Tagged: Five Times Ten Rhymes with Nifty?

I've posted three previous tagged blogs:

Eight funky, freaky, and/or fun facts about me (14 September 2007)

Behold the Man! - Eight MORE funky, freaky, and/or fun facts about me (29 October 2007)

TAG - I’m it! (10 more "weird or random things, facts or habits") (21 November 2007)

I joked after the last one that this was becoming a monthly ritual.  I also half-joked that I would never do another.  When *S*U*S*A*N* tagged me again in December, I wondered if I had anything left to say that you would find as interesting as my revelations in those first three tagged blogs and my "Ask Jesus Anything" blog.

Since then, I've been tagged by Darth Tater, Shyloh, and several other friends.  Rune Warrior even tagged my dogs, Lucky and Lady.  Unfortunately, with all the goings-on of the past month or two, I'm so distracted that I can't even remember who all has "tagged" me.  That's another reason this blog has been so long in coming - I was embarrassed to admit I couldn't remember, though for the life of me I still can't.  (Maybe I'm getting Alzheimer's!)  I know there here have been more than ten tags in all, just since mid-December.  Some named me specifically, while others said something like "If you read this blog, consider yourself tagged."

I've been trying to come up with a clever way to respond to all ten-plus tags at one time.  But if I wait for the perfect way to come to me, it may take forever.  So I'm going to throw out all the rules and just wing it, with ten fairly unrelated lists of ten - five tens now and five tens later.

I just looked at the clock and noticed it's 5:10 p.m.

Ten CDs I just borrowed from the Westlake Porter Public Library:

1. Badmotorfinger by Soundgarden - 1 of my favorite "new" CDs in 1992 right before I went to prison.
2. Twelve by Patti Smith - her 2007 disc covering songs by the Doors, Nirvana, the Beatles, Hendrix & more.
3. The Idiot by Iggy Pop - his kick-ass solo debut, produced by David Bowie.
4. Dummy by Portishead - groovy music to chill and think by - you gotta get it.
5. A Star Is Born by Barbra Streisand & Kris Kristofferson - don't laugh - listen!  I wore out my cassette.
6. Stars in My Crown by Jorma Kaukonen - eclectic new blues from the Jefferson Airplane's guitarist.
7. Year Zero by Nine Inch Nails - I haven't heard this one yet, but am looking forward to it.
8. Moondance by Van Morrison - dive "Into the Mystic" and say with him "it stoned me to my soul."
9. 42 Ultimate Hits by Kenny Rogers - like it or not, many of these songs are very, very good.
10. Fair & Square by John Prine - a fairly new disc by one of my songwriting heroes.

Ten favorite places I've vacationed:

1. Acadia National Park, Bar Harbor, and Bangor, Maine
2. Savannah, Georgia
3. Chattanooga, Tennessee
4. Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
5. Green and White Mountains, Vermont and New Hampshire
6. Venice Beach and Treasure Island, Florida
7. Campobello Island, New Brunswick, Canada
8. Williamsburg/Yorktown/Jamestown, Virginia
9. Parkersburg, West Virginia
10. Atlantic City, New Jersey

Ten books I'm still in the middle of reading:

1. The Assault on Reason by Al Gore
2. The Yellow-Lighted Bookshop by Lewis Buzbee
3. Satan: A Biography by Henry Ansgar Kelly
4. Stupid White Men ...And Other Sorry Excuses for the State of the Nation! by Michael Moore
5. Reading Judas: The Gospel of Judas and the Shaping of Christianity by Elaine Pagels
6. Genesis: A New Translation of the Classic Bible Stories by Stephen Mitchell
7. Dreams from My Father: A Story of Race and Inheritance by Barack Obama
8. Giving: How Each of Us Can Change the World by Bill Clinton
9. The Left Hand of God: Taking Back Our Country from the Religious Right by Michael Lerner
10. The Portable Atheist: Essential Readings for the Nonbeliever by Christopher Hitchens

Ten of the things consuming my thoughts this past week (in no particular order):

