10 Random Facts

[sunny]

Saw this on a film blog and thought it might be a good getting-to-know-you type thread, a pleasant and amusing diversion from our dark obsessions.

post 10 random fact/habits about yourself. Be your silly, profound, sexy, dorky, cool, self-pitying, or weird selves. Be honest! I know you're brilliant, so I don't want to hear about how you never watch television and spend your days reading Tolstoy, dish the dirt!

Ask others to elaborate, express your amusement, offer kudos, etc. but please keep comments non-judgemental.

I'll take the plunge-

1. I read The Exorcist when I was ten years old and slept with my mother for the next 2 years.

2. I forced all my little friends to come to my house to watch Nixon resign on live tv.

3. When I was 12, my uncle (by blood) tried to seduce me. I never told anyone.

4. I smoke almost a pack of cigs a day.

5. If I start drinking, I can't stop, so I drink only rarely. The upside is, I'm an extremely happy, talky, horny drunk.

6. Being a girl of the '70's a "piece of paper" marriage was not important to me. After ten years and two children, I briefly got religion so we officially tied the knot. I still tell people we've been married 25 years.

7. A few years ago, I developed a massive crush on my then boss, so much so that I joined a gym and got buff with the express intention of having an affair with him. Fortunately after that, sex got so good with my hubby I was no loger interested in pursuing the affair. Everytime I see the old boss, I thank him and he has no idea why.

8. I love tough-girl fic, like Janet Evanovich's Stephanie Plum series. and Sara Paretskys V.I. Warshowski.

9. I was a terrible pot head in high school. It was so bad, me and my friend once toked one of those smokeless pipes in the back of my 11th grade Spanish class. Mr. Hanover was clueless, poor sweet fellow.

10. A black, pink bewigged and sequin gowned transvestive saved my life one memorable night in New Orleans, after which we had a ball.

[Jeff]

sunny, that's a scary-good idea. Re number 3 - the fucking asshole. And number 10, please elaborate!

Okay, but only because I'm procrastinating:

1. I have an extreme aversion to ketchup.

2. I came down with severe and undiagnosed panic disorder in my second year of Bible College, when my faith started being a severely awkward fit. At the time I thought I must be either crazy or demon possessed.

3. I cried watching The Bridges of Madison County.

4. I sold futons while attending graduate school. Once, while alone in the store changing the sheets on a display, I fell asleep, and woke up only when a customer was walking out the door. Another time I closed the store to have sex on one (it was still wrapped in its factory plastic).

5. I was in love with a girl who, one weekend, met and married a carny.

6. When I was 17 I had some poltergeist-like experiences. Things would fall that shouldn't. Once, I reset one cassette tape that kept leaping out of place firmly on a shelf, stared at it thinking, if it fell now I know something was strange. My sister entered my room, I looked at her and in that instant it threw itself to the floor. And one night I awoke to deep-throated laughter and I instinctively moved to turn off my stereo, but it wasn't on. So I sat there listening to it, thinking, I'm not asleep, I'm not asleep.

7. I dated a goth dominatrix who still lived with her soon-to-be-ex-boyfriend. One evening she called and told me to come over because he was out, but by the time I got there he'd returned with a bunch of his friends. He got stoned and would laugh, "What the fuck are you doing here?" Even when she assured me he'd be out all night I was always too chickenshit to stay.

8. When I was 11 I requested NDP lawn signs for an Ontario election. My mother was embarrassed and tore it down, calling it the "poor people's party." Then they put up another and she tore that down too.

9. My first wife (I married and divorced early in my 20s) was denied an assignment working with the Canadian Senate subcommittee on terrorism because of my file.

10. On the last day of school, in I think grade 3, my class exchanged gifts. I got a little Popeye toy. He was on a base; you pressed the bottom and his limbs and joints moved. On the way home I lost it. It still upsets me.

[sunny]

Jeff, I love your list! I feel I know you so much better. re your # 6- how did you cope? re# 7-are you relieved or do you regret not getting the chance to sample your goth girls bag of tricks? re 10- I know how you feel, I lost my 5th grade English prize and still kick myself.

re fucking asshole- I adored him. He was so charismatic that he seemingly got away with everything. He was murdered five years later.

re my transvestite hero-I forgot to mention he was at least 6'6" tall! He was a WOW, ya know? Anyway, I got separated from my friends when I became engrossed in watching a very young street musician. I wandered off to locate them and found myself on some dark side street with no idea how to get back. He came out of the darkness and scared the shit outta me. "Honey, your little white ass is gonna get killed out here." He took my arm and lead me back to civilization. I felt completely safe with him. After an hour of searching for my friends, he threw up his hands "fuck it,baby, let's go have fun!" He took me to Bourbon Pub & Parade and I had the time of my life, dancing and getting blistered. (I was underage, but no one gave a crap in 1981)His name was Susie Q(ueen) aka George, and I prayed and prayed for him during Katrina.

