I did not get, at first, why there were no ANSWERS to these generally mostly interesting questions. It's because you are supposed to ask Sabotabby (or have someone ask YOU, if you repost it) any of the questions you are particularly curious about. That might prolong people's interaction with it, I guess?
I have been posting SO MUCH, recently, but only for my own eyes. It's been a great relief to type a journal, honestly, and to know that no one else is seeing it. Today, however, Facebook prompted a Memory (and for some reason in the past couple of weeks or so, I have been clicking on that) and it turned out to be a "15 Book Meme" from 2009, which I wheedled my mother into doing, and that was fucking touching, honestly. She -- before her dementia took greater hold -- followed the instructions (don't think too hard; 15 books which have stayed with you) to produce this list:
15 Books from MQ
1. Perdido Street Station, China Miéville
2. Socialism On Trial, Albert Goldman
3. The Second Sex, Simone de Beauvoir
4. The Secret Garden, Frances Hodgson Burnett
5. Little Women, Louisa May Alcott
6. Lad, A Dog, Albert Payson Terhune
7. In the Pond, Ha Jin
8. Years of Rice and Salt, Kim Stanley Robinson
9. Gaudy Night, Dorothy Sayers
10. And Then There Were None, Agatha Christie
11. The Russian Revolution, Leon Trotsky
12. American Notes, Charles Dickens
13. For Whom the Bell Tolls, Ernest Hemingway
14. The Censors, Luisa Valenzuela
15. Huckleberry Finn, Mark Twain
That list made me look for my own, because most likely I did the meme first and then pressured her to do it. But I have the WORST time searching fucking Facebook, and did not find anything. Which led me to the second of the rabbitholes I went down today. (The first, by the way, was ... god, how did this happen? Oh, another FB post, this one from a friend-of-a-friend philosophy professor in Canada who is a very cool woman raised Buddhist and anarchist... she posted a quote from Stuart Hall (whose work I enjoy) about preferring people's young or middle periods, e.g. The Eighteenth Brumaire to Capital, Vol. 2, or Althusser's For Marx to his Reading Marx... which led me to Althusser's extremely disturbing Wikipedia entry. Not that I didn't know he'd murdered his wife, just that I didn't know much about her, or his personal life. In a way, too, it re-awoke all my loathing of French intellectual life. I was interested in some Althusser in my 20s partly because he was a pied-noir marxist, like Camus. But what I texted my older niece about this was: "Also, reading it all [the Althusser Wiki entry] just makes me loathe the French intellectual world more. It’s shitty, no doubt, to smear a whole raft of thinkers with a national character, but UGH. I think I far prefer German (well, before fascism), Italian, Spanish, and even some English theorists and writers...The only exceptions I might make are Voltaire, Hugo, a lot of poets, Foucault, the whole of the Jeunesses Communistes Revolutionaires — opposition youth group in the PCF which broke away to become Trotskyists and join the Fourth International just before Mai 68 — and de Beauvoir, Sartre, and Camus... Oh, and Paul Nizan. He goes with de Beauvoir, etc.")
If you are wondering, yes, that is the length at which I generally text.
Yeah, so that long tangent was my first rabbithole. The second was looking at old LJ entries from 2009, fifteen years ago. God, I'd forgotten that I used to write several times a month, at length, and people would comment. And that was already during the Decline of LJ! I didn't find the book meme. It is probably buried in the search-resistant bowels of Meta.
Here is the meme Sabotabby posted. If anyone reads this and is curious about any of the questions, I will do my best to oblige with answers... but in a week or so, I might just answer the questions for my own satisfaction.
