As I stand before the mirror

Here is a sampling of what I discovered about myself today:

You are Bettie Page

Girl next door with a wild streak You’re a famous beauty – with unique look And the people like you are cultish about it

What Famous Pinup Are You?

You are an elitist bastard. You hate people that try too hard, actually you just hate people in general. You have excellent taste in alcohol, however, and probably have an excellent collection of classical and experimental music.

What kind of goth are you?
Created by ptocheia

You Should Learn French

C’est super! You appreciate the finer things in life… wine, art, cheese, love affairs. You are definitely a Parisian at heart. You just need your tongue to catch up…

What Language Should You Learn?

What Type of Librarian Are You?

You are Mary, from “Party Girl.”
Take this quiz!

You Communicate Like a Woman

You empathize, talk things out, and express your emotions freely. You’re a good listener, and you’re non-judgmental with your advice. Communication is how you connect with people. You’re always up for a long talk, no matter how difficult the subject matter is.

Do You Communicate Like a Man or a Woman?

What Kind of Reader Are You? Your Result: Obsessive-Compulsive Bookworm     You’re probably in the final stages of a Ph.D. or otherwise finding a way to make your living out of reading. You are one of the literati. Other people’s grammatical mistakes make you insane.
Dedicated Reader
Book Snob
Literate Good Citizen
Fad Reader
Non-Reader
What Kind of Reader Are You? Create Your Own Quiz

What CLAMP School Detective Are You?Hosted by theOtaku.com: Anime. Done right.

All about Ingmar

You scored 6 out of a possible 10
Very good. The world would be a better place if the general populace was as clued up as you are about Ingmar Bergman’s films. …and finally, most impressively of all,

What President are you?

Our 1st President, George Washington
Take this quiz!

p.s. One more day before classes are over!

Quiz Night: Visual DNA

What is your Visual DNA?

Tonight’s quiz is a clever social networking site’s version of a Hogwarts Sorting Hat, or maybe a kind of conscious tasseography. Pick the image that answers each question the best for you, and at the end find out more about yourself while meeting the cream of the crop, skimmed from the pool of 3 million plus participants who have also discovered their own visual DNA.

The image up above, by the way, is not from this Thursday’s Quiz site; rather, it is a pleasing little application called Web2DNA. Input your own URL and Web2DNA will “analyze it, crunch it to little bits and spit it out as a graphic representation of a human DNA.” Magnifique, no?

Respect is due to Phoebe’s Silk Felt Soil for directing my gaze toward tonight’s quiz

Quiz Night: Springfield, AlcaVtOrMiMeIlOk

(Today’s Electro-Map coming soon; first, Thursday’s Quiz:)

Have you ever wondered where Springfield, Simpsonsville really is? Are you already familiar with the Interactive Map of Springfield?

Maybe it’s time for you to take the Simpsons Quiz & figure out just how loyal a fan you are. If the MSNBC quiz is too simperingly mainstream, too pathetically simple, perhaps you should try the Simpsons Trivia Contest for a grueling 300+ trivia marathon which tests your loyalty to the Simpsons clan.

Or are you actually a long lost relative of the Simpsons yourself, biding your time Uncle Fester-like, hoping to lay a righteous claim on your property? Have you been Simpsonized?

As you subject yourself to tonight’s quizzes, just keep in mind this tiny acorn of Homer’s wisdom: “Kids, you tried your best and you failed miserably. The lesson is, never try.”

Quiz Night: etymology

Tonight’s quiz will challenge even the most confident lexicographers, logophiles, and word nerds. I’m talking about Etymologic!, one of the most challenging word origin quizzes I have come across. I took Latin for four years in high school only to augment the scope and flexibility of my vocabulary, and, honestly, because my school wasn’t teaching Japanese. My best run so far is 6 correct answers, but I want to score that well without having to guesstimate so often. It’s an ego thing.

When you’re done, you may want to brush up on your correlations and cross-references by visiting the British National Corpus and searching for all the words you got wrong. If that doesn’t do the trick, there’s always the Internet Anagram Server, which will slice and dice any phrase or alphabetic string up to 29 letters long. Perhaps it’ll help you compose your own mnemonic, rebus, acronym or personal method of loci after your tenth try at conquering Etymologic! Avast ye scurvy wordsmythe, we shall meet again!

Quiz Night: Are you obviously strong?

Tonight’s quiz is relatively simple — no soul-searching, no hard moral decisions, no strain on your intellect. Tonight, you need to ask yourself, What kind of superhero am I?

Your results:

You are Hulk

Hulk 70% Green Lantern 65% Catwoman 55% Spider-Man 50% Batman 50% The Flash 50% Superman 45% Robin 45% Iron Man 45% Supergirl 40% Wonder Woman 25%

You are a wanderer with amazing strength.

Wait a minute, that doesn’t seem right. Did I answer the questions correctly? I was hoping to be Catwoman, but I guess I don’t wear thongs often enough (and never a push-up bra). I didn’t answer any of the strength questions on the high side of the scale.

Maybe it has to do with a librarian’s inner strength, or perhaps it’s our quickness to anger when people ask “Now that I can Google everything, why do we need a library?”

