Thanks, Jevon

Jevon is the son of a friend of mine. He is 10 years old. He has recently figured out how to create Facebook quizzes. I took one of his quizzes called "Are you Awesome enough to pass this test?"

Those of you who have been reading this blog for a while will recall that back in September I discovered that I am, in fact, only 70% awesome (and 78% cool). When I saw Jevon's quiz I was excited. Here, finally, was a chance to redeem myself and let my true awesomeness shine through.

Sadly, according to Jevon, I am only middle awesome.

Sigh.

In Which I Reveal my Secret Super Power

I have long held the belief that everyone has a super power. You may already know your power. Luckily, for those who don’t, Facebook can help you out. As of this writing, there are 47 different quizzes that will tell you your super power. In the interest of public service I tried five of them.

It turns out I have the power to read minds. My mind reading abilities apparently don’t extend to electronic devices, however, because this result surprised me. Let me clarify that. It doesn’t surprise me that mind reading would be my power. Five years living in a country where you don’t speak the language will give anyone extraordinary abilities to read people. What surprised me was how consistent the different quizzes were. The “Your Super Power” quiz pegged me as a mind reader, “What is your Inner Super Power” said mine was mind reading, “What is your Latent Super Power” said I have x-ray vision, and “What Super Power Should you Have” assigned me the ability of persuasion. The only outlier was “What Super Power do you Have?” which told me I could time travel.

Four out of five quizzes more or less agreed. It’s as though a million monkeys randomly typing on a million keyboards have finally written Hamlet. That’s good news for all of you who have yet to learn your power.

When you do discover your power, I hope it’s something useful. Forget invisibility, flying, and the ability to walk through walls. I hope you have a power like Jenny, a woman I knew years ago who could sleep anywhere, anytime, or my friend Jill who has mastery over the art of etiquette and the writing of letters of complaint. I wish you the power of Lisa, who can cook perfect rice every time, RuthAnn, whose sense of smell rivals that of a bloodhound, or Cassia, whose organizational skills properly harnessed would allow her to run several small countries, and still have time to help her son with homework and remodel the bathroom on the weekends.

There are other useful powers out there too, like the power to get children ready and out the door on time, or the power to do laundry without losing any socks. There are some I wish existed, like the power to de-ice a windshield with a single glance, or the one I most fervently want: the power to banish people who annoy me to Antarctica where they will live out the remainder of their lives believing they are emperor penguins. Unfortunately that power requires more than just mind reading, it requires mind control, and I’m not so good at that.

Anyway, mind reading isn’t my true super power. My actual power is colour vision. Really. I discovered it in graduate school when I tried to help out a friend by being a subject in his perception experiment. He kicked me out for being able to see colors people aren’t supposed to see. Then he ran me again, because, you know, it wasn’t possible for me to actually be able to see them. I could.

Now you know, if you ever need to match paint samples, or find out whether the clothes you are wearing clash, I’m your woman.

Oi vey!

I've completed my marking for the term and have time once again to have a life, so of course I rushed over to Facebook to see if there were any quizzes to take.

In the spirit 0f the season I took the Christmas Joy quiz and learned that I am an actual, authentic Christmas Angel. The problem is, I don't like angels. It's possible that being one might not be so bad, especially being a Christmas angel. It might be fun, if I had the time, but really, I'm far too busy to add yet another thing to my to do list.

Not wanting to take on angel duty, I decided to explore the other side of my heritage and take a Channukah/Channuka/Chanukah/Chanukkah/Hanukkah/Hanukah quiz. This is when I learned that only gentiles are allowed to make quizzes on Facebook. No matter how you spell it, there are no quizzes for the festival of lights, not even for the dreidel. In desperation I even tried latkes. No luck.

This is distressing. I tried Passover. I tried Yom Kippur. I tried Rosh Hashanna. Nothing. Not a single quiz in the bunch.

Great, this is just great. I'm stuck being the Christmas Angel. Somebody pass me my halo, and do not, I repeat, do not attempt to stuff me on the top of the tree, thank you very much.

