Kip

102 Interesting Things About Me:

1) I flunked out my last year of high school.

2) I flunked out my fourth year of college.

3) I was an English/Political Science/no clue what I wanted to be major.

4) I took a year off to wait tables and regroup.

5) I went back, got a 4.0 at my old school.

6) I used the new grades to transfer to ASU.

7) Got a 3.96 at ASU in Biocellular/Biomolecular/BioChemical/Premed/Art History Engineering.

8) Received a Whitaker fellowship (a full ride for PhD to any school in the country) because of my GRE score and grades at ASU.

8b) Despite my meandering road to get here, I just finished my PhD in Neural Enginering at the University of Michigan... Yeah me!

8c) I'm too lazy to re-number this entire list... hence the letters/subheadings.

9) I'm now a published author, getting into a few science journals.

10) I play piano.

11) I'm a lazy perfectionist. Either I don't start it, or I get OCD on it.

12). I'm a recovering Catholic.

13). My older brother, who was my hero when I was young, died of a drug overdose in the last 8 months.

14). I am a huge Buffalo Bills fan.

15). One of my favorite books was "The Outsiders" by S.E. Hinton

16). I had to read most of the classics for my unfinished English Major - I think 90 percent of them are uninteresting reading, remarkable only for being the first work that tried _______ (insert claim to fame here).

17) _______ has been done better by countless authors since then, and has lost its novelty because I've read it before.

18) I am pro-choice.

19) I respect religion, but I am agnostic.

20) I don't respect any person so religious he can't understand why I am agnostic.

21) The American political system is screwed, but in most cases the only choice.

22) I wanted to be a politician, until I realized 21).

23) I decided I wasn't a fan of democracy... Everyone really wants a monarchy with themselves as ruler.

24) I play music by ear.

25) I am almost alway singing or making jokes.

26) I have what I now refer to as a phonograpic memory. I seem to remember alot more of any song/jingle than the average person (not my own observation, the observation of many other people).

27) Little Caesar's had a game based on the memory game Simon. You would pay a quarter and play. If you did well enough, you could win 2 pizzas. I was the only person at most little Caesars they had seen win it; my friends at college used to give me a quarter and drive me to little Caesar's when they were hungry and poor.

28) I got good at the memory game while working at a Chuck E Cheese.

29) I was a sandwich artist at subway.

30) I lost 60 pounds eating almost nothing but subway prior to Jared - that b*****d stole my scthick!

31) I view myself as a rare breed, as I don't judge someone's intelligence by how often they agree with me.

32) I am wrong many times a day, and change my mind often.

33) I respect people who like art I do not like. The more things that make you happy, the better off you are... I'm the one missing out because country music makes me cringe.

34) I absolutely love Lyle Lovett, who contrary to popular belief, plays alot of Big Band, Swing, Blues, and Jazz.

35) I am currently on a Mark Twain kick.

36) I did not vote in the last two elections, nor will I apologize for it. UPDATE - I did vote in the last election... even if it was simply as pointless as screaming F*** you republicans into the darkness, I was willing to do it. And I don't consider myself a democrat, I just hated to see a man vilified on the basis of weak speculation and conjecture. It's called the law of large numbers you morons. If you are a young politician, you literally meet hundreds of thousands of people. You can't be expected to vet, or agree with all of them - in fact, you are supposed to represent the ones you are diametrically opposed to. Obama met Khalidi and Ayers on Charity/Education boards doing good work - that incidentally received funding from McCain linked sources. Obama is also having a conservative, homophobic pastor give the blessing at his inaugaration; Does that make him ultraconservative by association?

37) If you think one vote makes a difference, you have poor math skills. You are just as culpable on a statistical basis by not influencing more people to vote (in which case we both had a negligible effect on the election). My voting in no way influences the rest of the apathetic people out there to vote. If I was less disenfranchised, I'd vote under the right circumstances.

38) From my poly sci, people in the government still have more information than you do about a given subject, no matter how much you read in the media. Being informed is good, but it is not a complete substitute for hands-on experience. Try not to judge them so harshly, they are mostly good people, even if sometimes their actions seem very strange from the information we get.

39) Although I do try to pay attention to politics, I honestly don't feel I am informed enough as a voter. I'd do nothing but create noise in the vote preventing people who are informed from having full impact.

40) Most of the people who think they are fully informed are not.

41) Not voting does not cost me the right to complain about the government. Read the constitution.

42) I'm starting a political party called the Apathetic Party. We'd have the majority, but our voter turnout would be horrible.

43) I love kids... time with my nieces and nephew is probably my favorite thing in the world.

44) I love to discuss any topic, and I rarely get angry.

45) Yes, I am arrogant on occasion.

46) Yes, on occasion my arrogance is unjustified.

47) I am aware of 45) and 46), and try not to be that way.

48) Occasional arrogance beats insecurity any day.

49) Yes, I am occasionally insecure.

50) I can only type 50 things before getting bored and needing a break. I'll continue later.

51) I have spent more time inside of garbage cans than the average human being. My older brother Chris used to toss me in a half-full garbage can and close the lid on an almost daily basis for the first 12 years of my life.

52) When I was really young, Chris used to throw me in the trunk of his Barracuda, drive a mile or two away from our house, and see if I could find my way home on foot.

53) The same older brother used to drill me on Math flash cards and the Encyclopedia when I was 4 years old. If I got a question wrong, he'd hit me or flatulate on me, depending on his mood.

54) (53) is a surprisingly effective teaching method. When I was in kindergarten, the teacher was sorting through the Math flashcards used for the 4th and 5th graders. I got them all right, and was immediately moved into 3rd grade math.

55) Despite (54), I was almost held back in first grade because of my handwriting. My handwriting is still god awful.

