Do I contradict myself?
Very well then I contradict myself,
(I am large, I contain multitudes.)Walt Whitman, Song of Myself
It has not been my habit to partake of LiveJournal tagging games. I usually work on the basis that if I don’t have anything to write about, I don’t have anything to write about, and I might as well admit it instead of relying on artificial writing stimulant guilt trip sorts of deals. That’s what I think, whether it makes any sense or not. I don’t believe I promised at the start of this paragraph that it would remain coherent all the way to the end. I’m sorry if I led you to believe this. Sorry like a fox.
Just like Walt Whitman, I am a little overweight, and I think it would be fair to say that I contain a few multitudes about the place, here and there. So if the right person were to ask, I might be talked into compromising my vaguely-held principles. This particular tagging game involves reporting ten little-known facts about yourself. I am not sure whether I have ten little-known facts. I do not like to talk about myself quite as much as Walt Whitman did, but I do have this blog, and it seems unlikely that I would have left ten facts unreported. However, if I am allowed to contradict myself, I am probably allowed likewise to repeat myself. So here are my ten facts.
One: I like corn when it stays on the cob until I am ready to remove it with my teeth. I am unable to get with the concept of little pieces of corn all living in a can.
Two: When I was a small child, wild goats taught me to tell left from right. The wild goats were scary. I did not wish to meet the wild goats. But once you crossed the plank that went over the creek on the far side of the field from our house, the path split in two directions. I had once heard Dad mention that he had seen some wild goats somewhere along the path to the right, so it became necessary to know which path that was, in order that I might go the other way. You might say that two paths diverged in the woods, and I took the road less travelled by goats.
Three: I still maintain that the capital is Morocco is not Casablanca, but Rabat. The CIA agrees with me. I feel Ken Ellis owes me an apology on this matter, and I would appreciate it if he would retrieve the basket of miscellaneous festive foodstuffs from the people to which it was wrongly awarded so that it may rightfully be shared among the surviving members of my team.
Four: Sometimes when I am quoting people in order to reply to their messages, I correct their spelling.
Five: Another thing I learnt as a child is that the smallest chicken in the flock never gets as many grain pellets as the larger ones. It tends to hop around behind them, unable to get past them to peck at the food. However, if you put a handful of pellets at one end of the cage for the larger chickens to fight over, you can take the rest of the bowl around to the other side and dump it in a great big pile. The large chickens will all have their heads down trying to get as much of the small handful as possible, so they won’t notice the much large food supply behind them. But the smallest one will see it, run over, and have plenty to eat while the larger ones are still pecking around trying to find any remnants of the smaller supply. It doesn’t matter how many times you do this, the chickens will not figure it out.
Six: My arms bend in the middle, but only in one direction, allowing for a limited range of angles from about forty-five to one hundred and eighty degrees. Fortunately, I have a sort of ball joint at the top end of each arm, which allows a much greater range of movement. So it’s not as bad as it sounds.
Seven: I can hear an aeroplane.
Eight: I still don’t really see the problem with just welding shut all the driver-side doors on cars. It’s not like they can’t use the other doors.
Nine: In my heart of hearts, I know that I cannot really speak Cat. I am just making meowing noises.
Ten: Somewhere in my house is a small bronze figurine of a bull, which is approximately three thousand years old. It bothers me that I can’t find it.
At the end of the tagging game, one is expected to tag six other people, who are required to list their own ten little-known facts. But since this can clearly lead only to a sort of chain-letter information apocalypse, I respectfully decline.