The 100th Post!

Holy crap! I made it!

This post on Michael O’Blogger is the official 100^th post since I started this thing in July of 2007. I had originally designed my web site to serve this purpose, a place to express myself and talk about my life regularly. It, however, started before the age of bloggery came upon us. I did mess with LiveJournal for a while, but didn’t really advertise that fact much. I resisted starting a blog, though, mainly because of my hatred of the word “blog”. Not only was it not a real word, and not only did it sound like an alien race created by George Lucas in his later senile years (you know, any year that came after Empire was released?), but it was anNOYingly overused by the media once they caught onto it. Be sure to read our blog! Lots of bloggers are talking about this subject! Let’s see what’s going on in the blogosphere! Blog blog blog blog blog!! They just had fun using the word – and, apparently, fun driving me monkeypoodoo (I’m swearing like George Lucas now…) by doing so…again and again and again…

It took me a long time, but I finally came to peace with the blog craze and surrendered to the word. It was the craze that made me so forgiving. I was stunned by how many people – in 21^st century America, mind you – were suddenly WRITING. It was amazing! People who had probably never seriously expressed their thoughts in print on anything were cranking out diatribes on politics, movies, sports, American Idol contestants, cooking, music, motorcycles, EVERYthing. Were they all writing WELL? Did most of them even know what the shift key is used for? No, but who cares?! Americans were writing! I was excited! And as a bonus, I, as a reader, was getting to read all about their thoughts and lives and experiences. What an amazing view into our world and our times, and into the minds of people from every walk of life. I remember emailing a (wannabe) writer once who had posted up the start of something she was going to publish. It was written in a journal or diary format. I really enjoyed it, and wrote her a note expressing this. SEEMED like a nice thing to do. But she shot back an email, all pushed out of shape at me and offended as I had mistaken it for a journal of her life. She tersely pointed out that it was fiction she was going to be publishing, and was NOT a journal, and made a point of stating “I don’t care to read someone else’s journals”. Um…you want to be a writer, and you don’t “care” to read people’s journals? Isn’t sort of a prerequisite (call me on this if I’m wrong) of being a writer having an interest in the world around you, in humanity as a whole, and seeking, through your writing, to tap into that great truth and our shared experience as a civilization? Guess not. I thought it was more than a little ironic (which is cool, because as a writer, I’m sure she appreciates irony) that someone who was writing a fictional diary of someone got offended at the idea of reading people’s REAL diaries. Takes all kinds. Good luck with that publishing career. Cough cough FUTURE BITTER EDITOR cough cough…

Anyway, I had started jumping around to the blogs of total strangers and really enjoyed the great tapestry of life experiences there. And then a few friends of mine started doing their own, and I found I LOVED reading their stuff!! What a great way to have “discussions” with far-away friends, to find out what’s going on in their lives and what’s important to them. I loved reading one friend’s book reviews, and another’s tales of his joys with every new magic moment with his new daughter, and another’s always entertaining annoyances with the world as a whole. And as I was trying, at the time, to get myself writing on a regular basis, it seemed like it was finally time to give up being a blog-hater and join ‘em instead of beating ‘em. So Michael O’Blogger was born. I started off slow, with just a few occasional posts, but, while not as prolific as many others I know, I at least managed to get something of a steady rhythm going.

A couple of my friends reached their 100^th posts on their blogs, and I found out that it’s a blogging tradition that, when you do so, you’re supposed to do a post citing 100 facts about yourself. I’ll admit, I was starting to think I’d never make it that far, and considered cheating and making 50 my milestone and doing half as many facts. But I stuck it out and kept grinding out posts, and eventually, I got here. Pat on the back to myself! I set a goal and met it! Rock on, me! And I hope to keep it going from here on out. I don’t even know…is there some prize for 500 posts? I wouldn’t be so lucky as to have it be getting a $500 check from some prestigious blogging society, would I?

So here, then, is my reward. I get to think up 100 facts about myself to post. Sadly, your punishment for sticking around this long is to have to sit through them. So let’s get to our centennial facting!

1. I was born in Sacramento, and my first home was less than a mile away from where I live now (that’s kind of a sad fact to start out with…). I also live less than a mile from my old high school and from my first college.