Maybe it’s just that underneath my keenly honed information-savvy exterior, I am at heart a brutish deconstructionist lout. … Lemme take that stupid quiz again.

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But wait! Maybe it’s that I’m actually a Super Villain…

Quiz Night: Are you now or have you ever been an American citizen?

Here’s a special edition of Quiz Night, in part because I may not have access to the Internet tomorrow (unless my local coffee shop is open). So here’s an early Happy 4th of July! I dedicate this edition to our three branches of government, and to their mutual chain of accountability and oversight. Chicago will be heady with the scent of beer and burgers as a I bike my way around town, in search of the best backyard (veggie) barbecue. Don’t forget to look for the fireworks tonight if you’re in or near Chi-Town. Early revelers in the park across from my apartment have already been scaring the hair off my dogs the past few nights with some thunderous celebrations.

I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby is already celebrating & hollering with joy as well, since his 30 month prison sentence was commuted by President Bush yesterday. Here’s the official White House release on the affair. Wasn’t Bush paying attention to the whole Paris Hilton fiasco? His timing is extremely baffling to say the least. I seem to recall a loud furor over Clinton’s Presidential pardons, especially concerning Marc Rich, but Bush hasn’t been too slack in issuing pardons and commutation either. He did publicly state, just days after assuming the presidency: “Should I decide to grant pardons, I will do so in a fair way. I will have the highest of high standards.” If there was information that would exonerate Libby, shouldn’t he have presented it to the jurors and the court?

But anyhow, in celebration of the 4th, I wanted to bring you Thursday’s quiz night a little early. Here is a Citizenship quiz from Writing.com, authored by the suspiciously named Special Kay and based on study materials for official INS citizenship exams. So am I qualified to celebrate the 4th?

Apparently just 84% qualified, it seems — but what about you?

Quiz Night: He kindly stopped for me

Welcome to this Thursday’s Internet Quiz, vouchsafed and vetted for you by your friendly neighbourhood Robotic Librarian.

I have decided to offer a quiz about mortality this time around, but finding the right one has proven to be a challenge. So many sites are attached to products, usually books that promise to increase your quality of life. Boring. Even HBO’s Six Feet Under has a quiz to help you determine your death date. Hmm…nah. Not quite right. Hopefully I can find something more unique.

The first one I tried is called the Death Clock — it told me I am going to die Monday, February 19, 2024. It’s counting down the seconds of my life as you read this, and at this point I’ve fewer than 525, 182, 401 seconds left to live. The Death Clock is a bit grim and short on both questions and answers, since it’s based mainly on my body mass index and birth date…let’s try another one.

Next I tried another OkCupid quiz, the same compilation site that supplied last week’s geek, nerd and dork questionaire; this one is called the Death Test.

DEAD AT 80

cancer

As you can see, I am given a little more time on earth from this one. The questions were slightly more creative, but I feel like I can find something better.

Next I tried the Day4Death quiz, very similar to the Death Clock in ways but it provides percentages rather than just a nail for my coffin. It told me “When you will die: Monday November 20, 2062, at age of 89.” as well as

Where you will die:
Nursing Home	43.10%
In Patient	33.70%
Residence	15.30%
Out Patient/ ER	4.00%
Other places	2.80%
Dead on Arrival	1.00%
Status unknown	0.00%
Place unknown	0.00%
How you will die:
Heart disease	38.20%
All other causes	19.60%
Malignant cancer	11.70%
Stroke	10.20%
Influenza and pneumonia	4.80%
Alzheimer’s disease	4.30%
Lower respiratory disease	4.20%
Diabetes	2.10%
Kidney disease	1.80%
Accidents	1.80%
Blood poisoning	1.40%

And not only that, I got a quick little list of

Who died on November 20:
2002 – Satellite TV pioneer – Henry Taylor Howard, dies at 70, plane crashed
1995 – Olympic Gold Skater 1988.1994 – Sergei Grinkov, dies at 28, heart attack
1985 – Cartoon voice, Bullwinkle – Bill Scott, dies at 65.

They win points for creativity and research at the very least. None of these feel right, though. Maybe I’m looking for something less predictive, less self-help. I know what I should be eating, how I should be exercising, and I know what diseases run in my family. Maybe what I’m looking for isn’t afraid to point a finger and judge me for who I am. A quiz that considers not only my impending mortality but my own attitude about it as well. In the end, I think I found the right quiz —

The Dante’s Inferno Test has banished you to the Seventh Level of Hell!
Here is how you matched up against all the levels:

Level	Score
Purgatory (Repenting Believers)	Very Low
Level 1 – Limbo (Virtuous Non-Believers)	High
Level 2 (Lustful)	High
Level 3 (Gluttonous)	High
Level 4 (Prodigal and Avaricious)	Low
Level 5 (Wrathful and Gloomy)	Low
Level 6 – The City of Dis (Heretics)	High
Level 7 (Violent)	High
Level 8- the Malebolge (Fraudulent, Malicious, Panderers)	High
Level 9 – Cocytus (Treacherous)	Low

Take the Dante’s Inferno Hell Test

That’s right, it’s Dante’s Inferno Test. Now you can find out just where you may wind up if you do not live as you know you should. After today’s quiz, I think I ought to finish reading that biography of Saint Francis of Assisi… Good Luck!