100 Things You Might Not Know About Me

1. The first book I remember reading was The Wizard of Oz.
2. In my lifetime, I have received eight Cross pen and pencil sets as gifts.
3. I hate pen and pencil sets.
4. I can't write in longhand with anything but a Sharpie Ultra Fine Point.
5. I once gave a drowned hamster CPR.
6. The first three movies I remember seeing as a kid: The Exorcist, Suspiria, and Rosemary's Baby.
7. I still check my closets and underneath my bed for monsters.
8. The only president I've ever seen in the flesh is Gerald Ford, when I was eight.
9. The thought that ran through my head when I saw him was, "If I had a gun, I could probably shoot him from here!"
10. When I was ten, I tried to shoot my neighbor's cat with a BB gun, but I missed.
11. I can type 87 words per minute without mistakes.
12. However, I compose so slowly that it sometimes takes me an hour to write a two-paragraph e-mail.
13. In sixth grade, I created a science fair project that was so bad, even though there were only three entries from my class they decided not to give out a third place prize rather than give one to me.
14. In third grade, I did something so awful that the headmaster of my Episcopal school devoted his morning sermon to it. He became so upset that he broke down in the middle of the sermon and stormed out of the chapel.
15. When they told my mother about it, she threatened to take me down to the Red River and drown both of us rather than live with the shame.
16. No, I'm not going to tell you what I did.
17. I smoked pot in college, but stopped after watching Pink Floyd's The Wall while stoned and realizing that it made boring movies seem like they were eight hours long.
18. I am an expert at hiding, and have never been found in a game of Hide and Seek unless I wanted to be.
19. I've moved somewhere around 27 times in my life, but in only six cities.
20. I didn't meet my parents until I was three years old.
21. Until I was about nine, I thought my parents were trying to poison me. I thought they had poisoned my toothpaste, so I wouldn't swallow any when I brushed my teeth.
22. When I was four, they gave us a lecture at school on household poisons. That evening, I instructed my parents to put the Drano and bleach on a high shelf, so I wouldn't eat it.
23. In second grade, my teacher had a conference with my parents because she asked the class what we wanted to be when we grew up, and I said I wanted to work at McDonald's.
24. The first girl I ever had a crush on was Lisa, in kindergarten. My kindergarten teacher used to spank misbehaving kids, except instead of doing it herself, she would assign another student to do the deed. So, one time, after my friend David and I dug a tunnel under the playground fence, the teacher had Lisa spank the two of us. David cried, but I was like, "Wow!"
25. The family legend is that we're descended from Genghis Khan. I have my doubts about that, but it would explain my periodic impulse to invade China.
26. I have an irrational fear of bread.
27. I also have a fear of staircases where you can see through the stairs to the ground below.
28. I hate walking in the ocean because I'm afraid of stepping on a sea urchin or stonefish.
29. When I was little I used to play with black widow spiders, because I didn't know they were venomous. I would stick my finger in its web, and when it rushed out to attack me I'd pull my hand away at the last second.
30. I had a thick southern accent until I was about eight.
31. If you ever want to see my head explode, ask me to choose between sushi and Cajun food.
32. I failed Physics in 11th grade.
33. I failed Physics in 12th grade. I actually got a lower grade than the year before.
34. I took Physics again my freshman year of college, and got an A.
35. Then I failed Chemistry.
36. Anime makes me sleepy; even when it's something really good, I can't watch more than an hour of it without falling asleep.
37. I could live in hotels for the rest of my life and be extremely happy.
38. I think it's uncool to stay in a hotel and not tip the chambermaid before you leave.
39. Back in the late 80's, my mom once convinced me to perm my hair. One photo exists from that period, and I keep it around to remind me never to listen to my mother.
40. I was a kleptomaniac when I was a kid.
41. I once fell for a girl because we came out of a supermarket together and discovered we had each, unbeknownst to the other, stolen something.
41. I don't steal anymore, though, except maybe for office supplies.
42. Total value of items I've stolen in my lifetime: about $180, not including office supplies.
43. The biggest thing I ever stole was a cardboard cutout of Anthony Perkins in "Psycho III," from a movie theater in Orange County.
44. The weirdest thing I ever stole was an artificial leg.
45. The only thing that keeps me from pursuing a life if crime is a fear of anal rape if I ever get put in the slammer.
46. Having said that, I think anyone who steals from a small mom 'n pop store should be anally raped.
47. However, I condone any and all (nonviolent) crimes against large corporations.
48. The more I like people, the quieter I am around them. If I don't like you, I'll be super friendly and smile a lot. If I really, really like you, I'll avoid talking to you entirely.
49. I'm a good listener, and can listen to people bitch and moan for hours on end.
50. However, I'm always forgetting people's birthdays.
51. I don't really like celebrating my own birthday, because it seems self-indulgent.
52. The only time I've ever been moved to tears by a work of art is when I stepped into St. Peter's Cathedral in Rome.
53. I tend to keep people at arm's length.
54. When getting ready for work in the morning, if I do any part of it in the wrong order, I feel out of sorts for the rest of the day.