2. At age…five, I think?...I was the Muscular Dystrophy Poster Child for Santa Clara County (my family was in San Jose at the time). I was on billboards and did appearances and stuff, and was even on the local broadcast of the telethon. I have a clear memory of being held up by the host as the final local tally was put up on the big board, and as people in the studio cheered and balloons dropped, and him asking me what I thought about that and putting the mic in my face. I was on the spot and completely tongue-tied, but managed to finally get out “I didn’t think you could raise that much money!” Hey, I just remembered also being in the locker room, post-game, of a soccer team – the game must have had some kind of M.D.A. fundraising aspect to it. Mom tells me she had a cowboy outfit on me for the billboard shoot, and whenever she’d take me out in that outfit, people would recognize me.

3. I have one tattoo. It’s on my left shoulder. It says “Fire and Rain”, based on the James Taylor song. I got this the day I flew home from my father’s funeral. The song had a special meaning for him and me, and a fondness for James Taylor seemed to be one of the few things (good things, at least) he and I had in common. Irony – Dad would have thrown a fit if he knew I’d gotten a tattoo.

4. I used to be on the radio in the mornings when I was in high school. I used to call the local “Masters and Johnson” morning duo on KWOD-106 and do little bits, and they knew me as “Mike from Carmichael”. I have some of those on tape somewhere, but even if I could find it, the cassette (which was cheap to start with) has probably disintegrated by now.

5. On Dad’s side of the family, my line alternates initials from “D.A.” to “M.D.” My grandfather, for example, was Morgan D. O’Connell. My father was Daniel A. O’Connell. And I’m Michael D. O’Connell. Were I to ever have a son, he would have to have a first name starting with “D” and a middle name starting with “A”. For the record, ladies, I’m thinking Damon Allen O’Connell. Get used to it. I’m not sure how far the tradition goes back – I’ll have to look that up. All those D.A.’s and M.D.’s, yet no lawyers or doctors. Interesting.

6. I started a newspaper at school, with my best friend Tim, in the 5^th grade called “The Campus Chronicle”.

7. I was then a journalism major my first semester in college. Only to find out that I didn’t have what it took to be a journalist (I have a soul). I wrote only one piece in the campus newspaper (The American River Current), a report on an upcoming fundraising carnival. I had to interview the student body president, and was so focused on trying not to screw up that I realized I’d left there without a single quote. So I had to go back and ask her (feel free to cringe, journalists), “Is there anything you’d like to be quoted as saying about the event?”. I probably would have gotten better at it. How could I NOT have? But, again…soul.

8. In the 4^th grade, I wanted to be a stuntman. Like-minded friends and I used to practice falling down. While I let go of the career aspirations, I continued to practice later in life, unintentionally, after nights of heavy drinking.

9. My first completed short film script was called “Love Stinks”, written as a semester project in screenwriting class as CSU Sacramento. Like love, it stank, but in some ways, it was a later source of inspiration for “The Nice Guy”.

10. I was officially baptized into the Seventh-day Adventist church in 6^th grade.

11. I can blow two smoke rings at once, one out of each corner of my mouth. Not as impressive as tying a cherry stem in a knot with my tongue, but still a unique skill.

12. I used to do a badass Mickey Mouse impersonation before my voice changed.

13. I have two metal rods fused to my spine that I got in 1984 as a corrective scoliosis measure. They immediately started breaking for no good reason, and are still broken now, as I really have no interest in being opened up again and having someone take a welding torch to me.

14. That’s my most impressive scar (neck down to arse), but I have four others – two on each heel from heel cord lengthening surgeries as a kid, one on the side of my foot from a muscle biopsy, and the one on my chest where they put in the pacemaker. Few people have seen all of these. Ask your mother, she’ll tell you all about them (dude, you walked right INTO that one! Sick burn!).

15. Thanks to my mother playing his records over and over, I know the lyrics of several Barry Manilow songs by heart. Thank your feeble gods that I don’t do karaoke.

16. I smoked a whole pack of cigarettes at once. On video. It was a bar bet. I still have the footage.

17. I was president of the “Toro Toastmasters” in high school.

18. I have a “B” in Spanish from college, but I never took the class. I signed up and never showed up to drop. And yet, I got a pretty decent grade. Mooey Buenas!