[Jeff]

re your # 6- how did you cope?

It was my evangelical period so I assumed it was demonic. I told a few people and asked them to pray, but it certainly fueled my panic disorder! Later when I read that poltergeist manifestations are often associated with adolescent sexuality, I was actually comforted.

re# 7-are you relieved or do you regret not getting the chance to sample your goth girls bag of tricks?

At risk of too much information, I did, just not that night. (I guess I should have clarified, I was always too chickenshit to stay until morning.) Though years earlier, while necking with an evangelical girlfriend who said that she wanted to make love and I replied I did too and suggested we pray for strength - that I regret.


About your night in New Orleans - there oughta be a movie!

[sunny]

Come on everybody, don't be chicken. Give us your list!

It was my evangelical period so I assumed it was demonic. I told a few people and asked them to pray, but it certainly fueled my panic disorder!

I had the worst panic attack during my "religious period". I wonder if anyone has done a psychological study of this particular disorder?

Later when I read that poltergeist manifestations are often associated with adolescent sexuality, I was actually comforted.

Maybe that is why I literally saw the devil as a kid? Also might explain what happened when I was about 15. I was in my grandmothers bedroom, crying and complaining about my mother. When she left the room for a minute, I became fascinated by my reflection in a wine bottle lamp on a side table. Even though I had stopped crying, my reflection continued to bawl. This wasn't an optical illusion or a hallucination-it happened.

[brownzeroed]

Be your silly, profound, sexy, dorky, cool, self-pitying, or weird selves.

[H_C_E]

Okay, I'll bite even though 1) I only post here infrequently due to a very busy life and 2) when I do post most everyone seems to not respond to me(except Jeff and Brownzeroed, coincidentally) as I'm not a regular member of the tribe.

1) I grew up in an 'occupied' house (not sure if haunted is the word, but some strange and frightening things occured there)

2) I am simultaneously scared shitless of, and yet fascinated by scorpions.

3) I very seriously considered going to divinity school or seminary when I decided to give a my career as a working musician ten years ago.

4) I spent time in juvinile hall for "manufacture of incendiary devices"
which were cheap home made bombs based on full cans of lysol or spray paint.

5) I was once arrested for a bounced check (15.00 and I didn't know it was still out there several years after the fact) on the night of my first gig with my first "A" level band. My wife managed to get me out in time for me to be able to show up right at "down beat" (first beat of the first song of the first set)

6) I once rode my bike all over the suburb I grew up in during Friday 'rush hour' in nothing but shorts painted head to toe in lurid day-glo acrylic paints (even in my hair). I scared one kid so bad that he risked almost being hit by a car to avoid me.

7) In ninth grade I drank so much I literally almost died. I came to well after midnight in the hospital room, and thought my parents had re-decorated my room. Until I noticed the TV mounted in the corner. I was also unpleasantly surprised and confused by the presence of a catheder (SP?) and leather restraints on all fours.

8) When I was nine, my younger sister and I kidnapped a neighborhood boy and held him at our house (parents were gone) all afternoon.

9) I once avenged myself of a beating from my older sister by wetting the carpet in front of her door and then shampooing it, then knocking on her her door and taunting her. she proceeded to come running out and immediately slipping and busting her ass. This prompted another beating.
Not such a great plan after all.

10) I also once trapped her in her bedroom for six hours by tying rope to her doorknob, then to the doorknob of the door directly across from hers. Her windows had been nailed shut from the outside by my dad in order to keep her from sneaking out late at night. So she was quite literally trapped. Fortunately when my mom came home and made me release her, she prevented my sister from touching me. Ha!

10b) I've been married for fifteen years, no longer touch alcohol or any other chemicals and reinvented myself as a horticulturist after returning to school to study it in 1997. And with the exception of my fascination with High Weirdness and the JFK murder, I have no "Dark Obsessions" and am actually quite hopeful and optimistic despite the pathological and sinister aspects of human behavior and life on Earth.

HCE

[H_C_E]

Oh, by the way,

BZ, the odd parallels between your personal facts and mine are purely coincidental (if not interesting) and true, I promise you.

And no animals were harmed in the relating of those facts about myself.

[sunny]

H_C_E

Okay, I'll bite even though 1) I only post here infrequently due to a very busy life and 2) when I do post most everyone seems to not respond to me(except Jeff and Brownzeroed, coincidentally) as I'm not a regular member of the tribe.

Hey! Sorry about that. I guess it takes time to get into the swim of things around here.

1) I grew up in an 'occupied' house (not sure if haunted is the word, but some strange and frightening things occured there)

Details!

