The rules, as stated by the Facebook instructions in the chain letter, state:
1. At 34 years old, I have never used any illegal drug and have never used any tobacco product of any kind.
2. I hate daytime and "reality" TV shows. Prime-time TV isn't much better. I can't understand how so many cable channels manage to stay in business, given the horrible shows they decide to air.
3. After college, I topped out at 212 lbs. (Thank you, B.U. meal plan. Thank you, Dunkin Donuts.) I currently weight ever-so-slightly just under 180.
4. I don't write nearly as well as I like to think I do. My sentences tend to ramble, I use too many parenthetical asides (like this one!), I don't get to the point fast enough, and I don't transition from subject to subject as smoothly as I should. In fairness, one is taught to find his or her "own voice" when writing ... well, I guess this *is* my own voice, because I speak like this as well.
5. My college years were essentially wasted, education-wise. I was an engineering student for the first two years. After much internal debate, I couldn't see myself being happy in that line of work, so I transferred to Communications as a journalism major. Bad decision. I don't know what I was thinking. Given my need to fulfill requirements of the switch in majors, my responsibilities as a Resident Assistant (heightened by some of the cretins who lived on my floor), and the general sadness and malaise resulting from my father's death from a heart attack during my senior year, I lost a lot of motivation to do more than the minimum necessary to just get through. I was never an intern or co-op, I had no clip file to speak of for prospective journalistic employers (see #6), and I didn't have the contacts that many others who spent four years in the program did. A journalism career seemed unlikely from the start, and my engineering days left me unable to do simple multiplication, never mind Modern Physics or Electronic Circuit Theory. So four years and countless thousands of dollars later ... I don't know. I should have just taken it to Las Vegas instead.
6. I tried working for the B.U. newspaper, the Daily Free Press, but it
was a bit disastrous. I attempted to write actual news stories during my Junior year (my first year as a COM student), but my first two experiences were horrible. The very first went unpublished (I don't recall the reason, nor the topic of the story). The second assignment was to interview members of the Senior class to find out why they were upset that the traditional Senior Week clambake was to be alcohol-free. I went to the Student Union and started asking "Are you a Senior? Are you a Senior?" It was tough to find a sampling of the population willing to answer my questions. Eventually I got a couple of quotes from a few people, and the response was, in general, "yeah ... it's really not a big deal."
Apparently it *was* a big deal to whoever the editor of the Freep was at the time (a Senior, I assume). The only "negative" quote I got was used and taken somewhat out of context, so when the story ran, it was much shorter than the one I had turned in, and it had a much different tone. I got an angry voice mail from the person who was quoted. I called her back and asked for her e-mail address, so I could send her the version I had actually written, prior to the edits that were made in the print version.
On a personal level, this cleared things up with the person who was quoted, but it left a really bad taste in my mouth in regard to the process as a whole.
As a senior, though, I wrote a poorly-conceived, semi-half assed bi-weekly column in the Op-Ed pages. Though they make me cringe to re-read now, this experience was actually a lot of fun and ultimlately led to my creation of a poorly-conceived, semi-half assed blog that seems to get published even less frequently. Go figure.
7. I have been to Japan, Belgium, England, and France, but I have never been to Canada or Mexico.
8. Everywhere you turn in my apartment, you can find something with a Red Sox logo on it.
9. I have never been arrested and have never received a ticket for a moving violation. I got a parking ticket once, over ten years ago.
10. I used to have long hair, but genetics failed me. Now, I buzz it down or shave it off altogether. What used to be 7-8 inches long now rarely even gets to 7/8 of an inch!
11. I have no tattoos or piercings.
12. I often wonder how different my life would have been if I had been more aggressive and much braver in my teens and early 20s. If I could have been more of the me that I am now back then, I probably would have had a lot more fun.
13. I consider myself a liberal, not a Democrat. The names "Democrat" and "Republican" seem too divisive to me, in a way. "Democrat" is a party, "liberal" is a mindset. I'm not so eager to claim loyalty to the former, but my values and morals lead me to embrace the latter.
14. I am not a religious person (here's some of the reason why), but have no problem with anyone else who is. I do think that religion and politics is a potentially toxic mix, however.
15. I have literally thousands of bootleg concerts archived on DVD-R. I am working on a comprehensive list in MS Excel format.
16. I have downloaded music and not paid for it. Most of it has been deleted almost instantly, however, because so much of it is terrible. I'll see a band written up in a music-related blog, so I'll check it out to see if it's worth buying, and so often it's just awful ... so, so awful. The vast majority of today's popular music doesn't excite me at all.
17. I am a movie snob.
18. I left all of my wonderful friends and a city I absolutely love (Boston) in 2003 to move to Portland, Oregon ... to follow a girl. We've been married since September 2006. I still can't quite believe she puts up with my nonsense, but she does.
