Help Help I've Been Memed

Michael Reynolds memed me.* I’m supposed to provide a link to his website launching the meme attack, include the instructions for the meme, post seven strange or random facts about myself, and then pass the meme along to others. This despite the fact that I’ve already posted strange facts about myself (eight facts, that time) about six months ago and the navel-gaze factor of this exercise is annoyingly high. I suppose that I’m as happy to navel-gaze as anyone, so here are your random facts.

1. I haven’t cried since 2005. Oh sure, my eyes water if I chop onions incorrectly or have a yawning fit, but the reasons for those tears are not emotional.

2. I do not know how to whistle. Your immediate impulse upon learning that someone cannot whistle is to whistle in that person's presence, to demonstrate the ease with which you can accomplish a thing your friend is incapable of doing. Please do not do this.

3. I recently spent $20 on a pillow in the hopes that it would provide better support for my head and neck while sleeping, and even more worthy of mockery, I am apparently naïve enough to be disappointed that it hasn’t worked out as advertised.

4. When I was a teenager, a career profiler suggested I pursue a career in the clergy. That, uh, didn’t exactly work out.

5. There is a small, hard nodule in my right pinky finger. I got it when I was twelve. I fell off a skateboard into a prickly-pear cactus and one of the spines penetrated all the way through to the bone, and the spine detached while my parents removed it with tweezers. I don’t know if the nodule is a scar or the preserved remnants of the cactus spine.

6. When I have a drink with vodka in the evening, a charley horse in my right leg invariably wakes me up later the next morning yelping in pain. Painful as this has been, I have not stopped drinking vodka.

7. I do not pass along chain letters, no matter what the threatened penalty for failing to pass along the chain letters (is the plural of chain letters "chain mail"?) might be. I henceforth adopt a similar policy for memes. Therefore, this strand of the meme ends now. I disobey the last command of the meme to encourage anyone else to do this. If you don’t like it, meme, sue me. (On the other hand, I’m waiting to hear back from my new e-mail partner, a banker in Burkina Faso with a stray account that needs “closing.” We met via an e-mail that just came in out of the blue, can you believe my good luck?)

* The comments to his meme post indicate that this may not be a “meme” within the strict definition of the word so much as a chain blog post. That, however, is a case of online OCD requiring overwrought hair-splitting so fine as to lose my interest in exploring the exact definition of the word “meme” any further.