I was tagged by ... I'm really excited. This is my first time doing something cool like writing about myself The rules, as I understand them, are: write 8 things about me, then tag 8 people so they can write 8 things about them.

... That means, if everyone follows the rules, the number of people doing a variant of this journal entry will be 8^x, x being the # of tags. That's a lot of people.

1. I alternate between being really touched by the tenderness and humanity I see around me, and feeling bitter acrimony at the morons who are stealing valuable oxygen from the planet's slime molds. The truth, I realize, is probably somewhere in the middle.

2. I am the Student Member of the Board of Education in my home county. And I've found that most bureaucracy is a lot more benevolent than I expected it to be. Yay for pleasant surprises ... but not for 5 hour board meetings.

3. I think the song Every Time We Touch by Cascada would sound great arranged for saxophone quartet. In fact, I might just arrange it, snag 3 other sax players, and find out for myself

4. I play video games a lot oftener than I should.
4a. I am a grammar snob! (oftener reminded me )

5. I prefer sofas to beds, where sleeping arrangements are concerned.

6. I *love* playing tennis. I play it with my dad, I play it with the school team, I play it when I travel cross-country ... but it's never enough

7. I used to send so many text messages that I could type messages in ABC mode ridiculously fast. People actually used to comment on how fast I went ... now that I look back on it, that's a back-handed compliment at best

8. I think the world is a fantastically scary place. There are horrors everywhere we look. I live in a fairly middle-class neighborhood, but I see drugs all over, ambulances making house-calls, domestic squabbles all night long ... stray animals and stray people and stray lives. I think, though, that the scariest prospect is a world without art. Not art in the rigid museum sense, but art in the true sense - any lens we can hold up to ourselves to see truth. I know that may sound snooty, and you may say, "no, Zach, I think a world without universal health care is a little scarier." But I submit that art - in its more abstract sense - enriches lives to the point of making them *worth* living. We are blessed with existence, and each moment we experience is a chance to create beauty, or laughter, or truth - art.

Well, those are my 8. I'll be on the lookout for who to tag. As Scar would say ... Be Pre-pared!

~edit~

Yay! Joined the wonderful Country Life Club pretty *exciting*!

Also now a member of and and