Wordsmoker

1. The best yogurt in the world is Yoplait Custard Style Vanilla, no question. *This post brought to you by General Mills*

2. I spend a lot of time in church for a Buddhist.

3. I think that limes are superior to lemons is just about every way imaginable and don’t understand why lemon just doesn’t throw in the towel already. For fuck sake, people– limes! We can do this.

4. I didn’t want to fill this stupid thing out because everyone else already did this like 3 months ago on Facebook, but I heard about this “compulsive oversharing” thing on some Gawker post about JA and it sounded like it might be fun to try.

5. There was an amazing street meat vendor near my office that I used to buy from all the time, but he’s been gone since 1/19/09. I worry that Bush’s last act as president was to send him to Guantanamo Bay.

6. I’m not as tough as I thought I was, but I’m a lot stronger than I used to be.

7. I sing. All the time. I don’t think I’m any great shakes at it, but that doesn’t stop me. The biggest crowd I’ve “performed” in front of was about 400 people and it was a great rush.

8. I’m a Raiders fan and so I usually lose interest in football after October.

9. I have an irrational dislike for puppets and claymation. Muppets are fine, sock puppets not so much.

10. Crushing on unavailable women seems to be a pastime of mine.

11. I haven’t done my own laundry since college and look forward to the day when I have to embarrass myself and ask someone to show me how to do it.

12. I have been saying “this is the winter I learn how to snowboard” for 8 winters now.

13. My career path has gone from smuggling to book publishing, but I think the work I liked best was trailblazing/bridge-building/brush-clearing in national parks from Maine to Tasmania.

14. I’m actually really shy. Whenever I tell someone this, they invariably say “No, you’re not. At all.” But I am.

15. I am surrounded by so many creative and interesting friends and it makes me wish I were doing something more right-brained with my life.

16. I’ve never read a Russian author and have no intention to do so. This used to frustrate my friends in college, especially since I was an English major, but the longer I go without reading a russian the more I enjoy my assertion that I’ll never read one. I just don’t think any pleasure I get from the reading will eclipse the cumulative pleasures of not reading them.

17. I think the following things are overrated: Ayn Rand, Radiohead, Flaming Lips, cats, blogs, feeling your feelings, celebrity gossip, the beach, cohibas, virginity, sushi, Gossip Girls, twitter, Top Shop, crocs, being right, and American Idol.

18. If I were a girl, I think I would be the type with mostly guy friends. I’d be foul-mouthed, cute but carrying a couple extra pounds of beer-bloat, and would be more than a little slutty. I would also shoot pool.

19. When I was 11 years old, I joined a military training organization at the Armory called the Knickerbocker Greys. It was sort of a Jr.Jr.Jr.ROTC that had been around for over a hundred years, teaching children how to march and carry rifles. The high point was the bi-annual “sham battle” where we were shipped off to a military base and the cadet officers were given M-16s and M-60s as well as maps. Grunts and NCOs had to make do with water guns or whatever. We had objectives like “take this hill” or “defend this ridge line”, but basically it was just a bunch of kids running around in the woods in full camoflage shooting assault rifles at each other. (The guns were filled with blanks, obv.) Even though today I’m a pacifist, I have to admit that that was pretty fricken sweet.

20. I made out with a giraffe once.

(Have you – yes, you, you with your pants possibly down and frowning at your freezer, yes, I can see you over the internet – have you sent in your 20 Things About Yourself? Well, have you? Listen to me. You have to. Just, because, okay? Don’t fuck with me now, just do it. I don’t care what the fishsticks tell you. Just go for it. You might win chocolate gold or something, maybe a car in something completely unrelated to Wordsmoker. Anyway, if you have something to tell someone else apart from your freezer or its contents, then send it to wordsmoker (at) gmail (dot) com and the Western Seaboard of the United States may be yours one day. Ed)