A bandwagon you say? Well I sure would like to hop on it sir, that I would.

Here are ten things you don't know about me. See if you can stitch together the tattered tapestry of my life with them.


1. I have a dog.



That I dote upon excessively. Her name is Freyja. She's an mini American Eskimo, and the cutest thing in the entire world.

She isn't a smart dog, but I suppose that's my fault. She barely knows any tricks, won't come when I call, and thanks to the unfortunate timing of having the roof re-done while she was in "fear imprinting puppy mode" she still freaks out when she hears any hammering or knocking.

Don't care. Best dog ever. If I ever get a tattoo, its going to be a bigass mural of Freyja jumping away from a explosion on my back. Let everyone know exactly where my mind is at.


2. I used to be super fat.

I used to weight an embarrassing amount. Eventually I got to a disgusted self-loathing point where I basically had to lose some weight or go full on morlock style and never leave the basement. Erring on the side that there might be something out in the big wide world that I would like to see or do one day, I opted to lose some goddamn weight. I dropped close to 90 pounds in a year and it really improved my life. It's sad to say, but people really do treat you differently based on how you look.

Sometimes I regret all the time I spent as a big guy, but at the end of the day I'm kinda grateful for it. I wouldn't be who I am without those sometimes painful formative experiences and I think I'm a richer, more rounded person for it.

Get it, rounded, like fat? Doh ho ho, I mock myself.

3. I love Batman.



Physically.

In some ways, I've never matured at all. I was 6 or 7 when Tim Burton's Batman came out. My mom took me to see it at the theatre on the agreement that I would cover my eyes when she told me to (I DIDN'T!), and I've loved the Dark Knight ever since. A man dressed as a Bat and a pasty guy in a hand-me-down Prince suit are are still my favourite hero and villain pair to this day.

I don't read the comics obsessively, back when I was a kid it was too expensive and my access to comics too limited to read month-to-month. Now as an adult, I find monthly issues tend to drag on and on with no payoff. I can't keep up with all the cross-overs and I hate half the artists that work on them. But one-shots and TPBs? Oh my goodness. I have a good and proper nerd hoard I sporadically add to in my personal Batcave.

4. I used to wear a cool cap like Gobun's.

But I didn't have the swag for it. Probably because mine was lame ass fabric and not glorious leather.

I rocked this kickass old man style cabbie cap around university for a bit. I guess because I'm a hipster or something? I thought it was cool at first but then started having second thoughts. I didn't want to be "the hat guy". Plus it made my hair curl out to the sides and I started looking like Captain Boomerang – and ain't nobody wants to look like Captain Boomerang.

5. A hippie girl in high school called me an "old soul" and I've never quite come to grips with it.



So I knew this girl in high school who was basically a mash-up of every Dharma/Phoebe/granola girl stereotype you see on your average TGIF prime-time line up. She was both sickening and cute at the same time. One day I'm chilling with the usual group in the breezeway where all the cool (or at least desperate for acceptance) kids hung out, and she's going on about people's auras and chakras and such. Alex has a orange aura, Megan might have been a tree frog in a past life, yadda yadda. Then some clown asks "hey, what about Nic?" and in the most dismissive offhanded way she glances over her shoulder in my direction and says "oh Nic? He's an old soul." She shoots me this sort of half-smile and goes back to speculating on other more interesting boys previous incarnations as wolves and eagles and motorcycles.

That's a backhanded compliment to get when your 16 eh? I mean, maybe she meant it to as flattering. "Oh Nic, he's so smart and mature. All that wonderful wisdom and insight" *swoon* That's nice isn't it?

But lets face she meant "Oh Nic? He reminds me of my Grandpa. A big grumpy know-it-all. Also he smells weird. Not like you Alex, you have a 'pick me up at 9:00 in your T-Bird and we'll fuck on the school's roof soul'"

Yeah. Bitter.

It's a complisult that always rang uncomfortably true with me. In some ways I really do feel like a crusty old man. I make the most of it though. Wear my pants too high, tell kids to get off the lawn. It's a life.

6. Music really is my aeroplane.

I've made it clear to my employer that the day they won't allow me to bring my personal stereo and iPod into the back room is the day I quit. I don't think I could get through the average work day without having my tunes as a mental pacifier.

I listen to a wide variety of genres and artists. Sometimes I like to put my iPod on random just to see how jarring it can get. I don't think my coworkers like me much.

7. I'm of half Irish/English decent.

But I only ever mention the Irish part. Why? Because it's funnier.

Irish jokes are hilarious when you can use them as affectionate self deprecation and not casual racism. The Irish people have a very interesting history and a lot of weird/cool figures to point to, lots of literary greats and charismatic criminals. A knowledge of Irish names is a great thing to have when you don't know what to call your newest Elf Paladin or Gnomish archer.

You may think it's poor form to pick and choose one's heritage based on what makes the better party banter, but I've got to live my life with red hair. You can be damned sure I'm going to get something out of it.

8. I bought a really fancy camera but never do much with it.



I've always had an interest in photography. It's the gear. All those lenses, bags, tripods. The finely engineered parts. The oh-so specific dials and buttons crammed all over the surface of a modern DSLR. The stage setting, lights, filters. I just love that kind of thing. So after years of lusting over camera magazines and forums, I finally took the plunge last Christmas and got one a nice entry level DSLR using my tax return. I was so excited when I got it.

But boy are those things complicated.

It turns out I love all that technical wizardry when it's being demonstrated or talked about, not so much when I'm actually expected to do it. For someone who was so into it at a distance, it's shameful how little I've used it. Hopefully by sharing this with some of my Dtoid bros I'll feel the necessary guilt to man up and learn how to work the damn thing.

9. I went through a voodoo phase.

Straight up, there were a few months in there were I though voodoo was the coolest shit in the world. Not in a practising "true believer" way of course, I just loved the ideas.

Grave dirt collected in the dead of night, lucky coins tucked neatly into mojo bags, and this weird blending of Catholic imagery and ancestor worship spiritualism. That stuff is bananas. Interesting in both an intellectually stimulating anthropological way, and as great B-movie pulp material. I am genuinely surprised you don't see more of its imagery or ideas in games (other than Shadow Man for the N64, but that game sucked).

When I saw there was going to be a witch doctor/voodoo-esq character type in Diablo 3 I flipped my shit. Jokes on you Blizzard, I was already going to buy Dialbo 3. You didn't have to go to all the trouble just to make a class for my dollars, suckers.


10. Dtoid is the only online community I've ever really been a part of.

I am a chronic lurker.

I've frequented several forums and communities over the years, but I've always somehow avoided actively participating. Not sure why. I don't like repeating what other people say or the tiny short replies that typify most forums, so maybe that has something to do with it. Mostly though, I'm just not very social. It was very nearly the same for Dtoid. I lurked under a different account here for more than a year posting the occasional comment. Not really sure why I took the leap to actually start participating, but I'm glad I did.

The only other places I've racked up any kind of post count or casual familiarity in where the City of Heroes and TF2 fourms. After 5 years of constant CoH play I managed to rack up maybe 2000 posts – mostly on-topic to defending and blasting and masterminding. I was pretty well known on the Heavy sub-forum for TF2, but eventually got sick of it after hoards of cry babies and the misinformed invaded when a few patches had the audacity to make the Heavy more viable.

I've certainly never stuck with a place for more than a year and written multiple blogs and made actual friends with other members like I have with Dtoid. I don't just say it to flatter the community, Dtoid's C-blogs is home to some of the coolest people and best content on the net.

This place is the tits and posts like these are what makes it great. Thanks for starting the meme-wave Bbain!

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