Hav­ing been <a HREF=http://vagueware.com/2007/2/15/oh-damn-it-tagged”>admonished and importuned, here are five items such that “I bet you don’t know at least four of these, how­ever you know me”.

1. I’m actu­ally a poor reader. No argu­ment that I’m catholic and dili­gent and more or less read­ing 12 hours a day, nor that I hap­pily live a life limned by books and writ­ing… but as it hap­pens I read nei­ther quickly nor deeply. When I read, what I think I’m doing is what F. González-​​Crussi might call apply­ing my “reader’s eye”, like what he calls the “clinician’s eye”: I’m able to suss out most of the qual­i­ties, ten­den­cies, premises, atti­tudes, and even some details of writ­ten prose with just a brief glance. More or less all I need, skim­ming, surface-​​wise. I end up pay­ing atten­tion to cues and inter­stices more than the words them­selves. If I need to make a deep read­ing, I have to (a) lis­ten to some­body read the entire work aloud to me, (b) have a con­ver­sa­tion about what some­body else has seen in the mat­ter (that I haven’t) and then go re-​​read it, © walk away after a first read­ing, let the mat­ter dis­ap­pear from my con­scious mind for a few days, and then return and re-​​read it, or (d) proof­read it, word-​​by-​​word. I real­ized a few weeks back that by these symp­toms I’m learning-​​disabled, by some folks’ standards.…
2. I get tired of try­ing to tell peo­ple what will happen—technologically, socially, in busi­ness, pop-​​culturally, scientifically—five years in the future. After 40 years of being right-​​but-​​ignored, being told how out­landish it all is when I’ve spelled it out… well, I’m basi­cally sick of it. It’s frus­trat­ing. I’m more inclined these days to just sit back and let peo­ple do what­ever it is they’re going to do, rather than try­ing to tell about it them before­hand. And no: I’m not jok­ing, and I’m not just being full of myself. I quit futurism.
3. I still like middle-​​period Sis­ters of Mercy, every Jesus Jones lyric I’ve heard, 1970s Black Sab­bath, Jon Ast­ley (even if he lives now only in out-​​of-​​print heaven), Jon Anderson’s Olias of Sun­hil­low, Gilbert & Sul­li­van pat­ter songs, and the Who. Don’t care if they’re all old and hack­neyed, now. So are we all.
4. I hold fast to the hope, unsat­is­fied for more than 10 years, that I’ll find some folks to play D&D with again, who under­stand how it’s sup­posed to be played. Not rules lawyers, not LOTR-​​reënactors, not kids look­ing to push the enve­lope: col­lab­o­ra­tive sto­ry­tellers. That is, decent play­ers. So I’m keep­ing my books and notes in the base­ment, dat­ing back all the way to 1979.
5. Don’t think I actu­ally like champagne.

These three five are called upon to do the same or similar:

• son1
• sun, too [because I want to see them both post things the other might not know]
• Ed Viel­metti, among other rea­sons, to see who he passes it along to (him of the 380+ LinedIn links) [already done] OK… Rada­gast
• Laura
• Nic