20 or so Facts Writeoff: don't blame me; you asked
Apr 24 '03 (Updated Jun 23 '06)
The Bottom Line My Final Recommendation on Member Messages to the Epinions Community is that you should write a couple every day. Duh.
Twenty or so facts about me, eh?
At first I resisted this. I very nearly didn't post it. But corpgent had a pretty good answer to my rather pointed and brusque question: "What reason is there to believe that anyone wants to hear me talk about myself?" He said, "Well, would it make a difference if I said that I wanted to hear it?"
Yeah, George, I guess it does.
1. When I was born, John F. Kennedy had six weeks to live. As I have often remarked, I was too busy pooop™ing my diaper to participate in the conspiracy. For those who care about such matters, I'm a Libra with Scorpio Rising. I don't know pud about astrology, but I believe the meaning of that combination is 'person who keeps all you nuts in line, but has a bad temper'.
2. My earliest memory is at age 1 1/2, walking down the steps of our Buena Park home for the last time. My Kansan folks had made a sensible decision: not only did they not want to raise their kids in southern California, they hoped never to set eyes upon it again. Thanks to healthy life choices, I've been able to uphold that. We went back home to the Sunflower State, which remains my spiritual home despite a very long absence.
Most people don't know that I was a disabled child. My shins were exceptionally curved, and the options were to put me in braces or to break my two-year-old legs in two places and reset them. I have it on good authority that, when the doctor proposed breaking her firstborn's legs, my normally Victorian mother uttered blasphemy and vulgarity. Happily, my parents never pointed out to me that I was disabled: they called them my 'cowboy braces'. I would take two steps, fall flat on my face, and laugh. I didn't learn to pity myself (that came later).
3. When I see those bumper stickers--IF YOU CAN READ THIS, THANK A TEACHER--I get sarcastic, for my mom taught me to read when I was three. My ancient aunt Nell gave us a set of 1955 encyclopediae and I read them dozens of times for entertainment, collecting a marvelous repository of trivia that grows more obsolete each and every day. By first grade, I was pressed into service by the teacher to read stories to the class while she did whatever it is teachers do while the class is busy. I want a bumper sticker: IF YOU HAD TIME TO GRADE SPELLING TESTS, THANK ME.
4. In 1968 Congress passed a Monday Holiday Law. My birthday, which had previously happened to be a holiday (albeit a stupid one), no longer was. I honestly think that I can trace my deep distrust of authority to this moment. One day there was something special about me, in a small way. The next day, I was just another spudulator, because some people somewhere had just made a rule. If they could take away a piece of the calendar, was there anything they might not steal?
Up to that time, I was so obedient that when the network TV began its day with 'please stand by', and the national anthem and aircraft carriers and the hydrogen bomb, I actually got up and physically stood beside the television, thinking it my duty. Now my default setting is disobedience. Unless I have a compelling reason to comply--with whatever--I just don't.
5. That same year, on the way to kindergarten, a knife was held on me for the first time. I brazenly turned and walked away. I still don't have a sensible, healthy fear of guns or knives. Most people think I'm pretty odd that way, and in other ways. I've come to value that.
In fact, I've come to understand in life that a ssholes are valuable because abuse from a ssholes lets you know you are doing the right thing. No one hates courage or decency like an a sshole, for no one is so humiliated by comparision. Your worst abuse in life will come from those who have compromised the principles you still uphold. If you do not show fear, or dare fight back, expect the hatred of cowards and sellouts. If you cherish spirituality, best anticipate the mockery and ridicule of those who lack it. If you are generous, no one will revile you like the greedy. If you value reciprocal sharing of ideas, anticipate that win-or-die debate thugs will mistake your civility and intellectual honesty for weakness. If you dare to question what you are told, those who have swallowed it all whole will mob you and do their best to force you to Just Believe.
You can, in short, come to know and even nurture yourself by observing who spits upon you.
