How do you do, indeed?

I'm the younger sibling.  Because she set the time frame based on me, I'll say I'm a certain age.  I had a different midwest experience, leaving when I was 12... from being picked on as a nerd in a rural elementary school to being picked on as a nerd in a "big city suburb."  It's nice to know some values truly are American.  But I came out okay, mocking derision aside.


I attended the same college as my older sister, starting the semester after she graduated, and "doing my thing."  Like many 20-something guys, I was a huge sports fan.  Always loved hockey- started watching it when ESPN made it to our rural midwestern hovel at the tender age of 8- and grew to like or tolerate the rest.  My zeal for sports has calmed a bit, though.

I am an Alpha Nerd.  I have a Master's in Chemistry, I can still fill 90% of the periodic table by memory.  I am a gamer.  Not just video games, but the tawdry, freeform variety that involve sweaty, obese men with neckbeards that can quote rules and probabilities of events in an amateur attempt to be Rain Man.  You might say "You mean like Dungeons and Dragons?"  I would respond... "roll for initiative.  it's on." 

This is not to say I am completely socially inept.  Just enough to struggle with events and issues that the average human being takes for granted.  Mostly because I dislike anything that's popular.


I've had a bit of an arrested development- got married at 32, had my first child four years later.  Ended up making a career out of the desperation of simply finding a job for awhile.  For 8 years I still don't understand how I made money doing what I did.  Now I don't understand how others do.

I am pretty relaxed as far as personal politics go- as long as you don't tell me what to think, I won't tell you where to go- and that's served for some time.  Occasionally people will try to get me to change my thinking.  This is when they realize I can be... difficult.   I really, honestly don't care about "what side of the aisle you're on."  Unlike many of the mouth-breathing, adderal-addicted, generic simpletons that graduate college but can't find China on a map or a chinese restaurant on the internet I can actually argue both sides of a political issue.  I do this to induce apoplexy in the weak-minded.

I also like jello.

And much like my sibling I am also a faceless, nameless drone in the buzz of our nation's capitol.  I truly revel in this, though.  I feel no need to stand out.  The less people know the better.  Becoming a father has made me truly understand my general worth, or more appropriately worthlessness.  I don't exist to be a person, I exist for my wife and son.  My joy is irrelevant anymore.

I am here because my sister- the woman who shares my parents, 13 years of my life, and many other things- asked me to and to show that despite having the same DNA donors you can have two human beings as dissimilar as we are... or at least, dissimilar is how we are able to sleep at night.  It's when we'll start to accept the similarities that will come out of this interwebz dokument that revelations will be made, gasping will be heard, a giant crack will occur in a glacier, and as the tower of jade topples in front of us we will run through a grassy field and realize the meaninglessness of existance.