100 Things About Me

Listening to: The Clash, London Calling

Bowing to pressure (from a partucularly pesky - and beautiful - reader), I finally got around creating this list. I know I said in a post once that I could never do one of these since I think this list is amorphous, in flux. What the hell, I'll indulge the meme.

100 things about me

1. I’m smart. Really smart. Don’t try to outsmart me, you’ll lose.
   
2. I’m more arrogant than smart.
   
3. Nothing scares me. Oh, I know fear - a man without fear is insane. It’s just there’s nothing I can think of that would be impassible or unable to confront.
   
4. I have the soul of a clown and the heart of a lion; in shoeboxes, underneath my bed.
   
5. I’ve read “The Lord of the Rings” Trilogy seven times.
   
6. After the seventh reading, I decided I needed to get laid.
   
7. I wear hemp clothing.
   
8. When I’m desperate, I smoke my shoes.
   
9. I was an Air Force brat and lived in 10 places in 18 years.
   
10. I lived in Taiwan when I was 13 and that started my love affair with Asian culture and Eastern Philosophy.
    
11. I was born in Cut Bank, Montana and lived in (respectively): Hutchinson, Kansas; St. John’s, Newfoundland, Canada; Morro Bay, California; Colorado Springs and then Denver, Colorado; Taichung, Taiwan; Missoula, Montana; Montgomery, Alabama; finally landed at Pearl City, Oahu, Hawaii when my parents and I parted company.
    
12. I spent my high school years in Montgomery, AL where I was very involved with community theatre and the bohemian scene, Klansmen who drank Merlot.
    
13. Having grown up with that, I have a romantic notion of the Gothic south and as such, an affection for writers like William Faulkner, Tennessee Williams, Flannery O’Connor, Eudora Welty, Walker Percy, et al.
    
14. Also Cormac McCarthy and I rate “Blood Meridian” as one of the greatest novels of the last century.
    
15. I spent most of my secondary education in Catholic schools as an atheist.
    
16. I started college in Hawaii majoring in Partying, minoring in surfing.
    
17. I discovered my spiritual side as a surfer dude in Hawaii. Tubular.
    
18. I gave up a Theatre scholarship to study philosophy.
    
19. I dropped out of college after my sophomore year to live my Jack Kerouac “On the Road” muse and hitchhiked across the US. I had a Mohawk at the time.
    
20. I played punk/alternative for about 8 years in several bands.
    
21. I play guitar, passably, but I write awful good songs.
    
22. I quit the band and re-entered college at the age of 29.
    
23. I set my sites a little higher my second time around in college.
    
24. I was going to go for my Ph.D. in Cognitive Science but kids came along.
    
25. After kicking around as a web developer, I became a therapist.
    
26. I’d rather be a writer than a therapist.
    
27. I’m a really, really bad poet. My poetry stinks. Except I like this one:
    

    On the Return of a Familiar
    
    She waits at the window,
    Slowly drawing an eye on the glass.
    Listening to the wind, the whispers,
    The shattered syllables whisked across
    the cold, stiff grass, she hears:
    
    I love you.
    I’m coming home.

    
    
28. I started blogging in 2002 for a local band, started a political blog in early 2004, started the this blog a few months later; my heart is with this blog.
    
29. I usually blog after my kids are in bed, pour a glass of wine or have a beer and BREATHE.
    
30. New Year’s 2004, I made a resolution to write every day; I’ve honored that resolution for almost a year and a half, the only truly successful resolution I’ve ever made.
    
31. Writing is now like breathing: essential.
    
32. I have 1/10th of a comic novel written across four composition books.
    
33. My biggest fear is that I’ll never finish it.
    
34. Procrastination and fear are the enemies of my aspirations.
    
35. My mom used to beat me for reading too much (true story); she now congratulates herself for raising such a well-read kid.
    
36. I also had to hide my writing to keep from getting beat.
    
37. When I was a kid, I thought I’d write/illustrate graphic novels.
    
38. I’m a snob and don’t see the literary value in graphic novels or Dean Koontz or Stephen King or Anne Rice or Tom Clancy – and yet, I’ve read all of those.
    
39. I’ve been married 3 times; while in the band and that lasted 4 months (go figure); once while in college when I married a Brazilian girl for $5000 so she could get a green card; the last time with the mother of my children, for 7 years.
    