19. I was a huge fan of the Adam West Batman series as a kid, but while I had both the Batman and Robin action figures, I never had the Batcave playset. The kid next door had it. Little bastard.

20. I own a certified limited edition replica Luke Skywalker lightsabre from Master Replicas that my sister got me for my birthday one year. Oh, screw you, you know you want one…

21. I don’t put ketchup on my burgers. I put ketchup on my plate and dip my burger in it as I eat. Don’t ask me why. I just do.

22. Like most guys do at a certain age, I wanted to be a musician and start a band. I decided to be a keyboard player and went out and (with my then-brother-in-law co-signing) financed a badass Yamaha keyboard and started taking lessons. Didn’t continue with it, and eventually ended up selling the keyboard (and the dream) to pay my phone bill. Friends who were really sick of hearing me play The Police’s “King of Pain” over and over rejoiced in private.

23. In case you didn’t know, I used to have a body perm. It was the 80s. That’s the only defense I can muster. I actually sat in a stylist’s chair for, like, three hours every few months and got permed. To be more manly, of course. Nothing says “sex machine” quite like sitting around with rollers in your hair.

24. I once entered an Atari Pac Man videogame championship, along with Tim. We both practiced for weeks. And we were both blown out within minutes.

25. I had a cheesy mustache period. Most guys do. Those guys unable to grow one are the ones that bitterly make fun of us.

26. I wrote and “produced” my first play in the 4^th grade. It had to do with shipwrecked people on a raft. Don’t remember what I called it. Several classmates were my actors and my teacher arranged a performance and invited the third-grade glass to watch.

27. In junior high I started my own locker-cleaning business. For a fee, I’d totally clean and organize your locker. And yet, mine was always a mess.

28. I’ve read the Bible, cover-to-cover, five times. Once in the King James Version, four times in the New International. I won’t ruin the end for you.

29. In the 7^th grade, I wrote an essay called “My 6^th Grade Dream Girl” about the attempts of me and three other guys to win the heart of Jenny Juarros. My teacher, Mrs. Grenberg, entered it in youth writing contest for me and I won 1^st place. There was a Grand Prize award above 1^st place, so technically I came in second. This was when I decided I wanted to be a writer.

30. I hate spinach.

31. I don’t like tomatoes, and yet I love ketchup.

32. The only bone I’ve broken is my left arm, and that was when I was five years old (or was I four?). Technically, *I* didn’t break it – my sister did. I was lying on the couch on a pile of freshly-dried laundry and she decided to tackle me. SNAP! The cool thing was that my dad, a motocross enthusiast, broke his arm around the same time on his bike, so we both had casts.

33. I can’t sing, but I was in the choir in high school. You didn’t have to try out for our choir or anything (small school), so I joined just for the social aspect and to go on band and choir trips. Got to go to the World’s Fair in Canada in 1986 and “performed” there (I did a lot of lip-synching).

34. I went to a small Adventist school, and there were only 27 people in my graduating class.

35. I was in Drama Club the first half of my senior year, and played “Mr. Wibble”, the mailman at the North Pole, in “Santa Sees a Shrink”.

36. As a kid, I wrote a letter to President Jimmy Carter, and I got a letter back from the White House. They obviously have a staff of people that answer these, as, instead of a form letter, it was one that actually echoed back the points I’d written about. Brief and generic, but personalized. Sadly, that letter’s disappeared over the years.

37. I’ve been a groomsman in six weddings and a best man in one.

38. I can’t roll my R’s. Even if I’d actually attended that class and learned Spanish, I’d still always sound gringo trying to speak it.

39. I’m a sucker for disaster movies (movies about disasters, not movies that ARE disasters). The bigger the disaster, the better. This is the one place in film where I can put up with bad storytelling and/or acting and still enjoy myself. Hence my being one of the seven people who liked Devlin and Emmerich’s “Godzilla”.

40. I freaking love Star Wars. I’m part of the Jedi Generation – I saw Star Wars in the theater as a kid in ’77, and was hooked. Saw every film after in the theater, multiple times. I loved Star Wars enough to kid myself for a while about the prequel trilogy, but learned that perhaps I’m not as big a fan of disaster as I thought – because that disaster I cannot forgive. George Lucas pisses me off.

