Tagged

...by Pris. Apparently, I am supposed to list 5 weird things about myself. The "rules" are:

“The first player of this game starts with the topic 'five weird habits of yourself,' and people who get tagged need to write an entry about their five weird habits as well as state this rule clearly. In the end, you need to choose the next five people to be tagged and link to their web journals. Don't forget to leave a comment in their blog or journal that says “You are tagged” (assuming they take comments) and tell them to read yours.”

Ok. Here goes.

1) I've never been tagged (but that's not my first weird thing. You have to read on for that). I like reading about it---who tagged whom, what funny things they say having been tagged, etc. For a while I thought, "I sure hope I don't get tagged. I don't want to write about something just because someone tags me." But as my bloglife went on (I started it last May from El Salvador) and I felt more and more like the neighborhood kid who never gets invited to play kickball, I began to want it. I had thoughts of writing someone, saying, "You can tag me if you want." Sad. So here I am, tagged and rambling on, realizing that one weird thing about me is my tendency to ramble on incessantly about things. I usually just control it better through some editing. Sometimes, though, I just have to stop myself in mid-sentence because I would

2) I was a game-show junkie. Press Your Luck, Sale of the Century, Jokers' Wild. Of course the biggies, too---The Price Is Right, Hollywood Squares. Hell, I've tried to watch Family Feud in Spanish. Es muy bueno, no?

3) I don't have a cell phone. I don't know if that's weird or not, but it makes you feel weird when the Bubble Yum snapping cashier looks at you, distracted from her conversation about The OC, and says, "Did you ask if we have a pay phone ?"

4) I have read every issue of Sports Illustrated since 1979. In that year, Willie Stargell and Terry Bradshaw were Sportsmen of the Year. It was the year before the U.S. hockey team upset the Soviet Union. Pre-Reagan. I was nine, already in full swing with a love affair with sports. My grandmother got me a subscription for Christmas, and she's done the same each year since. Once, when I was completing grad school, furiously researching classical rhetoricans like Cicero, Quintillian, Aristotle and the other Greeks, my grandmother asked if I would prefer something like The Wall Street Journal. Heck no, I said. Heck no.

5) I love to sing in my car. And to me, I sound gooood. As I like to say, you don't have to be good at life to live it (and love it). And you certainly don't have to be a good singer to love singing. I know I sound like a dying goat. But with the windows rolled up, the temperature set just right and the volume up loud enough, I sound just like Elton John. Or Steve Perry. Hell, I sound just like Pavarotti.

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I'll tag Pam, Shin Yu (how's Taipei?), Neil, Barbara, and Ji-in. How weird are you?