meme from sam: books, film/tv, music

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Sam Rasnake tagged me for the following questions. Except for titles, whatever is in itallycs I'm quoting from Sam.
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the last book I purchased: Native Son, by Richard Wright

the last film / network series I purchased : Being almost as poor as mice, I haven't purchased one in what's too long to remember, so I'll take liberties here and answer for the last film or tv series I've downloaded, which would be Season One of the brilliant, subversive, and powerful Showtime series, Dexter.

the last music or spoken word recording I purchased : Again, I've downloaded or received as gifts most of my recently acquired music, but I think the most recent collection I've purchased was Wilco's CD released about a year ago.

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As an adult, the following selections have influenced or impacted me the most...

the book: the ONE single book? wow. I'm not sure I really know; not sure I could choose just one, but if I had to, I guess I'd say Anne Sexton's Complete Poems. And if I had to choose a single book of hers, Love Poems for possibly more reasons that just this, but that was the first book of hers I read, which then prompted me to buy the complete collection. Yes, Love Poems it is. Oh, and even though I'm agnostic, I could never underestimate the impact the New Testament, which I learned first, and primarily, as a child, has had on me: so many of my values reflect so much of it, not to mention my politics. Oh, but Sam did specify "as an adult."

film / network series: I'd have to say Charlie Rose on PBS: there are films, and even a few television shows, that have had more of an immediate emotional impact on me, and it's hard not to choose one of those, but honestly the vast amount of knoweldge and insight presented on that show about such a wide array of issues, and for almost fifteen years (how long I've been watching it), has provided me with an education that I might compare roughly to my college education. Quite possibly even moreso. I'm certain I cannot even really begin to comprehend its impact.

music / spoken word recording: Another really difficult one. The Wishing Chair by 10,000 Maniacs. Although it could just as easily be a few others by REM, Tori Amos, etc.

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I think tomorrow I'll probably tag Tim, Nick, Paul, Jehanne, and Michi, who has great taste in music. But anybody/everybody: Leave a comment -- I'd be interested to see what answers are out there, especially to the second half of the questions.
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meme: eight things you don't know about me

Like I told Nic, I thought I had made it to home base without being tagged in this particular game of the poetry blogosphere, but, you know, you can run but you just can't hide when you are a cog in the industrial complex of blogging poets. Anyway, this is an alright meme, and being tagged "it" is half the fun, so here are eight things you don't know about me. (Nicole's is hilarious, though, so hers is a tough post to follow.)

1.) I am a statistics geek. In college I was down right competitive about being chosen to be the statistics teaching assistant (not realizing this was not a job that EV-ER-EE-ONE coveted), like some stereotypical, prototypical, made-for-the-movies bratty high-school girl vying for the title of homecoming queen. And I still loooove quantitative data, research methods, correlation, regression, ANOVAs, academic journals like Personality and Social Psychology, ranting to the television when anyone on a news (or a so-called-news) program makes some assumption based on anectodal evidence or some assertion based on incorrect interpretation of stats, etc., etc., etc. Yes, it's true, I have even been known to run statistical analyses on various data I've collected -- to, um, yeah, try to maximize the output of my submission efforts: charts and charts of magazines' %acceptance rates, response times, circulation or webhits, rated prestige, and on and on and on, and then interpreted statistically. One might say obsessive, I say scientific, practical, okay, obsessive.

2.) I once had a crush on Subcomandante Marcos.

3.) I've never been stung by a bee.

4.) I am terrified of frogs and toads. I have recurring nightmares about being in the dark and not being able to see, and not being able to move or step anywhere because all I hear is ribbit ribbit ribbit ribbit, ribbits into infinity.

5.) One of my favorite and overused words is anthropomorphize. And this is a two-for-one something-you-don't-know-about-me: I anthropomorphize so much that I never leave a single ice cube alone in the tray, because I think oh, it must be so cold and scared in there all alone like that in the dark.

6.) When I was about seven or eight, I started to sell my Halloween candy and give the money to charity. My interest in politics began when I realized my efforts did not seem to end poverty or eradicate racism. Seriously.

7.) By eight or nine I branched out beyond the Halloween candy and incorporated all of my businesses into "Fancy Freddie's, Inc." Before that, there were all the independent companies: the weekly Daily News, published by Fancy Freddie Press, Fancy Freddie's restaurant, Fancy Freddie's radio (WFFR), which was broadcast into a tape recorder with me as the dj (using all of my older siblings' albums until liner notes started to go missing or vinyl records started to show scratches), and Fancy Freddie's Pizza (Ritz crackers, ketchup, and parmesan cheese).

8.) I founded the now-defunct, two-person, secret (hush hush) organization called GVEC. If anyone can guess what that means I'll start it up again. (Hint: G stands for Group for the) But ssshhh, don't tell the FBI or NSA. grin

Now if you're in the mood for an intelligent and actually-important blog-post, read "Why Poetry?" on Amy King's blog -- even if you're not a poet, or even that interested in poetry (how could you not be?! -- but, anyway --) this collection of a few brilliant essays on language and its powerful relationship with culture and politics will most likely entertain and inform you a lot more than anything that has been on my blog, or many others, in quite a while.

The book meme that's going around.... Book That:

changed my life? Surfacing, by Atwood, The Golden Notebooks, by Lessing, and the Bell Jar, by Plath. I was given these three books together at the same time by a friend of my parents' whose kindness is perhaps surpassed only by his intellect; I don't think it was any accident he gave me those 3 books together and at the time he did. I was 18 and they opened a whole new world up to me, and among many things these books inspired, they also birthed my feminism, and not just on an intellectual, philisophical, or activist level, but on a very personal level, and I'm quite sure I haven't been the same since.

I've read more than once? Many, many books of poetry. More than ten times would be slightly easier to answer: All of Anne Sexton's books, especially Love Poems, to Bedlam..., Live or Die, and All My Pretty Ones. Also, Savage Inequalites, by Jonathan Kozol.

I'd want on a desert island? The 1993 Best American Poetry.

made me laugh? She's Come Undone.

made me cry? Of Mice and Men. The Giving Tree.

I wish I had written? Isolato, by Larissa Szporluk.

I wish had been written? The books Sexton, Plath, and O'Hara would have written had they lived past their destructions.

I wish had never been written? Some parts of the Old Testament, the parts that imagined and painted a vengeful, judgemental, and violent God, and has ever since been used to justify, and probably have even inspired, so much hatred.

I'm currently reading? The Origins of Species, by Darwin. Democracy, Culture, and the Voice of Poetry, by Robert Pinsky, and his Collected Works.

I've been meaning to read? The Making of the Atom Bomb. As well as many others on a very long list.

TAG, you're it: Scott Odom, Glenn Ingersoll, Matt Hart, Sarah Sloat, Rae.