The Basically Obscure Meme

It’s that time again, Thursday, where I steal a meme from Julie Maloney and try to act like it's my own original creation. Well, except for me telling you right off the top that I stole it from Julie Maloney. Speaking of Julie, she's got a funny blog and you should check it out sometime. Anyway, here is my latest meme, because I haven't been to the gym in months and other than a visit to the vampire, er, doctor to have a bunch of blood drawn and tested I don't really have any news to blog about ...

We need to take some blood for ... uh... medical purposes

1: Do you notice a persons eye color?
 Not usually. I mean, unless they have really striking eyes or they are up in my face making intense eye contact, I don't. I have even had girls kiss me and I didn't register their eye color. I guess I'm probably more of a boob man.

Sorry, did I say that out loud?

What color are her eyes?

2: White, milk, or dark chocolate mocha?
Hmm,  a chocolate question ... uh ... I like white chocolate. I have a Zero candy bar sitting on top of the refrigerator that has been there for weeks. I like milk chocolate, too. Somewhere up there is a Hershey bar next to the Zero bar. I'm not as big a fan of dark chocolate, but I'll eat it. But as far as all of this relating to a mocha, I'm not a mocha drinker. First of all, I don't know where around here I'd get one. Second of all, not having been to the gym in months I really shouldn't be drinking those in the first place. I take my coffee black, without all the creme and calories and sugary stuff.

3: If you could get a tattoo free, would you do it? what would it be?
I don't think the price of the tattoo is really the issue here. I used to be an artist and a lot of my friends were artists, too. One of them took his art to a tattoo parlor to sell and, mostly, to meet hot girls who were into tattoos and wild kinky sex. It actually paid off for him, I think, but more in the kinky sex department than the money for his art. Anyway, if something meant a lot to me, REALLY meant a lot, then I might get a very personal tattoo relating to it. Most tattoos are personal to the person wearing it. But so far I have never felt the urge to do that. I have a friend back in my hometown who moved from Minnesota down to Alabama. She's a bartender. She arrived beautiful and tattoo-free. In the course of 2 short years she totally covered her entire remarkable Playboy body in ink. She said it was something she'd always wanted to do. Perhaps if I had more friends like her, more friends with ink, it might be something of importance to me. But because I don't .... eh, not likely.

4: Did you grow up in a small or big town? Did you like it?
 I grew up in a town that was considered a moderate size, not big and not small, and it was primarily a government town with lots of people having security clearances and getting paid only OK money for work that required high intelligence. Today it has all switched around and the government hires and promotes based on sex and race and other factors having nothing to do with qualifications. The pay is twice what anyone makes in the free market and many joke about not really doing any work. But the legacy of high IQ families moving there for top secret jobs has created a community of highly intelligent individuals all living and working together. It's a great place, overall, and I wish I still lived there.

5: Your favorite adult as a child? (and not your parents, if they were your favorite)
As a child? How small of a child? When I was really little I'd say Mister Rogers was my favorite adult. He never got mad or yelled at me or made me feel bad about myself. When I was beginning to outgrow Mister Rogers I'd say it was Mister King, the man who called and asked if I wanted to play basketball on a team he was coaching. I said I'd give it a try. That was the start of my involvement in athletics. If not for him, I don't know where I would have ended up, but when I look at the path my older brother chose, not having sports in his life or a coach to help direct him, I thank God for Mister King and basketball.

6: What kind of smoothie sounds really good right now?
 Uh, this meme was written by a woman for other women, I'm thinking. All these questions about food. I don't know. I'm not a big smoothie person. The last smoothie I had was a very expensive protein smoothie. I didn't drink it for the smoothie part. I drank it for the 30 grams of protein it held. Not that it wasn't good. It's just that 'good' wasn't the point.

7: Most embarrassing moment from your elementary school years?
I remember the day I introduced my best friend's sister to the concept of Captain Underwear. I was still young enough to think it funny to strip to my underwear and run around the back yard pretending to fly like Superman while yelling "Caaaaaaptaaaaaaain Uuuuuuuunderweaaaaaaaaar!" But when I showed my best friend's twin younger sisters, suddenly I realized it was embarrassing to be in my underpants in front of girls. And also I think maybe they thought I was an idiot.  

Captain Underwear

8: Most embarrassing moment from your middle school years?
Pretty much every single moment from the first day of 6th grade until the last day of 8th grade was one endless humiliation. One that stands out was when a bunch of boys were chasing Adrienne Kump around the room trying to snap her bra. She was laughing, but they couldn't catch her. She ran up to me and stopped with her back to me. So I stood up from my desk and popped it. Suddenly she was mad and tried to kick me in the crotch. I caught her foot and briefly considered flipping her onto her head. But I had a massive crush on her and didn't want to actually hurt her, so I didn't. Still, the fact that she was fine with every other boy popping her bra and so angry when I did it that she would do something as horrible as that to me, even though she failed, absolutely crushed me. I spent the rest of middle school an emotional wreck after that and barely talked to girls at all. Ironically, in 9th grade she and I had a class together and she seemed interested in me. But I wasn't having anything to do with her.

9: Most embarrassing moment from your high school years?
Probably when I took a girl to a sorority dance and actually tried to dance. I was awful. That was probably only slightly less embarrassing than when I got both braces and a new girlfriend around the same time and I tried to kiss her for the first time. That did not go well at all. She dumped me not long after that when I made an excuse not to go to a dance. Between my bad braces kisses and my inability to dance I guess I was just too much of a loser for her.

