1. This list came about because my
roommate and business partner challenged me. She said, "When are you going to write something personal in your blog? When are you going to write one-hundred things about me?" "Is that a challenge?" I asked. "Yes," she replied.
2. I wouldn't have done this otherwise, but I was hoping someone would challenge me.
3. I am intensely competitive and tend not to back down from a challenge.
4. I am outwardly patient, but inwardly easily annoyed, which can lead to passive aggression.
5. I was born out of wedlock.
6. That means I'm a bastard.
6b. Actually, that's not because I was born out of wedlock (thanks,
Shelley).
7. I often feel like I have to get away from people on the street when they're discussing trivial things.
8. Today as I was walking home from the streetcar, I overheard a man say to his female companion, "I can totally see Joanna falling madly in love with that lamp." I sped up so I didn't have to hear the rest of their conversation.
9. Sometimes I think about how batteries say on them "Dispose of properly," but there are no instructions about how to do so. I
try not to throw batteries in the garbage.
10. Yesterday on the bus I told three year old to listen to his dad. The child was spitting orange spittle on the window of the bus, screaming and laughing. The kid didn't listen to me. He kept spitting and screaming.
11. I know more people than almost anyone else I know, which is strange, because I went to school in a town of 390 and grew up on a remote, secluded farm. Maybe I'm compensating for something.
12. My feet are between size 9 and a half and eleven.
13. When I started university, I wore "Large" t-shirts. Now I wear Small or Medium, even though I'm no smaller.
14. I'm losing my hair so I have to keep it short to avoid looking like a criminal element.
15. In some circles, I would be considered a criminal element.
16. I have been arrested, then spent 12 hours in jail, attended four preliminary hearings and had the case thrown out. My freedom cost $18,000; I am still paying this off. It was worth it.
17. I am lucky to have a few people in my life who care about me, whether I deserve it or not.
18. As I child, I often thought of how lucky I was to be born in Canada, to parents who were not wealthy, but who always loved me and were able to feed me.
19. I think we can rid the world of starvation, but I don't know how.
20. I used to have a radio show on cjsw fm called "the bachelor suite." It was between 2 and 5am on Fridays and Saturdays; I sometimes fell asleep on air. It was all about getting access to their massive music library.
21. My school never had more than 400 students, including kindergarten through high school.
22. On my last trip home, Dad and I counted how many families lived on the land he and his brothers now farm. There were between 15 and 20 homesteads on their farm.
23. I wish my brother and mother would move away from Lloydminster, even though it would break my dad's heart.
24. I am selfish.
25. I think of myself as an artist, but I am probably too obsessed with avoiding poverty to ever be a true creative genius.
26. When I got arrested, I thought it was about putting an end to substance abuse. Actually, I think it was about putting an end to treating women like candy.
27. I am absent-minded. I leave things everywhere. I leave keys in the door, cabinet doors open, apple cores in the shower, and my fly open. I used to sometimes forget to hit record when I was operating the video camera. In university I sometimes left the house after only shaving one side of my face.
28. I don't believe in God.
29. I do believe that there are forces at play in the universe beyond what science can explain.
30. In grade 11, all I wanted was to get a fat belly like the other guys in my class.
31. By university, I was over that idea.
32. I had a crush on the same girl for four years in high school. I never told her. I don't regret it.
33. In my first year of university, another girl I went to high school with tried to seduce me for several months. I was too dense and inexperienced to believe what was happening could be true. She was one of the most beautiful women I have ever known.
34. I am terrible at remembering names but I always remember faces.
35. I left home to go to University at 17.
36. I just learned that you can pay for a lot of favours with cigarettes, meals and beer.
37. I don't know anything about real poverty.
38. On my mother's side, my grandfather's family used to squat in houses in Moose Jaw in the great depression. He and his siblings would sit watch on the front step and when the authorities came, they'd whistle and the whole family would flee out the back porch.
39. On my father's side, my grandfather's family traded their first house for a homestead 25 miles from town. When they got there, they had no running water, no electricity, and lived in a house made of two old granaries pushed together.
40. At the age of four, I was electrocuted after sticking several twist-ties into the holes of an electrical plug.
41. As a toddler, I used to say that the bathtub was 'insurating.'
42. The day I learned to crawl, I crawled all the way up 10 stairs then cried when I got to the top, because I didn't know how to get down.