- - - - - - -
1 What was the first piece of furniture you bought?
2 What proportion of your meals do you cook?
3 Foaming hand soap or normal hand soap?
4 Favorite chore?
5 Least favorite chore?
6 Most precious thing one of your pets has destroyed?
7 Any groceries you've been getting into lately?
8 What cleaning product do you swear by?
9 What's your emotional support craft?
10 Youtube, cable TV, or streaming?
11 What's something you saved up for and then regretted buying?
12 How many cups can you see from where you're sitting?
13 Which filter are you most likely to go "eh, it's probably fine" when you find out you need to change it?
14 How often do you take baths?
15 Do you go down each aisle when you grocery shop, or only the ones you know you need stuff from?
16 Where do you go when you need to get out of the house but it's raining?
17 What's a movie you saw recently that you liked?
18 Pro or anti tchotchkes?
19 What's your go-to tape?
20 What's in your freezer right now?
21 Last concert you attended?
22 Favorite grocery store?
23 Paper bags, plastic bags, or reusable bags?
24 Do you get your government mandated 8 hours every night?
25 Favorite old person activity?
26 Would you rather sit on the porch drinking sweet tea or sit by the lake drinking beers?
27 Do you prefer Boardgame Night, Build-Your-Own-Pizza Night, or Movie Night with your friends?
28 Be honest, do you like all of the pictures of their babies that your friends send you?
29 Go-to holiday card format?
30 How many pairs of scissors do you own?
31 Do you still own your first car?
32 How do you take your morning coffee/tea?
33 What's something you collect?
34 What's your commute like?
35 Aisle at the grocery store you never bother walking down?
36 Do you keep a daily journal or agenda?
37 Do you still listen to the same music you listened to in high school?
38 What's the last filter you changed?
39 What little treat do you always get when you run errands?
40 Grocery list or no grocery list?
41 What's the oldest thing you own?
42 What's an unjustifiably expensive appliance that you really want?
43 Favorite book you've read recently?
44 Honest feelings on Settlers of Catan?
45 What's something you wish you had more time for?
46 What kind of stuff do you keep on the door of your refrigerator?
47 Lamps or overhead lighting?
48 If you could build your home from scratch, what outrageous feature would you want to build into it?
49 Do you bring a bag with you everywhere you go?
50 Pro or anti throw pillows?
51 How many blankets do you keep in your living room?
52 Did your relationship with your parents get better when you stopped living with them?
53 What's worse, the DMV or the Social Security Office?
54 Do you decorate your house for holidays? Which ones?
55 Favorite high-effort meal that you make?
56 Favorite low-effort meal that you make?
57 Do you tend to bring an appetizer, entree, dessert, or drinks to a potluck?
58 What kind of bag do you use for your bag full of bags?
59 If you died and your ghost was stuck in the outfit you're wearing right now for the rest of time, would you be happy with it?
60 Do you have an opinion on your local weather reporter?
61 Do you have a favorite brunch spot?
62 Where are you on the minimalism-maximalism kinsey scale?
63 Opinion on Bath and Body Works?
64 Last time you visited a farmer's market?
65 Anything you're procrastinating on right now?
66 Do you get your taxes in as soon as possible, at the last minute, or late?
67 Do you keep any stuffed animals on your bed?
68 Are your garbage bags scented or unscented?
69 What are you looking forward to next week?
I have been posting SO MUCH, recently, but only for my own eyes. It's been a great relief to type a journal, honestly, and to know that no one else is seeing it. Today, however, Facebook prompted a Memory (and for some reason in the past couple of weeks or so, I have been clicking on that) and it turned out to be a "15 Book Meme" from 2009, which I wheedled my mother into doing, and that was fucking touching, honestly. She -- before her dementia took greater hold -- followed the instructions (don't think too hard; 15 books which have stayed with you) to produce this list:
15 Books from MQ
1. Perdido Street Station, China Miéville
2. Socialism On Trial, Albert Goldman
3. The Second Sex, Simone de Beauvoir
4. The Secret Garden, Frances Hodgson Burnett
5. Little Women, Louisa May Alcott
6. Lad, A Dog, Albert Payson Terhune
7. In the Pond, Ha Jin
8. Years of Rice and Salt, Kim Stanley Robinson
9. Gaudy Night, Dorothy Sayers
10. And Then There Were None, Agatha Christie
11. The Russian Revolution, Leon Trotsky
12. American Notes, Charles Dickens
13. For Whom the Bell Tolls, Ernest Hemingway
14. The Censors, Luisa Valenzuela
15. Huckleberry Finn, Mark Twain
That list made me look for my own, because most likely I did the meme first and then pressured her to do it. But I have the WORST time searching fucking Facebook, and did not find anything. Which led me to the second of the rabbitholes I went down today. (The first, by the way, was ... god, how did this happen? Oh, another FB post, this one from a friend-of-a-friend philosophy professor in Canada who is a very cool woman raised Buddhist and anarchist... she posted a quote from Stuart Hall (whose work I enjoy) about preferring people's young or middle periods, e.g. The Eighteenth Brumaire to Capital, Vol. 2, or Althusser's For Marx to his Reading Marx... which led me to Althusser's extremely disturbing Wikipedia entry. Not that I didn't know he'd murdered his wife, just that I didn't know much about her, or his personal life. In a way, too, it re-awoke all my loathing of French intellectual life. I was interested in some Althusser in my 20s partly because he was a pied-noir marxist, like Camus. But what I texted my older niece about this was: "Also, reading it all [the Althusser Wiki entry] just makes me loathe the French intellectual world more. It’s shitty, no doubt, to smear a whole raft of thinkers with a national character, but UGH. I think I far prefer German (well, before fascism), Italian, Spanish, and even some English theorists and writers...The only exceptions I might make are Voltaire, Hugo, a lot of poets, Foucault, the whole of the Jeunesses Communistes Revolutionaires — opposition youth group in the PCF which broke away to become Trotskyists and join the Fourth International just before Mai 68 — and de Beauvoir, Sartre, and Camus... Oh, and Paul Nizan. He goes with de Beauvoir, etc.")