56) I have minor scars on my inner thighs and crotch from an accident with a lady finger. My brother called me over so I could see him light off the lady finger, and I rode my big wheel over the damn thing. It flew directly up my shorts, spun around for about 20 seconds, and burned me pretty badly.

57) Although this is incredibly dorky, I am probably the best Galaga player you will run into. A friend of mine once described my Galaga skills as follows: "Kip is better at Galaga than anyone has ever been at anything, ever!"

58) I was once kicked out of a tourist trap church in Sedona. Thinking it was a little bit hypocritical that the church was about 1/4th the size of the church's gift shop, I decided to be cantankerous. There was a wall of various "Jesus on the Cross" for sale. I yelled fairly loudly "A guy on a stick... that's brilliant. It'll be the next Pet Rock!" The nun working the register booted me in about 2 seconds.

59) I was kicked out of the cub scouts for cheating at the Pine Wood Derby.

60) I have now done stand-up at open mike nights twice in my life.

61) When I was in first grade, I was suspended for urinating on a kindergartner. A bunch of third graders told me to do it, convincing me that it was school rules for underclassmen to do ANYTHING an upperclassman told them.

62) I have eaten 28 burgers in one hour for a contest.

63) I don't think I have regretted anything in my life more than (62) later the same night.

64) I have bonged 12 beers in one hour.

65) There are very few people who can slam a beer faster than I can.

66) Alcoholism runs in my family. I only drink with friends� I do not keep alcohol in my house.

67) When I was a kid, I came fairly close to dying multiple times due to asthma.

68) I used to fairly regularly go to the emergency room for asthma. These trips often led to protracted hospital stays. Apparently I don't respond well to the conventional treatments for asthma attacks.

69) I skipped 149 out of a possible 169 days of school my senior year of high school. I know the exact number, because one of my teachers kept a "Kip count" on the board to his classroom as a running joke about my absenteeism. The 149 missed days is actually being generous; He'd even give me a half day when classmates saw me at Wendy's for lunch.

70) I played Max Bialystock on stage from "The Producers" before it ever became a stage production/musical. We did it during my second senior year for drama.

71) I am the youngest of 7 children. I was the tie-breaker (I have 3 brothers and 3 sisters).

72) My uncle was the mayor of a small town in northern Canada no one has heard of called Timmins.

73) I carried a 175 average in a bowling league for two years.

74) I can do 50 push-ups.

75) I have gotten so frustrated by a teacher in class that I got up, took the book from him, told him to sit down, and started teaching the class myself. More impressively, he let me.

76) I rarely handed in an assignment in college without changing it drastically to make people laugh (I still did the assignment well, however). I honest to God have no clue why the teachers put up with it in retrospect � sometimes the way I changed the assignment was very offensive to the teacher just to get a laugh.

77) Because of (76), a teacher of mine once told the class "I always save Kip's work to grade last. Usually I finish grading everything else around 2 a.m. Then I pull out a six pack, crack one open, and read Kip's assignment."

78) I consider (77) one of the best compliments I've ever received.

79) I am ridiculously competitive� but a horrible golfer. I force myself to continue golfing to try to teach me some humility.

80) This year I shot an 81 and a 137 at the same golf course on back to back days.

81) I used to be able to dunk a volleyball on a regulation basketball rim (actually, anything I could palm).

82) After two knee surgeries, I can barely touch the rim.

83) I learned to play the card game "Bridge" before I was five. I couldn't even hold all of the 13 cards by myself, so I had to lay them face down on the table and remember where each card was located.

84) Although I was pretty impressive as a five year old, I haven't learned a bloody thing since. I pretty much peaked at the age of five.

85) My body's warranty expired at the age of 21. I played sports all the time, and started getting injured on a fairly regular basis after my 21st birthday.

86) No one in my family, including myself, has the good sense to avoid playing injured � even in pick-up games. We have screwed our bodies up royally because of it. I think I picked up the trait from my brother Tim� he used to make diving catches when throwing the football around on the street.

87) Ever since my brother died, I find myself trying to keep from crying during any emotional scene on TV.

88) I hate scary movies. Scary movies either A) Scare me, which is a very unpleasant feeling, or B) Fail to scare me, in which case it is a crappy scary movie.

89) When I was a freshman in high school, I had to go to the emergency room to get stitches on the day the seniors got their class rings. The seniors liked to turn their rings over so the gem inlay faced their palms, and slap the top of the heads of freshmen as hard as they could. As I was in all senior classes as a freshman, I was the most accessible underclassman. My head was covered in blood by the end of the day.

90) The first female I ever had a crush on was Linda Carter as Wonder Woman.

91) My whole family used to think I was exactly like a little version of my brother Chris � and to a large extent I agreed. Imagine that one of the two people you are most like in the entire world (my friend Josh is the other) dies of a drug overdose. That thought bothers me on an almost daily basis.

92) Despite the fact that I have been in college my whole adult life, am the youngest in the family, and never owned a house, stocks, etc., I was the named executor of my brother's estate.

93) The vast majority of my brother's estate, coming to approximately $750,000 dollars including his life insurance policy, was left to his ex-girlfriend.

94) My brother's ex-girlfriend broke up with him approximately a year and a half before he died. She wouldn't even return my brother's phone calls/letters during that time.

95) My brother was in the process of changing his will right before his overdose, but didn't get it finished.

96) My brother had 11 patents and started three companies prior to his death.

97) The patent to the airbag in the PT Cruiser is my brother's.

98) I am now getting to the point where I no longer think about my brother's death on a daily basis.

99) (98) makes me feel guilty, as I am deliberately avoiding thinking about him because it still cause me a great deal of pain.

100) I miss him.