My cool social media acquaintance Kristen tagged me with a meme (see the post title) so I decided to respond. I was tagged with this once before and responded. I was tagged a second time (I think) but I forgot to respond to that. And so, I’m responding to both Kristen and blogger X with this.
In keeping with the theme of Broadcasting Brain, I’m trying to restrict these 8 random things to be about communications and social media (broadly speaking – I’m including a couple of other creative endeavours):
1. In elementary school I played a shepherd boy in the annual Christmas concert. Unfortunately, my fly was open during the whole performance. At least I had clear underwear on.
2. I won second place an oratorical contest in sixth grade, then never competed again.
3. I gave a horrible, horrible speech (this wasn’t a competition) when I was student council president in my senior year of high school. I started it by saying “Welcome back students to another fun year” in a Stephen Wright-ish voice. It was awful. I tried to make up for it by winning 3rd place in a Liars contest later that year.
4. I once set off a panic at work by using the phrase “no showstoppers” in an E-Mail to some colleagues in France, who apparently misinterpreted the E-Mail to mean that there were problems on our project. Oops.
5. In 1994 I wrote an entry for Project Galactic Guide (sort of a real world version of the Hitchhiker’s Guide To The Galaxy) about the longest covered bridge in the world.
6. Also in 1994, I wrote a silly little story/thing called “The Bobby Chronicles” that was somehow published online and was listed in John Labovitz’s e-zine-list. I appear to have lost any electronic copies of that document, but here’s what I submitted for the E-Zine listing:
“Tales and commentary about the lives of Generation X types trapped in rural New Brunswick, Canada. More often than not, the zine will be short, mostly factual, and not terribly serious. “Bobby” has several meanings, including ‘redneck’. This zine is -not- written from a redneck’s point of view. A stop on one of the dirt roads feeding into the info highway.”
It was an inside joke and you had to be there to get it, I guess. However, I was interviewed on the radio in 1994 or 1995 because of this E-Zine, which was quite bizarre at the time.
7. I used to belong to amateur press associations for many years. One of them, APA Centauri, is still active today.
8. I used to be part of a group that did some really small-scale improv a la “Whose Line Is It Anyway?” A few people still remember those times with great fondness to this very day.
So, in the spirit of this meme idea, I’m hereby tagging Nick, Steve, and Jeff. Have at it, guys!
