OK, here are the rules. Test your memory and your love of live music by listing 50 artists or bands (or as many as you can remember) you've seen in concert. List the first 50 acts that come into your head. An act you saw at a festival and opening acts count, but only if you can't think of 50 other artists. Oh, and list the first concert you ever saw (you can remember that, can’t you)?

[Facebook-specific memetic propogation instructions omitted]

1. Tom Petty & the Heartbreakers (first concert). Oh wait, he was just the opening band... so: Bob Dylan (first concert, ctd). Who came up with the rules to this meme such that Tom Petty doesn't even count? He was kind of a big deal. Anyhow.
2. Sandpit
3. Sangano
4. Tokyo Ska Paradise Orchestra
5. Dead Milkmen
6. Billy Bragg et al
7. Red Hot Chili Peppers
8. Carmaig De Forest... uhm... more than once... maybe an opening act each time? Uhm... uhm... 少年ナイフ (that's "Shonen Kife", you uncultured swine)
9. Bush (in St Louis)
10. Violent Femmes (in San Francisco and later at Hahvahd)
11. Wesley Willis... oh I'm sure he was an opening band. OK, uhm, Robyn Hitchcock and perhaps the Egyptians?
12. Primus
13. Oranj Symphonette
14. The Wells
15. Agent Orange. I saw them a couple of times, I think? Were they an opener each time? Uhm, I can tell this "opening bands doesn't count" thing is going to be a problem. Uhm, Explosions in the Sky.
16. Whipped, I think? Or had the band moved to LA before they ever played a real concert? Erm? Whatever: Veruca Salt.
17. Flower SF ... except maybe they were opening for another band... but I'm pretty sure I was there to see Flower... Uhm, Yes. I saw the band called "Yes" at the Oakland Colliseum
18. The Fabulous Hedgehogs
19. Some band that had Tanya Donnelly in it? Maybe? Like Throwing Muses or Belly maybe? Aw... I don't remember. OK, I'm sure I saw Talkdemonic and they were awesome.
20. Aggressive Dog (and/or Bandit) (Maybe. Hey, give me a break, it was all in Japanese at some little Tokyo Club (confusingly called "New York Antiknock") with unclear signage)
21. Quasi
22. Sleater-Kinney
23. Blüchunks
24. The Sugarcubes
25. The Cure
26. Spiritualized
27. The Verve except I think when I saw them they were an opening band, but I think maybe the whole reason I went to the show was for the Verve? Like the Opening Band was some flash-in-the-pan MTV thing? Can I count The Verve? No? OK, uhm, Southern Culture on the Skids.
28. Radiohead
29. Black Moth Super Rainbow
30. TV on the Radio
31. The Hellbillys... aw, did they headline? Or were they an opening band for... for... Aw... OK, cerntainly a headliner: David Byrne with the Extra Action Marching Mand et al.
32. Fugazi
33. Ozric Tentacles (which shouldn't count since they were the opening band, but I didn't stick around for the headliner past a couple of songs)
34. Voodoo Glow Skulls
35. Spearhead. When I saw them and Ani DiFranco at that same show, who opened for whom? Uhm... I don't remember. Have I ever seen Spearhead in some other context? Uhm... I don't remember. OK, pretend I never said Spearhead. I said... Holy Fuck.
36. Ladytron
37. My Bloody Valentine
38. L7... were they headliners? I didn't know there was gonna be a test. Uhm, They Might be Giants
39. Dengue Fever
40. Frente, I think? Maybe at Justin Herman Plaza? Does that even make sense? Maybe I just dreamed it. OK, I'm sure I saw M.I.R.V.
41. Cracker, an opening band surely, uhm how about Ween? They headlined a show I'm sure yeah
42. Man... or Astro-Man?
43. Ani DiFranco et al. I'm sure I've seen a show where she headlined.
44. Skankin Pickle... or maybe they opened for Voodoo Glow Skulls? Did I ever see Skankin Pickle headline? uhm, Stereolab.
45. Charlie Hunter et al
46. Laurie Anderson. or was it just her? Is Laurie Anderson a "band"? OK, then the House Jacks (yes, NPL freaks, that's an old one of Murdoch's projects before he was Kid Beyond).
47. The Quails a bunch but maybe they were always an opening band? Maybe? $&#* let's just say Barenaked Ladies but you know I didn't much listen to the music at that show, just mostly lay back and looked at the night sky.
48. 7 Year Bitch
49. Sonic Youth
50. Neko Case and I think maybe Carolyn Marks was there too et al

