Double-Barrelled Meme Blaster x 7

Duckie and Fyodor both invited me to meme with them - how hard would the heart have to be to knock them back? It's the blog equivalent of being mewed at by a basket full of ginger and white kittens with pink ribbons round their necks. The basket is being carried by a basset hound (held between the teeth). There may also be some fluffy yellow ducklings in the basket, I couldn't say for certain.

It is the venerable and virulent meme of sevens. Ever wondered why so many good things come in bundles of sevens?

Smart person George M. Miller has some ideas about why. In "The Magical Number Seven, Plus or Minus Two: Some Limits on Our Capacity for Processing Information", he says it's related to how many separate individual pieces of information (within the same single category) a person can conceive of as separate. Plus or minus two, seven positions on a graph, or seven different pitches, is as many as a person can remember and retain without confusing them or without grouping them into subcategories.


So there you go. On with the meme.


7 things I want to do before I die:

1. Blow out three hundred and one candles on my birthday cake.
2. Meet Elvis.
3. Go on the radio.
4. Live and work and make friends in a foreign country.
5. Write a screenplay faithfully and uncompromisingly based on a Patrick White novel.
6. Contribute to the greater knowledge, dignity and compassionate understanding of humanity.
7. Go for a ride in a speedboat.

7 things I cannot do:

1. Stop reading a novel or play or watching a movie even though it's obviously shit and not getting better.
2. See what's so good about David Foster Wallace.
3. Crack my joints.
4. Dive.
5. Anything that probably should have been done two days ago.
6. Be bothered getting the dry whitish stuff off the bathroom tiles.
7. Long Division.

7 things that attract me to the opposite sex:

1. A noble brow.
2. A very specific and quite rare sense of humour.
3. Manly disdain for inconsequential trifles and fussing.
4. Intellect.
5. Temperance.
6. An unfailing appetite for enjoyments of all kinds.
7. Honesty, dependability, steadfastness, fidelity.

7 things that I say most often:

1. What a beautiful cat! What a beautiful cat you are!
2. Ah Baz, such a nerd, such a fluffy little nerd.
3. I don't have anything to wear.
4. oh for fuck's sake.
5. No, still not finished.
6. That's nice.
7. NO, you choose.

7 celebrity crushes:

1. Jane Austen
2. Fanny Burney
3. P.T. Anderson
4. Julianne Moore
5. Mary, Queen of Scots
6. Jodie Foster
7. Walter Benjamin

It offends my sense of order that there are only six categories of sevenisms to this meme, so I'm throwing in another one here.

7 random things I feel like mentioning

1. Eric Hearble.
2. Jack Palance in Contempt: "When I hear the word 'culture' I reach for my chequebook."
3. Most of Father Ted is no longer funny after four or five viewings. I have yet to discover how many viewings it takes to wear out the funniness of The Office.
4. Of the eight lightbulbs in this room, five are broken.
5. The last taxi ride I took, the driver was playing Barry White. Loud.
6. Whichever way you look at it, plagiarism is revolting.
7. Denmark: who cares?

7 people I'm offering this preciousss meme to, (if they wants it)

Any seven who step up to the plate. Just go ahead and take it. It's my civic duty to cop out of passing it on, because with that rate of replication, this meme could wipe out the internet.