19. I met my wife in Harvard Square at a book signing. We were waiting to meet the eternally awesome Bruce Campbell (who is as cool and gracious in person as you could ever hope he would be).
20. I miss Portland dearly. I miss the rainy days, the gauntlet of homeless panhandlers downtown, and the coffee shops every fifty feet in any given direction. I miss Powell's World of Books. I miss Fred Meyer. I miss the Mission and Cinema 21.
Mostly, I miss my friends.
21. I have a co-writing credit for THQ's "WWE Smackdown vs. Raw 2008" video game. My friend Bryan wrote the storylines for the game, and asked me if I'd be interested in helping him re-write some of the commentary by the announce teams. I wrote more than 4000 lines of dialogue, but it was never used. Apparently they couldn't get the voice-overs recorded on time, so all my work sits in a spreadsheet somewhere ... I haven't played the 2009 version, so I don't know if any of it was used for the newest version, though I doubt it.
Some of the "articles" I wrote for the WWE magazines used as in-game plot devices were used, though, so as you play the game, some of what you read is stuff I wrote.
Though it was disappointing to play the game and not hear the dialogue that I wrote added into it, it was a great experience. I have the THQ contract, check stubs, and original electronic files to prove I actually worked on it.
Now if I could just unlock the closing credits and take a screen shot of my name in the scroll ...
22. I have small feet (size 8 or 8.5).
23. I own a lot of clothing that never gets worn. Dozens of t-shirts, at least 14 polos, close to 20 button-downs, and 15 pair of pants.
24. I have tried on numerous occasions to enjoy wine, but I just don't like it. I'm also not a big fan of hard alcohol. If you offer me any variety of Sam Adams beer, however, I will not turn you down.
25. I don't read nearly as much as I should. I have so many bookshelves full of novels that I'll "get to eventually", but never seem to.
If you've been tagged, you are supposed to write a note with 25 random things, facts, habits, or goals about you.I ignore most chain-letter requests like these, but I've received three in the past two days from friends with whom I haven't kept in touch as well as I ought to have (and I haven't written a blog entry in a few days), so why not?
1. At 34 years old, I have never used any illegal drug and have never used any tobacco product of any kind.
2. I hate daytime and "reality" TV shows. Prime-time TV isn't much better. I can't understand how so many cable channels manage to stay in business, given the horrible shows they decide to air.
3. After college, I topped out at 212 lbs. (Thank you, B.U. meal plan. Thank you, Dunkin Donuts.) I currently weight ever-so-slightly just under 180.
4. I don't write nearly as well as I like to think I do. My sentences tend to ramble, I use too many parenthetical asides (like this one!), I don't get to the point fast enough, and I don't transition from subject to subject as smoothly as I should. In fairness, one is taught to find his or her "own voice" when writing ... well, I guess this *is* my own voice, because I speak like this as well.
5. My college years were essentially wasted, education-wise. I was an engineering student for the first two years. After much internal debate, I couldn't see myself being happy in that line of work, so I transferred to Communications as a journalism major. Bad decision. I don't know what I was thinking. Given my need to fulfill requirements of the switch in majors, my responsibilities as a Resident Assistant (heightened by some of the cretins who lived on my floor), and the general sadness and malaise resulting from my father's death from a heart attack during my senior year, I lost a lot of motivation to do more than the minimum necessary to just get through. I was never an intern or co-op, I had no clip file to speak of for prospective journalistic employers (see #6), and I didn't have the contacts that many others who spent four years in the program did. A journalism career seemed unlikely from the start, and my engineering days left me unable to do simple multiplication, never mind Modern Physics or Electronic Circuit Theory. So four years and countless thousands of dollars later ... I don't know. I should have just taken it to Las Vegas instead.
6. I tried working for the B.U. newspaper, the Daily Free Press, but it
was a bit disastrous. I attempted to write actual news stories during my Junior year (my first year as a COM student), but my first two experiences were horrible. The very first went unpublished (I don't recall the reason, nor the topic of the story). The second assignment was to interview members of the Senior class to find out why they were upset that the traditional Senior Week clambake was to be alcohol-free. I went to the Student Union and started asking "Are you a Senior? Are you a Senior?" It was tough to find a sampling of the population willing to answer my questions. Eventually I got a couple of quotes from a few people, and the response was, in general, "yeah ... it's really not a big deal."
Apparently it *was* a big deal to whoever the editor of the Freep was at the time (a Senior, I assume). The only "negative" quote I got was used and taken somewhat out of context, so when the story ran, it was much shorter than the one I had turned in, and it had a much different tone. I got an angry voice mail from the person who was quoted. I called her back and asked for her e-mail address, so I could send her the version I had actually written, prior to the edits that were made in the print version.
On a personal level, this cleared things up with the person who was quoted, but it left a really bad taste in my mouth in regard to the process as a whole.