43. I met my girlfriend on the streetcar. We spoke for over a year before I asked her out.
44. She is a very kind soul but she likes to argue even more than I do. I love this about her.
45. I absorb the accents of people around me, including Alison's faint British accent. I know this is annoying.
46. My grandmother has researched the geneology of our family back to the 1400s.
47. I never used to care much about chocolate, but then I moved in with Shelley. For almost a year, we had chocolate every night.
48. My father told me recently that he "was once a socialist, but now he's become quite a capitalist. I enjoy the spoils."
49. I took piano lessons for two and a half years, then quit because I hated the fact that my mom, who taught me, knew exactly how much I hadn't practiced. This - a lack of practicing, homework, studying - became the template for much of my artistic life.
50. I learned to be OK with old people when my parents joined the Rock & Gem club. The Rock & Gem club's membership consisted of 30 old people, my parents and I. They used to go on 'caravans' where a big group of cars travelled together from gravel pit to gravel pit looking for gemstones and fossils.
51. I rarely vomit.
52. The first time I remember throwing up, I mistook the sensation for hunger. I reacted by eating several mandarin oranges. When we arrived at my grandparents house, I knew I had miscalculated. The results were dire, particularly for my mother, who had to clean up.
53. When my parents built their first house, a black bear and three cubs were sighted in the trees behind the house. Excited, my parents called my uncles and several friends over to see. Despite my parents' objections, the neighbours shot all four bears.
54. I have relatives who have tried to murder other relatives.
55. Cheese is one of my favourite things.
56. The last business card I received is from a guy named Sal Pacifico in London, Ontario.
57. I haven't received a paycheque since August, 2003.
58. I have dressed as a woman five times that I can remember. My thick five-o'clock shadow and heavy eyebrows make it a tough sell, but I am otherwise not a bad looking lady.
59. Last year I took a course called "Wisdom."
60. Before I took that course I thought I was a good person. During it I realized I didn't even do something giving every day.
61. I know my biological father's name and address. I have even been in his office, seen advertising for him on television and heard him on the radio, but have never spoken with him.
62. I think the planet is a kind of macro-organism.
63. I am a Scorpio.
64. I prefer black sport socks.
65. I go to movies by myself more often than with my girlfriend.
66. I am not a very good driver but have never been driving in an accident that would be legally considered to be my fault.
67. I grew an inch at the age of 22.
68. I love potatoes.
69. I have never eaten a steak as good as the ones I eat on the farm, but I've had better roast beef.
70. I have never eaten vegetables as good as the ones grown in my parents' garden.
71. My favourite colour is blue.
72. I generally follow UK spelling and grammar.
73. I grew up in a house heated by a wood stove.
74. I was born with six fingers on each hand.
75. I have exceptional friends.
76. I had a story published at the age of 15, and another two published at 18 and 21. I had two poems published, too. Since then I only write technical stuff, grants, this blog, and articles for the condo newsletter and a community newspaper called "The Bulletin"
77. I like to live amongst trees, but the closest visible tree to where I live now is a city bl0ck away.
78. I chastise people on the subway for not standing to the side.
79. When I was in elementary school, I used to explode into fits of uncontrollable anger, usually because people were calling me Jarhead or pushing me around. That stopped in Grade 7 after I beat up a kid named Tim Noble. He had tried to beat me up but I whalloped him instead. It surprised me. Then he got in trouble with the teacher.
80. I was and always will be a teachers pet.
81. I am a terrible employee.
82. I try to watch a documentary almost every day.
83. I try to write almost every day.
84. I never have time to do all the things I try to do.
85. I am a compulsive liar.
86. My favourite nightspot to hang at in Calgary is Ming.
87. I have never had a cavity.
88. I have tried and failed to be a vegetarian.
89. I went to Seattle on the bus when I was three.
90. My youngest memory is leaving the hospital after getting my sixth fingers cut off; I was six months old.
91. My grandfather was a postmaster.
92. I receive 30-100 legitimate e-mails a day and twice that in spam.
93. I want to live in a home with lots of glass at the edge of a lake, with lots of trees around me. I think it will be hard to find that
94. My IQ has gone down 31 points since I was 22. I can only assume this is due to drug use in my early 20s. Don't worry, I'm still smart.
95. What did I just say?
96. I like the hot, muggy weather of Toronto in the summer.
97. I have been to most of the Canadian provinces, except PEI and Newfoundland.
98. I haven't been to any of the territories.
99. I am working hard to get to Europe for the first time this October.
100. It took me almost a week to think of a hundred things about me, but I'm done.
