede’s Enchanted Forest Chronicles.

6. What is the first book you remember reading?

7. The photograph of you and . . . whatever it is you have on your fork . . . is particularly charming.

Though now I'm trying to figure out what piece of fruit you are...

Oh?

[kraada.livejournal.com]

I like tagbacks :)

[sovay]

1. You are the first friend I made at Brandeis. I plan to know you for the rest of my life. End of story.

2. Dave Carter and Tracy Grammer's "Lancelot." I know I've used it before, but it's true.

3. I can talk to you about anything. And probably at any hour of the night, too.

4. Well, you already took both the Sign-Seeker's Chant and Most College Day Ever, so . . . This is a memory of you, for which you were not there. The first time I ever tasted limoncello, homemade, when I was in Rome for the first time in 2004, I still describe the flavor as a very small lemon-flavored nuclear bomb going off in one's sinuses, but the very first thing I thought was, "I am going to have to see if I can bring some of this home for Joel."

5. Oscar Hopkins, from Oscar and Lucinda (1997).

6. Would you choose to live in another world?

7. You never seem to use the dragon icon, and I do like it.

[setsuled.livejournal.com]

Well. I suppose you could always do more writing . . .

[sovay]

Well. I suppose you could always do more writing . . .

That's my other deadline . . .

1. Your dialogues on movies are unfailingly interesting and I love your comics.

2. Recoil (with Nicole Blackman)'s "Breath Control."

3. I speak only from experience of Boschen and Nesuko and Moving Innocent, but your characters have the ability to shift from consistently smile-worthy humor to punch-in-the-heart pain with as little as a line of dialogue or a shift of expression between panels: and then back. I do not know if that is a balance I could pull off, much less maintain.

4. You set me up with a prince.

5. Tadhg Conneelly, from The Secret of Roan Inish (1994).

6. Where does your name come from?

7. I'm inexplicably fond of the one with Donald Duck about to be grabbed around the throat by a book.

[nineweaving.livejournal.com]

Mrf?

Nine

[sovay]

1. I convinced you to get a livejournal, so it would have been fairly shabby of me not to read it. But also you wrote a book that was autumn in almost all the ways that are important to me.

2. The color that comes with winter twilight, the luminous smoke-blue that fills the sky down into the streets and clings to the edges of things, branches, house-eaves, streetlights, so that you expect to breathe it in with the cold: there is an incredible depth behind that color, and it takes up space.

3. Your apartment is what branch libraries want to be when they grow up.

4. We were once accidentally locked inside an ornamental garden at Harvard.

5. Doctor Dianus Shaachen, from Tanith Lee's Faces Under Water.

6. Do you see any of your characters as avatars of yourself?

7. The one with your illustration of the tinker.

[mlle-rouge.livejournal.com]

Mmm... this makes me a little bit anxious ^^

[sovay]

1. Curiosity.

2. Jacques Brel's "Je suis un soir d'été."

3. Many of your posts are in the language of memoir, not text message or e-mail update: even when they discuss academic schedules and Nine Inch Nails, they could be published and read fifty years from now.

4. You shared with me the spam names Antigonus Probert and Libitina Loving, which I still think deserve their own story.

5. Antonina Scarabin, from Tanith Lee's "Stained with Crimson."

6. What is the origin of your username?

7. The default with the mask: it should illustrate something.

[dasheiff.livejournal.com]

Comment.

[sovay]

1. I was the Archmage; you were Locutus.

2. Pearl Jam's "Off He Goes."

3. Because of you, I read Gene Wolfe.

4. You came cross-dressed to Halloween, and kraada came as you, and my brother has never been quite sure since which one of you was the real dasheiff.

5. Ismaël Vuillard, from Rois et reine (2004).

6. Do you still own the tweed jacket?

7. The dasheiff-die.

[palecast.livejournal.com]

I think this will be a challenge - but maybe you like challenges. :-)

[sovay]

but maybe you like challenges. :-)

Well, from what I know of your livejournal . . .

1. The photographs you post are as luminous as their descriptions.

2. Don Mandarin's "The Medlar."

3. You write otherworlds that are not comfortable.

4. You asked me to translate a Greek inscription. That doesn't happen nearly as often as I'd like.

5. Janette, from Forever Knight (1992—1996).

6. What music matters most to you?

7. The stone angel.

[xterminal.livejournal.com]

In love and in trouble, I guess.

[sovay]

1.Your knowledge of music and film seems to be encyclopedic. Likewise your reviews of the same.

2 Orgy's "Fiction (Dreams In Digital)."

3. Your music recommendations are so far infallible.

4. You wrote an incredible review for me, and then you wrote another one, and I believe you both times.

5. The Hermit, from any pack of Tarot cards.

6. Badgers?

7. The Da Vinci Badger.

[strange-selkie.livejournal.com]

We HAVE the internet in Maryland, you know.

