Five (more) Things You Didn't Know About Me

For real this time. Okay...how do we make this embarrassing enough to be entertaining without making me want to stay indoors the rest of my life?

1. When I was a kid, I used to talk to thunderstorms. True story. When a thunderstorm would roll in I would perch at the nearest available window and just marvel at it. Invariably I would start to ask it questions: usually with yes or no answers. Like, a certain number of flashes or rumbles would mean "yes" and a certain number would mean "no". The number usually changed with each question. The spooky part: a lot of times I got pretty interesting/accurate answers.

Looking back, I was a lot like Ralph Wiggum as a kid. Anyway, it seemed cool at the time.

2. I never set foot on any type of aircraft until this year. Actually, it was just this past November for a trip to New Mexico, which was a life-altering experience for me. I'm 35 years old and I just took my first plane ride ever. It really wasn't all that bad. The worst part was my sore ass and general fatigue. We got some turbulence which was, according to my very flight-seasoned wife, pretty hectic. The wings were see-sawing at about 45-degree angles. My response: laughter. Thought it was kinda fun. Besides, what're ya gonna do? It's not like the airline gives you a parachute.

3. Hey, this is embarrassing: sometimes music is so great it makes me want to actually cry. True. It doesn't even have to be sad music. Sometimes a moment in a song is so perfect to me that I actually get choked up and have to cover it up by pretending to cough or something. Isn't that emo?

This should balance things out: other times I want to run around and gleefully smash things apart in celebration of the unbearable awesomeness of things.

4. I have a long and bittersweet relationship with the constellation Orion, beginning in my high school days when Metallica released "Master of Puppets" and me and all of my friends were way into that record. A few of us--including yours truly--really dug the song "Orion" and that was about the time when I learned where he was up in the sky. Since then he's become something of a historical marker for a whole bunch of events, good and bad and goodbad and badgood. I'm thinking of incorporating him into a tattoo.

5. I have never taken or used an illegal drug in my life. This actually isn't something I'm particularly proud of or anything. I'm not straight edge or uber-religious or morally set against it and I don't judge people who indulge recreationally. It's just something that I never did. The drinking to the point of absurdity thing is as far as I ever got. There have been plenty of opportunities to participate but I've just never pursued it. Don't think I'm not a little envious of some of the hallucinations I've heard about, though. Believe me, no one wants to see cartoons pouring out of a bathroom faucet more than I do.

Upon observing my behavior at times people have been known to call bullshit on this assertion. I stand by it. I'm a freak of my own power.

So, I'm supposed to tag someone now. That's how this works. I tag my subscribers, because I appreciate you for doing me the honor of paying attention to what I'm up to over here, and I want to hear from you.