Well that got messy. If you read to the bottom of this because you were interested, then you can consider yourself "tagged" with this meme. If not, hey, how are you even seeing this?

[A few months back, I posted a note on Facebook. It went a little something like this.]

How it is supposed to work....but don't feel obligated: once you've been tagged, you are supposed to write a note with 25 random things, facts, habits, or goals about you. At the end, choose people to be tagged. You have to tag the person who tagged you. If I tagged you, it's because I want to know more about you.

(To do this, go to “notes” under tabs on your profile page, paste these instructions in the body of the note, type your 25 random things, tag 25 people (in the right hand corner of the app) then click publish.)

0. Like many computer programmers, I start counting at zero.
1. I'm allergic to douglas fir. I found out about this from an allergy test in which I was poked with many needles. I'm not sure how the allergy testing people fit a douglas fir into that tiny needle.
2. I am allergic to cats and dogs but pet them anyhow. And then I wash my hands to rid them of dander. Really, you should wash your hands after you pet a dog or cat anyhow. Dogs like to roll in poop, you know. I'm not saying that's wrong, I'm just saying you should consider it.
3. I once bought four traffic cones. I still have them, for no good reason.
4. If it looks like I'm thinking deeply, I'm probably thinking about burritos.
5. I am a USA citizen over age 25 who does not own a television.
6. I am a USA citizen over age 25 who does not own a car.
7. I am a USA citizen over age 25 who does not own a burrito AT THE MOMENT but I hope to rectify this soon, albeit temporarily.
8. I usually have a piece of paper with me with the Morse code, Braille, and Semaphore flag alphabets. This comes in handy more often than you would think, but still not very often.
9. My usual breakfast: two peanut butter sandwiches.
10. If needed, I can find something to complain about in any situation.
11. I don't have a personality as such. I imitate the people around me.
12. I get a haircut at least once per year whether I need it or not.
13. I'm not superstitious about the number 13. That might be because I start counting at zero.
14. The prospect of going bald appeals to me. I think I'd look more distinguished and could get away with more stuff.
15. I believe in finishing what I start. I could be out procuring a burrito RIGHT NOW, but I'm determined to finish writing this list first. Also, it's raining.
16. I used to visit Facebook once a day, but now only visit it when I get some notification or other--and I ignore most of those, too. Twitter and Friendfeed have replaced Facebook in my life.
17. I play in the Bay Area Night Game, Shinteki, and The Game.
18. I sat on a bee once and hope I never do again.
19. I am tall. Scientific studies have found that my height makes people more likely to think of me as a "leader". I have found that my height makes me more prone to head injuries. It logically follows that human society is doomed.
20. I have been stung by bees in other places, too. I wasn't fond of any of them, either, you understand. I'm just saying that one bee sting was especially bad, is all.
21. I used to be pretty unforgiving until I ran an iterated genetic algorithm that played the Prisoner's Dilemma; it changed my thinking.
22. I make funny faces when no-one is looking.
23. Every so often, maybe at a new job, maybe at a party "mixer", someone asks me to give an interesting fact about myself. I keep quiet about the things which might lead to undue interest from law enforcement officers.
24. I cuss casually.
25. Like many computer programmers, I am prone to "fencepost" errors.

