The dreaded “five things” meme
It was bound to happen. I’ve been enjoying finding out all sorts of fun details about friends like danah boyd, Matt Hurst and David Weinberger as they’ve answered the “five things people don’t know about me” meme. But Rebecca just tagged me, and now I’m forced to come up with interesting and little-known details of my life.
The problem is that, for the past few years, I feel like I’ve been more open about my life to a wider audience than I, as a shy person, ever expected to be. I’ve told journalists about countless stupid details of my life and have gotten used to total strangers knowing my whereabouts due to my blog. So I’m not sure I have five secrets left, or at least five secrets that I’m willing to share. But here goes:
1) I ran for President of the United States in 1988. I was 15 years old at the time. I found a book called “Everyone for President” at the local library book sale and thought the author had a great point: while you can’t serve as President until you’re 35, there’s nothing to prohibit you from running. So I filed the forms included with the book and more or less forgot about it, until a local journalist started researching presidential candidates who didn’t have a chance of getting elected and interviewed me for the Danbury, CT newspaper. It was a great lesson in PR, and taught me that no one takes the promises of politicians seriously – I promised to run every four years until I was electable as a way of calling attention to the absurdity of the “35 year old” rule, but I never ran again, and no one ever called me on breaking my promise.
2) I’ve never applied for a job. Not a real one, at least. My first job out of grad school was at Tripod, where I got hired because I knew HTML and was willing to work for stock options. I co-founded both Geekcorps and Global Voices, so didn’t have to apply for positions there. (And the Berkman Center doesn’t count as a “job”. It’s far too much fun to be a job.) I’m entirely capable of envisioning a life where I never apply for a job…
3) I’d be very happy as a 1950s New England housewife. My hero growing up was my maternal grandmother, who was an absolute dynamo, working full-time into her 60s as well as mothering and grandmothering a brood of children. I wanted to do whatever she did – cooking, sewing, knitting – and she never put any activites off limits due to gender preconceptions. As a result, I cook really well, sew competently, and could probably remember how to knit if I could take needles onto airplanes. And I can darn socks, even if I generally choose not to.
4) I didn’t study African history. Or technology. A friend was introducing me at an academic talk a few weeks ago and tried to give my academic background to the audience before realizing he had no idea what I’d actually studied. I spent my college career studying continental philosophy (mostly Kierkegaard and Wittgenstein) and African music (which is what got me to Africa in the first place.) The geekery began as a way to make beer money while in college and has gradually expanded to dominate my whole life.
5) My main regret in life is that I’m not a better woodworker. I make functional but ugly furniture and have great ambitions of making prettier furniture someday. Or at least buying lots more powertools so I can dream about making pretty furniture with fewer excuses.
Okay, enough of that. Who to tap? Let’s see – I’d like to hear five things I don’t know about Ndesanjo, Ory, Abdurahman, Bruno and Janet… (time to see who reads my blog every day and who pays attention to their trackbacks…)
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December 30th, 2006 at 7:17 am
This is interesting. I thought I knew everything about you! Running for president?! I knew you could cook, but sewing too?
Damn, why did you pick me? Can I appeal?
December 30th, 2006 at 11:14 am
There are no appeals, my friend. Five things we didn’t know about you – bring ‘em on!
January 1st, 2007 at 1:20 pm
[...] There. So now who shall I burden with this task? The major disadvantage of waiting ten days to respond to being tagged by a meme is that just about every blogger I read has already played. A quick search of my RSS shows that much of my regular reading list has already succumbed. Amanda Congdon, Jeff Jarvis, Howard Owens, Mindy McAdams, Andy Dickinson, Peter Krasilovsky, Matt Waite, Danny Sullivan, Ryan Sholin, Lucas Grindley, Ethan Zuckerman, Euan Semple, Tim O’Reilly, Anthony Mayfield, Rebecca MacKinnon, K. Paul Mallash, Danny Sanchez have all told us their five things already. Will Sullivan set the bar pretty high with a great two-part response, and Susan Mernitt has a nice roundup of her favourite responses. [...]
