An Old Day Now

(Finally, this, as promised last time, only lightly altered for current continuity. Wibbly-wobbly, timey-wimey, and so on.)

So a little over a month ago I turned 34, as the inevitable and inexorable progression of numbers would have it. At this point, I'm no longer in the least surprised that as I stumble on towards my status as venerable graybeard (a designation increasingly literal these days, for good or ill), I still don't feel in the least like a grownup. So it goes, and frankly all for the better; being grownup remains an overrated prospect.

However, just to put this in terrifying perspective: Those of you who have known me for a long time, and maybe remember that unfortunate incident I was subjected to on my 17th birthday? The thing with the cheesecake and the uncomfortable car ride?* That was now officially half my lifetime ago.

Anyway, here in the Eternal Now, I see that I've been tapped with a Meme by Aishwarya, wherein I share six random and unimportant facts about myself. In honor of my 34th year and all the hermetic significance that implies, I'm upping it to seven. Bonus frivolity! So:

1. My very first comic book was a Marvel Conan the Barbarian, sometime around '81 or '82, now long since lost in a move, alas. It was wonderfully Howardian and spooky and weird, and I remember finding it fascinating and unsettling in more or less equal measure. (The Oracle at Google tells me it was #117, "In the Lair of Mullah-Kajar.") This imprinted on me pretty deeply in retrospect, if that wasn't obvious enough.

2. My list of DO NOT WANT Under Any Circumstances foods is relatively short, but hard-boiled eggs are right the hell at the top. If I were ever stranded on a desert island with nothing but a crate of hard-boiled eggs, I might actually starve to death.

3. For about five years now, I haven't listened to nearly any music I own on the original CDs. I have in fact become more than a little obsessive about keeping them pristine and unscratched in their cases while I use burned copies for actual listening. (This is a pretty good example of my particular cluster of neuroses involving Protecting My Stuff, which manifest in a number of amusing ways, though at least I no longer insist on covering my paperbacks in clear contact paper before reading them.)

4. The single biggest influence on any daydreams of rock-stardom I indulge in is without question Ian Anderson, who also gets the blame for why my Platonic ideal of performing music is wrapped up in a great deal of bombast and theatricality. Indeed, my one real regret in my public musical career is that I waited long enough to get serious about it that I no longer look any good in a codpiece.

5. I have an especially quirky and idiosyncratic way of organizing my bookshelves that boils down to "things that would get along well with each other." It's a source of no small irritation for me that I constantly have to compromise this system with the physical limits of the spaces involved.

6. I'm not sorry I didn't pursue theatre as a career, but I'd really like the chance to someday play the Divine Marquis in Marat/Sade. The psychoanalysts' field day's worth of implications of this I leave to those better equipped than I to mull over.

7. I still entertain an occasional daydream of being a radio DJ - not the modern vulgar shouty kind, but the cool 70's Venus Flytrap kind, or a more pretentious version of the guy who does Below the Salt. Preferably on some after-midnight program spinning, yanno, twenty-minute-long tracks in unusual time signatures.

As usual, I'm not tagging anyone in particular, but rather trusting to the whimsical enthusiasms of my loyal readers to pick it up as they so choose. Tra la!

*No, you're not getting any more than that. Not on the Internets, at any rate. I insist I still have my dignity, all evidence and Black Thursday** to the contrary.
**Likewise.