Reminder to self.

[truepenny]

LiveJournal is not a popularity contest. Do not obsess over your "friend-of" list. Get a life.

Comments

[matociquala.livejournal.com]

Quality, not quantity.

[matociquala.livejournal.com]

Quality, not quantity.

[monanotlisa.livejournal.com]

It's not?

Darn. I already bought the pompoms and the uniform.

[kaylarudbek.livejournal.com]

If the ratio of "friend of" to "friends" is greater than one, you're probably in pretty good shape in terms of popularity, truepenny.

[heresluck]

Poor competitive-when-roused porpentine. Have a carrot!

Also, if you need to feel like you're winning, you can always look at my list. *g*

[truepenny.livejournal.com]

Oh how embarrassing. You're right. This is The Madly Savage Mink Which Is My Competitiveness. Little bastard must have got the cage door open when I wasn't looking.

Argh.

(Did I tell you about the porpentine we saw at the zoo eating a piece of melon?)

[murielperun.livejournal.com]

Wow, another grad student! I've added you both to my friends list. And my "Friend of" list is really,/i> pathetic, if either of you needs cheering up.

memo

[deepad]

To: Competitive Mink (TM Truepenny)
Re: Reminder to Self

We would like to remind you have been added in the friend list of our Live Journal for reasons including, but not limited to, the following:
a) Intelligent and thought-provoking discussion of literature, including and especially genres such as fantasy and science fiction.
b) Citations of works ranging from Jacobean tragedy to Punk Hamlet.
c) In-depth analyses and commentaries on popular writing phenomenon and trends, especially pertaining to children's fiction and feminism in popular fiction.
d)Discussion about the gender-identification of dragons.
e) Porcupine icons.
We hope this will meet with your approval.
Yours & etc.

Deepa D.

Re: memo

[truepenny.livejournal.com]

Thanks!

[marith.livejournal.com]

Do minks eat thistles?

[ex-greythist387.livejournal.com]

Dear me, I hope not.

[truepenny.livejournal.com]

I believe minks are obligate carnivores, like the other members of the Mustelidae family, so most likely not. And, I beg of you, don't encourage the nasty little creature by offering it mice or plump voles or T-bone steaks.

I should make a sign for myself: DO NOT FEED THE MINK, and tape it to my monitor. That should confuse visitors even more than my DISSERTATE sign does.

[keswindhover.livejournal.com]

This exchange set off my urge to know useless things, so I quote:

'Mink food changes with the seasons. During summer months, they eat a lot of fish, crayfish, frogs, and some small mammals and birds. During the winter they eat mostly muskrats. Mink are very efficient and fierce predators so sit relatively high in the food chain. Some, primarily young ones, are eaten by coyotes, foxes, or owls. '

The mink referred to live in Illinois - which is apparently a tough place to be a muskrat.

[truepenny.livejournal.com]

I had it in my head that muskrats are bigger than minks. Is that just the effect of meeting Deacon Mushrat before I was old enough to take an interest in comparative zoology, or are minks even nastier little predators than I thought?

I still *heart* Deacon Mushrat.

[keswindhover.livejournal.com]

Your Deacon Mushrat reference is lost on me, sadly - I am from the UK. But of course, I will now have to acquire some more useless knowledge!

And mink, and the rest of their family, are quite capable of killing prey larger than themselves. Stoats eat rabbits, for example.

[truepenny.livejournal.com]

Sorry. Deacon Mushrat was a character in Pogo (American comic strip, drawn by Walt Kelly). He spoke in Gothic type-face and was continually being led by his closed-minded, rigidly held morality into being the pawn of evil characters like Simple J. Malarky (a parody of Senator McCarthy, by whom Walt Kelly was not deceived in the least). Deacon always came out with the short end of the stick, but every once in a while, he'd do the right thing. He was intolerant and easily led, but not actually evil.

[tekalynn.livejournal.com]

If I remember correctly, Deacon Mushrat ran for US president at one point, against Pogo. His campaign promises were of the utmost truthfullness, including "I pledge that the War of 1812 will be only a memory."

[truepenny.livejournal.com]

There were gaps in my parents' Pogo collection--which is how I met Pogo--and that must have been one of them. Dammit.

[marith.livejournal.com]

>I should make a sign for myself: DO NOT FEED THE MINK, and tape it to my monitor.
>That should confuse visitors even more than my DISSERTATE sign does.

*makes a sign reading DISSERTATE THE MINK, helpfully*

[truepenny.livejournal.com]

Love it!
*wanders off, giggling to self*

[yonmei.livejournal.com]

Reminder to self. LiveJournal is not a popularity contest. Do not obsess over your "friend-of" list. Get a life.

You betcha. Particularly as you defriended so many of us not long ago, and pointed out to us then that it wasn't that you didn't like us, it was just that you didn't have time to read us.

So, you know, if you think of your "friends of" list as a popularity contest, does that mean I should have concluded, back when you unfriended me, that I'm unpopular with you and I should unfriend you rather than hanging around where I'm not wanted? I think not. Just get over it already. Take the advice you gave to other people back then, swallow it neat, and carry on writing the lovely litcrit that we love you for. Yes, we love you for other things, too. Cute porpentines, and so on.

[truepenny.livejournal.com]

Yes, exactly.

[coffeeandink.livejournal.com]

*sigh* Yes, I need to remind myself of this too. And also that I do not need to take disagreement personally, or pay attention to people who insist on doing so.

[vass]

If you need shock treatment, to remind the Mink why popularity contests are not good things, go here. Scares the stuffing out of me that they exist, but I'm glad they hang around in one place.

[truepenny.livejournal.com]

*backs away slowly*

[rliz.livejournal.com]

And, my god, there are billions of those rating communities! They rate how pretty you are, how cool you are, how connected you seem to be. I boggle. I'm a little fascinated by the depth of time and work put into those things.

(Actually one night at 3 AM I made a fake LJ and posted a fake "application" to one of the rate-how-cool-I-am ones. No one got it.... A bad taste in my mouth, but anonymous hit-and-run satire has its 3-AM-y place.)

[liv]

Well, I've just friended you too (did so before I saw this post, in fact) because I decided I was reading you more often than people who actually are on my friends list. And because you talk irresistably about DLS, and because you attract intelligent comments.

But you're right, LJ isn't a popularity contest. If it were, I strongly suspect that the winner would not be anyone you would respect.

[truepenny.livejournal.com]

*blushes*
Thanks.

[rliz.livejournal.com]

... Wrod.

Hey, btw. Would you be interested in a custom LJ style? There could be porcupines!