Meme Me 'Round the Corner

So, OK, I've been tagged by Psychodiva. The following rules should explain the new blog meme.

• We have to post these rules before we give you the facts.
• Players start with eight random facts/habits about themselves.
• People who are tagged need to write their own blog about their eight things and post these rules.
• At the end of your blog post, you need to choose eight people to get tagged and list their names.
• Don't forget to leave them each a comment telling them they're tagged, and to read your blog.

Here are my eight random facts:

1. I think that following sports is a tremendous waste of time. People whose moods and actions are influenced by their team’s performance remind me of fundies.
2. I allowed my mother to talk me into being bar-mitzvah’d when I was 13. My father the atheist had no vote in our household. Even though I was an atheist, too, I wanted all those great cash presents. One of my best friends at the time was a little Catholic boy, who came to the temple, donned a yarmulke and prayer shawl, and sat respectfully during the ceremony. Towards the end of the service, the rabbi gave a short homily about how the entire non-Jewish world was responsible for anti-semitism. I couldn’t stop looking at my pal, and feeling embarrassed and angry. After a bar mitzvah is finished, it’s traditional for the parents of the honored boy to throw a “kiddush,” a minimal party, usually in the synagogue’s basement. This party is mainly to appease those people who have not been invited to the big, fancy-shmancy reception later. At the kiddush, it’s customary for the rabbi to grab two glasses of wine, and approach the bar-mitzvah boy to toast him for becoming a man. The rabbi approached me and offered me the wine. Instead of taking it, I said, “fuck you, you bigot.” My mother was mortified, but understood. My proud father told me about an hour later that I really had become a man.
3. My favorite authors are Charles Dickens, Philip Roth, and Raymond Chandler, not necessarily in that order.
4. I’ve grown extremely tired of books about atheism, written by atheists, for atheists. To me, they’re all essentially the same: “I don’t believe in god, and here’s why.” I don’t think people need a reason not to believe in god. Giving reasons for not believing in god, I feel, inflates an imaginary being's importance and, oddly, tends to validate its existence.
5. I voted for Ralph Nader in 2000, but I don’t blame myself for George Bush’s election. Nor do I blame the Supreme Court. I blame Al Gore for being such an uninspiring candidate and running such a half-assed campaign that he couldn’t even carry his own damn state.
6. Whenever I see a person with one or more tattoos on his or her body, I remember the Jewish baker in my childhood neighborhood. He also had a tattoo — a number put there by the Nazis. That’s why I don’t think “body art” is decorative.
7. My iPod is loaded with a completely schizophrenic collection of songs. Some of the artists who perform in my ears most often are: Talking Heads, Frank Sinatra, Cyndi Lauper, Louis Armstrong, Bob Marley, Fred Astaire (singing and dancing!), the Rolling Stones, Sergio Mendes, and Dr. John. Even though the mix is eclectic, I don’t have a single Country tune on there.
8. When I was called for jury duty last year, I agonized over how big a stink I would make if I were asked to swear to anything. I finally did get selected for a voir dire, a jury-selection process. We were asked to raise our right hands and swear that we would tell the truth about ourselves. I blurted out that I didn’t swear because “I don’t believe in god.” The judge shrugged and asked the clerk to have me “affirm,” rather than swear. Later, after I’d been selected to sit on the jury, the clerk remembered what I’d said before, and just asked me to affirm. No one seemed freaked out by an atheist sitting in judgment.

The blogs I'm choosing to tag are:
A Load of Bright
Atheist Hussy
Flumadiddle
Friendly Atheist
Way of the Mind
Deep Thoughts
This is You reading about Me ... or not
and one outside the Atheosphere:
A Guy in the Pew