June 10, 2005

Some things about me you may not know

1. My middle name is Carroll, because my brother's middle name is Jon, after my dad, and my mother, Carol, thought she was being clever.

2. Yes, I do get a lot of shit about my middle name.

3. During college, I worked about three years in grocery store meat departments. Working with animal fat made my hands soft and smooth.

4. I sliced off the tip of my right forefinger on a deli slicer. Those freakin' blades are hella sharp.

5. I attended an all boys school my senior year of high school. I missed girls. A lot.

6. I used to have the biggest celebrity crush in the world on Loni Anderson during her WKRP years.

7. Nowadays, it's Salma Hayek.

8. Daisy Fuentes ain't bad, either.

9. I have a unibrow.

10. Okay, I don't have a unibrow right now, because my girlfriend plucked out the middle part last night.

11. Eyebrow plucking is an irritating pain.

12. I had knee surgery when I was 16-years old due to a wrestling injury. They removed a piece of cartilage, and even today I notice it when I run.

13. I had a front tooth knocked out in 9th grade when a wrestling teammate threw a heavy pillow at me while I was doing pull-ups.

14. I was the only kid in my 9th grade class who had to put a fake tooth in Polident each night.

15. Boxers. Oh, wait, you already knew that.

16. When I moved to Tokyo my senior year, it was over a month before I ate anywhere other than McDonald's or KFC.

17. My favorite food is Naan bread dipped in Moti Butter Chicken. If you don't know what this is, your life is roughly 70 percent incomplete.

18. Through five years of college, I made the Dean's list twice: after the first quarter, and my last quarter.

19. I only had one D grade in college.

20. It was in my broadcast journalism class. That's pretty much when I decided to stick to the writing end of journalism.

21. After getting that D, I bumped into the broadcast journalism professor in the hall, and he asked me if I knew why I had been given a D. I said, "yeah, because you're a jackass."

22. That, obviously, came back to haunt me during the two other classes I had to take with that prick. He made life particularly unpleasant, although I still managed to get a C+ and a B, respectively.

23. I've been told I have a good voice for radio. I'm sure it's also been implied that I have a good face for radio.

24. My first computer was a Macintosh Performa 405. I thought it was really cool that it had Scrabble installed on it, although I played it, maybe, five times.

25. I didn't participate in my college graduation. Instead, I had to cover the graduation as a reporter for the Winona Daily News. That always struck me as ironic, for some reason.

26. I have recurring dreams about tornadoes.

27. I know the religious significance behind "Up, Up, Down, Down, Left, Right, Left, Right, B, A, Start."

28. I don't know how to drive a stick shift.

29. My first car was an '89 Chevy Cavalier. It was baby blue and got over 30 miles to the gallon.

30. I think Lenny Kravitz is one of the most over-rated musicians of our time and that all his shit sounds exactly the same.

31. I used the soundtrack to Rocky IV to help get me pumped up before a wrestling match.

32. I won six wrestling tournaments in high school, to which I largely credit the Rocky IV sountrack.

33. I've discovered over the past month and a half what I've suspected for most of my post-college career: I'm not a particularly good managing editor.

34. I'm picking up my parents from the airport today. They're back from Tokyo.

35. They're going to take me out to eat at a Thai Restaurant. I'll probably order green curry.

Posted by Ryan at June 10, 2005 03:00 PM
Comments

Number 27? Heh.

Posted by: Donna at June 11, 2005 09:04 AM

is number 27 a video game reference?

Posted by: Tim at June 12, 2005 07:16 AM

18. Through five years of college, I made the Dean's list twice: after the first quarter, and my last quarter.
19. I only had one D grade in college.

I went to the easiest college in the state when I was 17. Two years later I basically got thrown out for bad grades.

After that I attended two community colleges and two 4 year universities: two years of community college and two and a half years at the four year universities. I was on the dean's list every single quarter. I graduated with a 3.86 GPA. In my last four years of college I only got one grade lower than a B+: I got a B in my Sociology 101 class. I suspect it had something to do with my tendency to wear headphones during class and sleep through the lectures.

In spite of graduating with one of the best GPAs in my class I didn't get magna cum laude because I had too many transfer credits. I had too many transfer credits because the college I graduated from wouldn't let me in earlier. The college I graduated from wouldn't let me in earlier because they go out of their way not to admit State residents because they don't get as much tuition from them. They attempted to convince me that they turned me down because I wasn't academcially qualified so I decided to stuff that down their throat by graduating at the top of my class. See above re: transfer credits.

I'm still pissed off about this and I think it probably has a lot to do with my unseemly tendency to discuss my academic history with pretty much anyone at the slightest provocation.

Sorry. I know it's obnoxious.

Posted by: Joshua at June 13, 2005 02:32 AM

I made the Dean's list during my first quarter because I was conditioned to believe that I needed to get good grades and only good grades. Then, my focus drifted, because I didn't know what I wanted to do. I made the Dean's list the last quarter because I was hell bent on graduating. Everything in between was a wealth of psychological and motivational material that could be examined by professionals well into the next century.

Posted by: Ryan at June 13, 2005 09:28 AM

A wrestler with a unibrow? Never seen such a thing.

Posted by: Keith at June 13, 2005 12:09 PM

My only D in college was in photography, both semesters. But that had a great deal to do with the friction that was felt between the design dept and the phot dept. Try and spend 30+ hours a week in a darkroom for a class your not majoring in, anyway.

#27 is the cheat code for either Contra or Rush n Attack. I cannot remember which one.

Posted by: seed at June 13, 2005 11:44 PM

Contra. And thanks for playing, Seed.

Although, Rush n Attack. . . I had the proud distinction of being the first, I think, and only (that I know of) person to beat that game, the arcade version, at the local pizza joint, on one quarter. I only did it once, but I did it, and I was a god, for about a week, I think.

And wasn't Rush-n-Attack about the greatest play on words progaganda ever conceived for the cold war video game market?

Posted by: Ryan at June 14, 2005 12:34 AM

Yup.

Posted by: seed at June 14, 2005 11:12 AM
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