holding steady.™

 

one hundred things about me that you probably didn’t really want to know.

(note: this list is only entirely applicable as of 30 december 2007)

 

1-my full name is danielle ashley king.

 

2-i was named for daniel, from the bible. you know, with the lions and that posse of fellas (shadrach, meshach, and abednego)

 

3-i am a senior, graduating from the home of the ‘canes on may 9, 2008.

 

4-there is a song out right now, by 50 cent and justin timberlake, called “ayo technology,“ where jt sings in the chorus that he’s “tired of using technology.“ i will NEVER get tired of using technology.

 

5-more than anything, i am obsessed with photography.

 

6-that being said, i have ZERO formal training in photography. for my birthday this year (’07) i bought myself a canon digital rebel xti. and a 25-135mm lens. that’s about as pro as i get.

 

7-pirating is a fun and necessary part of my life. student=student budget. but as i have begun to earn money, that happens less and less.

 

8-that being said, i have 14,412 songs in my iTunes library. and i’m probably about to download john coltrane’s blue train, so, you know, plus 8.

 

9-the only thing that i love on the same level of music and photography is my computer. an apple macbook pro, 17-inch.

 

10-i have been obsessed with apple computers since the release of the titanium powerbook g4 in january of 2001, my freshman year of high school.

 

11-i like to try to convert people who say windows is better. out of my concern for their mental stability (which is clearly affected, since they went and said that).

 

12-i curse a lot.

 

13-i recently quit trying to quit cursing.

 

14-i am an empath, meaning i can’t stay mad at anyone, and i feel bad for everyone.

 

15-i haven’t been in a stable, committed relationship ever. way to push the stereotype.

 

16-oh, by the way, i’m a lesbian. :-).

 

17-some of my best friends are at least as gay as i am, which is a whole other can of worms…maybe i’ll blog about THAT someday.

 

18-i am a huge fan of watches. my favorite for the past couple of years has been the tissot t-touch (the one i have has an orange rubber band).

 

19-i also like sneakers/trainers. at last count i had 27 pairs. and that is only because i had to give some away, for lack of adequate closet-space. (see #65)

 

20-i do still live with my mother. but that’s totally ok.

 

21-i plan to move to europe for a couple of months in the upcoming fall or spring. probably france. i have a love/hate relationship with france that is oh-so typical of americans.

 

22-i hate the idea of being a typical american.

 

23-the most valuable thing on earth in my view is an ability to grasp how politics affects every individual, and to have a suitable knowledge of something that will touch your life in some way.

 

24-obnoxious language is kind of my thing. i wonder if it shows that i like to write papers.

 

25-i have recently picked up writing poetry. maybe i’ll start blogging some of that. it kicked off in the spring of ‘07, when i took a creative writing class on poetry. i got really into it, so that i have a half-full moleskine journal and a big-ass pages document on my computer.

 

26-it does kind get annoying that there are still a shit-ton of these left.

 

27-my ultimate goals for life are pretty simple: i want to teach at the university level, and i want to own my own bookstore.

 

28-currently, i live in a town that suffers from a certain amount of illiteracy, only counteracted by the number of borders bookstores there are. my favorite bookstore is a place called books and books in downtown coral gables.

 

29-by town, i was being intentionally misleading. miami, fl (including the outlying components of south florida) has a population of something like 5.5 million people.

 

30-it is a very real dream of mine to get my phd from harvard university. god, that would be awesome.

 

31-if I get into harvard, i’m getting a tattoo of the veritas seal on my forearm. it’s happening.

 

32- I would get a tattoo of an apple, you know, to show my love and fetish-obsession. i’m so far content with a sticker on the back of my car (along with an HRC equality sticker, to show how much I believe in equality).

 

33-speaking of “the gay,” i’m pretty much obsessed with my girlfriend tori. she lives too far away, but we can’t fault her for that, can we?

 

34-i have kind of a thing for desktop toys…

 

35-i don’t stay focused for very long periods of time.

 

36-with the exception of the computer i’m typing on and the camera that I got myself for my birthday, the best thing I bought in the past year was DEFINITELY the iphone.