January 2nd, 2007 at 7:56 am
My “five things” will be up later today!
January 3rd, 2007 at 7:04 pm
Well, it took a few days (holidays), but it’s up. Barack-Ethan, dream ticket. ;-)
January 5th, 2007 at 5:25 am
[...] Oh no. Three people have tagged me to do the “Five things you didn’t know about me” meme. Ndesanjo Macha, who’s fifth thing we didn’t know about him is that he is a disiple of Houdini and can disappear in front of your eyes (can these five things be fictional do you think?), and Torill Mortensen, who has hand-painted a whole set of china (I would never have guessed), and Karin, who danced ballet. Oh no. I even thought of doing it but what would I write that I haven’t already told the world that I’d actually be OK with the world knowing? I mean, I can’t disappear while you watch (well, not literally) and I never ran for president, either. [...]
January 5th, 2007 at 7:31 pm
[...] Well, three of the five people I’ve tagged on the “five things” meme have posted their responses – thanks Ndesanjo, Janet and Bruno for sharing with us. We’ll cut Ory some slack for being on vacation, and Abdurahman gets a free pass since he’s been watching the situation in Somalia very, very closely. [...]
January 9th, 2007 at 8:05 am
[...] And I have been dreading it for over a week…I’m sure that folks who’ve tagged me before know that I’m a notorious “tag dodger” (blame Googling). I even thought about appealing but once Ndesanjo folded I knew there was no hope [...]
January 13th, 2007 at 1:35 pm
[...] So herein lies the other problem with getting tagged for this so late in the game. Nearly everyone I know who blogs has already done their five things – Susan, Nabeel, and Ethan (who is also a fan of sumo) all have. So I had to dig deep to find folks to tag. Here are two people I’ll tag: David Ratajczak (whose blog has nothing on it – maybe this will help) and Xavier Cassanova. I know a lot of people who I think should blog but don’t (like Barrett Comiskey – I’d love to read about his efforts in getting small and mid-sized U.S. businesses to outsource manufacturing to China). Technorati Tags: Barrett Comiskey, cello, David Ratajczak, Ethan Zuckerman, five things, Georgia Institute of Technology, magazines, Nabeel Hyatt, sumo, Susan Wu, Toyota 4Runner, Xavier Cassanova Consult with Sanjay on thistopic or any other. 1-888-MY-ETHER ext. 01834613 [...]
January 19th, 2007 at 11:43 pm
[...] Bangladeshi-born Rezwan, now in Germany, puts me on his plate by pretending it’s a game of playing or not. Ignore it, I would be someone arrogant. However, Rezwan, whom I met in Delhi, India, in December last year was demanded to do the same by David Sasaki, a gentleman I met in London in December 2005. All Global Voices Online fellows. Enthan, tagged by Rebecca, could do it well. [...]
January 27th, 2007 at 4:43 am
[...] Bangladeshi-born Rezwan, now in Germany, puts me on his plate by pretending it’s a game of playing or not. Ignore it, I would be someone arrogant. However, Rezwan, whom I met in Delhi, India, in December last year was demanded to do the same by David Sasaki, a gentleman I met in London in December 2005. All Global Voices Online fellows. Enthan, tagged by Rebecca, could do it well; and so Maurina in Brunei. [...]
February 27th, 2007 at 4:11 pm
[...] Ethan Zuckerman – “I’d be very happy as a 1950s New England housewife. My hero growing up was my maternal grandmother, who was an absolute dynamo, working full-time into her 60s as well as mothering and grandmothering a brood of children.” [...]
March 3rd, 2007 at 11:37 am
[...] Oso has a nice formatted summary on the meme game of the GVO community, though he does not include all the victims of this game. I am amused/amazed by the stories of Tharum, Rebecca, Ethan Ndesanjo, Nicholas, Mong and more. This reminds me there is a tag sticking on me too. [...]
October 14th, 2009 at 6:47 am
[...] I met in London in December 2005. All Global Voices Online fellows. Enthan, tagged by Rebecca, could do it well; and so Maurina in [...]