" Laserbeak, eject. Operation: Tag. "

I was tagged a few days ago by 8 Skeins of Danger with the following mission: List 10 things that your friends may or may not know about you, but that are true. If I've repeated any of these in previous such postings, I apologize in advance.

 

1) I went to 6 different elementary schools, 1 middle school and 3 high schools. We moved a lot when I was growing up for no good reason in particular. The longest we stayed in one place was from late 1983 to the summer of 1988 when I was 9 to 14 years old (4th to 8th grades). By the time I got to the high school which would prove to be my last one ( and was the 3rd one I'd been to in the same year) I barely bothered to speak to anyone for the better part of the year, why bother to try and make friends if you're going to just leave again? I was pooped, making friends was too emotionally exhausting, thankfully I got over it eventually and made the best friends I ever had in my life, or will likely ever have.

 

2) I was happy when my parents divorced. I actively encouraged my mother to leave my Dad once I figured out she was just staying with him because she thought I needed a father figure. Seriously, they were horribly suited for each other and should've split up permanently long before they finally did. As a child, I was always confused when I saw movies where kids freaked out and were sad when their parents split up. My parents split up 2 other times before they made it permanent, the first time being when I was 4 years old so maybe I was just so used to it/sick of it that I didn't care anymore? The last time they got together I was sorta annoyed, but didn't have the heart to tell them how I felt since it was obvious that I was supposed to be happy about it, but that wasn't at all how I really felt. I got more attention when they were apart and felt more free to express myself without my Dad around, who had such strong opinions on things that I felt like I had to pretend to agree with him or else he'd disown me or something.

 

3) I grew up in various parts of the southern part of New Jersey. I've lived in Virginia since late 1998. I miss the places where I grew up although there are many things I hate about that place as well. I won't ever move back there, it's far too expensive of a place to live compared to where I live now. It's a strange place. There are lots of little towns along the shore that are like a continuous strip mall punctuated with housing developments. If you go further inland there is a huge forest called the Pine Barrens which is full of monsters like the Jersey Devil and the South Jersey equivalent of hillbilies called"Pineys". There are lots of retirement villages full of senior citizens who drive too slow and hate to pay taxes for local schools because their own grandkids live far, far away and therefore recieve no benefit from it. It's like a poor man's Florida. There are lots of hospitals and doctor's offices to take care of all those oldsters. People from New York (or North Jersey, which might as well be New York) and Pennsylvania come to the shore in huge numbers to rape and pillage every summer. The economy depends on them to a large extent but they are not loved by the locals who call them "Bennies" or "Shubies" which is local slang and doesn't have a good connotation. We hate it when people confuse us with people from North Jersey, it's almost insulting. We lack that obnoxious " Joisey" accent. We don't mind being associated with people from Philadelphia, they're on the same wavelength as us. Despite all this many families who live there were originally from the Northern part of the state, once you live there year round, you're pretty well accepted and it won't be long before the yearly hordes of invaders start to grate on your nerves as well. That is probably the glue that really holds us together -mutual loathing of tourists! I generally like the people here in Virginia, but they will always be a little alien to me in some ways. I always feel like an alien myself, but then again, I always did even when I was "home".

 

3) I don't listen to music as much as I used to. I have never been musically talented.I feel like I have music in my soul, but have no way to adequately express it. I can't dance, I can't sing. Despite this, I was in musicals in high school. I had to get off stage if there was a dance number, I managed to blend in okay in a chorus, but was too nervous to do a solo without it totally sucking. Music used to be pretty important to me, as a source of inspiration but it's faded in prominence as I've gotten older. I just don't have the time to keep up with it the way I'd like to, I need to move to another planet that has more than 24 hours in a day.

 

4) In my personal life I need a lot of stability to remain happy, however I like to see lots of change in the world around me. For example, you have no idea how happy I am that we have made so many changes to the way American money looks in the past decade or so. I was so bored with the old money when I was growing up - I hated it. I like to see the way cars evolve over time, getting more and more curvacious and aerodynamic. I like change in the visual aesthetics of things, and I like cultural changes like how society is generally becoming less sexist, racist and homophobic. I like the impact of computers on our culture - the fact that creative people can just create things and share them with people from all over the world without having to convince some rich bastard to financially back it so they can get a little richer off of it. Even though there is still much cruelty and injustice in the world I'm optimistic about the future. If you look at the last 500 or so years of human history the trend has been towards more tolerance and acceptance of one another, more freedom and individualism. As long as we can manage not to render the planet around us uninhabitable in the meantime (which is a very big if) then I think that generally speaking, things can only get better. Under the surface we are still savages, but if you look at the big picture we're getting better at managing our ugliest tendencies.