6. In 1969 my mother dragged me to the TV to watch the moon landing hoax. No, seriously, I'm glad now that I watched it. I was raised in a weird social atmosphere of Vietnam/hippie upheaval, Cold War nuclear fear, and boundless technological optimism. We kept reaching spaceward. Surely by the year 2000, when I would be playing Bingo at the Senior Centre, we would be visiting other stars. Star Trek told us so.
7. Say one thing for my parents: they were decisive. In 1971 my father declared that he was fed up with cities and would never again reside in one. Like his only son later, my father also had a reputation: he tended to keep his word, be it a promise or a threat. That meant it was time to pack. We moved to northern Colorado, where I learned good stuff like ice skating and how to throw rocks accurately.
Unfortunately, I also learned bad things, like how to fight and steal. My alarmed parents took their once-precocious little thug and put him in a radical Baptist school, where the faculty whipped bad boys with thick dowel sticks ('spare the rod') and tied them in their chairs if they didn't sit up straight. I broke a kid's nose in fourth grade, so I'm not sure all the Rapture/Millennium/Revelations stuff really took.
8. My parents had always told me that hippies were very evil, perhaps worshipping the devil (our school's favourite subject) and always with their minds destroyed by drugs ('reefer madness,' etc.). I was never to go near them. We lived near a hippie family, the Martinsons, and I stayed on the other side of the street rather than approach their yard--even when arrows I stupidly shot straight up in the air happened to land there. (You get bored in Poudre Park, CO, pop. 150.) I might accidentally inhale LSD or something.
One autumn night there was a knock at our door. It was one of our hippie neighbours, Mr. Martinson, gently cradling our bloody cat George. Dumb varmint had wandered out to the highway and gotten hit; Mr. Martinson had found him and brought him to us. Thanks to Mr. Martinson's kindly rescue, George lived to a ripe old age instead of dying in a highway gutter at age one. I was left to contemplate how dangerous, drug-crazed evil hippies were permitted to rescue cats.
9. In 1974 we moved to Washington. (For the ten thousandth time, the state, not the city. The city I dismiss as the ultimate cesspool: a place of cocktail parties, pressed suits, subtle backstabbing, and jockeying for political position--all of which sound like prison to me. The confusion between the state and the city is deeply offensive.) I'm going to skip most of the rest of my school years, which would either depress, disgust or infuriate a human being. Summary: my father Found God (and we all had to as well), I went from prodigy to pre-Columbinic nutcase, and the nation slid into its post-Vietnam malaise.
10. I went off to a major university at 17 and took five years to graduate with a degree in ancient history. Just as I had been too immature to turn loose at college, I was too immature to turn loose on the working world, and I achieved accordingly.
That's enough history. I don't want to talk about it anymore. It's a melancholy feeling to reflect that the most vivid memories of your youth involve the ways in which you were deceived, screwed or whatever, and it doesn't paint a very accurate picture of me today. But fair's fair; we were asked to be candid.
11. I smoke pipes and cigars and like both. Cigarettes are loathsome, and I don't know why any person of taste would elect to smoke them. Same reason people eat asparagus, I guess, or become president of their local koi pond club. ("Come one, come all! Gaze upon my fish! Commune with them! Be the fish!")
12. I love maps, books and libraries. To desecrate any of these is a great sin. I speak passable French (and no, I'm not ashamed of it, and no, I don't care who doesn't like that, and furthermore, no, I don't care how many tours you did in Vietnam or how much you hate Bill Clinton, I still am not ashamed of it), Spanish and Hebrew; broken Russian, Swedish and Irish; and bits and pieces of a good dozen more.
13. I like birds, am indifferent to cats, and hate dogs. I'm a serious sucker for all baby animals, from awking little baby parrots to needle-clawed little kittens to fluffy baby bunnies to infant elephants (even puppies). For someone who never wanted kids, I can be pretty good with them provided they're polite and intelligent, which really isn't saying much at all. The polite, intelligent ones are hardly the problem.
14. I've always loved strategy games. I'm poor at tactical games, fair at operational ones, and pretty good at grand strategy. I used to win at Pax Britannica, a wonderful multiplayer boardgame, even when they were gunning for me. In Republic of Rome, people were constantly on the alert for some nefarious machination on my part, and I swindled them out of their togas anyway. (The priceless moment was always that "Oooooh...you person who fornicates with his female parent!" look in someone's eyes.) However, in Squad Leader, my people were consistently blown to doll rags and put to rout.
