By The Light Of The Moon

Saw the categories for this on CSM's page, and figured I'd lift it for my own self-quizzing here. And, no I don't know why I do such things....

Seven things you like:

1. The poetry of Wallace Stevens (haunted still by the words "She sang beyond the genius of the sea")
2. Just about any movie with Alec Guinness
3. Sweet, sweet soul music
4. Irish Mist
5. Wit, whimsy, and fine raillery
6. Candour, sincerity and conviction
7. *ahem* Something I'm too much of a gentleman to mention here *cough, cough*

Seven things you hate:

1. Liars, hypocrites, backstabbers, and other ought-to-be-denizens of Dante's ninth circle of Hell
2. Pretense and arrogance (they're kissing cousins in my eyes)
3. Wolf Blitzer
4. "The School of Resentment" (literary critics that are really self-righteous ideologues)
5. Michael Bolton, of whom one writers once asked, can you imagine how this guy aches, begs, pleads, moans, yearns for a cup of coffee in the morning?
6. Humourless pedants
7. My flurking computer

Seven things in your room:

1. Lord knows how many books, including a signed copy of Northrop Frye's The Great Code
2. My flurking computer
3. The remainder of an 18 Year Old Wiser's Rye bottle
4. My apparently well-weathered fedora that is more popular than I ever will be
5. An 8-foot tall poster for Casablanca I don't have the room to hang
6. Zozo's Doctor J cartoons
7. Me (duh!)

Seven random facts about you:

1. Fills out inane things like this against his better judgment, largely because of (2).
2. Insomniac Extraordinaire.
3. Most-embarrassing fact: used to write love poetry. *covers face in shame* Doc J has since grown out of this, like others outgrow bed-wetting and other regrettable emissions.
4. Voted in residence days "Most Likely To Look The Same When He's 40 As He Does Now." Not sure if that was a good thing, in retrospect. Speculation has it there's a portrait of him in an attic somewhere.
5. Also known as: Jer, Papa Jer, Uncle Jer, Jerbo, Jerminator, Jerbear, Il Professori, Domino, Falstaff Junior, among others, and even "O Captain, My Captain!" (The last was a looooong time ago.)
6. Is actually a closet-romantic and a closet-idealist, but he will deny such things if they are suggested; no one ever fully believes such denials, including the utterer.
7. Tends inexplicably to refer to himself in the third person.

Seven things you plan to do before you die:

1. Read Don Quixote of La Mancha aloud, in bed, while drinking a good Manchegan wine
2. Write a poem I'm truly happy with
3. Drink famously in an Irish bar (four-thousand miles and thiry-years away)
4. Walk again through the streets of Old Quebec City and along the St. Lawrence promenade in the light of the moon
5. Figure out what I plan to do before I die
6. Remember what ambition is
7. Look into JL's eyes one more time

Seven things you can do:

1. Write
2. Teach
3. Out-innuendo the best of 'em, and generally make people laugh even when they least think they can
4. Give answers to silly lists and quizzes
5. Keep that secret you told me about the hamster, the bagpipes, and the Joint Chiefs of Staff
6. Something I'm too much of a gentleman to mention here
7. Something I'm too much of a self-guarding cynic to admit here

Seven Things You Can't Do (but really wish i could...):

1. Sing like Ray Charles or Sam Cooke
2. Write a poem I'm truly happy with
3. Understand feminine "logic" (now *that's* dreaming!)
4. Go back in time and fix the thing I regret most
5. Escape the curse of "Papa Jer"
6. Achieve enlightenment
7. Forget
(BONUS: 8. Create and savour the pleasures of the perfect seraglio.)

Seven songs people should listen to:

1. Van Morrison, "Angeliou"
2. Van Morrison, "Fast Train"
3. Leonard Cohen, "Take This Waltz"
4. James Brown, "How Do You Stop?"
5. Bruce Springsteen, "If I Should Fall Behind"
6. Robbie Robertson, "Broken Arrow" (not the cheesy Rod Stewart version)
7. Ray Charles, "A Song For You"