10: Have you ever fired anyone?
Yes, I fired my personal trainer after he became so insistent on telling me his conspiracy theories that it started interfering with training me. Also, he started working out with me, having me spot him and generally serve as his workout partner. It reached a point where I wasn't sure what I was paying him for, but I wasn't getting the results I needed and he was driving me insane with all the crazy. After that I fired my doctor when I told him about working out with a trainer for a year and a half, plus tracking my diet and keeping my calories to an average of 2100 per day and yet losing exactly 0 pounds. He called me a liar and insisted that was impossible. But what he didn't do was conduct any tests to see if something was wrong, such as my thyroid. I enjoyed firing my doctor. It was very satisfying. And I think I may have been the first patient he ever had to say "you're fired" to him judging from his reaction.

11: Have you ever climbed a tree more than twenty feet off the ground? 
Oh hell yes. Once I moved beyond the Captain Underwear phase, my friend and his sisters and I used to climb every tree in the neighborhood. Some of them were enormous and we'd compete to see who could get to the highest point in the tree. We didn't stop climbing until the tree top was bending with our weight and we didn't feel safe going any further up. Climbing down was the hardest part. Up was easy in comparison.  I don't think our parents had any clue we did this, although at the time it never occurred to me what a terrifying thing it would be for a parent to see their kids 4 stories high clinging to a tree as the top began to bend with their weight and the wind blew the tree back and forth. We thought it was a blast. These days, in the age of helicopter parenting, I don't see any of my neighbors kids climbing anything. It's very strange how different our childhoods were from the kids of today. I don't envy kids these days or their electronic worlds.

You didn't have a childhood if you never did this 

12: Did you like swinging as a child? Do you still get excited when you see a swing set?
I loved to swing as a child. My dad, ever the money saver, built our swing set out of enormous square blocks of wood, steel tension cables, and chains. We had the tallest swing set in the neighborhood and the largest backyard. The taller the swing set, the higher you can swing in it, and we took full advantage. The greatest fun was seeing how high you could swing and then jumping out at the peak, flying through the air and landing in the grass. My dad had a swing of his own, a porch swing. He even had our back porch built just so he'd have a good place to put his swing. Every day after work he'd go out back and sit in his porch swing and just swing back and forth, relaxing from the work day and thinking. Sometimes I'd go out there and swing with him, both of us sitting side-by-side, and talking and swinging. These days if I see a porch swing I think of my dad and the fact that I'll never get to sit and swing and talk to him again.

13: If you could have any pet in the world, illegal or not, what would you get? 
 Megan Fox. Seriously, a man would have to be a fool not to choose this.

Fox

14: What’s your favorite place to relax? 
It occurs to me just now that I don't really have a favorite place to relax. This is probably a bad thing. I have a front and back porch on my house, and sometimes we sit out there. But I'm never alone and just relaxing. I don't know that I have a place that I can go and just be alone and relax.

15: What’s your most favorite part of your personality? 
Um .... my shamelessly snarky personality? My willingness to open my mouth and make my thoughts known, come hell or high water? My excellent vocabulary? I don't know.

16: Madonna or Lady Gaga? Neither? Both?
Both are irrelevant. At least Lady Gaga seems to realize how irrelevant she is and doesn't take herself too seriously, but Madonna seems totally put out by the fact that Lady Gaga has come along and shamelessly stolen her old act.

Who even cares which one this is?

17: Have you ever watched the Superbowl all the way through?
I've watched many Superbowls all the way through. I'm a Cowboys fan and have been since I was little. I used to have a reason to watch Superbowls, back in the days when Dallas was a good team. These days, with Jerry Jones imagining himself a football genius, I usually skip the Superbowl. I guess after Jerry Jones dies I might watch it again, if Dallas gets a new owner who stays out of the way. I still remember Tom Landry.

18: Have you ever watched any major sporting event live?
I've been to an Atlanta Falcons game where the San Francisco 49ers and Joe Montana stomped them into the ground without mercy. I've been to AA baseball games where Jose Canseco and Mark McGwire, still relative unknowns, would strut out to the plate, enormously outsized in comparison to all the other players, and crush the baseball out of the park. We knew they must be juicing because their upperbodies were ridiculously huge compared to all the other players, especially Canseco's, but we didn't care. They were amazing to watch. I've been to an Alabama college football game where they stomped Louisiana Tech into the ground. I've been to an Auburn college football game where they stomped Temple University into the ground. I've been to lots and lots and lots of hockey games and seen more blood than most paramedics who don't watch hockey. And I went to a professional exhibition soccer game between Mia Hamm's Washington team and Cindy Parlow's Atlanta team and saw a rookie goalie boot a kick into her own fullback's ass only to have it ricochet backwards into her own goal. She was super humiliated, but to me it was the most hilarious mistake I'd ever seen and the game didn't count anyway.

19: What’s the most delicious food you’ve ever eaten in your life? 
 Um, again with the food? I don't know. A french silk pie was probably right up there near the top, if not the top. Well prepared steak is high up on the list. Good shrimp, good lobster, lobster bisque soup ... certain pizzas ... once or twice I've had an egg drop soup that was super duper awesome. There's probably a few chocolate cakes up there in the list somewhere. I don't know. I'm not super into food.

20: Margarine or butter? Which did you grow up with?
I grew up with the damn US Government telling us that butter was killing us all and that we should switch to margarine instead, and then years later we learn that no, in fact margarine is killing us and butter is actually healthier. Around the same time as the anti-butter crusade was going, our esteemed government 'experts' also said that milk causes cancer and eggs are nothing but cholesterol and should not be eaten. These days, Michelle Obama is going around telling us all what to eat and not eat and ordering schools to change their menus and not offer anything kids will actually eat, so the kids are just not eating and she says this is better for them. It all reminds me of how my dad used to say that you can't trust the government, and that even when they aren't up to no good they are usually incompetent and just flat out wrong. Dad was pretty smart.