15. My favourite ice cream is still butter brickle; my favourite food remains lasagna. My favourite ethnic foods are Greek and Middle Eastern. I am profoundly affected by music and writing, and not at all by visual art. I respect it; I just don't comprehend it.
16. I have one sister, disowned eight years hence. People who want harmonious relations with me refrain from lecturing me about it. I no longer attach much inherent value to the concept of biological family, having learned that they often treat you in disrespectful ways you wouldn't put up with from anyone else.
17. I am delighted to be wed to a wonderful lady. I will refrain from the gushfest. I have never been divorced.
18. For someone with a number of fairly rigid principles, I've got a fairly greyscale view of politics. Most issues are pretty complex, I find, and the sensible solution generally lies someplace in the middle. That said, I'm probably voting for the Communists next time, just because it will annoy a number of my countrypeople who badly need annoying. I spend about half my time cussing my fellow Americans as an ignorant bunch of bozos, and the other half loving all their good qualities.
19. I could be described as an Ásatrú vitki. I am not going to explain it. If you care what it is, there's Google.
20. Life has handed me a number of nicknames of varying degrees of flattery: 'The Badger', 'Scrap-Iron', 'The Punji Stick', 'Z-Z', many of them coming from my amateur athletic endeavours. I play first base and catcher for the Tri-City Rattlers. I played amateur soccer for one summer, and my job was to come in partway through and physically crush the enemy's primary punk and goon. I played six years of amateur hockey, mostly as an enforcer; I was involved in one laughable fistfight and three rather sinister stick fights, one of which I'm still ashamed of. I was valuable for my readiness to play a physical game yet never bicker with the officials: I have been an athlete for thirty-one years without ever having once argued with an umpire or referee. I think that anyone who does so is being foolish, and should be ejected immediately.
21. I've been nearly killed a lot of times. Sunstroke, hypothermia (twice), flying board, icy car wreck, diving accident, alcohol poisoning, fighting oil fire, and more.
22. The best job I ever had was and is working for myself; the worst one was picking up dog turds in a guy's basement. That was my first hourly-wage job in the more or less real world, and Mr. Worsley had told me he was hiring me to paint his house. When I arrived, he first sent me down to his basement with a bucket of Lysol and a mop. The dog had been confined there all winter, and had left many elegant tokens of his opinion on the accommodations. This proved to be a valuable sampling of what the corporate working world would later be like. I credit Mr. Worsley for wrecking all my silly illusions about employers at a relatively early age; later experience proved this a great boon, as I was prepared for most of reality.
23. It is no good telling me that I'd really like such-and-such a movie, because I never like them, even that one-in-a-hundred that I actually decide to watch. I'm as movie-challenged as I am art-challenged. My all-time favourite movie is Strange Brew with Bob & Doug McKenzie.
24. I like 'reality TV', especially Survivor and Fear Factor, because I regard it as true to the spirit of TV--pure trash--and thus intellectually and creatively honest, unlike the laugh-track-ridden fad sitcom of any given decade. Plus, you get to watch hot babes choke down congealed pig blood, horse rectum and exotic insects. What could be finer? I don't care that 'reality TV' is such a misnomer. I like Big Brother, simply because so many people hate it that I almost have to watch it.
25. I suffer from two crippling personality disorders: Disorder Denial Syndrome (DDS) and Therapist Sanity Inversion Disorder (TSID).
Those of us who cope with DDS want some serious pity for our condition: we persistently refuse to believe that we suffer from any syndrome, disorder or dysfunction. This is agonizing, because not only does it mean that we cannot take a pill instead of actually dealing with our problems, it makes social contact with the majority of the (non-sufferer) population very difficult. The true sign of a DDS sufferer is a lower lip viciously clamped between their teeth whenever someone begins to go on and on about their kid's ADD and ADHD, their own SAD and PTSD and OCD, and so on.
