friday 5

Hello, and welcome to this week’s Friday 5! Please copy these questions to your webspace. Answer the questions there; then leave a comment below so we’ll all know where to check out your responses. Please don’t forget to link us from your website!

This week’s questions (and their explanatory introductions) are inspired by this Mental Floss article about words in other languages without English equivalents. We did a first round of these words in October, three years ago, so feel free to use these as well, if you missed them the first time!

1. In German, fernweh is a longing for distant places, perhaps even places you’ve never been. What place you’ve never been do you have fernweh for?
2. In Finnish, myötähäpeä is “the kinder, gentler cousins of schadenfreude, something akin to “vicarious embarrassment.” For whom did you last feel myötähäpeä?
3. In Japanese, shouganai means “there’s nothing we can do about it, so we accept it, rather than waste time worrying or being angry.” How good are you at saying shouganai and putting it into practice?
4. In Scots, tartle is the “panicky hesitation just before you have to introduce someone whose name you can’t quite remember.” When did you last experience tartle and how did you handle it?
5. In Georgian, zeg means “the day after tomorrow.” What are you doing zeg?*

Thanks for participating, and may your weekend be safe and lagom!

* I’m sure many languages have a word meaning “the day after tomorrow.” In Japanese, it’s “asatte” (明後日), but I already used Japanese and I wanted five different languages for these questions.

Hello, and welcome to this week’s Friday 5! Please copy these questions to your webspace. Answer the questions there; then leave a comment below so we’ll all know where to check out your responses. Please don’t forget to link us from your website!

I’m posting this really late today. Sorry. Friday completely snuck up on me, as did almost everything else this week! 🙁

1. When did you last have fresh cut flowers in your home?
2. When did you last have a guest not related to you in your home?
3. When did you last have a service or delivery person in your home?
4. When did you last have nobody at all (including you) overnight in your home?
5. When did you last have an unexpected visitor at your front door?

Thanks for participating, and have a wonderful, stress-free, safe weekend!

Hello, and welcome to this week’s Friday 5! Please copy these questions to your webspace. Answer the questions there; then leave a comment below so we’ll all know where to check out your responses. Please don’t forget to link us from your website!

1. What is the most grownup thing you did this week?
2. What is the most adventurous thing you did this week?
3. What is the most foolhardy thing you did this week?
4. What is the most community-conscious thing you did this week?
5. What is the the quietest thing you did this week?

Thanks for participating, and have a grown-up, adventurous, foolhardy, community-conscious, quiet, safe weekend!

Hello, and welcome to this week’s Friday 5! Please copy these questions to your webspace. Answer the questions there; then leave a comment below so we’ll all know where to check out your responses. Please don’t forget to link us from your website!

Stick with me.

All I Really Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten is a collection of Robert Fulghum essays published in 1986. The title essay, which you are surely familiar with (however; if you are not, here is a PDF with a couple of errors in the title and spelling), articulates literally and figuratively lessons frequently taught in American kindergartens.

A sample from the text:

These are the things I learned. Share everything. Play fair. Don’t hit people. Put things back where you found them. Clean up your own mess. Don’t take things that aren’t yours. Say you are sorry when you hurt somebody.

Some have criticized the wildly popular essay as being simplistic, trite, or treacly, but these people don’t remember the seed in the polystyrene cup or the bugs under the rock, or they have never had to come up with a good idea for a short, fun writing assignment for ninth-graders.

1. In your essay, “All I Need to Know I Learned from [insert title of a favorite television series],” what are some lessons you’d include?
2. In your essay, “All I Need to Know I Learned from [insert name of a favorite musician],” what are some lessons you’d include?
3. In your essay, “All I Need to Know I Learned from [insert one of your hobbies],” what are some lessons you’d include?
4. In your essay, “All I Need to Know I Learned from [insert title of a book you like],” what are some lessons you’d include?
5. In your essay, “All I Need to Know I Learned from [insert something you’re terrible at doing],” what are some lessons you’d include?

Thanks for participating, and have a stupendous, splendid, super, safe weekend!

Hello, and welcome to this week’s Friday 5! Please copy these questions to your webspace. Answer the questions there; then leave a comment below so we’ll all know where to check out your responses. Please don’t forget to link us from your website!

1. Which partially-read book would you especially like to finish someday, and why didn’t you finish it last time you read it?
2. Which partially-watched TV series would you like to complete?
3. Which half-completed task is nagging at you most insistently?
4. Which incomplete project is likeliest to get some attention in the near future?
5. Which half-consumed item in your refrigerator or pantry are you thinking about right now?

