Author's Disclaimer: I'm tired and a bit moody at the moment. Work has been hammering me pretty hard lately so keep that in mind for a couple of weeks. Gracias folks. Allllllllrighty then! Yeah Write "tagged" me and asked me to list five things about myself that are not generally known. In general, I have mixed feelings about this whole fad going around. As SydoggXxX phrased it in his reply to Chili's blog, it is a bit like "the spread of a disease". On the one hand, all this blogging about ourselves could easily be blogs written about games, politics, religion, etc. Topics that people outside of our friends and close readers would find worthwhile to read about. On the other hand, I confess that I've enjoyed learning some new things about some of the other people I know about on this site. I suppose the deciding factors were as follows: A. Being a man, I really feel quite comfortable talking about myself for seemingly interminable amounts of time. B. It is an easy "Get out of jail free" card from really taking the time and effort that writing a more serious blog would take and, since C. Procrastination is a key part of my strategy for making it through any given day... ...I've decided to go ahead and enjoy this game. Without further ado, or procrastination if you want to be more specific, here are five things that are not widely known by the Gamespot community about me. 1. I have more butt hair than any man has any right to possess. Before I go any further, I'll kindly remind everyone that the fascinating mental image you're currently experiencing is thanks to Yeah_Write's tagging of me to write this blog. Therefore, I am not to blame for any nightmares about dirty apes you may experience during the rest of your night tonight. Speaking of apes, the Monkeys Writing Shakespeare union currently has a thread going on discussing the tension between faith and science. The subject of the "Missing Link" issue of the Theory of Evolution detailing mankind's evolution from monkeys was raised. I did not mention it at the time, but the "Missing Link" issue has more or less been resolved in none other than...me. One look at my hindquarters, generously endowed with fur to survive the cold months, would answer the question of where that "Missing Link" is. At least where it comes to body hair...I AM the Missing Link between Neanderthal and human evolution. Moving on! 2. The most serious fist fight that I've ever been in was during school hours in my drama cla.ss I generally describe myself as more of a lover than a fighter, but I've been in a couple of fights in my stupid youth. To really get a sense of how stupid I was back then, a little context is in order. Prior to the fight in question, the day before in fact, I had broken my hand and never got it tended to by a doctor. My school had a couple of inches of matting on the walls behind each of the baskets on the basketball court. They were placed there to prevent injuries to players driving to the basket for a layup who lost control and weren't able to stop themselves from running into the wall. A couple of inches of wrestling mat softened the impact of people running into that wall. Anyway, the day before my fight a friend of the guy I was to fight (a fight I was unaware was scheduled at the time) was chatting with me and asked me to show him how hard I could punch that mat. (Did I mention that I was an idiot as a kid?) Well, I punched that mat as hard as I could and, wouldn't you know it, a couple of inches of wrestling mat between my hand and a very solid oak wood wall isn't as much cushion as you might think. I broke a bone in my dominant hand in two places, but was too damned embarrassed to admit it to my parents.

The next day, the kid who I was scheduled (still unawares) to fight jumped me offstage of my drama clas.sroom We traded some punches, and my key learning from the experience that I'd impart to anyone reading this is that if you have a broken hand you should probably punch someone with the other hand because it hurts like hell otherwise. We were eventually separated and that was that. It was a completely pointless experience with really nothing to be gained. I'm not even positive I remember the kid's name anymore. 3. I went to a Roman Catholic private High School...and then promptly joined a Greek Fraternity in college. First some explanation for those outside of the U.S.: Greek Fraternities in the U.S. are more or less houses of debauchery. (At least the ones on the campus that I was a part of.) They are great places to get drunk, stoned or laid, but not so great for actually getting good grades in clas.ses. So you can read into this that I went from a very conservative, very structured Catholic environment in high school - complete with mandatory theology cla.sses and church attendance - to the complete polar opposite in my first year in college. "They" say that most kids/teens go through a period of rebellion before they grow up to become functional adults. I suppose I'm pretty darn normal in that aspect. 4. I won a couple of rare engineering scholarships before going to college Yep. At one point yours truly was going to be a software programmer. When I left high school I had no clue what I wanted to do with my life. (Sometimes I wonder if I've figured it out even now, but that's beside the point.) I figured that a career as a programmer, working on making video games, could be pretty interesting. Two years into college I couldn't stand programming any longer. If something more boring than writing and debugging code exists in this world I've never found it. 5. I did not like Final Fantasy VII. In fact, I think it is the worst Final Fantasy game (aside from the very first one) that I have ever played. RPG is, by far, my favorite genre. I consider myself something of a connoisseur of the genre. With that having been stated I feel that Final Fantasy VII was just plain ordinary at best. It had plot holes by the dozen. It completely failed to draw me into the story or the characters in any meaningful way and it is the only Final Fantasy game that I've ever played that I just stopped playing without finishing it. To this day I completely fail to understand why so many people go so completely gaga over this game. I theorize that it is an overreaction to it being the first Final Fantasy game released on the next generation platform of its time (PS1), but I don't really know for sure. Sephiroth was an absurdly whiny baby with a complete Oedipus complex who was completely unworthy of being worshiped as one of the best villains of all time, Cloud was a wimp and Aeris was bland and boring.



Well then...hopefully the five things that I picked out were mildly interesting to everyone. If not, well, I'm generally open to questions so if you have specific ones feel free to let me know.