41. The first time I ever learned about films selling out was going with my mom, my sister and my step-siblings to see Empire Strikes Back. I was in line, almost shaking with excitement, and someone came on the loudspeaker and announced that the shows were sold out. WHAT?! To wait that long and then to be turned away at the theater, and to have to come back the next DAY? I was crushed. That was the longest day of my life, up to that point in my life. How did civilization ever function without Fandango?

42. Everybody knows the story of me accidentally picking up a hooker in my van while being chased by police with a Bible on my dashboard, right? If not, read HERE and believe.

43. I wrote my first comic book script for publication in the mid-90s, a psychological horror short story called “The Girl Next Door” for a company called Empire, an imprint of Ripoff Press. It was for an anthology series called Mind Probe. The first issue of it came out, and in it was a full-page ad for my story, with my name on it, set for Mind Probe #2. Mind Probe #1 sucked so bad that Empire went under, and there never was a #2. Unless, of course, you consider the fact that #1 was pretty much #2 (get it?)…

44. Between 2000 and 2004, I was an NBA junkie. Though I lived in San Diego, thanks to League Pass, I never missed a Kings game. I lived basketball. I would take the day off work for the NBA draft. All-Star Weekend was the highlight of my year. Sadly, when my Kings started getting sold off, and my time grew less optional, I fell away from it, and now maybe see one game a year.

45. My first web page I did for money was a campaign page for a man named Nanjundappa who was running for State Assembly (72^nd District). He lost. I don’t think it was because of my web design. Probably had something to do with the fact that even I, his webmaster, couldn’t spell (or now remember) his first name. Good guy, though. He was a college professor known to his students as “Dr. Nanjun”. It was a really good experience for me.

46. I build web pages regularly, and yet, at this point in time, I still don’t know a damned thing about HTML. I’m a slave to Dreamweaver.

47. I had a finch named Dobie. He was a gift from my ex (before she was my ex). I think he actually lived for about eight or nine years before he died. I don’t know if that’s a long finch life or not.

48. I fell off a horse once. Don’t blame me – my sister was driving. We both fell off, but luckily for her, I broke her fall. Haven’t been on a horse since. That old saying about getting back on the horse? God made taxis for a reason.

49. I’m in love with Cynthia Rhodes. You have no idea what that is, do you? If you’re my age, you might remember her as the dancing girl from Toto’s “Rosanna” video, or from (sorry) “Stayin’ Alive” with John Travolta. Or maybe from “Runaway” with Tom Selleck. You probably know her best as Patrick Swayze’s knocked-up dance partner from “Dirty Dancing”. I wonder if she’s still with Richard Marx? Poodle-haired jackass. Oh, wait…I used to have that same hair…

50. I got to see Cynthia in person when I was in high school, when Tim, through his brother, got us in to hang out at this celeb tennis tournament. We were sitting one table away from her. I was just enjoying being near her and seeing her up close. Then some soap opera actor dude (I had no idea who he was. Still don’t) was nice enough to sit down and talk with us. Thought he was a cool guy, until I mentioned, quietly, that we were mainly there to see Cynthia Rhodes. Suddenly he says, loudly, for her to hear, “What? You guys are here to see CYNTHIA RHODES?” I was, of course, mortified, not being smart enough at that age to realize he’d totally given me my opening as Cynthia turned around and smiled, amused, at all of us and then went back to her conversation. I’ll never forget that smile (which was probably from her seeing my face turn beet red). I just looked it up, by the way – she and Marx are still happily married, with three kids. Damnit. I should have kept my perm.

51. I think Tom Jones kicks ASS!

52. I dig salsa music. I’ll sometimes just have that playing in the background when I’m doing stuff. Not often, but when the mood strikes.

53. In the late 80s and early 90s, I was a full-on hair-band rocker dude. Saw most every embarrassing band of the era in concert. Including Cinderella. And Dokken.

