eight more

Memes and meme tagging constitute a rash on the Body Internet, an irritated area that only spreads when you scratch it. But sometimes that scratching is too satisfying to resist. Mathew of the venerable sporky.net has requested the pleasure of my memeing with a contribution to cyberspace of eight facts about me. In the interests of not doing things properly, I am giving you eight (8) facts, one half to one third of which will distinguish themselves by being completely untrue. Can you guess which are real and which are real (but lies)? Take the test.

1. I was born with an instructional pamphlet that came in a sealed plastic package. The doctors and my family couldn’t make head or tail of the instructions, so they did everything the usual way, which is why my third arm dropped off at age five. They turned out to be an operating guide for the DVD player I bought last summer.



2. When I was young I read a novel that featured a character who liked to go through the medicine cabinets of people to whose houses he’d been invited. The novel stated that there were two kinds of people in this world: those who did and did not go through others’ medicine cabinets. Ever since then I’ve meant to do that, but I always forget, and every night out is tempered by a reminder that once again, I’ve proven myself to be the other kind of person.



3. I find that a can of peaches can be just the thing, especially after a long day of professional wild animal wrestling. Did you know that the squirrels in the park are considered wild animals? They’re so wimpy!



4. Once I ate wild blackberries picked from the foot of Roman ruins in the south of France. I told an ex-postman from French-occupied Algeria that I’d tried the blackberries, and he said “Aha! Bon appetit”. His name was Freddie and he drove a tiny scooter.



5. My shadow occasionally detaches itself from me and goes off to do my evil bidding. The only thing it can do is make small areas slightly darker, so my evil bidding usually involves ruining wedding shoots.



6. Since my wedding in 2001, we’ve been invited to countless weddings of friends and acquaintances. So far we’ve attended one. We probably wouldn’t have gone to our own if we weren’t needed up in front.



7. When I was eight or nine or so, I read a Swamp Thing comic about an alien monster that infested a cruise ship and turned the crew and passengers into Cyclopean slaves with one red eye in their foreheads and tentacle arms. It freaked me out so much that I put a T-shirt over my forehead when I went to bed to prevent the alien monster from getting me. That lasted until my mid-twenties.



8. My middle name is not Gregory.

Please submit your answers in the comments. The winning participant will receive a celebrity photograph in the mail. A celebrity photograph is better than tagging.