25 Random Things

After seeing a blog post on Octopus’ Garden where the author outlined twenty-five random things about himself, I decided to give it a try myself. Here’s 25 random things about me.


1. When people ask me how I’m doing, my response is almost entirely determined by where I’m at with my writing. (“How have you been?” “Oh, alright. I wrote three pages yesterday!”)

2. One of my great passions is game design, but I’ve never really pursued marketing any of my games/ideas. . . yet.

3. I believe that there are eight billion (or so) different ways to view the world, and that they’re all equally valid.

4. I love my car, The Blue Valkyrie. I painted her myself, and my mother did the hood. :)

5. My father made me memorize a series of five rules when I was a little kid that he would regularly test me on. The only one I still remember is the first: Shoot straight and speak the truth.

6. My absolute favorite food of all time is Stollen. It’s a form of fruitcake. I love it so much that when I discovered it, I was ready to propose to the cook.

7. Normal jobs bore me. I have to do bizarre things, like sell swords or teach creative writing.

8. All of my lucky numbers by chance happen to add up to or be divisible by 8. Therefore, 8 is my luckiest number.

9. I believe that James Cameron and Carl Sagan are the two most amazing human beings ever to live. James Cameron earns this because of Aliens, Terminator 2 and Avatar. Carl Sagan earns this by achieving a sort of scientific zen by means of pure genius. Watch Cosmos, you’ll see what I mean.

10. Thomas Dolby is my #1 favorite musician. His music is poetry in motion. :)

11. The only bone I’ve ever really broken was my left arm. Twice.

12. When I originally sat down to write Pink Carbide, I planned to make it into a series of shorter episodes, like Cygnus War (only this was before Cygnus War) and only later changed my mind and made it into a book instead. That’s why the first handful of chapters are all close to the same length, while later chapter lengths are all over the place.

13. I spent eight months flying airplanes at the world’s first flight school. Unfortunately, they fell on hard times, and all I got out of it were some memories and some debt.

14. My greatest weaknesses are:

1. Women with short hair (especially spiky!)
2. Glasses/dark eyes
3. Intelligence
4. Musical talent
   

15. I believe that artists of any kind are undervalued. I find it hard sometimes to contrast this with my belief that art should be free. (Free art leads to starvation and insecurity, which in turn leads to crappy art. Support your local artist!)

16. Storm Constantine and S.L. Viehl are the only authors who I would follow to the end and back. Stardoc and Wraeththu, baby! Yeah!

17. My favorite piece of writing that I’ve ever done is the unfinished novel on my wall that I can look up at and touch whenever I get into bed.

18. Originally, when I was much younger, I considered going into film, set design, music and drawing type fine arts in order to bring my stories to the world, but I ultimately settled on writing because it gives the most bang for the buck.

19. People have tried to give me nicknames here and there since I was a little kid, but the only one that has ever really stuck was “Big Brother.”

20. I feel that corporations, like anything else, have their benefits and their pitfalls. Benefits include people working together toward a common goal. Pitfalls include corruption, destruction, and a wide-scale skewing of world view in a way that damages those who don’t fit in.

21. My earliest memory is of seeing a strange red, ghostly light that spoke to me and told me things that I don’t remember, but which I feel had some spiritual significance. (I was really really small) My second earliest memory is of finding a dead kitten and asking my father what happens when we die. His response: “It’s like sleep, only you don’t dream. You never dream, and you never wake up.” From the very foundation, my beliefs when it comes to spirit, energy and the afterlife have been thus divided, and it sucks sometimes.

22. My favorite video game of all time is Sid Meier’s Alpha Centauri. It’s the only game I still play it at least twice a year.

23. I still have the first poem I ever wrote. . . somewhere around here.

24. I do what I like, therefore I am consistently weird. I find normalcy and “reality” to be painfully boring and pointless.

25. I live in khaki shorts and hawaiian shirts. Only on really cold days when I’m outside or in drafty areas a lot will you ever see me dressed in anything else, and then, its slacks and a leather jacket. (With the Hawaiian shirt)