54. I’ve been in one at-fault auto accident. I’d let my brakes get bad, and one night, while I was keeping an eye on the guy rushing up behind me as our lanes were merging, I didn’t notice the light ahead turning red. The guy in the Mustang had just left the freeway exit, from a stop, and I hit the brakes, but they weren’t good enough to make it happen. He ALMOST made it past me, but I clipped his rear end and spun him around. He was okay. I did about $6000 in damages. I know this because my insurance was with USAA, and I used to work there, and my buddy and former co-worker Kyle ended up with the claim and set the guy up right and let me know the status.

55. I dig everything about the Rat Pack era, and can listen to Frank, Dean or Sammy tunes anytime.

56. I hate seafood. It’s not even really a hate, it’s just that it all does bad things to me. Can’t truck with the fish. A tuna sandwich is about as aquatic as I can go.

57. My coolest spring break ever was my senior year of high school. My stepfather agreed to rent a house on the beach in Mission Beach (San Diego) for me and my sister and a few of our friends. No adults with us, just us for a week. Drunk, drunk, drunk. Had an amazingly fun time. I think…

58. I’ve had three stepfathers. But only one rents beach houses for a bunch of high school kids, see we kept that one.

59. I have one sister, four step-sisters, and two step-brothers.

60. My mother’s family and my stepfather’s family have known each other all their lives. Both Mom and Jack went through three marriages before finally getting together twenty years ago. So I’d already known my step-relatives my whole life before they officially became family. Made for a pretty easy transition.

61. This isn’t about me, but my step-brother Kamron won the grand prize of a national Weiner Schnitzel contest – a trip to Chile – when he was, like, 20. He passed it on to my sister, and she went. Cool, huh?

62. I saw my very first live TV celebrity as a kid when my family was at the Universal Studios theme park in L.A. and Jm J. Bullock from “Too Close For Comfort”, a show that my family watched all the time, was hanging out in the crowd at the wild west show we were watching. You’d have thought I’d just bumped into Brando as blown away as I was.

63. For a lot of my childhood, I wanted to be a DJ, and I used to do my own radio shows on my crappy tape recorder to practice for that day.

64. When my dad asked what I wanted for a gift for my 8^th grade graduation, I told him I wanted a file cabinet. Dad had a weird son. I got it – and I’m still using it today (one of two that I have in my room). How many people can say that about gifts they got in the 8^th grade, huh?

65. I sleep with the TV on every night. I just find it easier to fall asleep, and easier to wake up, with it on. So when I get ready to crash, I look for some movie on cable that I’ve seen before that I won’t pay THAT much attention to. So the last thing I do every night is flip through my dozens of movie channels, and generally can’t find anything to fit the bill. I usually end up pulling something up on On Demand. I’ll often waste 15 minutes or so of sleep time searching for just the right thing to have on.

66. I have a pacemaker that I got in 2001, the month after 9/11. My heart was slowing down and trying to stop one night, and I drove myself to the hospital, parked (and made sure to lock the van because I didn’t know when, or if, I’d be coming back to it), and went into the ER. I had surgery the next day and got it. In about a year and a half from now, I’m going to have to go in for surgery to have my battery changed.

67. I bought the Tony Robbins 30-day “Personal Power II” CD program off eBay, and completed it.

68. I hate breakfast. I never eat it. I get my vitamins from a can of Slim Fast (Chocolate Royale) every morning that I take with me to work, and I drink it while my computer is booting up.

69. I’ve had a goatee since 1995.

70. My first computer was a Vic20. I then got a Commodore 64. When I started college, I stepped up to a Commodore 128 (ooooh…). I didn’t get my first PC until 1994 – a DX66 (not even an Intel) that I got for $3000 on my Montgomery Wards card.

71. I hate cold weather. Hate it, hate it, hate it. I count the days when winter comes, waiting for spring to roll back around. When I get rich enough, I’m moving to the Bahamas or something.

72. I was in the studio audience of a Geraldo taping in Phoenix. You can see me for a moment as Geraldo goes past me and totally ignores MY hand being up and takes a question from another audience member.

73. I’M GAY!!!!!

74. Okay, okay, I’m not gay. I just thought I’d see if you were still paying attention after seventy-three of these. Awake now?