Re your #10-I wish I had had the courage to do that to my tormenting cousin. re #6-you should have been a performance artist!

brownzeroed, LMAO!-

2. I spent 6 months in juvenile hall for hot wiring a Mail Truck and terrorizing a local golf course.

That is so funny it had to be worth the six months, you mischievous imp.

[Joe Hillshoist]

This is a way cool thread.

1. Right now I have a torn hamstring, in my right leg. 6 weeks ago I did the left one so at least thats some kind of symmetry.

2. I fell off a cliff when I was 16 and was on crutches for 3 months.

3. I played violin for nearly 8 years as a chid, stopped when I was 12 and haven't touched it since. Dunno why, my teacher was a great one, an 80 year old nun with a heart of gold. No dodgy abuse or nothing, tho I spose it coincides with my family being chased out of Tasmania cos my old man tried to se the law society and got railroaded.

4. I once saw a marijuana bud bigger than my leg.

5. When I was young my friends and I used to go shooting guns in a quarry in Mellbourne. And drinking beer, great combination. Once someone called the cops, who sent out about 4 divvy vans and the chopper to find us. At one point I was lying on the ground at the top of the quarry and the chopper flew up from the depths of it with its spotlight pointing right at me, I was hiding behind a lump of dirt with my arm stuffed into a bush. I was holding a very illegal, loaded shotgun at the time. It was an awesome moment, the adrenaline and the way the light from the spotlight was all around me. Like I was in a war or something. About as intense as things get. being hunted that evening. The chopper hung there for a minute and I thought I was screwed but it turned and flew off. We got away with that one. It was one of so many close calls doing dodgy stuff from my youth, both with the law and its opposite.

6. I was head hunted by the Australian Army and Air Force in high school. They wanted me to go to officer school, however I failed the psyche test. The shrink actually said "come back when you have learned how to take orders." A friend from high school is now a major and actually commended the Australian unit that Jake Kovco was in when he shot himself, or was shot or whatever happened. We met in a nightclub back in the early 90s and he said to me "Gee you are lucky, I really regret joining up." Or words to that effect.

7. I am married to the most amazing person I have ever met, at least IMO.

8. I have planted over 100, 000 trees over my life, probably way more.

9. Considering my dodgy past I am considered a "respectable citizen" these days, being a junior football coach ( a sought after one at that - roflmao) and having been an permit officer with my local volunteer fire brigade for over 10 years. That gives me unbelievable power apparantly. I have an authority card in my wallet that enables me to use reasonable force to enter premises and detain people in certain events, within the confines of an act(some rurasl fire act or other, and possibly some of the fascist anti terror bullshit that we have in this country now). I have never used it.

10. Last night a possum somehow got into the house and I hand fed it a bread roll. I got a pic of it too, should put it on the animal lovers thread I spose.

[sunny]

Joe, I envy your #3, you should pick it back up. Kudos for planting so many trees! I've planted a few myself, but nowhere near that number.
Australia fascinates me. I heard someone say recently (Russell Crowe?) that Australia had no Bill of Rights or comparable document, but Aussies seem to be the most rugged individualists in the world. If this is true, ya'll should get to work on that so the politicians have a document to violate instead of a universal concept.

[H_C_E]

Hey! Sorry about that. I guess it takes time to get into the swim of things around here."

Well, then it will take me a very long time. I have some many other things going on that I don't have the time to post often, with any kind of consistency.

Okay, so you wanted details on the house I grew up in...


When I was four and five I was subjected to the dreaded "afternoon nap"

and when laying on my parents bed I would often see the greenish face on the back of the bedroom door. It had vaguely darkened depressions where eyes should be and no nose or mouth. I didn't know words like sinister or malevolent, but I did know it didn't seem nice. Turns out that years later I mentioned this to my younger sister and she had seen the same thing as a small child. This really raised the hair on our bodies.



Same sister kept rabbits during her elementary school years. Up late with my mom and sister one night, we'd had to bring the rabbits in as their hutch wasn't rain-proofed. And having cats we decided to sequester both in seperate rooms just to be safe. We kept coming back to find the rabbits and cats switched into opposite rooms. We returned them each to their given rooms a couple of times then finally gave up and left them where they were.



For years I and other family members would hear voices call our names. sometimes the voice would do perfect impersonations of other family members voices. Happened to friends and guests as well.



My personal favorite occurence was one I wasn't there for. My younger sister and her friend Nicky were at the house alone one summer afternoon playing hide-and-seek. We had a fairly large two story house so there was plenty of room to search and hide. Calling out for her friend while searching upstairs in my parents room, my sister heard laughter coming from underneath my parents bed. At first she rightly thought it was her friend. As she began telling her friend that she knew she was under there and to come out, she said the laughter changed. This scared her and she became angry. Insisting Nicky come out and having nothing happen she ran back downstairs and yelled for her friend to come out of hiding. Nicky heard her and came walking through the kitchen from the garage asking what was wrong. My sister explained, and they both high-tailed it out of the house and waited at Nicky's until the rest of the family arrived back home that evening.