Thanks for participating, and have a charming, quaint, idyllic, picturesque, safe weekend!

Hello, and welcome to this week’s Friday 5! Please copy these questions to your webspace. Answer the questions there; then leave a comment below so we’ll all know where to check out your responses. Please don’t forget to link us from your website!

1. What’s so funny ’bout peace, love, and understanding?
2. How’s it going to be?
3. What’s new pussycat?
4. Why do fools fall in love?
5. Can you feel the love tonight?

Thanks for playing, and have a music-filled, safe weekend!

Hello, and welcome to this week’s Friday 5! Please copy these questions to your webspace. Answer the questions there; then leave a comment below so we’ll all know where to check out your responses. Please don’t forget to link us from your website!

In sociology, the third place refers to the social surroundings separate from the two usual social environments of home (the first place) and the workplace (the second place). Examples of third places include churches, cafes, bars, clubs, libraries, gyms, bookstores, hackerspaces, stoops, parks, and theaters.

1. What is your usual third place these days?
2. How are your third place needs different today from some other time in your life?
3. What’s missing from your third places these days?
4. What kind of third places do you see yourself never frequenting?
5. Which third place in a television series would you most enjoy?

(and why is it Cheers?)

Thanks for participating, and have a better-than-decent, safe weekend! Go Raiders!

Hello, and welcome to this week’s Friday 5! Please copy these questions to your webspace. Answer the questions there; then leave a comment below so we’ll all know where to check out your responses. Please don’t forget to link us from your website!

Someone has been so sleep-deprived all week he fell asleep while typing these questions last night. Sorry if you came here and didn’t get the questions when you were ready to deal with them.

Some people really dislike questions like these, but I am not one. One of the greatest pastimes of all time is ranking things important and trivial, and I would ask them every day if I thought people would be as into it as I am. 🙂 Just don’t stress over it, but get the dang answers right, wouldja?

1. If you are forced to choose only one, what is the greatest single episode of a television series, ever?
2. If you are forced to choose only one, what is the greatest opening line of a song, ever?
3. If you are forced to choose only one, what is the greatest movie kiss of all time?
4. If you are forced to choose only one, what is the greatest building of all time?
5. If you are forced to choose only one, what is the greatest candy — not a candy bar — of all time?

Thanks for participating, and have the greatest, safest, happiest, most relaxing weekend of all time!

Hello, and welcome to this week’s Friday 5! Please copy these questions to your webspace. Answer the questions there; then leave a comment below so we’ll all know where to check out your responses. Please don’t forget to link us from your website!

1. What’s a perfectly satisfying libation?
2. For taking to work or school, what’s in your favorite personal sack lunch?
3. Do you know a pretty silly limerick?
4. What’s a pleasingly scented lotion?
5. What are some peppy song lyrics?

Thanks for participating, and have a pillow-soft landing into the weekend!

Hello, and welcome to this week’s Friday 5! Please copy these questions to your webspace. Answer the questions there; then leave a comment below so we’ll all know where to check out your responses. Please don’t forget to link us from your website!

This week’s 5 is inspired by the party game Scattergories, in which players have to think of items, all beginning with the same letter, in several categories. For example, if the die is rolled and shows the letter P, players might have to name a fruit, a bird, a river, and a movie star, all beginning with P. Valid answers might be plum, puffin, Potomac, and Piper Perabo.

First, go to this nifty online random-letter generator. Set the “number of random letter sequences to generate” to 1. Set the “length of each random letter sequence” to 1. Leave the “letters to choose from” how it is and click the button. You’ll get a rather non-dramatic one letter. Use this letter to begin all your answers to the 5 questions below. If you’d like to avoid difficult letters, feel free to change the “letters to choose from” list. I’ll only judge you a little bit.  

Wow. When I copied and pasted this from last year’s Scattergories post, somehow the smiley got its own paragraph, and WordPress is displaying it at full size. I’m leaving it — it’s so weird!

Alternately, if you find this boring, you could set the “length of each random letter sequence” to 5, thereby giving you five letters, a different one for each question.

Wow! This is our fourteenth year doing this! If you find this particularly fun (I do!) and haven’t done this before, here are the questions for parts 11, 12, and 13. Go crazy and do those too.

Please answer these questions with an answer whose initial is the letter you rolled!

1. If you can schedule it, what would you like for your last meal?
2. Where would you like to be buried?
3. What will they place in your coffin to be buried with you?
4. Who will sing at your funeral?
5. Who will deliver your eulogy?

Thanks for participating and have an OEOXO weekend!

(that word generated by the random letter generator)