10 things I've done that you probably haven't.

[topaz]

1. walked from Staten Island -- via ferry, through Wall Street and over the Brooklyn Bridge -- to Boerum Hill in Brooklyn, during an acid trip at 3am
2. spent 10 days canoeing on the St. Croix river in Maine
3. eaten twinkies and beer under the Brooklyn Bridge
4. biked from eastern Massachusetts to Brattleboro, VT
5. lived full-time on Nantucket (albeit only for three months)¹
6. written a Pilot interpreter in Z-80 assembly language
7. worked in a printing shop manufacturing rubber stamps
8. been personally denounced on the floor of Congress by Bob Dornan (sorry, this is still my favorite)²
9. ate genuine Scottish haggis in a restaurant in Glasgow. And liked it.
10. attended a bullfight in Madrid
11. masturbated in front of a crowd of fifty or more on a public city street.

I didn't notice that I had 11 until I finished the list. Then I found it too hard to choose one to excise.

1. keyne is exempted from this one.
2. keyne is exempted from this one too.
3. It's hard to do this meme with your spouse on your friendslist!

Comments

[penk.livejournal.com]

spent 10 days canoeing on the St. Croix river in Maine
Bzzt. I did this. Part of a camp I went to called something like the Maine something canoe basin. 10 days canoeing, back in base camp for 2, then 10 more days backpacking the appalachian trail.

Best summer evuh.

[qwrrty.livejournal.com]

Dude. It wasn't Maine Waterways camp, was it? Because that would just be too freaky.

Maine Canoeing

[arcticelf.livejournal.com]

My Boy Scout troop did this one sumer. Definatly a great way to spend a couple weeks. We just hired a guide company for it though...

AE

[harimad.livejournal.com]

Me, too, for Outward Bound. Also Penobscott and St. James. Learned to white water and LOVED it.

[bratman.livejournal.com]

Oh who *hasn't* done #11?

[catya.livejournal.com]

*chuckles* do the 50+ people have to KNOW? ;)

[qwrrty.livejournal.com]

Hmm: I don't know if technicalities count on this one. The event I described was definitely part of a public exhibition, with pretty much full consent all around.

[jss]

Yep. I remember that evening.

I was there!

[vokzal.livejournal.com]

I can verify!

[ronebofh.livejournal.com]

It's hard to do this meme with your spouse on your friendslist!

It's even harder to do when your spouse AND your brother are on your friendslist. That's one of the reasons i haven't done it.

[stephe.livejournal.com]

#8 is still my favorite too. Being denounced on the floor of Congress is one of my goals in life.

[docorion.livejournal.com]

Dude. Denounced by Bob Dornan?

I am not worthy. You are, in fact, The Man.

I would *so* love to hear that story sometime.

[fj.livejournal.com]

The denouncement is now in the Congressional record. Although he gets portrayed somewhat as a victim.

[qwrrty.livejournal.com]

The short version is that in 1996 keyne and I appeared briefly in Newsweek's cover story on bisexuality. A few months later Dornan was on the floor of the House delivering a factfinding report from his recent trip to Vietnam, and he took one of his patented B-1 Bob left turns into lunacy to spend forty-five minutes tearing apart the Newsweek article, paragraph by paragraph.

You can get a PDF of the relevant page from the Congressional record here:
http://frwebgate.access.gpo.gov/cgi-bin/getpage.cgi?dbname=1995_record&page=H8717&position=all

(I think that URL is persistent.) Look in the upper-right-hand corner.

[docorion.livejournal.com]

My goodness. keyne ruined your virtue, too, apparently. At least according to the good Congressman.

I'm proud to know you both. Well done. :-)

[qwrrty.livejournal.com]

keyne ruined your virtue, too, apparently.

She did. She does it all the time!

Fortunately it washes off pretty easily.

[jacflash.livejournal.com]

walked from Staten Island -- via ferry, through Wall Street and over the Brooklyn Bridge -- to Boerum Hill in Brooklyn, during an acid trip at 3am

I once walked from the East Village to the Upper West Side (96th St) during an acid trip at 3 am, on an unseasonably warm March night.

[qwrrty.livejournal.com]

Ah! keyne insisted that I specify 3am on that one, and I wondered why. Surely no one else would have been that crazy, would they?

Seems like there's something about the stuff that makes you hyperactive.

[redjo.livejournal.com]

Ooo! I have done #10! And yes, it was in Madrid! :)

[qwrrty.livejournal.com]

D'oh! keyne wins that bet.

[beah.livejournal.com]

I've done #10 too. I've seen bullfights in Madrid, Quito, and at least one rural village in Ecuador.

[queenmomcat.livejournal.com]

I too stand in awe of #8. I think I shall make this one of my life's goals, or rather to be denounced by any major official, prefereably an elected one. Being denounced by someone like Rumsfeld would be just dandy.

