<body><script type="text/javascript"> function setAttributeOnload(object, attribute, val) { if(window.addEventListener) { window.addEventListener('load', function(){ object[attribute] = val; }, false); } else { window.attachEvent('onload', function(){ object[attribute] = val; }); } } </script> <div id="navbar-iframe-container"></div> <script type="text/javascript" src="https://apis.google.com/js/platform.js"></script> <script type="text/javascript"> gapi.load("gapi.iframes:gapi.iframes.style.bubble", function() { if (gapi.iframes && gapi.iframes.getContext) { gapi.iframes.getContext().openChild({ url: 'https://www.blogger.com/navbar.g?targetBlogID\x3d32209663\x26blogName\x3dSideways+Mencken\x26publishMode\x3dPUBLISH_MODE_BLOGSPOT\x26navbarType\x3dBLACK\x26layoutType\x3dCLASSIC\x26searchRoot\x3dhttps://sidewaysmencken.blogspot.com/search\x26blogLocale\x3den\x26v\x3d2\x26homepageUrl\x3dhttp://sidewaysmencken.blogspot.com/\x26vt\x3d2412354670652716332', where: document.getElementById("navbar-iframe-container"), id: "navbar-iframe" }); } }); </script>

A Colt, A Skull, a Needle and a Knife.

Amba's 's tagged me with a meme. I probably should do it since I'm in a dark, gloomy, pissy mood. But fuck it. He said darkly. Also gloomily.

1. Link to the person who tagged you.

2. Post the rules here.

3. Share 7 random or weird facts about yourself.

  • I once accidentally fired a .45 automatic in the same room as my girlfriend, best friend and sister. I blew a hole in the floor. One of a handful of things that still give me cold sweats thinking back. I got rid of the gun in exchange for an SLR camera.
  • You know how when people lose a limb they have phantom pain? The sensation that the limb is still there? Since going to the full Lex Luthor I've had phantom hair. I still put my head down carefully on a pillow, you know, to conform with the way my former hair no longer lies.
  • Sometimes, I miss waiting tables. It's not just the weed, the sex, the booze, the adrenalin rush of being deep in the weeds, the late nights and later mornings, and the complete lack of responsibility. It's . . . okay, mostly it's those things.
  • Many, many years ago I got so drunk that for a brief time, perhaps 5 minutes, I was the best friend of the town drunk in Praia da Vittoria on Terceira in the Azores. Shortly afterward I was the victim of an unprovoked assault by a cobblestone street. I couldn't drink Scotch for a decade. I still don't want to see the Johnny Walker logo.
  • I have a deep fear and hatred of needles. Hated them when I was a kid. Still hate them.
  • Used to have a fear of artificial limbs. Now I think they're kind of cool.
  • I was once seconds away from stabbing a guy with a chef's knife. An enraged drunk kicking in my door, threatening to kill me, so it would have been legitimate self-defense. Just as he was lunging and I was doing the knife reveal, he rammed his arm through a plate glass window, severed an artery and almost bled to death before we could get him to the hospital. On what he thought was his death bed, he explained why, exactly, he hated me. That's when I bought the gun. See #1 above.
Tag some other poor suckers. Mostly because I think it will annoy each of them for different reasons:

Chris Hallquist
Transplanted Lawyer
The Queen of all Evil

“A Colt, A Skull, a Needle and a Knife.”

  1. Blogger Randy Says:

    Somewhere between #1 and #7 lies an interesting story, I think.

    As for the needles, for some reason they never bothered me. Then again, I've always had "great veins" despite a couple of decades of regular abuse at the hands of phlebotomists, and easy access makes all the difference, or so I'm told. Seriously, phlebotomists are almost always adept but physicians who think they can draw blood themselves are to be avoided at all costs.

    There was the time, however, when one of my favorite nurses hit a major vein (artery?) and blood started squirting out two or three feet away when she pulled out the needle. She told me afterwards that her first thought was "OMG, he's a bleeder!" even though she knew I wasn't. That was her nightmare, it seems.

  2. Blogger Dyre42 Says:

    I'm with you on needles and waiting tables. The hair thing I can kind of understand. I lopped off my long hair to get a better job and I didn't stop having long hair in my dreams until five years later.

  3. Blogger Randy Says:

    BTW, the link to Chris Hallquist is bad.

  4. Blogger Michael Reynolds Says:

    Thanks, Randy. Fixed it.

  5. Blogger Locke Says:

    I feel the need to disseminate this horrible abuse of the word meme, and what I posted at Hallqs page sufficiently gets across my point, so I'll paste:
    Sorry, but you are entirely misdirected about what a 'meme' is. A survey or chain letter or pass-me-on or whatever this is has no relation to the word. In order to not look silly or foolish, you should research terms before using them. You can't make something a meme just by declaring it so, and if this was one, it would be instantly recognized and occur regularly in the social consciousness in various forms. All your base are belong to us and LOLcats are memes, 'list 7 weird things about yourself' is a survey at best, and a piece of unsolicited spam chainmail at worst.

  6. Blogger Villagepig Says:

    In the interest of the blogosphere I am wasting a night off from the kids to follow Ms. Locke's rampant pedantry. I have responded to her and linked it back to her blog and am awaiting her reply.

    As an aside though, these are truly some of the most graphic 7's I've read :-)

    Amy