Yet Another Meme

I plan to have some reviews up Saturday, but here's a meme that I stole and then altered a bit.

The "4 Things" Lists

4 jobs I've had in life:
1) bookseller at B&N
2) copywriter
3) software QA
4) tutor

4 places I've lived:
1) NE Arkansas
2) SW Arkansas
3) NW Arkansas
4) Piedmont North Carolina

4 favorite foods:
1) Thai
2) Mediteranean
3) Mexican
4) Pizza

4 places I'd rather be:
1) Hanging Rock
2) Outer Banks
3) Downtown Hot Springs, either on Art Hop night, or a summer Saturday Afternoon
4) Peppers Pizza, Franklin St.

4 movies I can watch over and over:
1) Anchorman
2) Rushmore
3) The Apartment
4) Paper Moon

4 t.v. shows I like to watch:
1) Deadwood
2) Newsradio
3) King of the Hill
4) 30 Rock

4 websites I view daily:
1) juno mail
2) newsarama
3) yahoo mail
4) blogs

4 computers I've owned:
1) Current offbrand PC
2) dell PC before that one, now running Linux
3) Packard Bell PC before *that* one, now in attic
4) a word processor, fate unknown

4 podcasts I listen to weekly
1) Secret Identity
2) Jordan Jesse Go!
3) History According To Bob
4) On Point

4 comic books I loved as a child
1) The Brave & The Bold
2) Micronauts
3) Fantastic Four (John Byrne years)
4) All-Star Squadron

4 comic books I love as an adult
1) Fables & Jack of Fables
2) Scott Pilgrim
3) Madman
4) Dynamo 5

4 good books I've read lately
1) The Rise of Silas Lapham, by William Dean Howells
2) The Road to Serfdom, by F.A. Hayek
3) The Jugurthine War, by Sallust
4) Borderland: A Journey Through the History of Ukraine, by Anna Reid

4 bands I've seen live
1) Matthew Sweet
2) Juliana Hatfield
3) Sonic Youth
4) Bob Dylan

4 favorite albums
1) Girlfriend, by Matthew Sweet
2) Leave Them All Behind, by Ride
3) Keep It Like A Secret, by Built To Spill
4) Goin' Up, by Freddie Hubbard

4 things to do around here
1) Tate Street Festival
2) Ren Fair
3) Blues Festival
4) Stellarcon

4 funny-sounding place names
1) Possum Grape, AR
2) Pickles Gap, AR
3) Toadsuck, AR
4) Climax, NC

4 'yo momma' jokes
1) what's the difference between yo momma and a washing machine? when i drop a load in the washing machine, it don't follow me around for a week
2) yo momma's so nasty, she'd give sour dough yeast infection
3) yo momma's teeth are so yellow, when she smiles, traffic slows down
4) yo momma's so fat, she plays hopscotch like this: new york, chicago, l.a. ...
#1 stolen from Tina Fey on 30 Rock, #2-4 stolen from In Living Color

4 funny things my mom used to say
1) hard headed henry harris - what you got called when you were stubborn
2) bossy the heifer - what you got called when you were bossy
3) you'd argue with a sign you painted yourself - my retort: if i painted it, it'd be right
4) ___ is slower than Christmas

4 Southern linguistic eccentricities
1) "if it'd been a snake it woulda bit ya" - said when you find something in an obvious place
2) snakedoctors - one of my granpa's name for dragonflies
3) "Lord willin' and the creek don't rise" - expressing assurance that something will happen or get done; self-conciously religious people will respond to this with "if the Lord's willin', it don't matter if the creek rises"
4) "gave him down the road" - yelled at someone over a slight, foul-up, etc. never been sure exactly where this one comes from

Today i stayed in, painted some minis, watched some movies and finished a book about the Ukraine that i've been reading for a while.

I watched Almost Famous, which i really loved in the theater, but it's not as engaging now. It's still quite good, i'm just not in love with it like when i first saw it. This time i noticed how there are so many significant looks between people--or between people and the camera--and i wondered if some of what Kate Hudson was doing wasn't more modelling than acting. For example, that scene where she smiles into the camera, with a tear rolling down her face, and the sunlight behind her: it's very pretty, but it's kind of indulgent. Eh. I'm sounding very critical, but i like the movie.

I also watched Dirty Harry, which i hadn't seen before. There are some great shots in that movie. In the beginning, when there's all those huge shots of the city from the rooftop, i thought "so this is a movie about striking cinematography; i can dig that." The crazy serial killer thing has been done to death (no idea how fresh or stale it was when this was made), and i hate it when a killer is made out to be interesting b/c hey, they're crazy and ironic.

The book is called Borderland: A Journey Through the History of Ukraine, by Anna Reid. I enjoyed it, but parts of it were very depressing. They had pogroms, they got starved to death by the Communists and then there were the Nazis...there aren't a lot of happy stories in this book. But i like to read about other places, and i knew very little about the Ukraine, except that that's where Kiev is, and it's on the Black Sea, etc. This book is an overview. The author lived there, and the history she tells us sort of follows her travels. A rabbi shows her some mass graves, and that leads her to tell us the history of how the Nazis killed all these Jews, and that leads to a wider overview of the Ukraine during WWII, etc. I'd like to read a more systematic history of the country at some point.