| Some things you may or may not know about me. - I will eat almost anything for a nickel, including a dime! Seriously though, I cannot eat radishes (ew) or beets (double ew) or large concentrations of raw onion - but about a tablespoon at a time is fine, and cooked onions are fine as well. They tend to make my throat swell up and close, ceasing my ability to breathe correctly. I will not eat oysters, having gotten incredibly sick off of them once is all that took.
- I average about 3-4 hours of sleep a night, and that's on the 4-5 nights a week I manage to sleep at all. I wake up at least once every 2 hours when I'm sleeping to change positions, and that is the only time I am able to get back to sleep right away. If I'm sleeping soundly and get woken up, then I'm up - no going back to sleep for me. I am insomnia's whore.
- I only have 2/3 or so of my left lung. I was born with a congenital birth defect that has caused it to collapse (spontaneous pheumothorax) with no warning 3 times now - the first time it happened was the worst. After collapse #3, I had major surgery to repair the most excessively damaged portion of the lung. Essentially the surgeons put fix-a-flat in my chest, literally gluing my lung to my chest wall. Occaisionally I'll injure myself by pivoting or bending over with a full breath, causing the tension to tear the lung muscle from the chest wall. And yes, it hurts enough that I sometimes cry, but I'm getting better about not doing that as often. It's a fact of life for me that it does periodically, though.
- I have a weakness for Chef Boyardee Beef Ravioli - I know it's nasty as hell, but I love it. I also almost never ever eat it.
- When I was little, anytime I saw something defective - a character trait or physical ailment in another person - I had a habit of swallowing as hard as I could while closing my eyes and making a wish that I could take their whatever-it-was and make it disappear. Several years ago I read an interview with the hottie actor Vince Vaughn where he admitted to having an almost identical idiosyncrasy himself.
- I am as domestic as you can get. I cook everything from scratch, I can fix plumbing and work on a car, I can fix a broken lawnmower, build furniture, repair a broken electrical outlet or switch, practically any household project you could think of or find on DIY, I can or will do. I'm very handy to have around in a crisis as well, I'm always level headed in the worst of times.
- My birthmark is in the iris of my right eye, an is shaped just like a butterfly.
- I died once for 2 minutes and change (see #3 above), there was no tunnel of light I travelled through or familiar faces of those that passed before me. I knew what was happening, and I felt perfectly calm and unafraid, knowing I had no control over it. It was rather like going to sleep from a sleeping pill. Ever since then I have no fear of death, I accept it as a natural part of life and that I'm probably not going to know when it happens for real.
- My first name is Phillip, and I fucking hate that name. Calling me that in person can result in you getting punched in the neck and/or kicked in the balls. And if you're a female, you'd have to have balls to go there, so be told.
- I sleep naked with a pillow under my head, and one on either side of my body to curl up around. If I sleep on my side, I always pull my knee up over one of the pillows and have one arm underneath the pillow under my head. If I'm sleeping on my back, I sleep in a position just like dead people in coffins are placed in, which creeps everyone I know the hell out.
- If you sneak up on me for any reason, touch my feet, or attempt to tickle me, I can and likely will respond violently.
- I hate surprises for myself, but I love giving them to others.
- I am a published author, having put out a compilation of poetry and prose independently in 1995. There are no available copies, the initial pressing of X hundred was all that was available, and only my mother has an existing copy I am aware of that I might have access to, and that's if she ever finds the damned thing. It was called "The Listening Room". I don't write that stuff much anymore, but what I have available you can find here.
- It is rare for me to go out anywhere in public, even the most obscure of places, and run into less than 3 people I know. It is most irritating to almost everyone who is accompanying me.
- I am terrified of heights, bodies of dark water (resulting from a waterskiing accident when I was a teenager), and I detest clowns and smokestacks. The smokestacks thing is a carryover from childhood. I was watching a documentary on the holocaust and put together the connection between the smokestacks and the crematoriums. It was my first real loss of innocence and I remember exactly what it felt like.
- The Summer before last, my dear friend
![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif) michaelnolan received a letter from me. I gave him permission to post it in its entirety, but to leave it anonymous as I still held on to a baseless residual fear of what the knowledge might do to taint the view of me in the eyes of others. After a while, I reverted back to my normal "I don't give a fuck what anyone thinks of me anyway, I don't take myself that seriously" stance and allowed myself to be identifiable. The significance of this was the final shedding of a shame I'd felt for more years that a lot of you have even been alive. It also provided Michael and I the push we both needed to meet in person, and he and his better half Jeff (mynameisbessie) have been part of my family ever since. This is that letter. The only other time I've ever really spoken about this publically was in this post.
- This time next year D and I will be in Iceland, and I cannot explain how excited I am about it. Of course, I'll have to be seriously medicated for the flight, but I've not dealt with that quite yet.
- It was at my mother's suggestion that I come out of the closet when I was 15, as she so eloquently put it "You live a lie in pretending to be something you're not, and I did not raise a liar. You have a responsibility to yourself and to everyone you come into association with to not only speak your truth, but to be a voice for those too afraid to speak for themselves." She also told me that she would forgive me for anything I ever did in life except voting Republican - no forgiving that transgression. And thus, a liberal activist was born!
- My first memory is of cutting my bare feet in broken glass and leaving bloody footprints behind me, unaware that I'd hurt myself. I was no older than 3. To this day I rarely know when I've injured myself unless it is serious, I scrape and cut myself here and there and never take notice unless I see blood or find bloodstains on my clothes. My better half is forever finding scratches, bruises and the like on me and asking "Baby, how did this happen?", and I almost always reply "Oh, whaddya know, look at that! I have no idea."
- LiveJournal has served as a great conduit for some of the best relationships I have ever cultivated in my life. Through this blog I've forged lifelong friendships and extended my family to include people I love so dearly I cannot imagine what a life was like before them.
One more, just because. Years ago I convinced a very peculiar man in a record store in Atlanta to buy a cd by The Replacements. The man was Elton John, and he actually bought it. |
