Having been 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, (c) 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