Versatile Blogger: Some Quirky Shit

So as you know, last week was a pretty bad week as far as weeks go, and I haven't yet mentioned the one good thing that happened, which is that Jack over at Perking The Pansies passed on the Versatile Blogger Award to me. Since I rarely get more than a nod because I've turned up on time, I was pleased as punch! My face was hurting, I smiled so much.

Here's what I'm supposed to do: reveal seven things about myself that make me quirky, then nominate at least five other bloggers for the award.

Quirky

Quirky

As for the quirky thing, I've never considered myself quirky. Maybe other people do, but I doubt it.  Quirky is for people you want to have sex with, like Meg Ryan in When Harry Met Sally or Ramona Flowers in Scott Pilgrim or Seth Rogan all the time or the Band Camp girl. Quirky is what you say for someone who has issues but their issues are really cute on them.

Adorably quirky.

I'm pretty sure my issues are just issues. I'm pretty sure I'm what a lot of people would call "neurotic." If they were being nice, they might say "intense," but intense is just neurotic with wire-frame glasses and a sense of humor.

Anyway, quirky? No. Quirks? In spades. But they're probably the annoying kind.

Fuck you, Milk. All of you.

1) Milk. I fucking hate it. I hate milk so much it upsets me when I get some on my skin. I don't even like touching a container of cold milk that has condensation on the outside, because the wetness might be milk. The smell makes me gag. As I child, I couldn't even stand any cheese that was white or vanilla ice cream and I can still barely stomach milkshakes and they have to be chocolate with almost no milk in them. Thinking about milk when I'm queasy is an easier way to clear my stomach than sticking two fingers down my throat. I can't even drink anything that looks like milk, or that is called "milk," including coconut milk even though it looks like water. Rakı even takes a bit of psyching myself out until I've had enough that I don't give a shit what it is, as long as there's more.

Having a child that freaking loves milk is either some kind of test or some kind of curse, and he's either extremely good or I'm extremely lucky he's never spilled any in some difficult place, like the sofa. As for breast milk, it tastes like melon and was only horrifying after it had sat in the fridge or freezer and got the milky smell. Otherwise, I was pretty pleased with it most of the time because it was free "Stop Crying" juice. And I like things that are free.

Kind of gross.

2) I can do this with my hand. When I do this, the lower joints are locked this way and I can only bend them by relaxing my hand. When locked, I can wiggle the upper joints. The only use of this skill is impressing people in bars, so yeah. No one's all that impressed, really, but I keep trying because it's all I've got. The locking thing made it almost impossible for me to play the guitar because when I stretched my pinkie finger to the lower strings, it would lock in place and the only way I could undo it was to let go of the neck. Sometimes I could force it to unlock by bending it really hard, but it would hurt a lot and pluck all the strings on the way back.

I am him and he is me.

3) I played violin for about 15 years, off and on but mostly on. I never got very good at it, or at least, not as good as one should be after playing that much. One of my favorite movies is Amadeus because I'm Salieri-- a sullen nobody who deeply appreciates good music and who's possessed with a yearning to make beautiful music, but completely lacks talent and soul. That's me. Listening to me play the violin is an uncomfortable situation for most people at best, because bowed instruments are as unforgiving as the human voice. When someone fucks up on a violin or singing, it rubs you the wrong way painfully and you either feel angry with them for making you listen, or sorry for them for trying so hard and failing. Like singing, the only time I've been good at the violin was when no one was listening, and it was only for a few bars, and once or twice, a whole page. The locking pinkie finger thing was less of a problem on violin, except for certain double stops, but I was never much good at those either, so it was the least of my violin problems.

A girl can dream.

4) Speaking of bad singing singing, after watching a few too many episodes of Glee, I've decided my goal in life before I turn 40 is to be a rock star, preferably in a punk cover band. So if you know of a crappy 80s punk garage band looking for a female lead who can carry a tune but can't sing for shit when people are listening, send them my way so we can make my dream come true. The clock is ticking. It shouldn't take more than quite a bit of Jack Daniels and some false praise to make me a star. I'll swear a lot and even wear fishnets.

They forgot me.

5) My first serious crush was on Peter Pan. The Disney one. It was when I was about LE's age, which I remember because I kept taking my Peter Pan soundtrack record to nursery school for show and tell.  Once I realized I wasn't going to wake up as a boy just from hoping really hard, I turned my focus to Peter Pan. More than anything I wanted him to fly into my window with those little green tights and take me off to Never Never Land, a place apparently filled with young boys requiring little more than regular baths and a bit of affection. I fucking hated Wendy. What was did she have that I didn't have, I wondered? Wendy might have been the first girly girl who got the whole being-a-girl thing and really pissed me off because of it. I find the Peter Pan crush significant now not only because it means LE is having secret and intensely real alone feelings I know nothing about, but also because it could explain a lot of serious failures in the course of my love life.

I forgave Mrs. Brisby.

Oh, Watts. Was I jealous of you or Eric Stoltz?

You little tease, I cried when you died.

Getting better with age.

6) My other creepy crushes include Justin, the leader of the revolutionary rats from the cartoon Secret Of N.I.M.H, Oscar Wilde, Dustin Hoffman at any age, Tony Curtis at any age, Mary Stuart Masterson in Some Kind Of Wonderful, Adam Sandler, this one ugly, swarthy minibus driver we have out here, and River Phoenix at any age which isn't creepy, I don't think, except I fell head over heels for him when he was about 10 in The Explorers. Only I was like 12 so it's a little bit creepy. Pam Grier makes my jaw drop, and just Tim Curry's voice turns me to jelly. My abiding adoration for Robert Downey Jr. (even LE goes "mm-mm-mm" and shimmies at the sound of his name and you can be sure we watch a lot of Iron Man around here) continues unabated since my tweens and I'm pretty sure isn't creepy. And if Juliette Lewis would just quit being a Scientologist, she could kick my face in any day.

7) I'm scared of the dark. And driving, which I've never learned how to do. Also long black cords and telephone wires that are thinking about electrocuting me (good thing for fiber optics, most of those fuckers have all moved underground), certain minor keys, ghosts (they could appear out of the dark at any moment and start screaming, all right?), people at parties wearing masks who won't talk, certain small dogs, and dead things. Birds make me really uncomfortable when they look at me.

So I'm supposed to pass this award along to five other bloggers. The blogs I regularly read are, like my friendships, very few but well-loved. And my circle of blogs is, like my friendships, quite narrow. So here goes:

Nomad at A Nomadic View, the most versatile blogger I know and I miss his posts a lot these days. Hope all's well, Joe.

A Seasonal Cook In Turkey, who's saved my sorry ass for dinner more times than I can count. Also, she makes me want to grow up here even more than I already have because life in Turkey looks beautiful from her side of the world (the Asia side, to be exact).

Emre at The Istanbulian, partly because his view of the world is both confounding and interesting, but also because I just want to know what his quirks are.

The Pretzel King, who I love dearly and miss every day, even though (t)he(y) only has two posts and will you just make some more pretzels already? Please?

Turkish Muse, who has a much more interesting life than I do, plus she takes great pictures.

Maryanne at A Totally Impractical Guide To Living In Shanghai, who used to be here but had the big-ass balls to go over there and seems to be getting along just fine.

Thanks for spending time with me today.