Screaming Memes Day Two!

Day One: Ten things you want to say to
ten different people right now.

Day Two: Nine things about yourself.

(Day Three: Eight ways to win your heart.
Day Four: Seven things that cross your mind a lot.
Day Five: Six things you wish you’d never done.
Day Six: Five people who mean a lot (in no order whatsoever)
Day Seven: Four turn-offs.
Day Eight: Three turn-ons.
Day Nine: Two images that describe your life right now, and why.
Day Ten: One confession.)

1. I hate sleeping alone. In fact, when the pup recently started sleeping on the bed, I found it easier to get back to sleep when I was awake. Interestingly, he usually sleeps in the right lower corner of the bed, so I have him on one side and the missus on the other, so I'm not on the outside where a hyena could get me. Don't get me wrong, I like hyenas, but I assume they were the main nipper nabbers back when my cortex was swelling.

2. I thrive on pressure and die from stress. Give me a vital life-or-death decision to make Right Now! If I don't chew my thumb off, the bomb explodes! Does this animal have a chance, or does it need mercy killing? That kind of shit. Love it, love it, love it. Even if it's a horrible situation, it just feels right.

On the other hand, give me two months and a financial aid form and within weeks I'll be a hapless emotional cripple. Ever wonder why I wind up in so many dodgy situations? They're like vitamins!

3. I'm not that fond of sweets, and I don't get chocolate. I mean, I like chocolate but I don't love it. Caramel, nuts, and salt are more the kinds of things you'd find on my dessert isle. But it's grease, salt, and pungent, spicy flavors that are my weakness. A double chocolate mousse cake? 's okay. But let me get my hands on some nasty old cheese with a slice of raw onion on the side...

4. I'm much less easy to read than I think. It turns out that when I'm taking things in and trying to figure them out? I don't necessarily come across as baffled, semi-conscious, terrified, or enraged. Which is usually the case when I'm not emoting. If I seem pleasant, neutral, slightly guarded? Ask me which of those four I actually am and I'll give you a straight answer.

Oh. Make that five. I forgot licentious. But I might fib about that one.

5. In a lot of ways, the definitive cultural movement for me would have been the Lin Carter-led and Frank Frazetta-fueled fantasy revival of the seventies. I didn't recognize it as such at the time -- to me, the world is of necessity filled with hulking, brutal savages and the delectably chubby women who love them. I keep going back to that stuff, unsatisfied by its alternately twee and muttonheaded qualities and I sigh with wistful yearning...

6. Speaking of which, when I was a kid my two role models were Conan the Barbarian and Sherlock Holmes, and when I tell this to people who know me they go, "Yeah, I can see that."

This makes even more sense if you're actually familiar with the characters, by the way. Conan was heard to say that poets are in the end more important than kings, and Sherlock Holmes was a drug-sucking freak.

7. By my standards, I'm exactly the right size. I can buy all my crap off the shelf. There's a size of bed (the California King, by some coincidence) that I can sleep on lengthwise, rather than diagonally. I'm not obligated to buy two seats to fly, although if I had the cash, I would, I need two more inches of shoulder space on each side... but basically? I'm as big as you can be conveniently.

8. I wasn't actually thinking of getting a card saying, "Sean Craven, Super Genius." It was a Wile E. Coyote reference. But let's be honest for a moment. Why the fuck not?

9. There is a certain class of person that is beloved by children and animals. I am one of those. At times it borders on the uncanny. Those who have seen me in oaf mode might not credit it, but I can change a diaper with the best of them, and there was this one time I shared a house with this dude?

He'd gotten himself a cat, but he'd also gotten himself an interest in cocaine. As a result, he never got his kitten spayed, so his kitten had kittens. She was still basically a stray, and when her time came to have her litter, she tried to have it in my bed. My housemate put her in a box and moved her to his room, where she gave birth.

That night when (I would only find out in later years) he was out snorting coke and impressing girls with the trifecta of six-six, seems rich, and unbelievably naive, his cat scratched at the door of my room.

I opened it; she had a kitten in her mouth. I went back to bed and she followed me. Jumped up, walked up my body with cool deliberation, and dropped the kitten into the notch of my sternum.

It was still a little damp.

Then she left. And a while later she was back with another one. It took her nearly an hour to move all eight kittens down to me. Then she went out the back door and hit the alleys. Wasn't back until dawn, when she performed the same operation in reverse.

There was no way to sleep with those kittens in the bed.

And that was just the first night. She did it every night until I moved. At first it was just that they were tiny and helpless and delicate, but they swiftly moved on to frustrated futile suckling, and then from there the fights, up and down, left and right, all night long...

It was a good thing I'd quit trying to pass classes by that point or I would have been bummed out.

I hear Ed Gein and Hitler rocked that one as well. Children and animals are good judges of certain superficial elements of character, aren't they?