 

37-the best noise on the planet is undoubtedly the sound of a song with clear and amplified bass coming through a nice subwoofer.

 

38-the second best noise on the planet is the sound of rain….good, torrential rain that gathers in the storm gutters on the edge of the roof of the house and pours down with the kind of intensity that only nature can provide.

 

39-i tried to paint my nails recently. i’m not going to do that again, I don’t think.

 

40-my family hates when I try to take pictures of them.

 

41-i have a slight “black power” fetish. I have this poster hanging up in my room, among others.

 

42-i’ve really been getting into flickr lately. I found this photo-stream of science-related tattoos, and have come to realize that you truly can find anything on the “inter-web.”

 

43-i have several tv shows in their entirety on DVD (e.g. alias, the x-files, the west wing, frasier, the office-uk, the office-us, nip/tuck, will and grace & space ghost: coast to coast). I have been cycling through them, watching every single episode when I have bothered to watch tv for the past eight months or so.

 

44-as the result of my “new” thing of owning tv series on dvd, I don’t really watch tv anymore. but i’ll tell you, having dvr is the best thing ever. you know, for when I do deign to watch television.

 

45-my next large purchase will likely be a huge-capacity dvd player.

 

46-for my birthday/graduation present, i’m HOPING that I get a dog. I don’t care how expensive they are to feed. great danes are quite simply the most beautiful things on the planet.

 

47-metal pushpins and white boards provide me with the kind of joy that I don’t feel other people can truly appreciate.

 

48-i’m embracing a new understanding of the term “organization.” ergo, #47.

 

49-at some point in my life, I would love to live in either london or amsterdam. this should make a couple of people happy.

 

50-speaking of which, my platonic life-mate is named bruno. yeah, sure, i’ve got a few close friends, but this guy is like me, with boy parts. and brazilian. but, most importantly, boy parts.

 

51-i have a new passion for ethiopian food. in the miami area, there is a little place in the design district called sheba. mmm.

 

52-the best messenger bag I have found that fits my laptop is the jack spade nylon canvas tech field bag. at the most basic level, it’s so damn pretty.

 

53-i have a personal style of furniture preference. I feel like that’s weird in and of itself. but anyways, I feel like there just aren’t a whole lot of people who enjoy a nice wingback chair, or library tufted sofa AND the maly bed.

 

54-more than anything, I wish that I could speak more languages. I should probably master french first, but I have learned two words of amharic (bushti and sälam). and eventually, i’m gonna make my friend teach me portuguese.

 

55-there’s something like…6900 living languages, spoken in the world right now. I would really only find it useful to speak a few. namely, the world’s most influential languages (english, french, spanish, russian, arabic, chinese, german, japanese, portuguese, and hindi).

 

56-i had the best dessert ever encountered by man a couple of days ago. “key lime cheesecake flan, with macadamia shortbread, tropical fruit salsa and passion fruit coulis,” at michael’s genuine food and drink, in the design district of miami, about ten minutes from my house.

 

57-i have moments, where I am overcome by my concern for the environment and the ongoing state of the world. at such times, websites like 19.20.21, free rice, desmog blog, etc. are of comfort to me, and get often perused on my web browser.

 

58-at other times, I feel that all that I do is act in a continuous perfidy of mother earth. I usually get to a heightened sense of such an awareness, and then I have the moments described in #47.

 

59-it’s a frequent hobby of mine to get into graphic design. I have an ever growing arsenal of vector images (the best of which are ironically part of the gomedia arsenal) and fonts, courtesy of free front sites and miscellaneous spots (dafont, cape arcona, typoasis, and typenow). and then I play with them in fireworks cs3.

 

60-i like punctuation a lot. my favorite is the ampersand. it takes the place of an entire word AND it sorta looks like a cursive “s.”

 

61-i’m also a bit of a grammar nazi.

 

62-i happen to have a couple of tattoos, as it is happens. one is a hwemudua, on the inside of my left wrist,and the other is a stylized ampersand on the back of my right arm, just above my elbow.