HCE

[chiggerbit]

OMG, Janet Evanovich's Stephanie Plum series??? Really? I love her!! Great, relaxing reading SO MUCH FUN! But, I'm having a hard time reading lately, so it's been hard to keep up with the ones past Ten. I wonder if they will ever come out on the puter. I can read the puter much better than books, so far.

[monster]

1.) I have an uncanny ability to guess people's astrological signs. Once, at a daycare my gf's aunt ran, I watched the kids and then correctly guessed 6/8 signs on the first try. (My gf checked it against a list of birthdays her aunt kept.)

2.) I remember almost all of my dreams

3.) I have a recurring dream of seeing/running from UFO's in a schoolyard behind my parents' house. The dreams are always extremely vivid. I'm usually searching the schoolyard frantically for something... I don't know what. Other times, I just stand in awe watching the UFOs perform maneuvers in the sky.

4.) I'm a recovering bibliophile. My former apartment was stuffed with books.

5.) My favorite fictional characters are:

1. Sherlock Holmes
2. Quiller
3. Don Juan Matus

6.) I hate errors of pronunciation (notable: "Jew-luh-ry" instead of "Jewel-ry", "real-uh-tor" instead of "real-tor", "nuke-ya-lur" instead of "nuke-lee-ur", the word "irregardless", etc.)

7.) I always cry when I hear the star spangled banner, yet I'm not an emotional person (quite the opposite, in fact).

8.) I once took ~25 doses of LSD at once

9.) The only time I've voted for a politician I actually wanted to win was when I voted for Pat Buchanan, back in the day.

10.) The next time I vote for a politician I want to win will be the next election, when I vote for Ron Paul

[Joe Hillshoist]

Joe, I envy your #3, you should pick it back up. Kudos for planting so many trees! I've planted a few myself, but nowhere near that number.
Australia fascinates me. I heard someone say recently (Russell Crowe?) that Australia had no Bill of Rights or comparable document, but Aussies seem to be the most rugged individualists in the world. If this is true, ya'll should get to work on that so the politicians have a document to violate instead of a universal concept.

Australia always had this weird tension between being extrememly free and nastily authoritarian. One of the reasons a Bill of Rights was never looked at was cos of the indigenous problem IMO, but also because there was always a trend in Austraalian law to interpret the law one of two ways, a strict legal interpetation that left no room for interpretation or more commonly a ... can't remember the exact term ... a recognition of what was implied by the law.

In that context it was assumed that it was implied that all human rights were a given (stupid assumption given our history, and not just in ref to how we treated the blackfellas), and no legal power (ie judge high court justice etc etc) would ever forget that. But I think actually another frame of reference for all this has a fair bit to do with what anti posts re royal perogative and all that.

We are signitries to various human rights conventions and some rights are protected by law, but a Bill of Rights would be a useful document if it was written right. Specifically not to limit rights to just those specified in the bor, nor to allow the BOR or constitution to limit other rights. I think there is a provision in the US BOR for exactly that tho its been a while since I have taken much notice of it. I forgot to add that I deferred from studying law in the 10 facts, and never went back, but when I was at Uni there was a bit of talk about the BOR and whgether we should have one. It was in the time before the vote on the republic, and everyone just assumed we would vote to change the head of state and remove the queen and become s fully fledged republic. No one counted n the manipulative John Howard....

Part of the no BOR thing is that most aussies don't give a fuck and do what they want, but there is also a power mad puritanical streak in Australia that promotes apathy and the idea that having an interest in politics is a bit weird.

I used to plant trees for a living, at about 8c a tree we used to try and do at least 2000 a day, preferably (and usually) more, tho that was in monoculture plantings of eucalypts. But I have also done a fair bit of mixed rainforest plantings, regen and planting forest in paddocks. In fact I can design a rainforest for my local conditions, well the trees and understorey stuff, in the hope the fauna moves in and brings whatever species of flora I have left out with it. The moneys not as good, but the satisafaction was far greater.

Its funny reading over those 10 facts they don't tell so much about my life.

I tried to leave the RI related stuff out too, this is the lounge after all. But I could probably come up with 10 weirdness related facts on their own.

You are right about the violin too, i should get back into it. One of these days... I have enough cash lying around to get one, and my wife said she'd get me one for my last birthday, but didn't. Maybe next one.

Its one of the few things I really regret about my life. Stopping the violin. I used to plant with a guy who started playing in his 40s so i guess I don't really need to live with that regret for my whole life.

This is a great thread btw.

Thanks for starting it.