Sevens

I've never participated in a meme before, not for lack of opportunity. If you have no idea what a meme is, click here. In this particular meme (Sevens) you're supposed to post the rules of this meme, answer them, then tag others. Weird, because I've seen the same meme elsewhere - with sixes. Maybe it's time for Eights.

The rules:

• 1. Link to your tagger and list these rules on your blog. I was tagged by Alex, the Seaweed Music Girl.
• 2. Share 7 facts about yourself on your blog - some random, some weird.
• 3. Tag 7 people at the end of your post by leaving their names as well as links to their blog.
• 4. Let them know they have been tagged by leaving a comment on their blog.
• 5. If you don't have 7 blog friends, or if someone else already took dibs, then tag some unsuspecting strangers.

My Seven Facts

• 1. My Mother, a life-long coffee drinker and cigarette smoker, claimed to have spontaneously stopped smoking tobacco and drinking coffee while she was pregnant with me, but as soon as I was born she again wanted a smoke and a cup. I've never smoked and for the first 40 years or so of my life the smell of coffee made me ill. (I still don't smoke, but now I adore coffee and can drink unlimited amounts any time of the day without effect.)
• 2. I grew up in Sioux City Iowa, where there was a large pile of manure between the stockyards and the Interstate, not far from the Missouri River. When the wind was right, you could smell it at our house. A potentially bad job could always be excused by saying "It's better than shoveling shit."
• 3. In high school I read Eugene Ionesco's absurdist The Bald Soprano (in this wonderful pictorial edition) and I couldn't believe how much it seemed like my own life. Later I became a big fan of the equally absurd Goon Show.
• 4. In college I changed my major from Math to Music because the music courses began over 2 hours later each morning than math classes. Since then I've consistently made career choices based on how late in the day I could sleep.
• 5. In graduate school I taught myself to juggle using oranges picked by my roommate Wildman from trees belonging to the percussion teacher, John Bergamo. Oranges are very bad things for inexperienced jugglers because they split when dropped and get sticky juice all over. Eventually I took a juggling course at CalArts. Juggling was the only talent I graduated with that I didn't already have when I matriculated.
• 6. I have a huge tendancy towards motion sickness and I can't read in any moving land-based vehicle. Just glancing at a map while riding in a car can make me dizzy. Fortunately, although I'm a musician, I've never had to tour extensively. I really like sleeping in the same bed every night.
• 7. Here's a piece of music I wrote in a particular seven meter that I heard on an Internet radio station devoted to Afghani music.Read a little more about it here. I like music in non-standard meters - like five, seven, eleven. And I liked music which changes meter so much I named my blog after it. And I think the Diabolus in Musica is not what you've been taught - it's really the Back Beat.
• 8. The pictures in this post were left over from an aborted blog post entitled "Purple Things on the Grass".
  

My Tagees:
Andrew Durkin
Paul Viapiano
Peter (the other)
Atlanta Carter
The Improvising Guitar
Addison deWitt
Palm Axis
Kraig Grady

Seven Tags: one. . . two. . . three. . . four. . . five. . . six. . . seven. . . meme. . . David Ocker