random facts
I'm not so terrible as Venny to subject you to 100, so we'll limit it to 20.
1. Between the ages of 12 and 15 I would occaisionally get very severe, spontaneous nosebleeds every month or so. They only stopped because one day I'd had enough and went to the emergency room to get the offending artery cauterized.
2. I am irrationally bigoted against fat people. When I say "fat" I don't mean slightly chubby, portly or big-boned; I mean orca fat. Undulating fat that there's just no excuse for. It revulses me viscerally, and I'm not proud.
3. I'm normally a pretty mild-mannered person, but there are certain things that cause me to go from zero to biting your head off in two seconds flat. These things include, but are not limited to: histrionics, narrowminded parochialism/xenophobia, and bullshitting about a topic I take seriously. (Given that histrionics and bullshitting compose 80% of non-commercial communication on the internet, this is a large part of why I'm crankier online than offline.)
4. I have drank many times, but have never been drunk enough to have even the slightest hangover the following day. I now refuse to drink any beer that isn't stout, not because I like it much but because other kinds of beer suck more, and because two pints of stout is practically a meal in itself.
5. I'm constitutionally incapable of starting conversations unless I have something specific to break the ice with. There are at least four people on my IM contact lists with whom I have never actually chatted (but perpetually intend to), due to the difficulty of getting over this hump. Don't feel weird if you're always the person that initiates conversation, because I prefer that.
6. For the past three years, I have only had one haircut per year. Every year I try to push it a little longer, but end up caving in and buzzing off my luxurious brown mane under the irritation of the summer heat. We'll see what happens this year.
7. I have an IQ just north of 120. This annoys me more than one would think it ought to, because it means I'm smart enough to do many things competently (i.e. programming, math, writing) and have high aspirations, but not smart enough to do these things effortlessly or ever be considered a genius at anything. Imagine spending your life in the olympics and always coming up with the bronze. It's irritating enough to make me seriously consider using nootropics to push myself up a notch.
8. Jerkcity is the only online comic I read religiously. UNIX + COCKS + CAPSLOCK = FUNNY SHIT.
9. I've always had very poor hand-eye coordination and manual dexterity, which is probably why I always found every sport -- with the possible exception of soccer -- to be a painful experience and have never mastered a musical instrument beyond the most rudimentary level.
10. I have stacks of no fewer than 40 books sitting in my room waiting to be read, and a wishlist of over three times that number. I've realized grudgingly that at the present rate, I'm probably going to have to give up fiction altogether, purely as a matter of attrition.
11. I've always been very Buddhist in one respect: I don't recall ever feeling personally resentful of another person's success, material or otherwise. Whatever causes that, I think I just wasn't born with it. Whatever sense of envy I have is confined to the positive sort, e.g. seeing what someone has and wishing I had it too rather than wishing they didn't.
12. One of my most persistant fantasies is to live my life over again with all the knowledge I accumulated the first time around, like a massively extended version of Groundhog Day. This fantasy started when I was 15 and hasn't gone away no matter how many times I acknowledge the sheer uselessness of it.
13. I live in perpetual terror of making an ass of myself. Most of the memories which cause me the most acute winces of pain are social ones where I did something stupid and/or inconsiderate. I know that in all probability the other people present forget these things pretty soon after they happen, but memories of even minor foibles from years back can still cause me to cringe to this very day. If I could pick one thing to change about my personality, this would be it.
14. The internet has destroyed my attention span and I'm trying to claim it back.
15. My parents sent me to a psychiatrist a few times when I was 14-15. The woman was remarkably incompetant.
16. I used to take karate classes, then quit just prior to attaining a blue belt. I don't regret quitting so much as I regret not switching to something more practical, like judo or jujitsu.
17. I think I could be a lot better at pool, chess and go than I currently am (which is not very good), but I'm trapped in this cycle where the only times I get a chance to play are against people better at it than I am, I get my ass kicked and get discouraged, then don't play for a while. Repeat ad nauseam.
18. I have this obsessive tendency to pick and hack at blemishes on my body. Corns, pimples, scabs, blisters, you name it, I can't leave it alone. In its most extreme form I've been known to attempt to physically cut out a corn or somesuch with something sharp. Usually this just results in bleeding and failure to achieve the desired result, yet I never learn. I don't get any enjoyment out of it, it's just one of those things.
19. I adore pickled herring.
20. I think sincerity is much overrated as a virtue. Not that I don't think it is a virtue, just that it's not woth much by itself -- sincerity in an absolutely wrong conviction earns nobody any points with me.
and god dammit why the fuck am I not sleeping like a normal person?
