Recently I’ve been “tagged” as a recipient of a couple of my friends’ and relations’ “25 things about me, myself and I” Facebook postings. I don’t know if you’ve seen these – the idea is, you write down 25 things about yourself that others may find interesting, then send it off to 25 of your friends with the request that they also compile their own list of 25 things, then send it to 25 of their friends, and on and on. Now, I’m not against people getting to know each other better, but I have to say that I’m physically and morally unable to respond to any, any on-line request to do something and then send it to several of my unsuspecting cyberpeers. I don’t care if the e-mail reads, “Hey Jason, this is your cousin. Grandma’s dead  – please forward this the rest of the family.” Sorry, I ain’t sending it.

But, as I say, I do like the idea. So here, in blog form, are 25 things that you may not know about me. I promise that you are not required to send anyone anything after you read it.

1. I hate it when people with unique names complain about others misspelling or mispronouncing them. I mean, what do you expect? Your name is Krintinw, for God’s sake. Get over it.

2. Every now and then I slip the word “anus” into conversations with mixed company just to get a laugh.

3. If I were a multi-millionaire and didn’t have to work and could choose one thing to do with my time, every day for the rest of my life, I would choose to make soup.

4. I once struck a very large, muscular man over the head with an empty beer bottle because he had tossed my Sunday paper all over the kitchen floor.

5.  I find “America’s Funniest Home Videos” to be truly disturbing. I fear that some day an advanced species of aliens will find these tapes and mistake them for historical records of our race. They would think that the thousands of grainy, poorly-lit video clips of overweight men getting hit in the crotch by small boys with whiffle bats and grooms passing out at their weddings represent everything that humankind had accomplished. They would think that. And they’d be right.

6. I came up with a really funny line for a movie: “With friends like that, who needs Yemenis?” (Insert laughter here.) I don’t have the context yet, but mark my words – I will slip that into a screenplay one day if it’s the last thing I do.

7. I love being around people, but only if nobody knows me and I don’t have to chat. Y’know, like at the mall or at a funeral.

8. The longest I’ve ever spent in jail cell was under three hours. I mean, seriously, does that even count?

9. I always wished that I had one glass eye. Back in high school – I guarantee that I would have gotten more chicks.

10. Sometimes, when in a crowded room, I look out over all the faces around me, each with a different story to tell, different life experiences, different loves. And I think: in a hundred and twenty years, everyone in this room will be dead.

11. I am often overcome with the desire to hug little children. And by “hug,” I mean, “push down and laugh at.”

12. Once, when I was managing a kitchen at a Baptist Camp and Conference Center, I let all of my teenaged staff blow off steam by throwing pudding at me out back by the dumpster. Later I found out that that was illegal in Utah.

13. I don’t know how to throw a punch. This genuinely bothers me – how am I supposed to defend my family? By falling on the floor and curling up in the fetal position? Sure, that may have worked back in college, but it’s not going to cut it if my home is ever set upon by fricken’ zombies, now is it?

14. I’m really bad at pretending to be on the phone. All I can think of to say is “Mmm-hmm…..yep….sure….really?….mmm-hmmm….” It’s really embarrassing, and I’m almost always caught.

15. I will never, ever bungee jump. And if you have – I think you’re a jerk.

16. I really loved that show “Friends.” One day I remember thinking, this is the perfect show – everyone here is so funny! It’s like getting to hang out with your best, wackiest and most attractive friends every week! I felt truly happy to be around them. And then I thought, hey…that’s why they call this show “Friends!” That was a profound day.

17. Some days, when I need inspiration, I pick up one of my favorite books, “Critique of Judgement” by the German (then Prussian) philosopher Immanuel Kant. There’s one part that always makes me smile: “It is then one thing to say, ‘the production of certain things of nature or that of collective nature is only possible through a cause which determines itself to action according to design’; and quite another to say, ‘I can according to the peculiar constitution of my cognitive faculties judge concerning the possibility of these things and their production, in no other fashion than by conceiving for this a cause working according to design, i.e. a Being which is productive in a way analogous to the causality of an intelligence.’ In the former case I wish to establish something concerning the Object, and am bound to establish the objective reality of an assumed concept; in the latter, Reason only determines the use of my cognitive faculties, conformably to their peculiarities and to the essential conditions of their range and their limits. Thus the former principle is an objective proposition for the determinant Judgement, the latter merely a subjective proposition for the reflective Judgement, i.e. a maxim which Reason prescribes to it.”  I read that and I’m like, OMG! That is SO how I’ve been feeling lately!!!

18. Once when I was late for work I pushed over an older, handicapped woman using a walker to get through the turnstile in the lobby of my building.

19.  I think that those boxy Scion cars are the dumbest-looking things on earth. The fact that people didn’t roundly laugh this embarrassment off the streets and into the land of the Edsel, Gremlin and Pinto ranks, for me, as the second biggest mass failure of judgment in the history of mankind. Right behind the reelection of George W. Bush.

20. When I’m alone at home eating dinner, I usually lick my plate clean of every last trace of food. Then, after I’ve finished my wine, leaned back in my chair, exhaled and patted my belly with content, I get up and put some pants on.

21. My wife and I once had an argument: she said that if she had to make a choice between saving the last two members of a near-extinct species of animal or a random human being from perishing in a burning building, she’d save the animals. I thought that was ludicrous, though I had to concede that given the ultimatum of saving either a human from a burning building or the last known copies of all of Shakespeare’s works (sonnets included), I would chose the latter. What did we learn from this? That we’re both assholes.

22. It just recently occurred to me that Marvin, the Paranoid Android from Douglas Adams’ The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy and A.A Milne’s Eeyore are the same character.

23. Sometimes I look at all the infrastructure around me – the buildings, the highways, the industry – and I think, if it were up to me to do all this stuff it would never exist. We’d still be living in freaking tents.

24. Once I looked around the room and experienced a moment of complete, all-knowing clarity about the universe. I knew in that one moment that everything that had ever happened to me had led to that moment; that everything was as it should and will be, that everything around me had a meaning and a purpose, and that no matter what happened – even the darkest of tragedies and ugliest of horrors – everything was going to be okay. And I’m sure it had nothing to do with all that Ecstasy I took.

25. I cry during the scene in Jurassic Park when the Tyrannosaurus Rex is attacking the kids in the overturned Jeep. I mean, really, Spielberg, give those poor kids a break.  They’re just kids – they don’t need this kind of shit.

Let’s see…yep, that’s twenty five!  Toodles!