October 26, 2011

• Tag; I’m It.

  

  Until I do my post about the Sacrament of Baptism, I was tagged yesterday by @QuantumStorm to post a list of seven things people probably didn’t know about me. So, here goes!

   

  1. Up until I entered the Jesuits, Star Wars was my chief interest/hobby.

  

  Granted I still have the occasional occasion to indulge in my old interest, but not nearly to the level I used to. The picture is from two years ago when the local symphony was doing the music of John Williams and a few members of the 501st Legion were present. Last weekend at Discovery World was Star Wars Day and not only were there Clone Troopers, Mandalorians and Clone Troopers present, but R2-D2 was there as well. I also tune in to Cartoon Network every Friday for a little dose of Star Wars fun.

  Before joining the Society, however, I would do Star Wars roleplaying adventures with my college friends, read Star Wars novels, play Star Wars video/computer games, etc. I don’t recall ever dressing up as a Star Wars character for Halloween or any other reason but had I the money and the means I think I would have joined the 501st or other fan group that dresses up for special events.

  Before college was the height of Star Wars-dom for me, though. Growing up outside a small town we had no internet and little access to malls, bookstores, comic shops, etc. To go to “the big city” was a rare treat. When I was in fifth grade two high school boys babysat my siblings and I and introduced us to the Star Wars Roleplaying Game (the old-school West End Games version). When I was old enough to do the babysitting my brother and I decided that it would be fun to start our own roleplaying game. So we cannibalized every board game in the house for dice and pooled together what then was our meager collective knowledge of Star Wars. We watched the classic trilogy over and over and over and I took copious notes of everything. I dove headfirst into the Star Wars Customizable Card Game and learned even more. I read every book I could. Over the next decade my brother and I (mostly me) developed a massive and very comprehensive Star Wars roleplaying game that started out just being handwritten rules and notes on scratch paper and became typed up and three-ring binder-bound rules with a sense of order about them. I had stats on over 200 starfighters, shuttles and transports (basically everything around the size of a Medium-transport on down) and well over 100 ships the size of a Corellian Corvette on up. This is just for starships; I had stats on weapons, equipment, creatures, alien species, everything. 

  We would have epic roleplaying parties with our circle of friends two or even three times a year where we’d roleplay the whole time, eating Tostitos and other junk and guzzling a whole refrigerator full of pop. As the adventure progressed (we played the same characters, the same adventure for over ten years) it grew to include elements from the Starcraft computer games, Aliens, Independence Day, the Homeworld computer games, and toward the end I even permitted a sprinkling of Star Trek. 

  I even drew up this map of the Star Wars galaxy as we had, over time, created it to be:

  

  

  Here you can see a close-up of the Core Systems, including Coruscant near the middle.

  But, as everyone got into college and “grew up” the possibility of getting the whole crew together for even one day of roleplaying became impossible, and so the adventure had to end about five years ago or so. And since then I just haven’t found the recent Star Wars novels as appealing as I used to (I probably spoiled my tastes by finally reading Tolkien; it’s hard to step down from that!) and the Star Wars movies don’t have the same appeal as they used to, either. I still enjoy watching them maybe once a year or so, especially if I am sharing them with someone who has never seen them before.

   

  2. I only ever had one girlfriend.

   

  (Sorry for the quality but, lacking a scanner, I had to take a picture of a picture!) 

  Her name was Christina; all throughout high school I was rejected by every girl I ever fell for. Finally, at the age of 19 and having a year of college under my belt, someone fell for me. We were together for a year and a half before she broke up with me. I sometimes wonder where she is now and how she is doing, and I pray for her.

  Sometimes I leave comments on Xanga about relationships, love, etc. and people instantly snap back, “What the hell do you know? You are just come sexless blah blah blah…” Well, now you know that I at least do have SOME idea of what I am talking about!

  That and now you’ve seen me in a zoot suit!

   

  3. I wanted to be an archaeologist.

  

  When I graduated high school in 2002 I went to the University of Wyoming to study archaeology. For years my dad and I hunted arrowheads in Iowa and even in the Red Desert north and south of Rawlins, Wyoming. We’d go out to the middle of nowhere, out where there is no sign of civilization as far as you can see except for the two-track road that brought us there, and that was probably made several decades ago by sheep herders. No one out with us save for the occasional pronghorn antelope or, if you were lucky, a beautiful, powerful, majestic wild horse. I miss that area sorely, and I don’t know if I’ll ever make it back there again. 

  I also LOVED U-Dub, as we affectionately called it. I made awesome friends there and had tons of fun; lots of roleplaying and sundry nerdy things. It was also the place (well, down the street at the Newman Center) that I really began to care about my Catholic faith which, as you can probably guess, set me on the course of the rest of my life. It’s just a terrific place to go to school.

   

  4. I’ve seen a UFO.

  

  When I was in third grade I woke up in the middle of the night. It was fall so there were no leaves on the trees and the night was clear. The moon was straight up in the sky (moon-noon I suppose!) but I don’t know what time it was. My brother was sleeping on a trundle-bed on the floor.

