cognitive dissident

Ron Britton at Bay of Fundie tagged me with a meme, and I decided to play along. Here are the rules:

1. Link to the person who tagged you.
2. Post the rules.
3. Write six random things about yourself.
4. Tag six people.
5. Inform the tagees and the person who tagged you.

I'm not accustomed to writing about myself, but here goes:

1). I used to be a big-L Libertarian, after having read way too much Ayn Rand and way too little of everything else. Thankfully, I outgrew that phase before I became too much of an insufferable snot. As usually happens as people grow older, I'm now (much) more liberal than I used to be, and deeply skeptical about grand ideologies that don't map well to reality.

2). Many years ago, I helped a few friends move a car that had been parked in a place it wasn't supposed to be. We dragged it halfway up onto the sidewalk and left it wedged (with an inch or two to spare at each bumper) between two parking meters. I suspect that the driver has since paid much closer attention to "no parking" signs.

3). Although I'm an atheist/rationalist/humanist/freethinker who is *really* low on woo, the idea of reincarnation still resonates with me. Jonathan Livingston Seagull was always one of my favorite books--even before I understood the Buddhist parallels--and the Indigo Girls song "Galileo" gives me goosebumps. Every time. (This is actually rather common for me--some music has worn deep groves in my psyche.)

Speaking of woo, The Dancing Wu Li Masters and The Tao of Physics really made me head spin when I started getting interested in physics. Then, thanks to higher-quality scientific writers (John Gribbin, Richard Feynman, Carl Sagan), I found out that real physics is even more fascinating.

4). The late jazz trumpeter Maynard Ferguson led me into a deep appreciation of jazz, and turned me into a junkie--for the hard-bop era in particular. I used to play trumpet, and--when I get the chance, which is almost never these days--I'll put on some Miles Davis, stick in the Harmon mute, and play along. (I never had the fingers or the chops to handle charts like Maynard's "Give It One.")

5). I'm not a confrontational person, but I once intervened when a stadium rent-a-cop was roughing up an acquaintance of mine. When I stepped between them to break it up, the Barney-Fife-with-a-Napoleon-complex threatened to rip my arm off and shove it down my throat. I responded that if he tried it, I'd rip off his little dick and shove it up his ass.

It was all downhill from there.

6). Puns, riddles, and wordplay fascinate me, and I'm forever dropping them into conversations in hope of garnering a chuckle (or a groan). Here are two of my most recent ones:

Q: What do you call the feeling of longing when an avid video gamer is away from the gaming console?
A: Wiithdrawl

Q: What was the largest injection-molded plastic model airplane ever built?
A: The Sprue Goose

Thank you very much, I'll be here all week. Try your waitress, and don't forget to tip the veal!

In order to share the misery fun, I've tagged the next six victims participants:

Leslie Hawes (Leslie's Blog)
Dale McGowan (Parenting Beyond Belief)
Valerie D'Orazio (Occasional Superheroine)
S (Explicitus Est Liber)
Buffy (Gaytheist Agenda)
Hemant Mehta (Friendly Atheist)