Tag! I'm it!

TS, one of those magnificent bastards at Instaputz, has tagged me with a literary challenge. Here are the rules:

• look up page 123 in the nearest book
• look for the fifth sentence
• then post the three sentences that follow that fifth sentence on page 123.

I giggled with all the mirth I can muster at such an ungodly hour and grabbed Sam Myers The Blues is My Story by Sam Myers and Jeffrey Horton from the sidepocket of the lap desk, thinking "How fortuitous! I get to promote a friends book!" (Jeff is the father of Alex Horton, who writes the wonderful Army of Dude and is a frontpager at VetVoice, and still finds time to occasionally crosspost some of his stuff to Watching Those We Chose) and turned to page 123. My glee was quickly dashed. Page 123 is the end of a chapter, and has five lines plus one word. (Note that this did not prevent me from forging ahead with my whoring ways. I knew Sam Myers from my tenure at the Grand Emporium, and though he is gone now, his music lives on.)

Shameless promotion taken care of, I plucked Ye will say I am no Christian The Thomas Jefferson/John Adams Correspondence on Religion, Morals, and Values edited by Bruce Braden.

Denied again.

And down to two choices unless I made a trip to the bookshelf. If I go with Johnathan Alter's wonderful The Defining Moment FDR's Hundred Days and the Triumph of Hope my reputation as a thinking lefty blogger is safe for another day. If I go with Darkly Dreaming Dexter by Jeff Lindsay, my cover is blown - y'all know what a sick freak I am at my very core.

'Twas quite a dilemma...I opened both books. Johnathan Alter won out because that page of Dexter was a conversation, and I didn't want to reproduce all the punctuation. Besides, that's a really good page of the Alter book.

He added that Hoover was a great humanitarian who became a sort of timid Boy Scout leader (could FDR have been thinking if Lippman defining him along the same lines?). Hoover had been a figure of great respect, but now, FDR told Tugwell, he was surrounding himself with guards to keep away the revolutionaries. There was nothing left inside the man but jelly.

Now - who to tag? This is the easy part - SkyGirl, you're it.

I would like to thank all the members of the academy who voted for me!

It is with humble gratitude we accept this award, bestowed upon us by one of our original tour guides through the wilds of blogtopia (and yes, he did indeed coin that phrase)...Skippy!

Skippy was tapped by the lovely Brandy at moue magazine, in addition to us, he also tapped some fine blogging talent (and poached some of our obvious choices) when he also reached out and touched zaius nation, zen comix, whiskey fire, vidiot speak vagabond scolar, mike, the mad biologist, the galloping beaver, echidne of the snakes, drinking liberally in new milford, the culture ghost, correntewire, cookies in heaven, cannablog, blue gal, and badtux, the snarky penguin.

Now in my sidebar you will find a whole passel of worthy blogs, and it is a challenge to select just ten, but I shall give it a whirl...

BurbanMom is practicing what a whole lot of us preach. I dunno about you, but I think this is one of the most honest profiles on Blogger - I'm just your average suburbanite slob who woke up one day and realized my daily actions were contributing to the rapid decay of the planet. In an attempt to mitigate that damage, I am trying to make one change every day that will lighten my ecological footprint. I thought that perhaps by sharing my adventure I might encourage other "average joes" to do the same. This is how you change the world, people. One "suburban slob" at a time wakes up. Just so you know.

I am so on the same page with The Earth-Bound Misfit so much of the time that tapping her was pretty much a given. But then, us cantankerous, mean old gun-toting bitches gotta stick together ya know.

Want no-spin, solid, fact-based climate information, with just the right amount of junior-high snark mixed in so you don't realize you are learning something until it's too late? Go see my buddy Sniderman.

Monkeyfister is one of the most worthy bloggers on the left side of the 'sphere, but if mf doesn't tap ten soon, it's because the gawd-awful disease that has swept the nation has claimed another victim.

Opit brings most everything you need to see together in one giant linkfest every day.

I love these magnificent bastards even if they don't link me.

Betty Cracker simply must be linked - she has God himself cornered in her laundry room!

More people should ought to come Outta the Cornfield, and do it with such a vengeance.

I sooooo should have thought of this screen name...

And this one keeps me centered and reminds me where I come from and not to get too damned uppity.

OK y'all - there you go - hook yourselves up with that badge, and tap ten.

I have been tapped for a blogging award!