[Fun fact: It is a pain in the !@@ to find an old Facebook posting.]

via Journeywoman, a "meme" that's almost on topic with my recent whining about Russian novels:

What we have here is the top 106 books most often marked as "unread" by LibraryThing’s users. As in, they sit on the shelf to make you look smart or well-rounded. Bold the ones you've read, underline the ones you read for school, italicize the ones you started but didn't finish.

Here's the twist: add (*) beside the ones you liked and would (or did) read again or recommend. Even if you read 'em for school in the first place.

OK, this is me again. In addition to the suggested notations, I added (link)s to Book Reports for those books upon which I have Reported.

Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell
Anna Karenina
Crime and Punishment (reached the finish, but only read the odd-numbered pages)
Catch-22
One Hundred Years of Solitude
Wuthering Heights
The Silmarillion
Life of Pi : a novel (link)
The Name of the Rose
Don Quixote
Moby Dick (skimmed a fair amount)
Ulysses
Madame Bovary
The Odyssey *
Pride and Prejudice
Jane Eyre
A Tale of Two Cities
The Brothers Karamazov
Guns, Germs, and Steel: the fates of human societies
War and Peace (link)
Vanity Fair
The Time Traveler’s Wife
The Iliad
Emma
The Blind Assassin
The Kite Runner
Mrs. Dalloway
Great Expectations
American Gods (link)
A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius
Atlas Shrugged
Reading Lolita in Tehran : a memoir in books
Memoirs of a Geisha
Middlesex
Quicksilver *
Wicked : the life and times of the wicked witch of the West
The Canterbury Tales
The Historian : a novel
A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man
Love in the Time of Cholera
Brave New World
The Fountainhead
Foucault’s Pendulum
Middlemarch
Frankenstein
The Count of Monte Cristo
Dracula
A Clockwork Orange
Anansi Boys (link)
The Once and Future King
The Grapes of Wrath
The Poisonwood Bible : a novel
1984
Angels & Demons
The Inferno (and Purgatory and Paradise)
The Satanic Verses
Sense and Sensibility
The Picture of Dorian Gray
Mansfield Park
One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest
To the Lighthouse *
Tess of the D’Urbervilles
Oliver Twist
Gulliver’s Travels
Les Misérables
The Corrections
The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay
The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time
Dune
The Prince
The Sound and the Fury
Angela’s Ashes : a memoir
The God of Small Things
A People’s History of the United States : 1492-present (link)
Cryptonomicon *
Neverwhere
A Confederacy of Dunces
A Short History of Nearly Everything
Dubliners
The Unbearable Lightness of Being
Beloved
Slaughterhouse-five
The Scarlet Letter
Eats, Shoots & Leaves
The Mists of Avalon
Oryx and Crake : a novel
Collapse : how societies choose to fail or succeed
Cloud Atlas (link)
The Confusion *
Lolita
Persuasion
Northanger Abbey
The Catcher in the Rye
On the Road
The Hunchback of Notre Dame
Freakonomics : a rogue economist explores the hidden side of everything
Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance : an inquiry into values *
The Aeneid
Watership Down
Gravity’s Rainbow *
The Hobbit
In Cold Blood : a true account of a multiple murder and its consequences
White Teeth
Treasure Island (link)
David Copperfield
The Three Musketeers (link)

I plagiarized the following explanation from someone else who was passing along this meme: This is a list of the 50 "most significant" science fiction/fantasy novels, 1953-2002, according to the Science Fiction Book Club. Bold the ones you've read, strike-out the ones you hated, italicize those you started but never finished, and put an asterisk* beside the ones you loved.

