Pat pointed his accusing finger at me and demanded that I acquiesce to his demand for personal trivia. Because one doesn't see enough of personal trivia on a blog, right? The following trivia (trivium?) I've posted are indeed as random as I can manage at the moment, but I apologize if I've mentioned one or more of them here on my blog before. I'll try to be original.

Anyway, here's how it goes:

Here are the rules:
1.Post the rules on your blog
2.Write 6 random things about yourself
3.Tag 6 people at the end of your post
4.If you are tagged, just do it, and pass the tag along!



A. Pat mentioned the fact that he seriously considered riding the rails, hobo-like, for a year. I have, in my life, considered being a trucker (I like road trips and tend to do well being alone for long periods of time), joining the Army (Mr. Tompkins, my high school history teacher and a Vietnam vet, persuaded me not to), and, after playing the computer game "Full Throttle," I became somewhat obsessed with the life of the biker. Before I decided to become a comics artist, I wanted to be an astronaut. Of course, I was in fourth grade when I came to that conclusion, after discovering that astronauts had to be good at math, but I was totally serious about it up until then.

B. If given a choice, 8 times out of 10 I would rather write than draw. I've put the most effort toward drawing because I think I have a talent for it and it seems easier to get a job as an artist than as a writer (it's certainly easier to show your work to an editor), but I find writing far more enjoyable.

C. I am incapable of growing sideburns; my beard only goes up to about the bottom of my earlobes, leaving a half-inch gap between my hair and my beard. I believe I may be incapable of growing my hair long. In high school I grew a mullet (tragic, I know), but if I let my hair grow, it grows out, not long, getting larger and larger like some kind of hair helmet. My brother's done it, so I assume it's possible, but I've never been able to tolerate having that much hair long enough to find out, and likely never will.

D. I am becoming increasingly convinced that, while we complain about the fact that our political struggles in this country have become more rude, heated, and utterly divisive, that it has always been this way in this country. Lately I keep coming across quotations from historical debates and political articles dating back as far as the early 1800s, and some of them are just as nasty as the kind of stuff we see these days. They just drew upon a wider vocabulary.

E. I have always thought that I would be completely happy to spend the rest of my life in the mountains where I grew up. They're much more crowded now, and the fire danger is constant, but nowhere else feels like home as much as the San Bernardino Mountains do to me. I miss a lot of things about Minneapolis, and it's nice to have my friends nearby in Los Angeles, but more than any place else, I want to live in S.B. Mountains again.

F. One of my recurrent wishes and fantasies is the desire to go back to when I was a freshman in high school, knowing then what I know now, and start over. Most people seem to feel that they would never in a million years want to relive that, but I can think of so many things I'd want to do differently, and all the ways in which those decisions would have improved my life, that I honestly would do it if I could. I would want to focus on the friendships and people I now know would be my most lasting friends, who would most often crop up in my life, and not allow odd peer pressures and insecurities distract me from them, or direct me toward people who I perceived as more popular or somehow more socially acceptable to interact with. I would want to do my homework in my classes, getting the grades I know I could have gotten (instead of slacking off and not doing much of anything), so I could get scholarships and take care of my academic career earlier (and get a car earlier!). There's a lot of stuff I'd want to (re)do, a lot of opportunities I'd want to take advantage of that I let slip by before...and, yeah, a lot of things I enjoyed then but that I still kind of took for granted (like gaming opportunities and making mini-comics). I don't feel like I've "failed" in life, or necessarily even went horribly wrong, but I can think of so many ways in which things now would be better if I had done it right the first time...

Okay, now I have to name some people:

Marilyn
Michael Slusser
Beth
Skaggs
Christina
silverstah

...consider yourselves tagged!