1. The Presidential Election: watching the Democratic debate, seeing Hillary, missing a chance to see Bill because I waited too long to open the e-mail with the invitation, reading and thinking about the candidates....
2. My tooth: after a month, I finally returned to the dentist yesterday.  The two hours with my mouth open were almost more than I could bear.  But after the root canal, he was able to refill and save my tooth - and this time, since no post or cap was required, my wife's insurance covered the entire cost.
3. My brother was in the hospital this week, as many of you know, with an Addison's crisis and a blood pressure of about 69 over 30.  If my sister-in-law hadn't had a bad feeling at work and returned home early, he might no longer be with us.  We were very worried - but he was at a good hospital and is now home and feeling a heck of a lot better than he was.
4. My website, blogging and building a free online library (include studying my HTML 4 For Dummies, 5th Edition book in with this).  Many thanks to the few of you who've helped this site pay for itself by donating cash, clicking on my sponsored ads (to the left on this page and sprinkled elsewhere on my site), and by ordering books and music through my site's Amazon.com links.  So far, you've kept this site paid for through April.  I'm trying to come up with ways to make it profitable, so I can write full time. Of course I'm already writing full time - and at this point I'll take any job I can get.
5. My kidney stone - the past several days, I've had a nagging pain in my side and back.  Looks like we've finally gotten it diagnosed, and it's finally moving a bit.  Sucks, let me tell you... makes it hard to focus on much else.
6. My book - I've been writing my memoirs, as most of you know.  The first volume is tentatively titled SexCrime? (yes, an allusion to George Orwell's 1984).  Since I have far more material than I need for one book (I've written nearly a thousand pages and feel I've barely scratched the surface), I've decided to limit this one to the year and a half between when my "victim" more than likely decided to make her accusation and when I was convicted of that crime I did not commit and sent to prison.
7. Death - my mother-in-law recently passed away.  Other family members have had close calls. And of course I'm no longer feeling so young myself.  Today, I learned that one of my very good MySpace friends, known as Dark (short for the Dark Albino) just passed away after having a massive stroke.  You may visit his MySpace page by clicking here: http://www.myspace.com/darkalbino.  While there, you can read a blog his brother wrote about his passing.  I'd also like to encourage you to visit hs regular website: www.darkalbino.com.  Rest in peace, brother.
8. Prison and court issues - Spend 11 years in prison for a crime you didn't commit, and you can't help but think about it for a while.  I imagine that even the guys who do commit their crimes never forget their time behind bars.  Add to this the fact that the government is, more than fifteen years after my conviction, passing unconstitutional laws that punish me retroactively, prevent me from procuring meaningful employment, and exert an undue burden on me and my family.  Fortunately, some public officials are beginning to see reason, and I won a small but significant victory at my most recent hearing (please read my blog entitled Court Update for more on this).  So far the sheriff's office is not enforcing any of the new law in my case. 
9. Music - I've been digging out old songs I've written, working on new ones, thinking about finishing my CD that's been on hold for about a year or so because of too many distractions and a lack of inspiration.  Oddly, I am feeling bursts of musical inspiration again - hopefully these bursts will bear significant fruit in the next year.
10. Finances and marriage - I guess to some degree they count as one.

Ten somewhat "weird" facts about my personal library:

1. I have 71 Presidential biographies - 14 of them are about John F. Kennedy and 21 are about Nixon.  I'm not counting Barack, Hillary and Al Gore yet, though I do keep them with the "real" Presidential biographies.
2. I have 6 translations of the Tao Te Ching, 2 of the Qu'ran, 3 of the Bhagavad-Gita, and about 40 of the Bible (including versions in Greek, Hebrew and Spanish).
3. The first book I ever bought was Beverly Cleary's The Mouse and the Motorcycle.
4. The last book I bought?  Besides several bags of used books at a recent library book sale... My Education: A Book of Dreams by William S. Burroughs.
5. The last book I finished?  The God Delusion by Richard Dawkins.
6. Two books that were taken from me and burned long ago: Mao Tse-Tung on Guerilla Warfare and Hermann Hesse's Siddhartha.
7. The last books I read more than once: Heart of Darkness (Joseph Conrad), Collected Poems 1947-1980 (Allen Ginsberg), The Prophet (Kahlil Gibran), Life Really Is That Simple (Harry Eisel), Tao Te Ching: A New English Version by Stephen Mitchell (Lao Tze), and Thus Spoke Zarathustra (Friedrich Nietzsche).
8. I have about 67 books on the United States' Civil War.  My favorite among them, though it's difficult to decide, is probably Battle Cry of Freedom: The Civil War Era (Oxford History of the United States) by James M. McPherson.
9. What I most want to add to my library: the New Interpreter's Bible (about 15 volumes).
10. And if I was forced to burn any book, whose would it be?  Hmm... probably my own, since I still have it in my head on on my computer hard drive.

Okay, so that's five lists of ten.  I still owe you five.  Peace....

Posted by Jesus Crisis at 2/23/2008 12:01 AM
Categories: Music, I've Been Tagged, Writing and Poetry, Travel and Places

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