1. The Lord of the Rings, J.R.R. Tolkien
2. The Foundation Trilogy, Isaac Asimov*
3. Dune, Frank Herbert
4. Stranger in a Strange Land, Robert A. Heinlein
5. A Wizard of Earthsea, Ursula K. Le Guin
6. Neuromancer, William Gibson*
7. Childhood's End, Arthur C. Clarke
8. Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, Philip K. Dick
9. The Mists of Avalon, Marion Zimmer Bradley
10. Fahrenheit 451, Ray Bradbury
11. The Book of the New Sun, Gene Wolfe*
12. A Canticle for Leibowitz, Walter M. Miller, Jr.
13. The Caves of Steel, Isaac Asimov
14. Children of the Atom, Wilmar Shiras
15. Cities in Flight, James Blish
16. The Colour of Magic, Terry Pratchett
17. Dangerous Visions, edited by Harlan Ellison
18. Deathbird Stories, Harlan Ellison
19. The Demolished Man, Alfred Bester
20. Dhalgren, Samuel R. Delany
21. Dragonflight, Anne McCaffrey
22. Ender's Game, Orson Scott Card
23. The First Chronicles of Thomas Covenant the Unbeliever, Stephen R. Donaldson
24. The Forever War, Joe Haldeman (I read the comic book. Does that count?)
25. Gateway, Frederik Pohl
26. Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone, J.K. Rowling
27. The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, Douglas Adams*
28. I Am Legend, Richard Matheson
29. Interview with the Vampire, Anne Rice
30. The Left Hand of Darkness, Ursula K. Le Guin
31. Little, Big, John Crowley
32. Lord of Light, Roger Zelazny
33. The Man in the High Castle, Philip K. Dick
34. Mission of Gravity, Hal Clement
35. More Than Human, Theodore Sturgeon
36. The Rediscovery of Man, Cordwainer Smith
37. On the Beach, Nevil Shute
38. Rendezvous with Rama, Arthur C. Clarke
39. Ringworld, Larry Niven*
40. Rogue Moon, Algis Budrys
41. The Silmarillion, J.R.R. Tolkien
42. Slaughterhouse-5, Kurt Vonnegut
43. Snow Crash, Neal Stephenson*
44. Stand on Zanzibar, John Brunner
45. The Stars My Destination, Alfred Bester
46. Starship Troopers, Robert A. Heinlein
47. Stormbringer, Michael Moorcock
48. The Sword of Shannara, Terry Brooks
49. Timescape, Gregory Benford
50. To Your Scattered Bodies Go, Philip Jose Farmer*

The instructions don't say what to do with books that you didn't finish because you hated them: italicize or strike-out? However, in my case there is no ambiguity. All of the books on this list that I didn't finish--they all stunk on ice.

Here's a list of the top 110 banned books. Bold the ones you've read. Italicize the ones you've read part of. Put an exclamation point by the ones you've never heard of before. Read more. Convince others to read some. (Meme via Journeywoman)

