Tag Archives: BPF

I’m It.

At least, I assume I’m It, because that’s what usually happens when I get tagged. Mada tagged me for the dreaded “Six Things About Me” blog meme, and now I have to come up with six things about myself and tag six other bloggers.

Before I forget, I need to post the rules. The rules are:

  1. Link to the person who tagged you.
  2. Post the rules.
  3. Write six things about yourself.
  4. Tag six people at the end of your post by linking to their blogs.
  5. Let them know they’ve been tagged by leaving a comment on their sites.
  6. Let your tagger know when your entry is up.

Without further ado, here are six things about my favorite subject, me

  1. I picked “The Unfocused Life” as my domain name because I’m, y’know, kind of unfocused. I can focus; it’s not like I have adult ADHD or anything. I think. Several of my coworkers over the years have suggested that I might, but what do they … hey, what’s that shiny thing?
  2. In college, I went through three majors before I settled on Political Science. The other two were Physics and Philosophy, so at least I stuck to the P section of the course catalog. Before you ask, there was no Psychology major until my third or fourth year; until then, it was called Behavioral Science.
  3. I hate doing little fussy projects with my hands. When I was around 8, my mother gave me a chemistry set for my birthday, after I begged her and begged her and begged her and begged her for it. I did one experiment: I made invisible ink, which, unsurprisingly, I couldn’t read, and then I was done. I started a couple of others, but getting these teeny-tiny amounts of chemicals into the teenier, tinier test tubes made me INSANE. In high school, I got a crystal radio kit; the instructions said you must coil the wire around the tube carefully and neatly, without any twists in the wire. I screwed it up on the second turn of the wire around the tube, and I was done. This afternoon, I helped Unfocused Girl make a set of pentominoes (we’re taking turns reading Chasing Vermeer to each other before she goes to bed, and they play a major role in the book), and I wanted to stab myself with the scissors. Not because I objected to doing a project with UG — far from it, which is why I was able to stick it out — but because drawing the grid on the cardboard, and then cutting out the shapes … made … me … all … twitchy … arg! I’m perfectly happy doing big things with my hands, however; a few years ago, my father-in-law and I spent the weekend building an enormous playset in the backyard for the kids — no problem.
  4. If I go more than a few days without running, I have dreams that I’m smoking. I quit smoking in 1992.
  5. Last movie that made me cry? Armageddon. Not the ending — it was the scene where [SPOILER ALERT] the young son of one of the crew members who didn’t know his father at all is watching the crew board the shuttle and says to his mother, “Look, that salesman’s on TV,” and his mother says, “That’s not a salesman, that’s your daddy.” [END SPOILER] My only excuse that I was watching it on an Air France flight home from Paris, and I drank a LOT of Veuve Cliquot before the movie started.
  6. My least favorite chore before going to bed is feeding Big Pink Fishie. I have no idea why; it’s the easiest thing in the world.

Enough about me; let’s talk about you talking about me. Or about you, if you must. I hereby tag:

Spynotes

Everything Under the Sun

Orbis Writings

Polybloggimous

Spontaneous Derivation

Life in Scribbletown

Response to Weekend Assignment #205: Those “Other” Pets

Scooz me

I’m in an unreasonable amount of pain this morning from a wrenched muscle or a pinched nerve in my back, the result of a slip on the ice on Thursday. Just about the only thing I can do without suffering unspeakable agony is type, which makes this an excellent time to get my homework done.

The assignment this week (as always, from Karen at Outpost Mavarin) is to discuss our experience with pets other than cats and dogs. Our only pet these days, and the one constant companion Mrs. Unfocused and I have had since 1990, is BPF: the Big Pink Fishie, familiar to readers of this blog because of the LOLfish I made in response to a dare from Nathan at Polybloggimous (prior posts here and here). The new LOLfish at the top of the post is the first part of my response to my assignment.

