I've got a million things to do on this damp, gray morning. There's only one thing to do, then: waste some time having some mindless, useless fun. This is a skill well-honed over my adult life, starting with my days as an undergraduate in the seventies, where I would typically put off, say, writing a paper on the Emile (translated from the French by "Ravelstein") by doing my natal chart by hand, revealing sun and Mars in Libra, rising sign and Venus in Virgo, and moon in Capricorn. (The astrological profile didn't say, but should have said: "You believe that you have gone grocery shopping when you come home with a pint of Haagen Dazs, the current issue of Vogue, and a box of Meow Mix. You have too many books, and you need to do the dishes.")
Advances in technology into this new millennium have now provided us with ever more efficient means of procrastination. So...what do the personality quizzes say this morning? (Except for the final quiz below, these are all courtesy of Quizilla.)
80's song: I'm "When Doves Cry" by Prince. (The rest of the field: Eurythmics' "Sweet Dreams"; AC/DC's "You Shook Me All Night Long"; Nena's "99 Red Balloons"; and RunDMC's "It's Tricky".) Yeah, I can live with this.
Japanese name: My name is Ichi ("the one with wisdom"). A few complaints: this particular quiz doesn't show the other alternatives; and the name is written in hiragana (one of the two Japanese phonetic "alphabets") rather than kanji (the Chinese character equivalent). The kanji would have given some interesting insight into the meaning of the name (I'm not quite willing to take "the one with wisdom" on faith). As it is, "ichi" is cognate with the character for the Japanese number one. Which, to think about it, may fit as I'm the oldest daughter of four children, which makes me a "maht-ttal" in Korean--a special term for the first child, if the child is female. It's also cognate with the character for "sun" or "day", which sorta fits with my middle name ("Myong" in Korean, "Akira" in Japanese), which is the Chinese character consisting of the character for "sun" next to the character for "moon". Whoa, Nellie...starting to channel Amaravati here.
Personality disorder: I have an avoidant personality. (The rest of the field: paranoid; histrionic; obsessive compulsive; narcissistic; anti-social; schizoid; schizotypal; dependent; borderline.) Whew, I guess.
Mythological form: I am the phoenix. (The rest of the field: goddess; angel; vampire; unicorn; gargoyle; dragon; elfin; gryphon; demon.) Spot-on! The symbol of my alma mater.
Author's fiction: Flannery O'Connor wrote my book. (The rest of the field: Anne Rice; Dorothy Parker; Ernest Hemingway; Jane Austen; William Gibson; William Faulkner; Robert Heinlein.) This is, hands down, my favorite result.
And finally...although I fully intend that this blog be a politics- and current-events-free zone, Colby Cosh's recent infliction of a typically elegant, and mortal, blow to the popular "Political Compass" quiz renders the quiz, in my view, now safe "for entertainment purposes only". For what it's worth, then, I show up close to the center, in the lower right-hand quadrant. My avoidant personality is pleased to see that I do not share this quadrant with any globally known figures.
Back to work, then. (Sigh.)
The 80's song link goes to the Japanese name quiz :( I'm off to hunt it down, but I thought you would like to know.
Posted by: Alicia | November 16, 2003 at 06:23 PM
Link now corrected--thanks for the heads up! I apologize for the "operator error".
Posted by: Bookish Gardener | November 16, 2003 at 07:51 PM
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Posted by: adult chat | May 28, 2011 at 05:36 AM