What would Judas do?

My Facebook pals have been posting a lot of those Buzzfeed personality quizzes lately. You know the ones: "Which Harry Potter character are you?" "Which Downton Abbey character are you?" "Which Beatle are you?" There are scores of them, perhaps hundreds.

This morning, a friend posted one called "Which of Jesus' disciples are you?"  Well, her husband is a Baptist minister, after all.

It is, like all the other quizzes, highly unscientific and rather random. But I took it anyway. Elder daughter had just come downstairs during a break in the highly touted gold medal game between the Canadian and Swedish hockey teams on the final day of the Sochi Winter Olympics which I've succeeded in ignoring almost completely this year.

The quiz results had informed me that I was Saint John, so I read out the profile and watched in bewilderment as elder daughter and the Resident Fan Boy hooted in hilarity.  While it's true that the paragraph ended with my comparison to a Golden Retriever puppy, I noted uneasily that their laughter had begun much earlier, with my description as being "kind and loving".

Actually, I was rather hurt.

However, the day was there to be got on with.  Canada won the hockey game.  (Rah-rah.)  There was a free access weekend at Ancestry.co.uk, and after a couple of hours of downloading records and doing laundry, I saw elder daughter's results on my Facebook wall.  She had come out at Judas Iscariot.  Not far above it, her updated status read:  "Hurt and disappointed."

I thought that was rather an extreme response to a silly quiz, and went upstairs to investigate, where I discovered it was, in fact, to do with an ongoing controversy at her university.  She is co-editor-in-chief of the magazine, and someone on the council had published an inflammatory criticism of the editors' decision to publish a letter -- which had been a public letter and which they had permission to publish.  On top of this, the person in question was someone who she considered a friend and who had not said a word to her on the matter for two weeks.  He's in second year, so I guess sophomoric behaviour is not such a great surprise.

I waited a little while before approaching her again.  In the meantime, she got supportive texts and Skype visits from Halifax.

I climbed the stairs and paused in her doorway.

"I just wondered if I should come with you to Halifax this evening.  Y'know, just so I can beat the stuffing out of this fellow.  No, I'll do it in a kind and loving way, rather in the style of a Golden Retriever puppy, which, as you know, I resemble just as much as you do Judas Iscariot…."

To my relief, she laughed.

Tripping the light font taste test

Wikipedia pulled a witty April Fool's stunt yesterday. For "witty", read "rather esoteric in-joke". The only reason I got the joke (in an off-side kind of way) is that when I'm avoiding things I'm supposed to be doing, I read through the comments on postings on Passive-Aggressive Notes, a site that collects notes, very few of which are truly passive-aggressive, although the site-host(s) readily admit to this. One of the key things I have learned from piddling my time away at PAN is that Comic Sans is bad. Comic Sans is the equivalent of portraits of Elvis Presley painted on velvet, ruffled tux shirts, having "Sometimes When We Touch" sung at your wedding. Or, according to one of those insufferable London press fashionistas, wearing a cape. You know, the ones who decree every year what we should and shouldn't be wearing and what losers we are if we don't comply? Am I the only one who wants to slap them?

Comic Sans is a font (yes, it's okay if you didn't know this), and Wikipedia's big joke on April 1st was using Comic Sans in their entry on Helvetica which (apparently) is a very tasteful font even if its name does remind me of cheap cheese.

I've got nothing against Comic Sans, or Helvetica for that matter, although I now know that I dare not use the former if I'm ever to be taken seriously. Up until recently, I had no idea that I was being judged on my choice of font. I guess the fact that I usually use whatever default font is available (usually Arial or Times New Roman) betrays me as being hopelessly unimaginative or completely lacking in initiative.

Frankly, my favourite font ever was a "Harry Potter" one that computer-savvy elder daughter (then about age ten) downloaded for us. It got lost when our computer went foom, and since I have no idea how to download fonts, I use whatever's available on Outlook Express or Word Perfect. When I do choose, it's Calligrapher when I want to take up a lot of space and Perpetua when I don't.

Of course, someone with a lot of time on their hands came up with a clever online test to determine "the font that is best for you". You've probably seen it. I took it for the second time a few weeks ago, having forgotten I'd already taken it months ago and my result this second time was: Okay, I may not have anything against Comic Sans, but I think Plastica is vile. This font sucks. It was apparently assigned to me because (supposedly) I'm emotional, understated, traditional, and relaxed. Plastica doesn't say any of that to me, besides, I'm reasonably sure that last time I took this silly test, I got Archer Hairline (emotional, understated, progressive, disciplined -- apparently I've deteriorated and backslid between the first and second takings of this test) which was okay, but I couldn't find it anywhere. Besides, of the fonts available on the quiz, I only really liked Baskerville Italic(rational-understated-traditional-relaxed) and Perpetua Titling Light(rational-understated-traditional-disciplined), but the latter appears to be only in upper-case, so I'd be shouting all the time. But very tastefully. Besides, I thought it was called Perpetua Tilting Light which I found far more appealing, and so was rather put off when I discovered its true name while attempting to google it.

So, lessons learned:
1. Comic Sans is to be avoided, unless, of course, you're being ironic and everyone else gets the joke.
2. If you take on-line quizzes seriously, you're a fool in more than April.

I wonder if I can find an ironic way to wear my cape.

This scares the stuffing out of me

Got this from the real Persephone's blog, although I hasten to point out that these are my results, not the real Persephone's whose results appear on her own blog. I confess I am spooked. Try it if you dare:

Persephone took the free ColorQuiz.com personality test! "Longs for a tender and sympathetic bond and for a ..." Click here to read the rest of the results.