Meme of Fours: The Sequel

Take two on the meme of four and as there are a hundred conceivable answers to every question, I’ll try not to repeat anything I’ve said before. And thanks to Phelgmfatale for stirring me to sit down and write something.

Four jobs I’ve had in my life:

1. Roving magazine subscription salesperson. I’m sixteen. An unlucky six to eight barely employable people are packed into a car and driven to the outskirts of some place like Southeast Backwards, Ontario and dropped off to knock on doors and offer special deals on subscriptions to poor people. It is cold. It is unpleasant. I end up talking to lonely homemakers for hours and I go home sad. I quit within two weeks.

2. Assistant to a TV producer. I sit in an office and wonder what I’m supposed to do. No one explains it. Once in a while the producer drops a letter to be typed. This is back when there were typewriters and carbon copies and (a great deal of) White Out because I was (until God gave us computer keyboards) a shitty typist.
I last about a month.

3. Paralegal for a criminal lawyer. Well, almost. I was hired but never actually started. After spending the weekend at the Northern Lights Folk Festival, I decided that I was never working in a high rise building with sealed windows again. Nor was I going to work anywhere that required business clothing. It might have been the drugs. That was…oh…twenty-seven years ago – and I kept that promise to myself. Now I work in the arts, meaning I’m doomed to work too much for too little, but I get to wear jeans and inhale lung fulls of pure, clean car exhaust coming in open windows.

4. Waitress. Bad, bad waitress. I have a permanent case of hero-worship for good waiters and waitresses everywhere. I tip heavily because I admire the fact they haven’t thrown a plate of food in my face. This was an almost uncontrollable compulsion I had while employed in the Food Service Industry.

Four movies I have watched over and over again.

1. Blade Runner
2. Withnail and I
3. Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistlestop Café
4. Serenity

Four websites I visit every day

1. Sorry. I have to repeat here. EVERY website link on my blog.
2. Astrodienst
3. BeadFX
4. And I surf.

Four foods I love

1. Potato salad – homemade
2. Peach pie
3. Lime Mango chutney
4. Baked beans

Four of the most wonderful places I’ve visited

1. Chicago. Coming in by car from the airport, with the sun setting and the city sparkling like Cartier’s window. Staying in a Latino area where every other shop had a gigantic, lurid mural painted on the building. A juicy city.

2. Toronto. Actually I was born there. The Kensington Market – ramshackle bins of fruit and the Jewish Bakery - everything sprawling untidily onto the sidewalk. The smell of apples and fish and bread.

3. St. Louis. The famous Japanese Gardens. A little piece of paradise. Coy fish like living rainbows. K.D. (until then a “distance” friend I only knew from internet and phone) to walk with – who has driven from another state, just to spend the day with me.

4. Deventer, Holland. I stayed in a home that was formerly a lightening rod factory. Apple trees in back, a field of Brussels sprouts on one side and a windmill on the other.

Four songs I could listen to every day (out of 4,000)

1. “Peyote Healing” from Robbie Robertson’s Contact From The Underworld of Redboy
2. "Mannish Boy" – Muddy Waters
3. “Reconsider Me” – Warren Zevon, Sentimental Hygiene
4. “The End of the Innocence” – Don Henley, The End of the Innocence”

Four People I’m Tagging (think of it as exercise)

1. Mary at A Breath of Air
2. Jess at Past Tense, Future Perfect
3. Marko at Yottabite (come on #3 & #4 – you aren’t too cool for this. I will
personally believe it’s sheer laziness if you don’t write something.)
4. String at Yottabite