Lindsay at Majikthise sent us this 7×7 meme. And I’ve swallowed the bait:
1. Seven things to do before I die
(i) Hang glide (ii) Be a bartender at a semi-legal after-hours place in the city(iii) Beat Abbas at Scrabble by a margin of at least 300 points (iv) Learn Spanish (v) Learn statistical quantum mechanics (vi) Memorize the Divine Comedy (in English), and (vii) Drive down the 16,000-mile spine that is the pan-American highway, Alaska to Chile, and then drive off to Tierra del Fuego
2. Seven things I cannot do
(i) Whistle with my fingers (ii) Bake desserts, especially custards (iii) Yell (iv) Watch cricket (unless it’s done a la Bollywood musical) (v) Salsa (vi) Write poetry and (vii) Understand Hegel
3. Seven things that attract me to [New York City]
(i) Its deposits of time (ii) Its deposits of memory (iii) That it’s always used but never emptied or exhausted (iv) Its quiet places (v) Its non-parochialism (vi) That the instability of its parts makes a stable whole and home and (vii) The view of Manhattan while coming over the bridge on foot or on subway
4. Seven things I say most often
(i) Okey dokey (ii) I’m not sure (iii) You’re insane (iv) Will you let me finish (v) Too te too te too te too (vi) That’s trivially true and (vii) What’s your point
5. Seven books (or series) that I love
(i) Les Liaisons Dangereuses, Laclos (ii) Mimesis, Auerbach (iii) The Man Without Qualities, Musil (iv) The 18th Brumaire of Louis Bounaparte, Marx (v) The Great Transformation, Polyani (vi) The Making of the English Working Class, Thompson and (vii) Fact, Fiction, Forecast, Goodman
6. Seven movies I watch over and over again (or would if I had time)
(i) Sans Soliel, Chris Marker (ii) Dr. Strangelove, Stanley Kubrick (iii) My Beautiful Laundrette, Frears (iv) Apocalypse Now, Coppola (v) Touch of Evil, Welles (vi) The Matrix and (vii) LOTR
7. Seven people I want to join in, too
(i) Jason Kottke (ii) Matt Jones (iii) Sean Carroll (iv) The folks at Fistful of Euros (v) Cosma Shalizi (vi) Brad Delong and (vii) Darcy Argue