Ocean Scene with Octopus and Nautilus

Please indulge me while I brag about my son. When he was 3 he decided he wanted to be an artist when he grew up. At 6 he still wants to be an artist. He takes classes. He practices every day. This is his most recent drawing.

The Intersection of Happy and Sad

The internet has been infected with some particularly virulent memes recently, and no I'm not talking about keyboard cat or three wolf night. Today it seemed like everywhere I went people were talking about the best and worst things, or, even better, things that were both. Not wanting to be left behind, I thought I'd join the in-crowd (see Facebook quiz, I'm still trying hard to be cool).

So here we go, let's put the bests first, in no particular order:

• Kissing my 4 year old on top of his head
• Sitting up at night with my 6 year old in the top bunk and talking until he can fall asleep. We have our best conversations when he has insomnia
• Holding my boys when they were infants, or toddlers, or in preschool, or...just holding them no matter how old they are
• Watching my boys play together, and seeing how much they enjoy each other
• 1991
• Painting
• Driving - alone, for long distances, preferably somewhere I've never been before
• Thinking about possibilities, for renovating the house, vacation, supper, my future, anything really.
• Blueberries

And the worsts:

• Hearing the alarm go of at 6:45 and knowing I have to get up
• Naples, Italy
• Seeing my boys hurt, physically, emotionally, it doesn't matter how
• Letting people down
• A $20,000 math mistake
• Pneumonia
• Chronic Fatigue Syndrome
• 2009 - even though far worse things actually happened to me in 2008, I hate 2009 more
• Dealing with people who see in me their idea of who I must be instead of who I actually am.

And, for good measure, a few things that simultaneously make me happy and sad:

• Dogs
• Germany
• Watching my boys grow up
• 1987
• Childhood
• Ice cream
• My son's family portrait

That's all for now. Time to play me off, keyboard cat.

Yippie yi Ohhhhh to the Block Rockin Beats

My son loves techno. That's what he tells me anyway. He likes the beat and he likes the "robot" sound of it. I take no responsibility for this. It must come from the German side of his family.

He also likes Johnny Cash, more specifically Folsom Prison Blues, which I currently have in the heavy rotation playlist on my ipod. He sees to it that it gets extra heavy rotation.

His unusual combination of musical tastes got me thinking. If, like, me, you're addicted to Glee, you're already familiar with the episode where they try to do mash ups of songs that really, really don't go together.

If I were to remix Johny Cash as a techno artist, my first choice would be Ghost Riders in the Sky. Yes, I know he didn't write it, but he recorded it so it counts. I have the chorus
"Yippie yi Ohhhhh
Yippie yi yaaaaay
Ghost Riders in the sky"
looping round and round in my head backed by a hard driving beat that drops off just as the words start. Unfortunately, because I'm not a techno artist, I can't get it out, as much as I really would like to, because maybe then it would go away.

As it turns out, someone has already made a techno song titled "Ghostriders." I did consider linking to it, but it's even more painful than the version in my head, and I just couldn't bring myself to inflict it on you.

Instead I'll embed this one. It's Cash's "I Walk the Line" all technofied, and actually not too bad, if, you know, you're into techno, like my son.

This is for you, B.

Post Halloween Poll

What's the best Trick-or-Treat candy?

My list:
My true favourite is Goldberg's Peanut Chews, or whatever the name is of the company that makes them now, but only NYers will know these, so, sticking to more widely distributed snacks:
1) frozen snack sized Snickers, must be frozen
2) Plain or Peanut M&M's, depending on my mood, ideally ones manufactured in the U.S. because they taste chocolatier and yes, I really can tell the difference.
3) KitKat (milk, dark, or chunky, I am equal opportunity with KitKat)
4) 100 Grand Bars
5) Reese's Peanut Butter Cups

Agree? Disagree? Discuss.

(and be aware that I can't for some reason, comment to my own blog posts so I'm not ignoring you, I just need to save my answer for a separate post.)