A Slight Mutation

Doing my part to blast memes with cultural radiation.

Three stupid things:

As there was once a time when "It seemed like a good idea at the time" was my personal motto, I can't pick three. Dying my hair jet black two days before my college graduation at the suggestion of a jerk is the first thing that comes to mind. Just recently I went to a concert without ear protection, and I'm still annoyed at myself about that. Good bye hair cells! I'll miss you! (Probably you will be seeing more about this later.)

Given a time machine that functioned, and you were allowed to only pick up to five people to dine with, who would you pick:

At the current moment, who has the most influence in your life:

If you had three wishes that were not supernatural, what would they be?

Name one event that has changed your life.

See, it's the chance that I'd have to pay someone to talk about stupid questions like these that will keep me out of therapy no matter how much people on the internet recommend it to me. Because you know that for the second one that there is a small set of "right answers." For example, if you're an adult, your mom is not the right answer for that one unless she is ill and you are taking care of her. (I believe that right answers include "myself" and, for Christians, "Jesus.") And that third question? What use are non-supernatural wishes: "I wish that I will take a shower, get dressed, drive to Kroger and buy a doughnut and a newspaper." Like I need wishes for that. Oh, and the time machine? I'd take it apart to see how it works.

Someone is visiting your hometown/place where you live at the moment. Name two things you regret your city not having, and two things people should avoid.

Current city needs more cafes and also a fine dining restaurant. What to avoid? Getting anywhere near here on a Saturday in the fall without first checking the football schedule. I'm not a good resource on what else to avoid, as one of my standard evening walks takes me under the freeway, past the bus station, past the day shelter, back under the freeway, past the halfway house for released prisoners, and by the homeless shelter.

NEW QUESTION: List some regrets:

I think that this nicely complements the three stupid things (because not all stupid things are regrettable) and moves my interpretation of this meme fully into negative territory. In reverse chronological order:

1. Not making more of an effort to see if it really would have been possible to spend time at MSRI when I was in grad school and they were devoting a year to the stuff I'm interested in.
2. Not taking more computer science classes when I was an undergraduate.
3. For not researching colleges better and not discovering that large non-elite universities have interesting "vocational" majors (like graphic design) that the liberal arts-oriented elite schools lack.