100 Things About 100 Bloggers (via her Meeshness)

1. I was born in Hong Kong.
2. I haven't lived in a house (i.e. a free-standing single-family residence) since 1989.
3. My accent shifts slightly depending on where I live.
4. The best place I've ever lived is probably New York City. Or Paris. Hong Kong's nice, too.
5. I have lived in 7 cities on three continents.
6. I expect the numbers in #5 to grow.
7. I once worked the 6 a.m. shift at Jack-in-the-Box in Tempe, AZ. For a month.
8. I want to be a member of the idle rich.
9. I hate the idle rich.
10. I buy lottery tickets.
11. My favorite sandwich is thin-sliced roast beef on a baguette section with lettuce, tomatoes, onions, and mayo.
12. It's virtually impossible to get a good roast beef sandwich in East Asia. I know, I've looked.
13. The best salad dressing ever is good olive oil and balsamic vinegar.
14. I like chocolate.
15. I don't like chocolate ice cream.
16. I also don't like mint chocolate.
17. Some day, before I die, I'm going on an eating tour of France.
18. There are no great dim sum restaurants in New York. I know, I've looked.
19. If I could only eat one cuisine for the rest of my life, it'd be Chinese.
20. I don't know why they call English cuisine "food". It's not.
21. I know a great $13 California pinot noir.
22. I like the taste of coffee, black, no sugar.
23. I don't drink coffee.
24. I get The New York Review of Books, MacAddict, and National Geographic in the mail.
25. I wear a chef's jacket when I cook because I hate wearing aprons.
26. I like football.
27. I like opera.
28. I think that an opera about football would be a terrible idea.
29. I haven't driven a car on a daily basis since 1994.
30. I like sending postcards. People don't get enough real mail in their mail these days.
31. I have bought things off of Amazon wishlists for people I've never met.
32. The only truly essential piece of cooking gear is a really sharp knife.
33. I prefer my $20 chinese chef's chopper (actually made in Japan) to big expensive German knives costing ten times as much.
34. I wouldn't turn down the gift of a Global knife, though.
35. I need a job with more vacation days.
36. My favorite European city is Paris. It's a food thing. Budapest is nice, too.
37. I hate flying on airplanes. They take all the romance (19th century usage) out of travelling.
38. Road trips rule.
39. I have started collecting fountain pens.
40. I am a certified AOW diver.
41. Both of the previous two hobbies are really expensive so I don't get to enjoy them as much as I would like to.
42. Brown eyes.
43. Brown hair, for the time being.
44. I think that Tiger Woods should make more of a deal about the fact that he's half asian.
45. I am alleged to snore very loudly. This is something that I have never been able to confirm.
46. English is not my native language.
47. I've completely forgotten my native language.
48. I'm a pack rat.
49. I like shopping on-line.
50. I'm not very good at dating.
51. I would be a francophile save the fact that I don't speak French.
52. I have seven stitches on my left index finger.
53. I have six stitches above my right eye.
54. I have never broken a bone.
55. I still have the first CDs I ever bought.
56. I think that people who wear flip-flops in New York are stupid.
57. I believe the lottery is a tax on people who are bad at math.
58. Margarine is the work of the devil.
59. I used to think that Wil Wheaton was a dork until I read his blog. Now I know he's a dork. But in a good way.
60. I own every full-length Saint Etienne CD released in the US except for one.
61. The only two TV series I've made a point of watching every week are Star Trek: The Next Generation and Farscape.
62. Sunday afternoons in the fall were made for the NFL.
63. I'm a lousy pool player.
64. I'm a better poker player than I am a pool player.
65. I don't think that I'd like myself if I met myself.
66. My freshman year in college I lived in a dorm with a guy who looked almost exactly like me, but we never met.
67. I like organ music.
68. I like films with subtitles.
69. I like films with big explosions.
70. I really like films with subtitles AND big explosions.
71. I don't know why I like techno.
72. I lived without a television for five years.
73. Getting a cable modem changed my life.
74. I hate being tickled.
75. Most of the joints in my body will pop on demand.
76. Living in New York has greatly increased the percentage of my wardrobe that's black (or close enough).
77. I can't drink like I used to.
78. My favorite color is red.
79. My lucky number is 8.
80. I know how to throw a fastball, a circle change, and a curveball.
81. I consider being hapa to be a blessing.
82. I don't know enough about chinese cooking.
83. I was on the speech and debate team in high school.
84. The idea of settling down and putting down roots is foreign to me.
85. I'm tallest member of my family.
86. People think that I'm shorter than I am.
87. This is partly because I often don't stand up straight.
88. I have never been arrested, though I came close once.
89. I believe that Marx wrote the most penetrating critique of capitalism ever.
90. I believe that Marx was wrong about most of the other stuff, particularly the bit about the workers' paradise.
91. I own a t-shirt that says "I am an acquired taste". Yes, it's black.
92. I wear it in public.
93. I haven't listened to commercial radio in four years. Except for 1010 WINS and 880 WCBS. The radio in New York City blows huge chunks.
94. Attractive women seem to be allergic to me. Unless they're married.
95. My drugs of choice are caffeine and alcohol.
96. For a laid-back kinda guy, I carry waaaay too much tension in my back and shoulders.
97. I want to see a fully-staged production of Einstein on the Beach.
98. I don't know why on earth anyone would willingly use Windows.
99. I stopped eating hamburgers for a large number of months after I left Jack-in-the-Box. It was a great sacrifice for a 17-year-old.
100. I have a highly-flawed and impractical (yet strangely compelling) plan for world domination.

As seen on my way to work:

EXPIRING FOR LOVE IS BEAUTIFUL BUT STUPID

We're coming and we're unstoppable. El Tigre is our leader. And now Thailand is succumbing to the onslaught.