  Looking out the window to the west of the house I saw this big yellow ball just floating partly behind one of the trees. In the center the ball was a sort of orange color and there were three black lines streaking from it through the yellow part. It just sat there and I was terrified. Then it began to shrink and suddenly it was a small dot on the horizon, and then it would zoom back up to full size, and it did that several times. I just sat there unable to move and having no idea what the heck I was looking at. Were I thinking I’d have woken my brother so there would be another witness but, being the stupid third grader I was, I just stared. Finally I ran to my parents’ room and told them what I had seen. Dad came in quickly but OF COURSE there was nothing there any more.

  I remember the next morning we were all having breakfast before going to Mass and I heard my dad talking to my mom in the kitchen. She asked why I had come into their room last night and dad said, “Jacob said he saw something in the sky, but I didn’t see anything. He was really afraid of something, though, so I don’t think he was making it up.”

  Spooky, huh?

   

  5. Among many kinds of music I enjoy, symphonic power metal is among them.

  What?!

  Yeah, unexpected I imagine! Granted, it isn’t a huge percentage of music in my ITunes, but there is a smattering of some select songs, such as:

  or

  This is a very recent development, too; one of my scholastic brothers last school year introduced me to the genre. I really enjoy the “epic” scale of some of the songs, but moreso the storytelling quality, at least of the tunes I have picked out for my listening pleasure. I’m pretty picky when choosing metal songs that I enjoy but I thought it would definitely qualify as something y’all didn’t know about me! So if it is a metal song with good instrumentation, singing and lyrics (and isn’t loud, screaming, growling, etc.) then I may at least give it a shot!

  I mainly prefer film score music, big band/swing, folk, Irish/Celtic, classic rock, and music along those lines.

   

  6. I used to collect swords.

  Yes indeed! In high school I was fascinated with knighthood, chivalry, and Arthurian legend. I purchased my first sword at a gun show for $40.

  

  I eventually gave it to my girlfriend, as she collected swords, too. I lost it in “the divorce” haha. I also had a Confederate Cavalry Sabre (reenactment quality, so, very sturdy) which I gave to a college friend before I became a Jesuit, an Excalibur sword I purchased in Scotland:

  

  I ended up giving it to my friend formerly-known-as-maje_charis here on Xanga, before I became a Jesuit. And then last summer she entered a convent, and so I have it back! I don’t really know what to do with it now, so I am hoping one of my siblings will hurry up and have a really nerdy kid I can give it to someday. 

  A cheapo katana that was really the only sword I used (since it was so cheap and I didn’t care if it broke). It was my constant traveling companion when I would go out in the woods, whether I used it as a machete or just to make myself feel knightly or adventurous. I think I gave that to an old high school buddy who just wanted a sword to hang on his wall as well as something to remember me by, something so “me” that he’d never forget who it belonged to. Having taken my own oaths of chivalry as a high school freshman, it was something that everyone who knew me knew me for. I suppose one can be remembered for worse! I also had a massive, solid, hand-crafted Scottish claymore that my mother secretly purchased me while we were in Scotland and then gave me for Christmas. It had a straight crossbar like the one seen in Braveheart but varied in every other respect. Being an actual, true, real sword and not a “wall-hanger” as many swords out there are, I could easily have bashed a car to bits with it. But I loved it too much, so I was careful with it, giving it away to my best friend from high school before I became a Jesuit. Lastly I owned a United Cutlery produced Glamdring, the sword of Gandalf from The Lord of the Rings:

  

  I had a college buddy in Wyoming who needed cash and sold it to me for $100. Shyeah! I gave it to another high school friend before I entered. So, now, besides the “sword of truth” I suppose, I no longer have any swords save for the one that was returned to me.

   

  7. I’ve been to Space Camp

   

  When I was in sixth grade the local news station held a contest: for every A paper a person turned in they could enter a drawing for an all-expense paid trip to Space Camp. I wasn’t going to do it, even though I was obsessed with the space program (I would write NASA letters all the time with questions about outer space, and some nice person out there would send me back a short letter along with all sorts of pictures and documents with answers to my questions). My social studies teacher encouraged me to do it any way and helped keep track of any A papers I gave her: 14 in all. I ended up being drawn and when I finally met the other four students from Eastern Iowa who also had won I heard the two boys talking:

  “How many papers did you turn in? I had 54.”

  “83; I figured that would be enough.”

  ?!

  And I thought 14 was a big number…

  Space Camp was an absolute blast. I was the oldest kid in my group, and I still remember my best friend there was a kid from Missouri named Beau McDill. At the end of the week there was a big assembly and after some talks and such they presented the one award that they gave out: the Outstanding Trainee Award.

  Yeah, I got it.

   

   

  So there you go; seven things you likely didn’t know about me!

  • 3:19 pm
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