Maya's Granny has bestowed upon yours truly a Roar for Powerful Words from the Shameless Lions Writing Circle. In granting the award, this is what she said about my blogging efforts:

Blue Girl, Red State, whose sidebar reads "Deal in facts and check the sources." This is a "twit free zone." In covering political issues, you know she comes from a liberal perspective, and you quickly learn that her opinions are backed with facts and understanding.

This award comes with responsibilities. First, I have to define three elements that I think make for good writing. Then I have to tag five people whose writing I find powerful. Okay, let's tackle this project...

Three things that I think make for good writing, eh?

The first one is easy: Write what you know. If you operate from the starting point of writing what you know, you are less likely to get caught with your pants down and have to explain yourself later. There is plenty of space in the blogoshere - let me offer an example: My husband takes part in a discussion group that debates what version of the Upton Manual Custer was operating under! If that community can thrive, there is a place for all of us. So write what you know, and hope your audience finds you. If you make ten people a day actually think, you have made an impact in the world.

Second: Write with passion. If you can't get excited about a topic, how the hell do you think you are going to get anyone else excited about it?

Third: Be open minded. When you tackle a topic, and the facts reveal your preconceived notions to be incorrect; adjust your notions, not the facts.

Now...Five worthies. (Just five??? Argghhh!)

Okay, I can do this.

First up is my fellow MO-Blogger, Sky Girl. She writes Corner of the Sky with clarity and caring and she makes you care, too. She is a compassionate and passionate soul, a helping professional, a wife, and a mother. She writes about her experiences at home, and at work in family court, and every post is a treat.

Next is Leila, who writes the wonderful Dove's Eye View. She writes from feet firmly planted in two worlds - on one side she is a tenth-generation American, and on the other, she is a first generation Lebanese American. When you visit her site, you might find a beautifully written piece of prose about Middle East peace; or you might find a recipe. I say this as an occasional kitchen blogger: If you find a recipe on Leila's site, you have to try it!

My third choice is Maven, who writes The Constant American. I originally got to know her as a fellow commenter at Political Animal, the Washington Monthly website. Every word she writes is considered and weighed, and every argument she makes is sound.

Fourth up, with one to go...Blue Gal (no relation, as she says) who blogs at her own place, as well as at The Aristocrats and Crooks & Liars. Here is a bit of Azure Female trivia - she and I started blogging the same week and found one another almost immediately. Back then, I was Blue Gal, too - and quickly swapped out Gal for Girl to keep the confusion to a minimum! We have both experienced some success in our efforts, both of us have moved to new URL's and customized our sites since then, but that's all that's changed - unless you count that we are both even more pissed off now than we were back then!

And finally...I reach out and touch Yellow Dog, my fellow Watching Those We Chose blogger. Remember towards the top, when I said "write what you know"? Yeah, well, Yellow Dog knows Kentucky politics, and writes about it in a vivid and scathing manner. And YD is not shy about a well-placed "fuck" - calling 'em the way they fall, and if you're thin-skinned or delicate (besides the fact you shouldn't be here) don't click the link. Pretty simple, really, and the philosophy I follow here. And to think that a year ago, when I first started wheedling for help at WTWC, I got a bit of resistance, "I'm more of a commenter, I'm not really a blogger." I, being the irresistible force that I am, dismissed those concerns with a "pshaw" and now, Yellow Dog is a regular contributor to three blogs! And we are all the better for it.

That Magnificent Bastard™ Strikes Again!

That Magnificent Bastard™, in case you don't know, is my affectionate name for the inimitable Rook, over at Rooks Rant. He went and tagged me with something that would be right up my alley if I was not a buzzin' mother fucker right now, taking narcotics after throwing my back out.

Here are the instructions, as copied and pasted from Rook's post, which were copy-pasted from Brian's post, and somewhere, at some point, someone was likely blogging in the House that Jack built, for all I know...

There are a set of questions below that are all of the form, “The best [subgenre] [medium] in [genre] is…”. Copy the questions, and before answering them, you may modify them in a limited way, carrying out no more than two of these operations:

• You can leave them exactly as is.
• You can delete any one question.
• You can mutate either the genre, medium, or subgenre of any one question. For instance, you could change “The best time travel novel in SF/Fantasy is…” to “The best time travel novel in Westerns is…”, or “The best time travel movie in SF/Fantasy is…”, or “The best romance novel in SF/Fantasy is…”.
• You can add a completely new question of your choice to the end of the list, as long as it is still in the form “The best [subgenre] [medium] in [genre] is…”.
• You must have at least one question in your set, or you’ve gone extinct, and you must be able to answer it yourself, or you’re not viable.