Or something like that.

Hey, anybody want to buy a T-shirt? All proceeds go to funding my inevitable and inexorable secret plan for global conquest and world domination.

A couple of classics from craigslist (I'm doing research, yes, really I am):

• Ugly People Need Love Too. Hm. I think that maybe someone's dealing with some lowered expectations....
• Any Jewish, lefty, academic men out there? Um, well, New York would be the right place to look....

And as for the men... well, ladies, there are some real winners out there!

• Like this fellow's opening gambit? "You're a bitch and you know it." A real charmer with a silver tongue.
• He's just a gigolo, everywhere he goes: $uper deal, you know what I mean
• And here I am thinking the 70s were over. Silly me. Well, they aren't for anyone who declares themselves to be Super Macho and Arrogant.
• Third funniest personal I've ever seen: Let's Be Horribly Honest.

It's a wonder than anyone is actually able to reproduce....

In the continuing saga of American (and Canadian) women vs. British men, I am pleased to report that Gywneth Paltrow has, in fact, been asked out on a date by an Englishman. The lucky (brave?) fellow is a rock star by the name of Chris Martin (no, I've never heard of him either -- I guess that's what I get for being an ol' fuddy-duddy). I think that I saw a report about Heather Graham not having problems with the hospitality of the English male, but I couldn't find anything in a quick web search (help me out, guys?)....

. . .

Field Correspondent Jane Galt reports on a British study that suggests that shorter women are more successful in attracting long-term mates than tall women. Hmmm.

. . .

I'm sure that by now you've all read the heart-warming story of how a single Instapundit link lead to true love for Chris Kanis. But let's face it. Didn't we all start blogging in the vain hope that we'd be able to pull? (true story: I built the first version of this web site to impress a girl. And it was a very impressive website for 1998. The only catch was that I'm pretty sure that she never looked at it. C'est la vie, eh?) Hell, let's face it. The reason why most men do anything is in the hope that it'll impress a girl (unless you're the sort of fellow who prefers the company of men, in which case it's to impress a guy).

. . .

This just in from Jane Galt: hot chicks (and hot guys) have an unfair advantage in life. In other news, the sky is blue, the moon is not made out of cheese, puppies are cute, and beer goggles aren't just a product of your imagination. Film at 11.

I'm really liking Jaguar. Yum.

In observance of Relationship month, The Gentil Knight sends in this link: Too Much Self-Esteem Damaging to Relationships.

• Calvin Trillin asks the unaskable: Can you really tell between red and white in a blind test?
• Gwyneth Paltrow weighs in on the Great British Men controversy. Personally, I'd think that they're all slighly starstruck and mildly fearful; Saint Gwynnie's reputation precedes her, I think.
• Nuttin' better than a Peanut Butter and Banana Sandwich, Elvis Style. It got me all shook up.
• The Reverend is still recovering from losing his Daisy Princess. Send him some luvin'.
• See Solly is jobless once more. Send her some luvin'.

Dear Noted Relationship Expert,

I'm involved in a play relationship. I'm in my late twenties, as is he. He has a serious long term girl friend who brought up the open relationship idea. They both have a separate relationship outside their main one. Him with me, she with another guy. I'm the only other girl he's seeing, besides the serious one. In our play relationship I'm the submissive one, the slut. Mainly I pleasure him. In fact his current rule is no pleasure for me until I take him in [word normally used to describe sporting equipment, begins with "b" (this is a family website, you know)] deep. I am working on this, though it's hard with the gag reflex. It is starting to wear at me. No one in my life/world knows I'm doing this.

So my question I guess is - how do I focus bringing some pleasure to myself, seen as how [sporting equipment] deep still eludes me. And how do I sort out my bad self from my good self, do I tell people in my day to day life? Or should I wise up and stop all this fun?

Thanks,
The Masochist.

Dear Masochist,

Interesting choice of words.

The logical course of action would be to walk away. But as logic rarely has a role to play in relationships, we can safely ignore that advice. Besides, I suspect that you've broken it off before yet gone back.

What to do about this guy (does he have a name? For our purposes, we're going to call him D--)? I would humbly suggest that you change the rules. "But I can't!" you cry. Well, are you really sure about that? Knowing next to nothing about the relationship, I'm going to make the suggestion that every relationship is a two-way street, to a greater or lesser degree. Maybe you can't -- for reasons of temperament, for reasons far beyond my ken -- just come out and say it (in any event, the direct approach seems to be not the best one). But there are other ways to massage, to shift, to nudge things more towards your liking.

It seems that this isn't just a hidden affair, like so many others, but that you've divorced this behavior from the rest of your personality, what with this "good self/bad self" dichotomy that you've got going. You're attempting to separate that behavior, what you do with D-- from the rest of your existence. Can you?

"It's not me!" I can hear you exclaim. But I beg to differ. It is you (unless you're suffering from alien mind control). After all, it's you who is doing it. And it's not a part of you that you can easily divorce. I'm not going to go into Freudian theories of the mind (lots of links here that cover that), but I'm going to suggest that you'll be much happier when you accept it really is part of you -- maybe not all of you, probably not most of you -- but it is you. This "good girl/bad girl" stuff? Those are entirely social constructions. Who's to judge if you're "good or bad"? Don't worry about being "good" and don't worry about being "bad". Just be.

Or you could just work on your gag reflex.

Your call.

Jessica (now no longer long-distance) weighs in on the whole dating a blogger thing. She's not so hot on the idea:

Imagine enacting such a dysfunctional ritual online, with the unhappy couple leaving snippy comments in each other's comment sections. Y'all know it would be spectacularly ugly.