Any excuse for a post

Dear Memephiles,

It has been anonymously suggested that I should honestly announce ten (novel?) facts concerning myself. Seems easy enough? Number 3 has already been announced at "For Keats' Sake!".

1) It seems I like sherry. Harvey's Bristol Cream is the only sort I'm actually familiar with, but I'm curious to try others. (For my latest birthday, some clever fellows presented me a bottle of amontillado for which I did not have to follow them through a cellar — it is still unopened)

2) I am very easily distracted: If anyone trys to tell me something VERY IMPORTANT and I hear any half-decent baroque counterpoint wafting from the room next-door it's quite likely I won't retain a single word of whatever it was he wanted to say.

3) When praying before meals "Benedic, Domine, ... " I habitually pronounce "larghitate" instead of "largitate" (italian phonetic spelling). Something about having that "r" there just throws off my diction, or something.

4) The credit card companies don't seem to like me. Maybe if I owed money to more people they'd approve a card for me?

5) I can't stand lines on the paper I write on. So I usually use printer paper. I suppose this means I don't use it efficiently, but then again, I mostly use it to play with math, which is an inherently inefficient activity anyway.

6) I seem to own a flower press.

7) Cats are delightful creatures (glory be to God for cats!) but most of them make me sneezy and otherwise ill.

8) I like to grind my coffee beans as I use them up. I really can't tell whether this tastes better than if I were to grind the beans in-store; but if it were too easy to *make* the coffee all at once, I'd probably drink far too much!

9) "You have only one choice" really should mean "here is an exhaustive list of pairwise exclusive options; choose one". People mostly use it to mean "you have only one option --- no choice". Perhaps we don't like to sound as though we're taking away choice; but sometimes, the options really are trivial, and the physics or morals of a situation constrain what we can or may do --- and then it's cowardly not to recognize it. The fact about me is that it REALLY BUGS ME that in Peter Jackson's "Fellowship of the Ring" Elrond says "You have only one choice: ..." and goes on to identify the only procedural option for solving the Ring threat. The "one choice" really is "who's it gonna be?", not "you must throw it into the fire".

10) I often watched Square One! when I was a wee lad. It was fun!

That is all!

the usual suspects

P.S.:

VEXILLA Regis prodeunt;
fulget Crucis mysterium,
quo carne carnis conditor
suspensus est patibulo.