75. I have lived in – Sacramento, Fresno, Modesto, San Jose, Fremont, Cool (yes, that’s a town), Pilot Hill, Auburn, Citrus Heights, Carmichael, Folsom, Rocklin, Tempe, San Diego, and a perpetual state of mediocrity.

76. I spent one summer, as a kid, living in the back seat of a yellow Ford Galaxy 500. Well, “living” is a strong word. I just slept there. It was in the country, and it was parked next to our little trailer. What can I tell you? Jimmy Carter was president. That’s probably what I wrote to him about.

77. The first girl I ever fell in love with was named Cindy, when we were both in Kindergarten. I asked her to marry me on the pretense that I was in this “boys’ club” that required its members to get married. She didn’t buy it. In retrospect, I should have made up a fake membership card to sell it better. If we’d had Photoshop back then, I’d be a happily married man right now.

78. I saw my first live boobies when I was 14, in Vegas. I was there with my dad, and he took us to the Charo show, a musical revue that involved ninety-nine topless showgirls (which adds up to 198 boobies, if you’re doing the math). My father did this, basically, to be able to get a kick out of watching my nervous reaction to the whole thing and tell everyone he knew about it. Dad had that kind of sense of humor.

79. I have a goddaughter named Zoe, the daughter of my friend Kevin. She’s both a musician and a Doctor Who fanatic.

80. MY niece (Danielle) can beat up YOUR niece. I’m not bragging, I’m just stating a fact. Warn your niece to tread lightly.

81. My favorite cigar is the H. Upmann #100 Robusto.

82. When I was having kidney stone surgery in 2004, I woke up in the middle of the operation. But get this – without my knowing it (because they didn’t realize they had to do it until they put me under…and to tell you the truth, I’m still not exactly sure WHY they had to do it), the doctors decided they had to “chemically paralyze” me. So I woke up in the middle of surgery, completely unable to move any single muscle in my body. Couldn’t even blink. I couldn’t even draw a breath – they had a tube down my throat doing my breathing. So, suddenly awake while being operated on, and completely unable to let anyone know it. Thankfully, I wasn’t awake very long.

83. I have two TVs in my bedroom. I originally just had my 13” set in there, but when I got my new HD set for the living room, I moved my old 29” set into the bedroom. I was just going to get rid of the 13”, but my pal A.T. was the one moving the sets, and he grabbed some cables and did a split on the cable box. So I have the 29” on top of my armoire right across from the bed – the one I watch while I’m in bed – and the 13” up on this swivel mount that’s off the upper shelf of my computer desk, one that’s turned so that I can watch it from the desk while I’m working, if I feel the need. This makes me feel like Marty McFly (“He’s kidding you, honey. Nobody has TWO televisions…”).

84. I use three alarms to get up in the morning. Getting up? Not a natural process for me.

85. I own over 380 DVDs. And that's by UPC code, so many of those are box sets, not individual discs. 87 of those are TV show seasons. And that’s just as of this writing.

86. Since I’ve reached #86, I’ll point out that, if you didn’t know, I graduated in 1986.

87. I’m a complete packrat. I’m better than I used to be, but I used to hold on to just about everything that would have any kind of sentimental or historical value to me. Ticket stubs, greeting cards, invitations, party flyers, cocktail napkins, everything. This makes for a great living history of my early years. Thankfully, my later years are much less exciting so I don’t feel the need so much anymore.

88. I have broken three hearts that I’m aware of, and all of them out of my own cowardice.

89. I once rode in an elevator with both the actor who played Uncle Owen in Star Wars AND a Playboy Playmate. I’ll tell that story another time. It’s pretty funny.

90. I got my first VCR, as a Christmas gift, when I was in high school (was I a sophomore or a junior? Not sure), and since I was on Christmas break, I went to the local hole-in-the-wall video store (there weren’t many video rental stores back then, and definitely no big chains yet) with Tim and Wayne, and we rented 15 movies. I don’t think we slept for the next two days – just watched movie after movie in my living room and drank lots of Mountain Dew.

91. If I had to trace the origins of my particular sense of humor, I’d say it grew from Mel Brooks movies, the Airplane movies, and Kentucky Fried Movie. And early SNL. These, to me, defined what comedy ought to be – unexpected, subversive, with the appearance of dumb but with the legs of secret smartness beneath.