#1 The Bible
#2 Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain
#3 Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes
#4 The Koran
#5 Arabian Nights
#6 Tom Sawyer by Mark Twain
#7 Gulliver's Travels by Jonathan Swift
#8 Canterbury Tales by Geoffrey Chaucer
#9 Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne
#10 Leaves of Grass by Walt Whitman
#11 The Prince by Niccolo Machiavelli
#12 Uncle Tom's Cabin by Harriet Beecher Stowe
#13 Diary of a Young Girl by Anne Frank
#14 Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert
#15 Oliver Twist by Charles Dickens
#16 Les Miserables by Victor Hugo
#17 Dracula by Bram Stoker
#18 Autobiography by Benjamin Franklin
#19 Tom Jones by Henry Fielding
#20 Essays by Michel de Montaigne - !
#21 Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck
#22 History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire by Edward Gibbon
#23 Tess of the D'Urbervilles by Thomas Hardy
#24 Origin of Species by Charles Darwin
#25 Ulysses by James Joyce
#26 Decameron by Giovanni Boccaccio - !
#27 Animal Farm by George Orwell
#28 Nineteen Eighty-Four by George Orwell
#29 Candide by Voltaire
#30 To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee
#31 Analects by Confucius
#32 Dubliners by James Joyce
#33 Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck
#34 Farewell to Arms by Ernest Hemingway
#35 Red and the Black by Stendhal
#36 Das Kapital by Karl Marx
#37 Les Fleurs du Mal by Charles Baudelaire - !
#38 Adventures of Sherlock Holmes by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
#39 Lady Chatterley's Lover by D. H. Lawrence
#40 Brave New World by Aldous Huxley
#41 Sister Carrie by Theodore Dreiser
#42 Gone with the Wind by Margaret Mitchell
#43 Jungle by Upton Sinclair
#44 All Quiet on the Western Front by Erich Maria Remarque
#45 Communist Manifesto by Karl Marx
#46 Lord of the Flies by William Golding
#47 Diary by Samuel Pepys - !
#48 Sun Also Rises by Ernest Hemingway
#49 Jude the Obscure by Thomas Hardy
#50 Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury
#51 Doctor Zhivago by Boris Pasternak
#52 Critique of Pure Reason by Immanuel Kant
#53 One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest by Ken Kesey
#54 Praise of Folly by Desiderius Erasmus - !
#55 Catch-22 by Joseph Heller
#56 Autobiography of Malcolm X by Malcolm X - !
#57 Color Purple by Alice Walker
#58 Catcher in the Rye by J. D. Salinger
#59 Essay Concerning Human Understanding by John Locke - !
#60 Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison - !
#61 Moll Flanders by Daniel Defoe
#62 One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn - !
#63 East of Eden by John Steinbeck
#64 Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison
#65 I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou
#66 Confessions by Jean Jacques Rousseau - !
#67 Gargantua and Pantagruel by Francois Rabelais - !
#68 Leviathan by Thomas Hobbes
#69 The Talmud
#70 Social Contract by Jean Jacques Rousseau - !
#71 Bridge to Terabithia by Katherine Paterson - !
#72 Women in Love by D. H. Lawrence - !
#73 American Tragedy by Theodore Dreiser - !
#74 Mein Kampf by Adolf Hitler
#75 Separate Peace by John Knowles
#76 Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath
#77 Red Pony by John Steinbeck - !
#78 Popol Vuh
#79 Affluent Society by John Kenneth Galbraith - !
#80 Satyricon by Petronius - !
#81 James and the Giant Peach by Roald Dahl
#82 Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov
#83 Black Boy by Richard Wright
#84 Spirit of the Laws by Charles de Second et Baron de Montesquieu - !
#85 Slaughterhouse Five by Kurt Vonnegut
#86 Julie of the Wolves by Jean Craighead George - !
#87 Metaphysics by Aristotle - !
#88 Little House on the Prairie by Laura Ingalls Wilder
#89 Institutes of the Christian Religion by Jean Calvin - !
#90 Steppenwolf by Hermann Hesse
#91 Power and the Glory by Graham Greene - !
#92 Sanctuary by William Faulkner - !
#93 As I Lay Dying by William Faulkner
#94 Black Like Me by John Howard Griffin
#95 Sylvester and the Magic Pebble by William Steig - !
#96 Sorrows of Young Werther by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
#97 General Introduction to Psychoanalysis by Sigmund Freud
#98 Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood
#99 Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee by Dee Alexander Brown
#100 Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess - !
#101 Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman by Ernest J. Gaines - !
#102 Emile Jean by Jacques Rousseau - !
#103 Nana by Emile Zola - !
#104 Chocolate War by Robert Cormier - !
#105 Go Tell It on the Mountain by James Baldwin - !
#106 Gulag Archipelago by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn - !
#107 Stranger in a Strange Land by Robert A. Heinlein
#108 Day No Pigs Would Die by Robert Peck - !
#109 Ox-Bow Incident by Walter Van Tilburg Clark - !
#110 Flowers for Algernon by Daniel Keyes

The next time I'm called upon to provide names for a set of [computers|meeting rooms|secret projects], I would like to use names of famous carnies and freaks.

• jojo
• chang
• eng
• petomane
• tomthumb

Tag: carny