a meme (yes, it's marking season) from fjm

[woolymonkey]

I know very little about some of the people on my friends list. Some people I know relatively well. But here's a thought: why not take this opportunity to tell me a little something about yourself. Any old thing at all. Just so the next time I see your name I can say: "Ah, there's Parker ...she likes money and cereal." I'd love it if everyone who's friended me did this. (Yes, even you people who I know really well.) Then post this in your own journal. In return, ask me anything you'd like to know about me and I'll give you an answer.

Comments

[fjm.livejournal.com]

Do you select out the anticipated "best' or "worst": to mark first?

[woolymonkey.livejournal.com]

I mostly just mark in the order they were submitted. It's my way of bribing/rewarding students to get the work done in good time because I return their work in batches, earliest first.

That said, after the first assignment, there are one or two that I know tend to be incoherent, or do something very odd with the question, and I don't look at them until I've got my eye in on some more run-of-the-mill stuff. Because OU marking is also teaching, I save the really bad ones to do at the end of a marking day when I can spend some extra time on them without putting myself behind with the whole batch. If I see a student who generally knows what s/he is doing in the early batch, then I will often head for that one to get me off to a good start.

[smtfhw.livejournal.com]

Trying to think of something to tell you that you might not know... The best I can come up with is that whenever I see a doctor for anything that requires them to peer into my pupils, I always have to tell them first that I have one pupil that is much smaller than the other because I was hit in the left eye by the edge of a swing when I was five. It left me with a scar and this weird discrepancy between pupils that really freaks out members of the medical profession (until I explain why it's like that).

[woolymonkey.livejournal.com]

I vaguely remember that different pupil sizes is a sign of all kinds of alarming brain problems. Good thing yours has a harmless explanation. Bet it didn't feel harmless when you were 5 though!

[dbalthasar.livejournal.com]

Hi - I'm here via amenirdis. :-) Fwiw, I'm a writer, a knitter, and I live in an apartment that overlooks a lovely pond filled with extremely large and carnivorous turtles. You probably don't want to know how I found out about the turtles' eating habits.

[woolymonkey.livejournal.com]

Hello. No, I really would like to know about the turtles!
I don't think my garden tortoise would eat meat if he got the chance but his eating habits are disgusting. I feed him lettuce, tomato, dandelion. I feed the cats cat food. The cats go in the garden. Lets just say the tortoise eats lettuce, tomato, dandelion and cat food.

[dbalthasar.livejournal.com]

A friend of mine who's a wildlife biologist thinks she's identified two species of turtles in the pond: Florida cooters, which have domed shells and are described as "conspicuous basking turtles" (and indeed are just that); and snapping turtles, which have flatter shells and grow very, very large. Both species tend to sun themselves on various dead trees that have fallen on my side. Toward the end of the summer, after several days of heavy rain, something dead washed down into the pond. Over the next 15 hours, the snapping turtles proceeded to eviscerate, dismember, and dispose of it completely. It was weirdly fascinating, and is probably going to feature in my next book, but I was taken aback at the size of the largest snappers. The biggest one I saw had a shell that was easily two feet in diameter (I think a bit larger, but they're not supposed to get bigger than that) and a beaked head like an old and evil dinosaur.

At the moment, everything seems to be in at least semi-hibernation, though it's been warm enough this winter that on the nicest days a few of the cooters will haul themselves out onto the logs to enjoy the sun.

[doubtingmichael.livejournal.com]

When I was seventeen, I found a copy of R A Lafferty's Fourth Mansions in a charity bookshop in a seaside town in Devon. When I got to the end, I felt as if my mind had been reorganised.

Random question: who do you think is the best writer of humour?

[woolymonkey.livejournal.com]

I don't know about 'best' because they feel too different to measure against each other but the ones I keep coming back to are
Terry Pratchett for combining wit, parody, and wisdom
P G Woodhouse for escapism and great turns of phrase
Sellar and Yeatman's !066 and All That, probably because so much of my life has been concerned with assessment: my own, my students', my kids'...
Am I allowed TV shows? The Thick of It is brilliantly written and I suppose I just like nasty satirical humour aimed at human stupidity. Monty Python and Black Adder, of course (the Shakespeare parody of BA season 1 is under-appreciated and I especially like the logical paradox lines in Python: "We are all individuals." "I'm not."). And the best bit of Buffy and Joss Whedon in general.

[doubtingmichael.livejournal.com]

That is an excellent selection. Personally, I'd add Jasper Fforde, Robert Sheckley and probably Douglas Adams. But everyone on your list would be on mine too.

[woolymonkey.livejournal.com]

Douglas Adams, yes. He could easily have been on my list. But I've not read the other two. Where would you suggest starting?

[doubtingmichael.livejournal.com]

Jasper Fforde started off excellent, and if anything, got a little stale in later books. So begin at the beginning, with the Eyre Affair.

Sheckley, who was a big influence on Adams, was at his best in short stories. There must be lots of second hand collections around, say at conventions, and that's probably the best place to start. There are some free online at http://www.freesfonline.de/authors/Robert_Sheckley.html, but I think they are all early work, before he became so funny - I think he was quite liberated by the 1960s counterculture.

And I maybe should have mentioned Georgette Heyer as well. Her comic romances don't have the linguistic fireworks of Wodehouse, but apart from that, I think she's his equal. A would happily lend you a few to try.

[woolymonkey.livejournal.com]

They're going on my reading list. I confess I didn't realise Georgette Heyer was funny so would never have tried her if you hadn't enlightened me.

I want to add Stella Gibbons' Cold Comfort Farm to my list. It wasn't on my mental shortlist because I only recently discovered it - saw it in a charity shop and remembered my dad used to love it. Very funny and pushes my parody button as well as my Sussex childhood and never-quite-got-Jane-Austen buttons.

[(Anonymous)]

Bavaribina is confused - is this fjm's project or have you made it yours?
So something you know already (or might have guessed) is that English + blogspeak = confused foreigner. You also know that I don't have an account, therefore I'm not even sure if I qualify, as I'm not that kind of friend in the first place...
Something you don't know...
that would probably be: we don't have a TV and errm... well I don't have ANY account, blogwise. That's boring, so one more thing.
I'm getting back onto the arts track, and if only I could write / illustrate / create whatever-it-turned-out-to-be successfully, I'd only teach for two days a week, maximum.

[woolymonkey.livejournal.com]

Teaching full-time is just so full on, isn't it? I hope you find a way to mix and match with something creative.

It's not my project or fjm's - just something lots of people liked and so decided to copy and use. See wikipedia for 'meme' in general or scroll down to the bit on 'internet culture'.

[woolymonkey.livejournal.com]

Sorry. Forgot the link to wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meme

[(Anonymous)]

Cheers! I knew it felt out of context, got it now.
Congratulations on your heels (to you up there on your heels!).
I don't even teach full time (couldn't possibly, with little Anony-boy being the pupil he is...).
Hope to get news from the kitties soon. Muffin and Senzi say meeow.