If you are wondering, yes, that is the length at which I generally text.
Yeah, so that long tangent was my first rabbithole. The second was looking at old LJ entries from 2009, fifteen years ago. God, I'd forgotten that I used to write several times a month, at length, and people would comment. And that was already during the Decline of LJ! I didn't find the book meme. It is probably buried in the search-resistant bowels of Meta.
Here is the meme Sabotabby posted. If anyone reads this and is curious about any of the questions, I will do my best to oblige with answers... but in a week or so, I might just answer the questions for my own satisfaction.
- - - - - - -
1 What was the first piece of furniture you bought?
2 What proportion of your meals do you cook?
3 Foaming hand soap or normal hand soap?
4 Favorite chore?
5 Least favorite chore?
6 Most precious thing one of your pets has destroyed?
7 Any groceries you've been getting into lately?
8 What cleaning product do you swear by?
9 What's your emotional support craft?
10 Youtube, cable TV, or streaming?
11 What's something you saved up for and then regretted buying?
12 How many cups can you see from where you're sitting?
13 Which filter are you most likely to go "eh, it's probably fine" when you find out you need to change it?
14 How often do you take baths?
15 Do you go down each aisle when you grocery shop, or only the ones you know you need stuff from?
16 Where do you go when you need to get out of the house but it's raining?
17 What's a movie you saw recently that you liked?
18 Pro or anti tchotchkes?
19 What's your go-to tape?
20 What's in your freezer right now?
21 Last concert you attended?
22 Favorite grocery store?
23 Paper bags, plastic bags, or reusable bags?
24 Do you get your government mandated 8 hours every night?
25 Favorite old person activity?
26 Would you rather sit on the porch drinking sweet tea or sit by the lake drinking beers?
27 Do you prefer Boardgame Night, Build-Your-Own-Pizza Night, or Movie Night with your friends?
28 Be honest, do you like all of the pictures of their babies that your friends send you?
29 Go-to holiday card format?
30 How many pairs of scissors do you own?
31 Do you still own your first car?
32 How do you take your morning coffee/tea?
33 What's something you collect?
34 What's your commute like?
35 Aisle at the grocery store you never bother walking down?
36 Do you keep a daily journal or agenda?
37 Do you still listen to the same music you listened to in high school?
38 What's the last filter you changed?
39 What little treat do you always get when you run errands?
40 Grocery list or no grocery list?
41 What's the oldest thing you own?
42 What's an unjustifiably expensive appliance that you really want?
43 Favorite book you've read recently?
44 Honest feelings on Settlers of Catan?
45 What's something you wish you had more time for?
46 What kind of stuff do you keep on the door of your refrigerator?
47 Lamps or overhead lighting?
48 If you could build your home from scratch, what outrageous feature would you want to build into it?
49 Do you bring a bag with you everywhere you go?
50 Pro or anti throw pillows?
51 How many blankets do you keep in your living room?
52 Did your relationship with your parents get better when you stopped living with them?
53 What's worse, the DMV or the Social Security Office?
54 Do you decorate your house for holidays? Which ones?
55 Favorite high-effort meal that you make?
56 Favorite low-effort meal that you make?
57 Do you tend to bring an appetizer, entree, dessert, or drinks to a potluck?
58 What kind of bag do you use for your bag full of bags?
59 If you died and your ghost was stuck in the outfit you're wearing right now for the rest of time, would you be happy with it?
60 Do you have an opinion on your local weather reporter?
61 Do you have a favorite brunch spot?
62 Where are you on the minimalism-maximalism kinsey scale?
63 Opinion on Bath and Body Works?
64 Last time you visited a farmer's market?
65 Anything you're procrastinating on right now?
66 Do you get your taxes in as soon as possible, at the last minute, or late?
67 Do you keep any stuffed animals on your bed?
68 Are your garbage bags scented or unscented?
69 What are you looking forward to next week?