40. Since I don’t count the green-card marriage, I figure 3rd time’s a charm.
    
41. I expect Mrs. #3 will be the person I’m still in love with when I die.
    
42. Mrs. #3 had better know how to shit in the woods.
    
43. I have camping gear in both my cars; with a wild hair, I can drive 20 minutes and pick a camp site.
    
44. I’ve camped on my own since I was 13.
    
45. I’m convinced the brain is the sexiest organ of the body.
    
46. Smart=sexy.
    
47. Funny=sexy.
    
48. Well-read=sexy.
    
49. Smart+Funny+Well-read=my eternal adoration.
    
50. I know how to do adoration; I was, after all, raised Catholic.
    
51. However, I’m a sucker for a pretty face and hypnotic eyes.
    
52. However, physical attributes only go so far with me, I’m easily bored.
    
53. I quote Shakespeare not because I’m showing off but because he so says so many things, so well, there’s no improving on what he said.
    
54. People still accuse me of showing off.
    
55. Even the Devil can quote scripture to suit his purposes.
    
56. Because I’m a therapist, dates invariably ask me, “Are you psychoanalyzing me?”
    
57. Well, YEAH, it’s an occupational hazard.
    
58. Between LSD, mushrooms, mescaline, peyote, DMT, PCP, and Ketamine, I’ve tripped well over 700 times.
    
59. I’ve also smoked enough pot to buy a Panamanian family a shrimp boat.
    
60. The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual for the American Psychological Association implies that, by #58 & #59, I am clinically insane.
    
61. I report, you decide.
    
62. I cook for my kids but I live off of Tina’s Frozen Burritos;
    
63. However, I nuke the burritos.
    
64. This is how I make Daddy’s “You Don’t Want to Touch This” Salsa – a jar of Pace Salsa and a few shakes of Dave’s Insanity Sauce. Then I dribble some of that on a nuked Tina’s Frozen Burrito. Yummmmmmmmmmmmm.
    
65. Having said that, it’s safe to assume #59 is not past tense.
    
66. Given the choice between a big house and travel, I choose travel. I just want a modest little place to return to after jaunting around the globe.
    
67. I’m a hopeless romantic.
    
68. I’m also coolly logical; my ex used to call me ‘Mr. Spock’.
    
69. Despite my logical side, I am a bit superstitious;
    
70. Still, I have a sacrilegious streak and sneer at my own superstitions.
    
71. I am an unashamed science geek.
    
72. My children appreciate that I give them straight answers regarding the world around them instead of half-assed fairy tales.
    
73. “Creationism” is a fairy tale and I don’t understand how anyone can take it seriously.
    
74. I have no problems with other people’s beliefs but it bothers me when they try to force those beliefs on me.
    
75. Knowing I don’t have all the answers and I still won’t have all the answers when I shuffle off this mortal coil makes my life a persistent adventure.
    
76. I automatically distrust and dismiss people who think they have all the answers.
    
77. I prefer earthy, girl-next-door types to air-brushed Barbie Doll high-maintenance types.
    
78. I despise “Men’s magazines” like Maxim and such, especially their adolescent leering obsession with air-brushed Barbie Doll high-maintenance types.
    
79. I believe grown men who read Maxim hardly qualify as “men”.
    
80. Given unlimited funds, I could be a clothes horse; I firmly believe the women go crazy for a sharp-dressed man.
    
81. Feminist chicks dig me.
    
82. I prefer red wine over white.
    
83. I prefer wine over beer.
    
84. Either way, I’m a snob and although I drink expensive beer, I don’t think it’s necessary to sell the house in order to afford a good bottle of wine.
    
85. I read Wine Spectator in order to make informed wine-buying decisions.
    
86. I probably put too much stock in the opinion of reviewers; I watch “Ebert and Roeper” more often than I go to the movies.
    
87. I prefer sitting in a theatre to sitting at home with a rented DVD; there’s just something about the big screen.
    
88. I’ve seen “Casablanca” probably 15 times; I’ve seen “Citizen Kane” probably two-dozen times; I’ve seen “2001: A Space Odyssey” probably 50 times.
    
89. I’m a big Monty Python fan but I give the edge to Firesign Theatre (thus my moniker, “Nino the Mindboggler”.
    
90. I’ve met many of my best friends by quoting Firesign Theatre or Frank Zappa at parties and they picked up on the allusion.
    
91. I only drink fair-trade organic coffee.
    
92. I love hip, bohemian coffee-houses.
    
93. A perfect Sunday morning is occupying a table at a hip, bohemian coffee house with a copy of the Sunday New York Times.
    
94. More perfect is sharing that paper with someone I woke up with (after a night of earth-shattering sex), reading each other snippets and co-solving the crossword.
    
95. Even more perfect is finishing the crossword with the co-solver, going home and spending the rest of the morning, all afternoon and evening in bed, not just repeating the sex from the night before but transcending it.
    
96. Obviously, I have a dirty mind and an enormous appetite.
    
97. I love being preyed on by women in libraries and bookstores. MMMMmmm!
    
98. I rarely remember my dreams.
    
99. I have one tattoo, a Celtic Knot armband.
    
100. This list is subject to change without notice.