He climbed; cau­tiously plac­ing one foot before the next as he ascended the room’s sin­gle dias. Grip­ping the hard-oak edge of the speaker box he cleared his throat and tried to not look upon the faces before him. “My name is Argy, and I’ve been tagged.”

So, Mer­rilee Faber of Not Enough Words smacked me up with a tag and although I do not usu­ally do these kinds of things (how many times have I read that on the blogs of other tag-ees) I thought this time — new year and what­not — I would humour the prospect of this one and say my piece. It might also help to actu­ally ‘put a per­son’ behind the name of the writer, as I have read on a cou­ple of already pub­lished replies.

So, here are  se7en degrees of me you likely did not know:

I: I seem to have two per­son­al­i­ties, one that will bend over back­wards for one per­son and say fuck you to the next. I’m not sure where it comes from, or where it is going to take me, but some­times it helps and some­times it hin­ders. I am not a Gem­ini, a do not have diag­nosed schiz­o­phre­nia but my god I can be happy, buoy­ant and hilar­i­ous one day, and a grouchy old bas­tard the next.

II: I hate cilantro. What type of a dis­gust­ing, tangy green piece of cacky veg­etable is that? If it goes in any­thing, I’m out… sorry. I can do grim and dis­gust­ing: I can clean up cat crap and unplug toi­lets, but cilantro, well no comment.

III. I never knew my father, waa. I don’t begrudge him, or any­one for that mat­ter. In fact, I am com­pletely indif­fer­ent to the fact that I had no male-rearing dur­ing the course of my child­hood. Maybe it made me respect women more, maybe it made it more of a chal­lenge for me to learn to become a father myself, but it is what it is.

IV. I love facts, weird lit­tle things that are of no real impor­tance. I have been research­ing (in a way) the future of the uni­verse and the nature of Red Dwarfs and it’s been fas­ci­nat­ing. I also quickly looked up the mean­ing of a tea I have recently come to know, and it’s com­pletely use­less to any­body but me.

V: I’m oddly strong for some­one as tall and thin as me. Cur­rently I reside at 6′ — 6’1″ and I hang in the low 140lbs. This makes me the equiv­a­lent of a daddy long legs at a bee party. Yet, I do have enough strength to often go beyond what one might deem my means. I can lift, run, push etc etc what some­one twice my size can. Maybe it’s good breed­ing, or maybe that unknown father fig­ure was Her­cules him­self (I jest, I do not believe I am descended from a Greek half-God nor any Spartans).

VI: I rarely cry. I recall, in the last two years, cry­ing exactly twice. One when I saw Chil­dren of Men — the scene where all the shoot­ing stops yadda yadda, and the sec­ond when my daugh­ter was born. How weird a duo of instances to shed a tear? The for­mer was under­stood at the time, but when the lat­ter hap­pened it made me won­der what these two things had in com­mon. Come to your own conclusions.

VII: I’m going bald or thin­ning, or both. I’m in my mid-twenties and have a pathetic head of hair on-top, oh what a man I am. It began about three-years ago after I tried to grow my hair long for the third time in my life. At that time, the front just would not grow and I ended up look­ing like a badly uti­lized floor mop. I’m okay now though, I don’t dis­may. After that real­i­sa­tion I shaved it all off and grew a beard. Rogain can fuck off too, I’m never try­ing that. I’d rather be bald than pathetic (hush, you).