Pieces of Eight

Okay, Ann Bartow just tagged me in the eight random facts meme. So here goes. To make the facts truly random, I have used my iPod shuffle to determine their content.

1) "Swinging Party" - The Replacements

I am from a Republican family. I actually owe my existence to the Sunset Young Republicans, where my Dad was President, and my Mom was Secretary. Growing up and becoming interested in politics, I used to write long diary entries about my impressions of presidential debates and speeches. (Sound familiar?) Much of the pre-teen angst in its pages was actually about my sympathies for the Democratic Party and soul-searching about whether I should come out to my parents as a political liberal. My older sister found one of these diaries and threatened to tell my folks that one entry was all about how if I were 18 I would vote for Jimmy Carter. Scandal!

2) "Love Will Tear Us Apart" – Joy Division

I am a truly devoted Dodgers fan, but I do not boo Barry Bonds at games. Nor do I yell "Giants Suck!", which entire families do at Chavez Ravine. I only boo bad umpire calls and cynical decisions to walk power hitters. There's something about the sound of a crowd's rage that I find disturbing at the level of my limbic system. I hate to sound moralistic, but I think it's bad for the sport. (I also found it annoying that the TV promo for this ad campaign from Mastercard in conjunction with Major League baseball kept showing blond Caucasian women as representative Dodgers fans. I happen to fit that description, but LA is a multi-cultural city, as are its fans.)

3) "White Houses" – The Animals

I receive the weekly "White House Update," although I have never been desperate enough for a blog entry to use any of its content.

4) "Just Like a Woman" – Bob Dylan

My hero growing up was Elizabeth Blackwell. I wanted to be a doctor as a kid, since biology was my best subject, and the children's books about her life and those of the suffragettes in her circle were of great interest to me. No one knew who Elizabeth Blackwell was, of course. I identified with all of the "Elizabeths" in feminist history, actually, including Elizabeth I.

5) "Drive Friendly" – Motor Boys Motor

I am approaching a decade of carpooling to work with faculty from U.C. Irvine's School of Information and Computer Science. Because it is a hundred-mile roundtrip on often congested freeways, there are days that I spend more time actually talking to computer scientists than members of my own family.

6) "Heroin" – The Velvet Underground

When I read stories in the newspaper about Internet addiction, I do guffaw about the attitudes about digital practices that are manifested in the coverage. But I spend a lot of time online, although during much of it -- I have to say in my own defense -- I am multitasking. On addicting games, I go through phases, mostly with casual games. Currently, I am back to playing a lot of classic Tetris on my cell phone, sometimes when I am a passenger during the long drives to and from work. I'm also spending a lot of time on the iLike Challenge on Facebook, in which you have to identify a song within ten seconds. According to them, I am currently a "Music Genius."

7) "Now Mary" – The White Stripes

Although I'm a lifelong Unitarian, I married a very lapsed Roman Catholic and thus consider myself to be what I call a "co-Catholic," which is sort of like being a co-dependent. When we are traveling abroad, I often encourage my significant other to check out the visibility of the confessional or taste the communion wafer, much to his annoyance.

8) "Ghostriders in the Sky" – Dick Dale

I've always loved star-gazing, and I try to make it out to my local planetarium whenever possible. One of my fondest memories of camp is staying up late with a dozen fellow Girl Scouts looking for constellations, falling stars, and UFOs. One of our children is even named after a famous astronomer.

I tag bitch phd, Alexandre Enkerli, Mitsuharu Hadeishi, Eszter Hargittai, Julia Lupton, Howard Rheingold, Alice Robison, and Nedra Weinreich (because she tagged me in a previous meme).