7×7 Meme

ZenPundit has tagged me with this durned thing. I don’t get tagged very frequently so I think it behooves me to respond graciously.

Honestly, I think that “meme” is a misnomer for this sort of exercise. Meme should be reserved for foundational ideas like “Bush lied” or “Cindy Sheehan is a moron” or “winning hearts and minds”—ideas that help to form belief systems and are at least a little useful in identifying where in the spectrum of thought the correspondent fits.

A better characterization of this sort of exercise is a game. It’s like “Truth or Dare” or “Tell Me Something I Don’t Know”. Well, anyway I’ll play.

The games consists of seven questions:

  1. Seven things to do before I die
  2. Seven things I cannot do
  3. Seven things that attract me to (…)
  4. Seven things I say most often
  5. Seven books (or series) that I love
  6. Seven movies I watch over and over again (or would if I had time)
  7. Seven people I want to join in, too.

Seven things to do before I die

I’ve always been bad at longterm goals.

  • Go to Paris and Rome with my wife.
  • Dogsled into a campsite, stay overnight, and dogsled out.
  • Raise a puppy from birth.
  • Figure out what I want to do when I grow up.
  • Learn Arabic.
  • Create something really novel and useful.
  • Improve the template for The Glittering Eye.

Seven things I cannot do

It will sound like bragging but there aren’t a lot of things I can’t do. There are some things I haven’t tried yet. 😉 But there are a few things I really cannot do. I’m not going to share the really serious things. Those are just too painful to talk about.

  • Go a single day without excruciating pain.
  • Fly a plane (my eyesight is too poor).
  • Suffer fools lightly.
  • Take a compliment.
  • Get a decent night’s sleep.
  • Figure out where my great-great-great-grandfather Blanchard was born.
  • Follow a recipe without improving on it.

Seven things that attract me to blogging

  • It’s creative.
  • It’s a challenge.
  • Posting daily requires discipline.
  • Meeting new people.
  • Learning new things.
  • It engages my mind.
  • It gives me an opportunity to share my thoughts on things I care about.

Seven things I say most often

  • At any rate…
  • “A man’s reach must exceed his grasp or what’s a heaven for?”
  • “When the only tool you have is a hammer every problem begins to look like a nail.”
  • Qila, knock it off!
  • Mira, off!
  • Tally, come!
  • Janice, I love you.

Seven books (or series) that I love

  • Dante’s Purgatorio
  • Henry Fielding’s “The History of Tom Jones, a foundling”
  • Dostoyevskiy’s “The Brothers Karamazov”
  • Charles Dickens’s “David Copperfield”
  • de Pomiane’s “French Cooking in 10 Minutes”
  • de Camp and Pratt’s “The Land of Unreason”
  • Roger Zelazny’s “This Immortal”

Seven movies I watch over and over again (or would if I had time)

This one is easy.

Seven people I want to join in, too

Hmmm. I feel dastardly passing this on. And Mark took one of my candidates.

11 comments… add one
  • Thanks, Dave. I was wondering what I would do today.

  • My 7×7 Meme is up. Thanks for the invitation.

  • This is turning out really well – I had no idea that you and Marc were Dostoyevskii fans…

  • I have maintained that the entire “lets all answer the same bunch of questions” thing is all one meme regardless of the questions, and that tagging is a mutation of that same meme.

  • Ann Julien Link

    hey! i’m the only one who’s not a blogger! What does this mean!

    there’s no way i could be a blogger—not organized enough.

    in fact, it will be hard for me to complete these lists (not organized enough).

    i guess “they” say you should always play to your strengths, and my strength is the disorganizedness (is this a word?) of my thinking. i’m the outside-the-box person in ‘most any group, which can be incredibly annoying. guess i’ll try later. (that’s typical…) luv, and thanks for putting me on the list. ann

  • Hmm…I’m already in awe of you bec. you’re in the select few on Pundita’s going, going, gone blog roll. I’m going to miss that analytic genius.

    Soo…as soon as I finish the council voting, which I always manage to drag out to the last minute +2, I will begin.

    And think about the next seven on *my *list. Maybe the Baron. I never know him as well as I think I do.

    BTW, you’re right: “meme” doesn’t cover this genre. How about TAG –You’re It?

    I will have to respectfully disagree with your previous commenter. If being organized were a requirement for blogging, at least half of us would be off the rolls real quick.

  • Soo…as soon as I finish the council voting, which I always manage to drag out to the last minute +2, I will begin.

    I usually wait until the antepenultimate moment myself so I know what you mean.

  • Lol. He got me, too. My weekly etymology post will have to wait a day. Interesting how few answers are repeated, even among people who presumably think alike or have arrived at many of the same answers to complex questions.

  • OK, OK. Ya got me . . .

Leave a Comment