When Unfocused Girl was four, we caved in to her increasingly desperate demands for a pet she could hold. After rejecting fur-bearing creatures (Unfocused Junior and I both have allergies), birds (allergies, noise), and turtles (salmonella), we settled on hermit crabs. The first pair, Rosie-poo and Butterfly, lived for several months. None of their successors, Rosie-poo 2, Butterfly 2, Rosie-poo 3, and others whose names none of us can recall, lasted more than a month or two, so eventually we gave up and accepted our lot as a Family With Fish.

Unfocused Girl is now deeply into the Warriors series, and I think she would feel a little odd having a kittypet anyway. If we were to get a cat, I suspect she would leave the back door open all the time, to encourage it to escape to the forest and achieve its true potential as a Warrior for Thunderclan in the fight against Shadowclan. But we can’t have a cat, so the question is moot.

I had cats growing up, though, usually between three and six at a time. We didn’t realize I was allergic to cats — everyone just thought I was a sneezy kid (another reason why the Seventies are often referred to as the “Oops Decade”). Some of the names we gave to the cats we had were a little unusual. The two cats that were generally “mine,” because they slept in my room and preferred to sit with me while I was doing homework or watching TV, were Sesame and Dammit. I was little when we got Sesame, and I named her after Sesame Street. Before we adopted Dammit, she was a nasty-tempered stray who used to invade our backyard and terrorize me when I was small; the Unfocused Mom always ran out into the yard, yelling, “Get out of here, damn it!” and the name stuck. They were good cats.

BPF Dissed, Defended, and DonnĂ© La Croix de Guerre

Nathan of Polybloggimous, who originally pushed for the LOLfish in spite of my suggestion that a fish, especially an old fish like Big Pink Fishie, might be difficult to catch on camera doing anything particularly funny, saw my LOLfish and posted this on his blog:

“And I’ll now agree that a 400-year-old fish (in fish years), is not all that inspirational.

“He floats. He floats. (Does he do anything else?) No.

“He floats. But he’s LOL. Can’t you tell?

“Yes, we can move on.”

Prompted by Mrs. Unfocused, I lept to the defense of our family pet on his comments page:

Nathan –

First, thanks for the shout out, and the certificate of compliance. I intend to print it out and have it framed. I will hang it near the fish tank.

I must take issue, however, with your characterization of Big Pink Fishie as “not inspirational.” In my original comment, I said that, as a 400-year-old fish (in fish years), BPF is not funny, not prone to wacky, camera-friendly antics. But not inspirational? We got BPF in 1990. There are kids buying beer with fake IDs younger than this fish. It has lived through four moves, a three-day blackout in 95-degree heat, multiple illnesses, and various other mishaps that have killed every other fish we’ve ever had. Big Pink Fishie keeps on keeping on.

Sure, all he does is float. Who has a better right?

Damn right he’s inspirational. When I’m 400 years old, I don’t plan to be all that funny, either.

Sorry for the rant. I had to defend the honor of my fish.

I have to say, Nathan owned up to his error. He has awarded BPF the Croix de Guerre, which, I think, completely makes up for saying that the Fishmeister is not inspirational. For some reason, Nathan’s old logo is loading in the comments here instead of his new one, so when you think of Nathan, please think of Jack-Jack from the Incredibles.

Now that BPF is acknowledged as a hero, I can tell you all a secret: BPF has psychic powers of mind control.

Here’s proof: many times, I have gone down to the basement and found the fish food can open, food spilled all around the tank and half of the contents of the can floating on top of the water, BPF happily pecking at it from below. My son, Unfocused Junior, is invariably standing nearby, hands covered with Tetramin flakes. When I ask him what happened, he answers, “It was time to feed Big Pink Fishie, Daddy!”

Time to feed Big Pink Fishie indeed.

Why would you post a LOLfish on your blog?

Because this guy dared me to (scroll down to the comments when you follow the link). Here it is:

mabellyitchez128470075962500000.jpg

I hope that now we can move on.