I encourage anyone who has been tagged with the "four things" doohickey to pass this back up the line; I think perpetrators should have to come up with four new things (at least in the first four categories) every time another victim passes it back!

Four books I'd buy a friend

1. East of Eden, John Steinbeck
   
2. Narziss und Goldmund, Hermann Hesse
   
3. One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovitch, Alexander Solzhenitsyn
   
4. The Moon and Sixpence, Somerset Maugham

Four books I'd buy an enemy (on condition they had to read 'em)

1. Beloved, Toni Morrison
   
2. A Million Little Pieces, that guy who was all over the news recently
   
3. The Satanic Verses, Salman Rushdie
   
4. Winnie the Pooh, AA Milne

Four pieces of music I'd miss if I went deaf

1. Tabula Rasa, Arvo Part (played by Shaham/Anthony)
   
2. In A Landscape, John Cage (played by Stephen Drury)
   
3. Are You The One (That I've Been Waiting For)?, Nick Cave
   
4. Shine On You Crazy Diamond, Pink Floyd

Four pieces of music that make me want to gnaw out my own eardrums

1. Do You Believe, that Cher thing
   
2. Popcorn (I like it, but what an earworm)
   
3. anything with a breakbeat
   
4. anything by Kenny G

Four pet peeves

1. people who stand right in front of "No Smoking" signs, smoking
   
2. people who stand at the front of the bus when there's room to move back
   
3. the phrase "very unique"
   
4. Kenny G

Four things I like that other people commonly find weird or horrible or both

1. vegemite
   
2. Neil Diamond
   
3. stale cookies (pre-fungus, though, of course)
   
4. high humidity on a hot day

Four popular things that I think are weird or horrible or both

1. oysters
   
2. snow
   
3. reality television
   
4. Kenny G

Spousal unit, I'm looking at you!

I would be safe from this kind of thing, down here at the far end of the blogosphere's long tail, but for the spousal unit and her irritating habit of having sociable friends. I appear to have married a popular person. How'd that happen?

Anyway, grrr, but I pretty much cannot say no to my wife, so:

Four jobs I've had

1. streetside hot dog seller
   
2. janitor
   
3. proofreader/copyeditor for scientific mss
   
4. research scientist

Four movies I can watch over and over

1. Lilo and Stitch
   
2. Cool Hand Luke
   
3. Jesus of Montreal
   
4. Lawrence of Arabia

Four places I've lived

1. Madang, Papua New Guinea
   
2. Gracemere, Australia
   
3. Sydney, Australia
   
4. Portland, Oregon

Four TV shows I love

1. Firefly
   
2. Wonderfalls
   
3. A Touch of Frost
   
4. PBS' Now, before it was gutted

Four places I've vacationed

1. Kuwait
   
2. Jersey (Channel Islands)
   
3. Amsterdam
   
4. Northwest Island (on the Great Barrier Reef)

Four of my favorite dishes

1. rice and beans
   
2. vegetable soup (spousal unit's version)
   
3. cheese, tomato and onion sammiches
   
4. saag paneer

Four sites I visit daily
my Bloglines account keeps me in touch with some 200 sites; here are four I particularly recommend:

• Your Daily Art
  
• So What Can I Do
  
• Chromasia
  
• Ask Metafilter (avoid MeFi itself!)

Four places I would rather be right now

1. wherever the spousal unit is
   
2. Brisbane, with some friends I miss very much
   
3. Northwest Island
   
4. Amsterdam

Four bloggers I am tagging
I'll have to think about this some more. I've decided not to pass it on, for reasons made clear in the next entry.

This year I'm going to:

• Give blood; make sure organ donation preparations are in place.
• Volunteer to do something about someone else's problems.
• Quit wasting so much time on the internets. Seriously. And stop doing it at work at all. Instead: read more books, take more photos, get more exercise, see more live music, do more stuff.