 

5) I worry far too much, mostly about money. I hate money and the things I have to do to get it. I envy animals even though their lives are brutal contests of survival and I'm not really one for either competition or brutality. At least their lives are HONEST. Most of the jobs I've had make me feel unclean in some way. I hate the politics and subtext of working for a company. I don't mind working hard, what I mind is the constant feeling that I'm making my money by helping a corporation screw over my fellow citizens, while I'm simulateously being screwed in some way by the company as well. I feel that I am a slave to the Allmighty Dollar, to the creature comforts I can buy with it, and the greedy indulgences it can provide. I hate the idea of arbitrarily assigning prices to different things. Everything has a $$ value, even things that we like to pretend are priceless, like human life and dignity. The whole thing does make me feel sick on some sort of a spiritual level but I honestly don't know what I can ever do about it aside from trying really hard NOT to think about it. I think I spend most of my time trying to distract myself from this sadness.

 

6) I worship truth and beauty. I do not believe in absolutes of either. In a way I see them as being practically the same thing. To me a truth can be totally symbolic, and in fact I get quite annoyed with people who insist on interpreting everything around them literally (although I do it too). This is a false distinction to me. Beauty intruiges me because there is no reason for much of it to exist. I mean I can understand the evolutionary logic behind finding someone attractive for the purposes of wanting to procreate, or finding something attractive/pleasureable so you'll want to eat it. If men and women didn't find each other attractive the human race would die out, if we didn't enjoy eating we'd starve to death, etc. If we didn't laugh and enjoy each other's company we'd never want to from social groups and would accomplish far less to aid in our mutual survival. But why would I ever look at a sunset or the stars at night and find them beautiful? What purpose does that serve- that feeling? That question fascinates me to no end. I like it because there is no good, definitive answer. It speaks of a great mystery and the world needs mystery.

 

7) For unusual personal reasons that would be very difficult to try and explain, I don't eat anything with tomato sauce on it, no traditional pizza, lasanga, etc. spaghetti. I do eat things with BBQ sauce, which I absolutely love, and I tolerate ketchup on hamburgers, but will eat it on nothing else. I don't like cheeese very much either, especially if it's melted. This makes me a very frustrating person to feed or eat out with. There is a whole universe of common foods I will likely never be able to knowingly experience without feeling like I need to puke. It's totally psychological. I'd have to be faced with starvation (there's practically nothing I WOULDN'T do to avoid my own death) or serious bribery to get over this. I wonder if hypnosis would work?

 

8) One of my biggest disapointments in life is the realization that nobody ever really grows up. Obviously, looking at my love of toys, you can imagine that to some extent I believe that one should hold onto your childhood, but what I'm talking about isn't the positive aspects of childhood - it's the stuff I remember the most which is the incredible capacity for cruelty and greed that children seem to have. I remember as a kid that I couldn't wait to grow up because it seemed to me that adults treated each other with more dignity and respect that children did. What I didn't realize then, and which breaks my heart now, is that IT NEVER GOES AWAY. There is only the illusion of kindness and respect, adults are just more practiced in hiding their hatred and disapproval. They've had it drilled into their heads that they need to learn how to pretend to get along with others, because telling people how you really feel about them isn't socially acceptable unless you're saying something nice. But below the surface all that nastiness is still there, in whispers, behind closed doors, and it bursts out into the open when adults don't get their way right away. At least children can be honest even though they may be cruel in their honesty, they often aren't aware that they are being cruel. Adults know EXACTLY what they are doing when they let the monster out - and they don't care. That's why they suck compared to children. I work in customer service, so I am exposed to the worst excesses of this sort of behavior on a daily basis.

 

9) I've never been a terribly confident person, as a result, there are many opportunities in my life I've missed out on, and potential talents that never got properly developed. As I get older, a lot of things I used to be afraid of no longer scare me or bother me as much as they once did. I guess this is a good thing, but it puzzles me. Is confidence merely not caring about something? Am I gaining confidence or becoming so jaded that I barely care about anything anymore? They make it seem like it's some sort of inner strength or something that can be cultivated, but to me it seems like it's not caring, which would be losing something, not gaining something. I guess you could not care about something because you feel so strong inside you realize it won't hurt you much if it doesn't go the way you want it to go? Maybe not caring about something can be a good thing if caring too much was holding you back? It's just sort of peculiar because confidence is not usually described as being a lack of caring, which is usually seen as something negative, but to me it seems to be the same thing. I guess what determines if its positive or negative is not whether you care about something or not, but WHAT you choose to care about and how that affects others and yourself.

 

10) I'm fascinated with all kinds of kooky paranormal things like cryptozoology, ufology, ghost hunting, etc. Like I said earlier, there isn't enough mystery in the world, so I am intruiged with anything mysterious and strange. The possibility that in some cases there might be anything truly fantastic in the real world is too exciting to ignore for me. If nothing else, the sorts of people who gravitate towards these things are interesting to study in and of themselves.

Done