92. My computer gets left on 24-hours a day, and I have a minimum of seven or eight applications/windows always open. I also have two monitors on my computer, as I’m often referencing one thing when I’m working on another. I’m comfortable with having as many windows as possible open, and I get amused with people who see that and want to strangle me for it.

93. I was in Washington, DC in 1985 for Ronald Reagan’s second inauguration. My high school band played there, and since there were only a handful of us NOT in the band, the whole school got to go.

94. I’ve fallen out of moving cars twice in my life. The first time I was about three or four, in the back (middle) seat of the family station wagon, unseatbelted (it was the 70s…), leaning back against a door that I obviously hadn’t closed all the way. It opened and I fell back, and my sister grabbed my legs and held me. If I close my eyes, I can still see the street rolling by beneath me, and my hair dragging along it, as my mother screamed and tried to get pulled over. So I guess my sister breaking my arm later was balanced out by her saving me then, so we’re even. The next time I was 18 and really drunk. Technically, the car wasn’t moving as I started getting out. My pal Chris, behind the wheel (also drunk), thought I was already out so he hit the gas. I don’t remember tumbling down the street (being drunk as I was), just the next memory being me looking up at the night sky and blinking, and Chris standing over me. He asked, casually, if I was okay. I shrugged and said sure. “Okay,” he nodded. “I’m going to go park.” And we went back into the party. I attribute both my early stuntman training and lots of vodka to the happy ending there.

95. I refuse to get an electric wheelchair until I no longer have a choice. Using one might be easier, but it would also eliminate the only exercise I get. Easier is not always better. When it does happen, it will be because I have no other option, and when that happens, I imagine wheeling myself will have become such a pain in the ass that I won’t mind the transition so much.

96. When walking was getting too hard for me at the end of high school, and doctors were just ready to put me in a wheelchair full-time, it was my father who suggested I try a cane, and he gave me his own – the one he had used after his big medical event, when he had to work his way up from bedridden to a wheelchair to a walker to crutches to a cane to walking again. Because of that, I kept walking for a number of years before needing the chair 24/7. While I don’t use it anymore, I still have it, and it’s a reminder to me of not only the wisdom of my father, but the lessons he taught me – and anyone else who knew him – about perseverance and patience.

97. I’m a huge proponent of the space program, and I think we need to keep putting our resources into it, and into space exploration in general. Why? Can you actually look into the night sky and ask me why? Mankind, at our best, are explorers, seeking new answers, new frontiers, new challenges. How can we turn away from the great mysteries awaiting us out there? You want to have a conversation about mismanagement at NASA? Okay, I’ll back you there. But people thinking we don’t need NASA? I just can’t understand that kind of thinking.

98. I haven’t counted lately, but I think I own something like 70 domain names. Some of those are for projects and/or properties I’m working on, some are ones I may want to use someday so I grabbed them up so no one else would get them first, and a lot are just ones I got on speculation to sell (before I understood the realities of domain speculation…).

99. I’ve come to realize that I really loathe politics. It is inherently dishonest at its core, in this day and age, because politicians know that we, as a people, would never elect them in the first place if they actually told us the truth. Nor would we re-elect them if they didn’t just tell us what we wanted to hear. We, the people, are the real problem. We need to expect more of both our government and ourselves. I think the polarizing effect of the two-party system has ensured that nothing ever really gets resolved. I wait for the day when we decide to start declaring ourselves Americans, and not forging our identity and decisions in our party affiliation. Now, more than ever, in this internet age, we have the chance to find the facts ourselves, instead of just being fed them by biased media and leadership, and to share our views and ideas and dreams directly with one another. We can find our common ground, together – and we can the elect representatives that will bring form to our ideals. Ones that work for US. It can happen. Let’s stop with the bumper sticker slogans, with the chants, with the surface-only thinking and the demonizing and the quick-fix unreality. Let’s find our common needs and goals and do something about them, together.

100. I am grateful for every day of my life, for every person that’s come into my life, either for a long stay or a brief layover, for the country I live in, for the world I share with billions of amazing and unique souls with so much more potential than they even realize, and for the God that brought me into it and let me play a small role in this big dramedy we call humanity.

And that’s a fact.