- I once wanted to Change the World. A part of me still does. At the moment, though, I’ll settle for having health insurance.
- I wear my glasses all the time despite the fact that I can still see pretty decently without them. I tell myself that this is because, if I didn’t put them on in the morning and keep them on all day, I’d never remember to put them on even when I did need them.
- A major reason why I am thinking about leaving Japan is that I hate being in a place where no one laughs at my jokes.
- All of the best decisions of my life have been made for the stupidest reasons imaginable.
- I’ve spent a good portion of my life idolizing the image of the slacker savant, that figure in movies and books and such who excels in life while minimizing his or her actual work output. I (literally) slept through high school and got a 4.2 GPA, all-nightered it through college and graduated magna cum laude and with honors, and devoted myself to as many pursuits that I was already good at as possible so as to reduce the amount of practice I would have to put in to those pursuits. Now that I am ostensibly an adult, however, this approach is much less successful at allowing me to actually do anything with my life.
- I prefer to have a relatively small number of close friends than an extensive network of casual acquaintances because I hate the idea that the words I speak mean less to the person I am speaking them to than they do to me.
- I keep waiting for one of the books I am always reading or the CDs I am always listening to or the movies I am always watching to somehow encapsulate my existence and explain to me why I am the way I am and what shape my life should take from here on out. At some point I got sick of waiting for this to happen and tried creating my own catalysts for personal growth in the form of short stories, funny articles for the school newspaper, and blog entries on Facebook, which brought me closer but still haven’t quite done the trick.
- I really suck a planning and organizing. This might be one reason why I dislike my current job so much.
- The idea of wearing a tie or even a collared shirt is irrationally offensive to me. As far as I can tell a tie serves no practical purpose whatsoever, and I hate being beholden to arbitrary standards that have no basis whatsoever in reality.
- I really, really want to get a “Calvin and Hobbes” tattoo.
- It takes me forever to answer e-mails and such because I always try to really think about what I’m going to write back, and if I’m not feeling particularly eloquent at that specific time I’ll put the message aside and wait until I am. Sometimes this can go on for days (and weeks), even with something simple like writing on someone’s Facebook wall. For similar reasons, it took me a long time to write this list.
- I tend to get really nervous when shopping for clothes, so I do as much shopping as I can online. When I do go to an actual store to buy clothes, I don’t always spend as much time as I should trying things on and finding something that really fits me. As a result, many of the clothes I own are (noticeably) either to big or too small, but I wear them anyway.
- You know that one game people play when they’re drunk sometimes where you hold out ten fingers and take turns saying something you’ve never done, and then if any of the other people in the group have done that thing, they put one finger down until there is only one person left who still has one or more of his or her fingers up? And since this game is mostly played by drunk people, the “I have never” statements usually end up being about sex? Yeah, I always win that game.
- I hate waking up early. I recently realized that I have never woken up before 10 AM voluntarily. Even in instances where I’d volunteered to do something that took place before 10 AM, when it came down to actually waking up for that thing, I’d have hit the snooze button and gone right on sleeping if I could have. If I ever get married, my wedding will have to be in the evening or else I’d stay up until all hours the night before and then hit the snooze button four times in the morning and almost be late.
- Despite my intense dislike of waking up, I have a pathological tendency to go to bed at late hours for no other reason than I hate the thought of spending less time awake and doing my own thing than I spent at work on a given day.
- There is no number sixteen.
- Something about an ordinary, quiet life is extremely appealing to me and is also terrifying. I realize that my personal happiness has historically been linked more to the proximity of good friends and the amount of time I am able to devote to goofing off rather than traditional indicators of success such as creative output or professional development, but this is hard for me to justify philosophically. It’s still hard to say whether hard work and great deeds will win out in the end over my desire to spend entire days watching music videos on YouTube.
- I love food, but I have an extremely unrefined palette. To me, there is very little difference between a Subway sandwich and one from an actual deli, Chipotle is the ultimate Tex-Mex establishment, and KFC’s factory chicken tastes better than almost all of the “authentic, home cooked” fried chicken I’ve eaten at restaurants in my various travels across the Southern United States. The one exception to this rule is with soda; I stick with Coke or Pepsi and don’t touch that offbrand stuff.
- Even though I consider myself an environmentalist, I have never, ever had fun on a hiking trip.
- My favorite album of all time is Neutral Milk Hotel’s “In the Aeroplane Over the Sea.” Many is the time I have made myself hoarse by belting out “Oh Comely” while driving too fast down I-10 on my way to one destination or another.
- I think it would be cool to be a stand-up comedian, but, like many other jobs that seem cool, I have no idea how one actually gets into that line of work.
- I don’t make eye contact with people unless I think about it really hard. I try to play this off as an amusing personality quirk rather than the sign of a deranged mind. It is an especially unfortunate tendency at job interviews, but is inconvenient in a wide variety of social situations.
- My favorite novel is Picture This by Joseph Heller. Despite repeated gushing recommendations and despite the fact that I have loaned it to at least two different people, I have yet to convince a single one of my friends to actually read it.
- My personal theme song is “Aside” by The Weakerthans, unless I’m trying to psych myself up to do something important, in which case it’s “Boy Decide” by Murder By Death.
- I have trouble being concise.
25 Random Things About Me (I Succumb To An Internet Meme Because It Allows Me to Talk About Me [Which Is My Favorite Subject])
Published
by Mr. Blithe
on February 12, 2009
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5 Comments
Tags: lists, narcissism, personal, solipsism.
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Very nice read! Keep it coming. Seventeen spoke to me. Real recognize real.
Thanks for your comment! I hope you stick around.
I will man…this is great. I like the more biographical/solipsistic pieces because I think they are postmodern in the most perfect unpretentious way: LIKE : Charlie Kauffman’s Adapation. Perfect example of the beauty of neuroses (and their exploration thereof). Woody Allen as well. Keep them coming! FOR THE LOVE OF GOD!
Very interesting article. Some made me funny, other made me to think.
11>> That’s one of your coolist thing. People may prefer sincere response to message of answering machine. You have faithful mind! Well, it takes me a long time to response to your article too, but it because my English is terrible XD
22>> Really? I heard eye contact is personal manner in America… but in the East, it’s opposite. People avoid eye contact or cast his(her) eyes down when they talk with better, so they think they observe the proprieties… uh, I mean, It’s only personality quirk, yeah.
Thank you both for your comments.
photonicdove: You have no idea how happy it makes me to be even compared in passing to Charlie Kaufman and the movie Adaptation. Adaptation is one of my favorite movies. Fuckin’ sweet.
rodanoS: Thank you for taking the time to respond. I know it can be hard communicating in a second language, but I am always happy to read your comments. Most people in America do make eye contact. I am just weird and do not make eye contact. It is a problem for me in America.