[qwrrty.livejournal.com]

It helps a lot if the elected official in question is certifiably insane. (http://www.realchange.org/dornan.htm)

[queenmomcat.livejournal.com]

Yeah, that would make it easier...

[neimon.livejournal.com]

My personal goal is to being such enlightenment to the masses that I'm secretly declared a menace and murdered by the FBI.

What? It could happen!

[harimad.livejournal.com]

How does one choose? List 10 countries I've been to that no one in their right mind would visit? Ditto the street food I've eaten? 10 things are easy, 10 cool things are harder.

1. Been married by a supreme court justice.
2. Watched a relative face down the Secret Service on a security issue - and win. The Princess of Thailand sat with her back to the window that day.
3. Publicly called a bigwig (the managing partner of a large law firm) on his saying something idioticly sexist ("Why isn't there a men's legal defense fund?") and actually convinced him why he was wrong, instead of just getting him to back down and lose face.
4. Been given a tour of Zhongnanhai, the Chinese governmental compound, by the Premier of China (the recently deceased Zhao Ziyang).
5. Changed US military aid policy when I was 19.
6. Been 'saluted' by the President's Honor Guard.
7. Been to Haitian voodoo ceremony in Haiti.
8. Lived in China before Tiananmen Massacre (ie, before it was fashionable).
9. Been taught to read by a blind man.
10. Flew in a Jordanian military helicopter; 10A - before the head of the Jordanian military did so.

Your #8 is a hard act to follow.

[qwrrty.livejournal.com]

Your #8 is a hard act to follow.

And you have risen admirably to the challenge!

[keyne.livejournal.com]

OK, I want to hear about #5 :-)

[harimad.livejournal.com]

It sounds much better without details. But here they are: in college I was summer intern for Sen John Chafee (R-RI) in Defense & Foreign Affairs; my LA wasn't impressed with her full time employee and was impressed with me. She fired him and I got more responsibility. My opportunity came when Israel wanted to use US military aid to buy diesel-electric submarines, which are small and quiet at low speeds, very good for coastal water patrol. The issue is that military aid is supposed to be spent on US goods but the US doesn't build diesel-electric subs. (Ironically enough, FRG did, raising the prospect of Israel buying military tech from the Germans.) Did our interest in Israel's security outweigh our interest in that money being spent in the US? I determined it did. I made the rec to Senator Chafee, who agreed. With his support it worked its way through the Senate and eventually to approval.

Curiously, Cruiser told me over the weekend that the Navy is considering building the DE subs again, because another country wants to use US military aid to buy them.

[vokzal.livejournal.com]

Ok, I have to ask, are you utd?

I wanna know about #2!

[harimad.livejournal.com]

I am an honorary exile, or exile by invitation, or perhaps exile-in-law. I participate.

#2: My parents met the Princess of Thailand via a lady in waiting to the Queen (not sure, at this remove, how they became friends with Lady Nid). A number of years ago, when the princess was in DC, they invited her as guest of honor for dinner in a restaurant. The only logical way to arrange the meal was a table shaped like |_____| in a room with a picture window on the ground floor (slightly sunken, even, which is worse), and any arrangement other than table's back to window blocked all the doors. Secret service had kittens at the thought and forbade. My mother, a woman of no mean determination herself, was not about to let her dinner be ruined by overanxious agents and insisted. To this day she won't say exactly how she prevailed.

Years later I became friends with the son the former US Ambassador to Thailand. My friend had heard about the confrontation. Wonder who else knows? Maybe it's in the Secret Service books as an example of what not to do.

[keyne.livejournal.com]

Ok, I have to ask, are you utd?

She posts fairly often. Where are you these days? :-)

[harimad.livejournal.com]

I'd like to change #6 to "Been chased by a herd of goats" with the additional detail "in Algeria" if necessary to distinguish it from other LJ'ers experiences of being chased by a herd of goats.

[anotherjen.livejournal.com]

Okay, I MUST have details on #11.

[anotherjen.livejournal.com]

Did you actually whip it out?!

[qwrrty.livejournal.com]

Pants down, shorts off, full frontal, NC-17, no holds barred, CHICA.

[jss]

And lest you think he's fibbing: He's not. Pants-around-ankles, etc.

Funnily enough, each time Ilona told the story, Tim would enact it more and more realistically.

[pumpkin-pi.livejournal.com]

Wow! Very cool! I've done #8 (and agree--very yummy), though I had mine at NEFFA. (http://www.neffa.org) ()

[qwrrty.livejournal.com]

Whoa! You were publicly denounced at NEFFA? Not by Bob Dornan, though? :-)

[pumpkin-pi.livejournal.com]

GACK!!! I meant #9! *sigh* I need to work on my multitasking :/

[keyne.livejournal.com]

For the record, I ate haggis at the same Glasgow restaurant as T. -- I just wasn't wild about it :-)