[sovay]

We HAVE the internet in Maryland, you know.

Yes: and I am using it! But I wasn’t sure ahead of time whether I would be monopolizing your computer, and that did not seem a bright idea to me.

1. In person, I see you even less frequently than I see shirei_shibolim, and this needs to stop.

2. The clementine. Duh.

3. You can write historical fiction: you know all the right details to catch the flavor of the time.

4. The Leonids we watched fall from outside the Castle, freezing and eating winter fruit and singing.

5. Ryan, from Susan Cooper's Seaward.

6. What genre of food do you most like to cook?

7. Zachor.

[ap-aelfwine.livejournal.com]

Well, an you've the time and inclination, I'd be grateful.

Enjoy your weekend!

[sovay]

1. You play traditional Irish music on several instruments and have a fascinating family history.

2. Andy M. Stewart's "The Errant Apprentice."

3. You translate beautifully.

4. When you wrote out your username, I thought it was Welsh.

5. Des Helani, from Doris Egan's Two-Bit Heroes.

6. What is your native accent?

7. When you get one, I’ll let you know . . .

[wind05.livejournal.com]

I don't even know how you pronounce "meme"

[sovay]

I don't even know how you pronounce "meme"

To rhyme with "theme," I believe. I am fairly certain the common internet usage is a bastardization of the original definition, which has more to do with the cultural equivalent of genes—transmissable packets of information; technologies, melodies, superstitions—than with humorous questionnaires, but that's language for you.

1. Because I only now found out you have a livejournal.

2. The Devil’s Interval's "Studying Economy."

3. You have the talent of making anecdotes about your life into full-fledged performances of storytelling, even casually, which I prize.

4. You pointed to a lengthily incomprehensible acronym of a sign over the inner lintel of the restaurant's door and said, "If I tell you what it means, will you buy me a drink?"

5. Vir Cotto, from Babylon 5 (1994—1998).

6. If you left Catholicism (if one can leave Catholicism), toward what other faith, if any, would you gravitate?

7. I had actually been meaning to ask what yours is . . .

[gaudior.livejournal.com]

I totally want to ask, and I totally doubt that I'll have the time to do it in my journal.

But still?

(also, hi!)

[sovay]

(also, hi!)

Hi!

1. Best. Cousin. Ever.

2. Robyn Hitchcock's "Sometimes A Blonde."

3. Your customary greeting is "Be hugged!" with whose awesomeness not even the unwieldy nature of the English passive imperative can interfere.

4. You were the only person I'd ever met who had read Peter S. Beagle's The Folk of the Air without me first telling them to.

5. Florian de Lacey, from Mary Gentle's Ash: A Secret History.

6. If you were an anime character and your hair could not be pink, what color would it be?

7. "Bunny!"

[catvalente.livejournal.com]

Me please?

[sovay]

1. You mythologize. And beautifully.

2. Jill Tracy, "Quintessentially Unreal."

3. Ezekiel, the Monkey, is on the list of favorite characters I have been keeping since my sophomore year of college.

4. You referred to an escape of tzatziki from the gyros we were eating at the Greek restaurant in Madison as a "bukkake moment."

5. Morgause, from Elizabeth E. Wein's The Winter Prince.

6. Would you change your name legally to Apollonia?

7. "Dear Ezra . . ."

[chriscrick.livejournal.com]

Yeah, but, but, I don't actually keep a journal like this. My account is solely for the purpose of making snarky asides in _other_ people's posts.

[sovay]

My account is solely for the purpose of making snarky asides in _other_ people's posts.

I got a livejournal in order to read friends' locked posts. Look where that got me.

1. Because in case you ever post anything, I want to read it!

2. The Comedian Harmonists' "Mein kleiner grüner Kaktus."

3. You are a jack of all trades and master of an impressive number thereof.

4. Your homebrewed stout was, to date, one of exactly three beers I have ever wanted to drink again.

5. Verdialos, from the Liavek anthologies (primarily in the contributions by Pamela Dean, whose invention I believe he is).

6. Do you have a middle name?

7. The only one you have: you look decently like yourself.

[upstart-crow.livejournal.com]

Hokay, if you still are up for playing I'd be curious :)

(Though my LJ pics are kind of embarrassing, mostly HP-related and out of date).

[sovay]

1. You write interestingly. Do I need a better reason?

2. Lal Waterson, "The Flight of the Pelican."

3. You wrote an entire verse play about the redemption of Iago and it was good.

4. Our nightlong e-mail conversations.

5. BZ Gundhalinu, from Joan D. Vinge's The Snow Queen, World's End, The Summer Queen.

6. How many of your poems do you consider autobiographical?

7. "I WRITE LIKE A MOFO!"