 

63-i like getting tattoos. but I have to be very careful to not get addicted to it, as my mother will kick me out, and my girlfriend will break up with me if I get any more anytime soon.

 

64-i have moments where me and the outdoors don’t get along so well.

 

65-i love converse all stars. LOVE.

 

66-that is not to say that I don’t love all shoes (see #19). I do, especially the kind that no one else has. for examples, check out sneaker freaker and kix-files.

 

67-i have come upon true evidence of my mac geekery. upon realizing that macworld san francisco is just around the corner, I got a flutter in my stomach.

 

68-twitter is my new thing.

 

69-one of these days, I want to plan a monster tour of europe. a couple of countries at a time, but by age thirty, I want to have been to every country in western europe. and then, I take on the world.

 

70-in the recent future, I expect to live in san francisco. what an awesome city. who knew that i, of the east cost elitist snobbery, would be pumped about moving to california?

 

71-i’m still not quite sure where my east coast elitist snobbery comes from. I live in miami.

 

72-modern art is exciting to me, especially since I live in miami. the wealth of art resources available in such a city would astound anyone.

 

73-my favorite kind of art stems out of the abstract expressionist school.

 

74-in high school. for my senior art research project, I did an exploration on installation art. it was a better experience into a new understanding of art than I gave it credit for at the time.

 

75-i shop at the gap a little too much.

 

76-i’m thinking about starting to shop at j.crew a little bit more. I know, i’m a shame to my race.

 

77-i know i’ve said it before, but i’m kind of a whore for books and reading.

 

78-recently, i’ve decided that i’m going to read “á la recherche du temps perdu,” aka “in search of lost time.” i’m not scared of proust, or his 3200-page monstrosity.

 

79-upon the advice of a truly fabulous religious studies professor, I have started reading michael eric dyson. the foreword to his reader is called “why I am an intellectual,” and I found it particularly stirring.

 

80-#41+#79=my own brand of Black pride.

 

81-i used to row for the university of miami. it was a short period of my life, and it’s over, but I still look back upon the experience overall as a happy time.

 

82-i have a longboard, that I love. I named it oscar, for no particular reason.

 

83-my love for political history is matched only by my love for the visuals that accompany it.

 

84-there is this mac program, called journler. it’s what i’m using to compose this extremely long list of completely useless information about myself.

 

85-i like to cook. I don’t get to do it enough, but whenever I come upon a great recipe (usually from tastespotting), I try to hold onto it. I plan to get macgourmet for storing the recipes on my hard drive.

 

86-speaking of cooking, I am obsessed with nigella lawson. both her cooking and her…shall we say, visual appeal are obscenely fantastic.

 

87-continuing to speak about cooking, the food network is basically the only consistent television that I ever watch.

 

88-i like things that are soft, like down comforters and pillows. you wouldn’t think so, since I sleep on a futon bed. but I do.

 

89-one of these days, i’m going to solve a rubik’s cube again. I haven’t been able to in some time.

 

90-i really like punctuation. there are fourteen types of punctuation marks (period, question mark, exclamation mark, colon, semi-colon, hyphen, dash, parentheses, brackets, ellipsis, apostrophe, quotation marks, and commas).

 

91-i wish I could learn to shoot a gun. but I feel that this wish would require me to stop being morally opposed to firearms.

 

92-my mother has often told me that I could read before I could walk well. I guess that explains some things.

 

93-why is it that in tv shows, people just randomly have music playing softly in the background of their homes?

 

94-am I finished with this damn list yet?

 

95-oh no, only about five more to go….whew.

 

96-per the reference point of #57, I am embarking on a new thing where I am anti-paper. there is (naturally) actually a couple of pieces of mac software (papers and yep), that enables the archiving of pdf documents in an interface that allows for easy reference. i’m getting that ish.

 

97-i love albert einstein.

 

98-i’m a perfume whore. currently the scent of the hour is victor rolf’s flowerbomb.

 

99-it’s true what they say. the best ideas come to you in the bathroom, whether in the tub or on the toilet. more the former for me.

 

100-i enjoy a good aphorism when I come across one. the only real one I have come up with so far in my short life is that there really is never enough time in a day.