As a senior, though, I wrote a poorly-conceived, semi-half assed bi-weekly column in the Op-Ed pages. Though they make me cringe to re-read now, this experience was actually a lot of fun and ultimlately led to my creation of a poorly-conceived, semi-half assed blog that seems to get published even less frequently. Go figure.
7. I have been to Japan, Belgium, England, and France, but I have never been to Canada or Mexico.
8. Everywhere you turn in my apartment, you can find something with a Red Sox logo on it.
9. I have never been arrested and have never received a ticket for a moving violation. I got a parking ticket once, over ten years ago.
10. I used to have long hair, but genetics failed me. Now, I buzz it down or shave it off altogether. What used to be 7-8 inches long now rarely even gets to 7/8 of an inch!
11. I have no tattoos or piercings.
12. I often wonder how different my life would have been if I had been more aggressive and much braver in my teens and early 20s. If I could have been more of the me that I am now back then, I probably would have had a lot more fun.
13. I consider myself a liberal, not a Democrat. The names "Democrat" and "Republican" seem too divisive to me, in a way. "Democrat" is a party, "liberal" is a mindset. I'm not so eager to claim loyalty to the former, but my values and morals lead me to embrace the latter.
14. I am not a religious person (here's some of the reason why), but have no problem with anyone else who is. I do think that religion and politics is a potentially toxic mix, however.
15. I have literally thousands of bootleg concerts archived on DVD-R. I am working on a comprehensive list in MS Excel format.
16. I have downloaded music and not paid for it. Most of it has been deleted almost instantly, however, because so much of it is terrible. I'll see a band written up in a music-related blog, so I'll check it out to see if it's worth buying, and so often it's just awful ... so, so awful. The vast majority of today's popular music doesn't excite me at all.
17. I am a movie snob.
18. I left all of my wonderful friends and a city I absolutely love (Boston) in 2003 to move to Portland, Oregon ... to follow a girl. We've been married since September 2006. I still can't quite believe she puts up with my nonsense, but she does.
19. I met my wife in Harvard Square at a book signing. We were waiting to meet the eternally awesome Bruce Campbell (who is as cool and gracious in person as you could ever hope he would be).
20. I miss Portland dearly. I miss the rainy days, the gauntlet of homeless panhandlers downtown, and the coffee shops every fifty feet in any given direction. I miss Powell's World of Books. I miss Fred Meyer. I miss the Mission and Cinema 21.
Mostly, I miss my friends.
21. I have a co-writing credit for THQ's "WWE Smackdown vs. Raw 2008" video game. My friend Bryan wrote the storylines for the game, and asked me if I'd be interested in helping him re-write some of the commentary by the announce teams. I wrote more than 4000 lines of dialogue, but it was never used. Apparently they couldn't get the voice-overs recorded on time, so all my work sits in a spreadsheet somewhere ... I haven't played the 2009 version, so I don't know if any of it was used for the newest version, though I doubt it.
Some of the "articles" I wrote for the WWE magazines used as in-game plot devices were used, though, so as you play the game, some of what you read is stuff I wrote.
Though it was disappointing to play the game and not hear the dialogue that I wrote added into it, it was a great experience. I have the THQ contract, check stubs, and original electronic files to prove I actually worked on it.
Now if I could just unlock the closing credits and take a screen shot of my name in the scroll ...
22. I have small feet (size 8 or 8.5).
23. I own a lot of clothing that never gets worn. Dozens of t-shirts, at least 14 polos, close to 20 button-downs, and 15 pair of pants.
24. I have tried on numerous occasions to enjoy wine, but I just don't like it. I'm also not a big fan of hard alcohol. If you offer me any variety of Sam Adams beer, however, I will not turn you down.
25. I don't read nearly as much as I should. I have so many bookshelves full of novels that I'll "get to eventually", but never seem to.
4 comments:
Jim, you have posted much of this info on the blog many times over the years, I wonder if there is some subtle psychological reason for it?
You seem to be bragging.
Try a cigarette. They're horrible, but then you can say you know for sure and not sound like a pansy when you say you haven't tried them. The same logic does NOT apply to illegal drugs :)
Go to Canada. (Get a passport first). It would be a cheap roadtrip, and you will be a better person for the experience. The same logic does not apply to Mexico.
Wine sucks, I have no idea how billions of people for thousands of years have consumed it. The same logic does not apply to beer.
Now you understand why I missed Fred Meyer so much when I lived in Boston. It's not the best for anything, but it has everything without that horrible Walmart vibe.
-Old Man Grimes
If you decide to take your passport to Canada, find the documentary Chez Schwartz, watch it, and visit Schwartz's deli.
FACT: Although Jim's never done an illegal drug, he huffs Scotch Guard constantly.
~J.D.
21a) I stole your Roddy Piper line for the story mode of SvR08, and that definitely made it in, because I heard the man himself perform it.
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