55. I used to believe people could read my thoughts, because I would think something about them and they would turn around and glance at me.
56. I talk to children, the mentally disabled, and dogs the same way that I talk to normal adults.
57. Unfortunately, I also expect them to behave like normal adults, so I get frustrated when they don't understand something I'm saying.
58. I always tell people I'm a terrible liar, but that's just to cover up the fact that I'm actually a masterful liar.
59. I'm just kidding about #58.
60. The more credentials people have, the less seriously I take them.
61. I'm a sucker for anything peach-flavored, peach colored, looks like a peach, or has peaches in it. I got into Cézanne only after seeing a painting of his that contained peaches.
62. However, I dislike peach pie.
63. I have the worst gaydar in the world. People I had no idea were gay until someone told me: Elton John, Liberace, Freddie Mercury, Charles Nelson Reilly, Boy George, the lead singer of Frankie Goes to Hollywood.
64. My lack of gaydar once placed me in an awkward situation in a pickup truck outside a house party, with a guy named Griswold.
65. I think it would be really cool to be encased in a gel, and have all your life functions sustained through tubes and wires.
66. I can never fantasize about being stranded on a deserted island, because I always wonder what I would do for toilet paper.
67. I think Armageddon was actually a kickass movie.
68. I've seen The Sound of Music over thirty times.
69. I often fear going to sleep, because it feels the way I imagine dying feels.
70. Sometimes I get mad at people for something they said or did to me in a dream.
71. Ever since Sandra joked about alligators living in the sewers, I can't pour boiling water down the sink without diluting it with cold water first.
72. I'm totally clueless about romantic signals, so a girl pretty much has to show up in my bed naked in order to convey that she likes me.
73. When I was seven, I realized there was no Santa Claus when I was snooping through my parents' stuff and found assembly instructions for the bike I'd gotten from "Santa."
74. I didn't know I was nearsighted until I was seven years old. Until then, I assumed everyone else had some sort of super-vision.
75. I once convinced a college professor to let me take his class from home because I wasn't psychologically fit to attend class in person.
76. I went to my admissions interview for Georgetown wearing an English cabbie cap and a scarf because I thought it would make me look more urbane. I didn't get in.
77. In my entrance interview for University of Chicago, I tried to convince the admissions officer to disregard my 1.7 GPA because I "really really" wanted to go to the University of Chicago. I didn't get in.
78. I once made Sandra cry by doing a George Takei impersonation.
79. I passed up an opportunity to buy a first edition of Stephen King's "The Gunslinger" for $80. Two years later, I saw it listed for $3000.
80. Once when I was depressed, I didn't leave my apartment for two weeks.
81. I have a fear of calling people, because I always imagine that I am interrupting them right in the middle of doing something really fun.
82. I drive my fellow comic geeks crazy because I treat my comics like shit and never bother to bag and board them.
83. When I was little, I spent most of my afternoons and weekends at my parents' store in downtown Shreveport. They let me roam around the streets unattended, so for many years I spent my Saturdays hanging out with winos at the corner liquor store.
84. No matter how much I hate somebody, if I see them eating I feel immediate sympathy toward them.
85. I am an ordained minister of the Universal Life Church, and can legally perform marriage ceremonies in many states.
86. I once sat on the edge of a 1,000-foot high cliff at the Grand Canyon, in order to conquer my fear of heights.
87. Groups of more than three people make me nervous.
88. I find cruelty to be the basest human trait, followed by disloyalty and ignorance.
89. Sometimes it makes me really sad to know that I'll never feel or experience things the same way as I did when I was a teenager.
90. If I could choose between eternal life and a normal life of perfect happiness, I would choose eternal life.
91. I fear intimacy.
92. The mere act of kneeling at a toilet causes me to vomit.
93. The scariest thing I can think of is closing your window blinds at night, and just before you close them completely you catch a glimpse of someone standing outside, looking in.
94. The second scariest thing I can think of is a closet door that is just slightly ajar.
95. And red, glowing eyes staring out at you from inside.
96. I find it difficult to relate to emotions that don't exist in movies or TV shows.
97. When I was 16 I had a huge crush on Anne Frank.
98. Sometimes I have lucid dreams, where I realize that I'm dreaming but don't wake up. They're great because you can do anything you want in them. Usually in these dreams I create huge sums of money for myself, and then get upset because I can't take the cash out into the real world.
99. Cream style corn. Cold. Sheer heaven.
100. When I die, I'd like a "sky burial," a Tibetan Buddist ceremony where the deceased's body is hacked up and fed to vultures. Failing that, I'd like the headstone of my grave to be a big mirror. I think that would be freaky.