A serious DDS sufferer (we prefer that label because it helps us feel more self-pity) may evince PUD, or Penile Undulation Disorder, in which we have the uncontrollable urge to pull out and wave our dicks in mid-pity party. (DDS women find this terribly sexist of us, to invent a disorder without inviting them. There's a lot of controversy in the sufferers' community. My view is that it's the women's duty to come up with an equally anti-social method of showing their scorn; it might be kind of fun, too.)
TSID sufferers are even worse off: we have come to the conclusion that the typical psychologist is far more wack than most of his or her patients (although not all; I'll make an exception for that guy who used to stand on the street corner near the UW with a big duffelbag chanting about symptomatic nerve gas). We do not hold it against them; going into the mental health field was probably the most natural thing in the world for someone who sincerely wanted to figure out why they were always depressed even though life didn't suck.
In one of their first classes in college, they manipulated rats in a lab, and this intensely scientific labour gave us the astonishing discovery that if a rat gets food when he pushes a button, he'll learn to push it again. I had never suspected. A powerful contribution to knowledge. Later, they graduated to doing "we wanted you to believe X but in reality we were testing to see if you would Y and Z" experiments on their fellow students. I remember one of the better ones was when they put beers in front of you to see if you would drink them.
After graduating, many quickly saw that it would pay their student loans off a lot sooner to adopt the following philosophy: "I'm still in therapy, you too should be in therapy, everyone should be in therapy. And you don't understand; that isn't a drug. It's a chemical that replaces something your brain isn't producing, so that's totally different." Uh-huh. With TSID, you are pretty sure that your mental health professional is probably just that--mental--so you don't hire one. Lacking any other option, you are chained to the miserable iron ring of having to face and solve your own problems, taking responsibility for your own emotional and psychological state.
It's horrid. I wouldn't wish either DDS or TSID on anyone.
26. I have more pet peeves than is really healthy or wise. High on the list is having anything powdery or sticky on my hands. My wife says this suggests that I have Hamburger's Syndrome, or something like that; maybe I do. In any case, I find that the condition is easily cured by washing them, and not worthy of any further stress. A couple times a day seems to suffice.
Another one that ranks high is the gross misuse of words like 'literally' and 'decimation', so if you're guilty of this, get your head out and listen up. 'Literally' does not mean 'very'; it means that you are describing an actual event with precise words rather than using a metaphor or simile. 'Decimation' comes to us from the Romans (who used it as a group punishment if someone screwed up) and means the loss of one in ten. No more, no less. The Iraqi Republican Guard was often referred to by CNN, who really ought to know better, as being 'decimated'--evidence suggests that it was more like 'wiped out'. (Fox-Jazeera was innocent only because it doesn't comprehend or bother with four-syllable words to begin with. It finds verb conjugation challenging enough as it is.)
A final one is the dumbing-down of news so that the stupidest of my countrypeople can understand it (a considerable feat under the circumstances), facts and terminology be damned. During the anthrax scares I raged as 'pulmonary anthrax', a term apparently too hard for our pea brains, was dumbed down to 'inhalation anthrax'. 'Cutaneous anthrax' became 'skin anthrax', just so that we would not actually be asked to learn a new word. It's a good thing no one developed visceral anthrax, the third major variation, which would surely have become 'tummy anthrax'. Rarely a day goes by that I don't take time out to sneer at the American media's shabbiness and transparency.
There. I really needed to get all that out, thanks.
27. No. Twenty-six is entirely too many.
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This review is part of 20 or so Facts About You Writeoff. It's proven to be one of the most massive in Epinions history, I think mainly due to George's charisma.
'Pooop™' is a trademark utterance of Hard_To_Please, a much lamented member who is no longer with us. When he granted me permission to use it in perpetuity, I never realized that it would be the legacy of a lost friend. I like to think that he's still laughing about it, somewhere.
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Epinions.com ID:
jkkelley
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Location: Ana-Tolia
Reviews written: 79
Trusted by: 308 members
About Me:
Farewell, Mr. Grover.
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