5 Things

Kristen tagged me with the 5 Things You Don't Know about Me meme, which may qualify me as the very last person to receive this thing.

Here we go:

1. My great grandfather, Signor Sebastian Herne, was the head of the Socialist Party in Springfield, Massachusetts in the 1930's. (At least that's what my mom told me.)

2. I won the Gold Medal in the National Latin Exam when I was a freshman at Mercy High School in Middletown, CT.

3. As someone who has been raped (I have a strong aversion to the word "victim"), I am having a very hard time with the outcome of the Duke rape allegations. Primarily, I am pissed that a woman would lie because it makes it harder for the rest of us. (By the way, the Rape, Abuse and Incest National Network says that one in six women have been sexually assaulted, so this is not meant to be shocking.)

4. I wrote a zine in college called Disco Fred's Got a Vasectomy. Some self-absorbed men thought it was meant to be a comment on castration, but it really was just a ridiculous line from a movie of the week starring Timothy Busfield.

5. I have a tattoo of Alice in Wonderland, based on one of the book's original pen and ink illustrations, on my left hip. I have been thinking of getting another tattoo for years -- continuing the theme of female literary characters in pen and ink with an illustration from Harriet the Spy. But the last time I got a tattoo was when I was 20 and, even then, I wished the tattoo artist (Mandy Flynn at Erno Tattoos in San Francisco) good luck when she said she was going to find a flat part of my body to tattoo. In other words, I think I might be too old and there may not be any more flat parts of my body.

I'll tag Morra.