Up To The Challenge

A little over a week ago Aggie Sith issued the Challenge of the Sith. It's basically a "tell me ten things about yourself" meme. So without further ado, here are my ten things.

1) I have never been a liberal. Even when I was in grade school I was pretty sure that Jimmy Carter was an idiot and that if you punish those who do good things pretty soon no one would do anything good. "Tax the rich, feed the poor, till there are no rich no more" always seemed to me to be a warning that we would be wise to heed.

2) I am the son of a son of a Sailor. My grandfather was a Seabee heavy equipment mechanic in WW2 who told my father that he didn't want his kids to be Sailors or mechanics. I'm sure I would have either been a source of great disappointment or great pride to him, having been both Sailor and mechanic (on Navy aircraft).

3) I am an ordained minister with the Universal Life Church (and you can be one, too, if you follow that link). The only reason I did it was because one of the people in a chatroom I used to frequent was one and used it as his "moral superiority" for any arguments he would make. I got ordained so that I could follow his "As an ordained minister, I think..." with an "As an ordained minister, I think you are a jackass" of my own.

4) I am a Darwinist at heart. I believe that stupidity should be painful, and occasionally fatal, and that the only thing that safety equipment has done is make it harder for the truly stupid to kill themselves off, and humanity is dumber as a result. For reasons that should be obvious, I hate ambulance chasing lawyers.

5) Both of my parents have been ordained ministers (Oral Roberts University instead of Universal Life Church, with divinity degrees and everything). My father still is one. My parents became ordained ministers after all of their children had left the house, so although I am technically a "preacher's kid" I wasn't one while I was a kid.

6) I have five children, but I only helped to create one of them. One of them is a red-headed step-child and another is actually my great-grandson if the family lines are all drawn out, so I am my own grandpa. The only one I helped to create was raised by her mother in Wyoming so she was spared all of this insanity.

7) I will occasionally mangle the English language on purpose to see if anyone notices. One of my former shipmates used to get crazy about it because I was "obviously intelligent so why do you DO that?!?!?!?" I didn't tell him that it was because I thought it was funny that he got so nuts over it because I figured if he knew he would stop letting it bother him and rob me of my amusement.

8) I have always had a fondness for unusual vehicles. One of my current vehicles is a Subaru Baja, and the one before that was a Dodge Rampage.

9) The first motor vehicle I ever owned was a motorcycle. I have owned at least one motorcycle ever since. I currently have two (a Harley and a Suzuki), neither of them run, and I don't have a current motorcycle license so neither of them are registered.

10) I have never broken a bone or had major surgery. Other than being short for my weight I am unreasonably healthy.