1. Between the ages of 12 and 15 I would occaisionally get very severe, spontaneous nosebleeds every month or so. They only stopped because one day I'd had enough and went to the emergency room to get the offending artery cauterized.
2. I am irrationally bigoted against fat people. When I say "fat" I don't mean slightly chubby, portly or big-boned; I mean orca fat. Undulating fat that there's just no excuse for. It revulses me viscerally, and I'm not proud.
3. I'm normally a pretty mild-mannered person, but there are certain things that cause me to go from zero to biting your head off in two seconds flat. These things include, but are not limited to: histrionics, narrowminded parochialism/xenophobia, and bullshitting about a topic I take seriously. (Given that histrionics and bullshitting compose 80% of non-commercial communication on the internet, this is a large part of why I'm crankier online than offline.)
4. I have drank many times, but have never been drunk enough to have even the slightest hangover the following day. I now refuse to drink any beer that isn't stout, not because I like it much but because other kinds of beer suck more, and because two pints of stout is practically a meal in itself.
5. I'm constitutionally incapable of starting conversations unless I have something specific to break the ice with. There are at least four people on my IM contact lists with whom I have never actually chatted (but perpetually intend to), due to the difficulty of getting over this hump. Don't feel weird if you're always the person that initiates conversation, because I prefer that.
6. For the past three years, I have only had one haircut per year. Every year I try to push it a little longer, but end up caving in and buzzing off my luxurious brown mane under the irritation of the summer heat. We'll see what happens this year.
7. I have an IQ just north of 120. This annoys me more than one would think it ought to, because it means I'm smart enough to do many things competently (i.e. programming, math, writing) and have high aspirations, but not smart enough to do these things effortlessly or ever be considered a genius at anything. Imagine spending your life in the olympics and always coming up with the bronze. It's irritating enough to make me seriously consider using nootropics to push myself up a notch.
8. Jerkcity is the only online comic I read religiously. UNIX + COCKS + CAPSLOCK = FUNNY SHIT.
9. I've always had very poor hand-eye coordination and manual dexterity, which is probably why I always found every sport -- with the possible exception of soccer -- to be a painful experience and have never mastered a musical instrument beyond the most rudimentary level.
10. I have stacks of no fewer than 40 books sitting in my room waiting to be read, and a wishlist of over three times that number. I've realized grudgingly that at the present rate, I'm probably going to have to give up fiction altogether, purely as a matter of attrition.
11. I've always been very Buddhist in one respect: I don't recall ever feeling personally resentful of another person's success, material or otherwise. Whatever causes that, I think I just wasn't born with it. Whatever sense of envy I have is confined to the positive sort, e.g. seeing what someone has and wishing I had it too rather than wishing they didn't.
12. One of my most persistant fantasies is to live my life over again with all the knowledge I accumulated the first time around, like a massively extended version of Groundhog Day. This fantasy started when I was 15 and hasn't gone away no matter how many times I acknowledge the sheer uselessness of it.
13. I live in perpetual terror of making an ass of myself. Most of the memories which cause me the most acute winces of pain are social ones where I did something stupid and/or inconsiderate. I know that in all probability the other people present forget these things pretty soon after they happen, but memories of even minor foibles from years back can still cause me to cringe to this very day. If I could pick one thing to change about my personality, this would be it.
14. The internet has destroyed my attention span and I'm trying to claim it back.
15. My parents sent me to a psychiatrist a few times when I was 14-15. The woman was remarkably incompetant.
16. I used to take karate classes, then quit just prior to attaining a blue belt. I don't regret quitting so much as I regret not switching to something more practical, like judo or jujitsu.
17. I think I could be a lot better at pool, chess and go than I currently am (which is not very good), but I'm trapped in this cycle where the only times I get a chance to play are against people better at it than I am, I get my ass kicked and get discouraged, then don't play for a while. Repeat ad nauseam.
18. I have this obsessive tendency to pick and hack at blemishes on my body. Corns, pimples, scabs, blisters, you name it, I can't leave it alone. In its most extreme form I've been known to attempt to physically cut out a corn or somesuch with something sharp. Usually this just results in bleeding and failure to achieve the desired result, yet I never learn. I don't get any enjoyment out of it, it's just one of those things.
19. I adore pickled herring.
20. I think sincerity is much overrated as a virtue. Not that I don't think it is a virtue, just that it's not woth much by itself -- sincerity in an absolutely wrong conviction earns nobody any points with me.
and god dammit why the fuck am I not sleeping like a normal person?