Then answer your possibly mutant set of questions. Please do include a link back to the blog you got them from, to simplify tracing the ancestry, and include these instructions.

So, here goes:

My great-great-great-great-grandparent Metamagician and the Hellfire Club.
My great-great-great-grandparent is Flying Trilobite.
My great-great-grandparent is A Blog Around the Clock.
My great-grandparent is archy.
My grandparent is Why Now?
My parent is Rook's Rant.

The best female empowerment novel in SF/Fantasy is: Friday by Robert Heinlein.

The best “bad” movie in SF/Fantasy is: Attack of the 50-Foot-Woman.

The worst science-themed pick-up line I have ever heard in my life was delivered by a geneticist at an ASCP convention: "If I were an enzyme, I would want to be helicase so I could unzip your genes."

***************

Now...who to tag?

This seems like the sort of thing that Edger would get a jolly or two from.

And Strannix needs a good taggin' just on principle.

Next up...Desdinova, Supervillain of the Ozarks

And then there were one...let's just balance this out - two Canadians and two Americans - OPIT! Tag! You're it!

Okay guys...dazzle me...

Tagged Back

So – I went to check out Rook’s Rant to see what eight things he revealed (chemicals and bunkbeds were a theme) and eight bloggers he would tap – and the fucker is a world champion Calvinball player! He tagged me back and changed the god-damned rules. (And his stock went up. I like the devious.)

Okay, now here's my last tag: Blue Girl, Red State. WHAT!? you say in surprise. Well, I don't recall her saying anything about there not being tag backs. Now, I remember my youth well enough to know you've got to call "no tag backs." So, because she failed to say "no tag backs" I'm tagging her. However, just to make it easier on her, I am going to give her a different meme: share your 4 favorite and four of your least favorite posts. Describe why, though. No fair just creating links. Seriously, that would be cheap. Oh, and then tag 4 other bloggers. 8 is just way too damn hard.

Like I said in his comments, he truly is a magnificent bastard.

Now – my four least-favorite posts…Well, lets go back to the archives. I can find some things I wrote at the outset that I can muster a cringe over.

Exploding Toads? What was I thinking?

Deconstructing Karl – material that rich deserved a lot better fisking than I gave it.

A Sad Enlightenment at Barnes & Noble – like it’s surprising that people are not well read. Get over myself.

Rest in Peace Admiral Stockdale – is just schmaltzy. Embarrassingly so.

Now for the fun part! Four posts that I consider favorites…

In other words, the ones that I kvelled over and then felt dejected when no one else picked up on the brilliance and eloquence that is me at my finest!

The first one is easy – Biblical Literalism. It’s the argument that the fundies hate – because they can’t refute it. (Oops. Here is Biblical Literalism - but the mistake is a pretty good one too, I'm leaving it.)

In that vein, No More Activist Chaplains is one of my favorites – because it is one of the first posts that I wrote that I felt like I was finding my voice; that I might have something to offer that amounted to substance and analysis. (apologies KV.)

I have to go back and crow about the first post I ever had picked up by a news aggregator: North Korea Wrap-Up was the post I put up in the wake of the NorK’s detonating their fizzler.

And finally – The post where I talk about guns and make everybody mad because I might be the only person in the history of the blogosphere to ever address guns and gun control and not get beset by the kool-aid drinkers on either side.

Now – what four to tag…Doc Larry, of course. He was spared last time because I already had him working on a project when I revealed eight things and tagged eight bloggers.

exMI gets tagged, too, for much the same reason – he was spared last time – and besides, y’all need to go read the story about the skink.

Edger too – he is one of my co-bloggers at the Out of Iraq Bloggers Caucus, and the busier I get with the preparation to roll out Show Me Progress, the more worthless I am to him over there and the more responsibility he is forced to assume. Since he isn’t busy enough (*coff*) I tag him. He was on the short list last time, and got spared. Not getting out of it this time, tho.

Finally, Rook! Yeah, yeah, he put up a “no tag backs” separate post – after I stupidly telegraphed my intent (I should never blog drunk) but I am tagging him anyway. First of all, the post was already written and saved as a draft, I just needed to drop in the links. Second, I have played a game or two of Calvinball myself. Third, and most importantly, I’m still a babe. In the physical world, I would put on my Skippy T-shirt and make something jiggle and flash a smile and…Tag him! (Yes, I am that Bitch. Unapologetically so.)

Now – dazzle me, fellas – and no tag backs!