“Blogging” is still fairly new to me, at least when you’re talking about the culture that has sprung up around it. I’m like Unfrozen Caveman Blogger:

“Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, I am just a caveman. I know nothing of your ‘microwave ovens’ and your ‘blog ranking websites’. Words like ‘pimped’ and ‘tagged’ confuse and frighten me. But there’s one thing I do know…”

I have previously been “pimped” for the first time, and now I have had my inaugural “tagging” performed. Interestingly enough, both times the culprit has been Ray Ray. I think maybe he’s got a man-thing for me.

In any case, the topic of this tagging is “Six Weird Things About Me”. I’m not going to provide you with the six weirdest things, because each one of those could serve as kindling for its own blog bonfire, and some day when I’m fresh out of other ideas I may need to use them. So you get some random oddity. Prepare to be SWTAMed:

1) I once shopped at a mall wearing a gorilla suit.
While working a seasonal job at a Halloween costume store at the mall, I noticed that we had a full-body gorilla suit for sale and begged the manager to let me put it on. She was hesitant, but agreed when I offered to carry around a sign advertising the store.

So I doffed the simian duds and set off through the mall. I rode the escalator, pretending to look at my watch. I went to the record store and put on the sample headset, bopping around to the latest tunes. I visited Victoria’s Secret and perused the unmentionables. I stopped by Taco Bell and ordered a gordita. All without a word and only hand gestures and muffled grunts through which to express my wishes. It was a great time, I gave shoppers that day a story to bring home, and best of all, I enjoyed complete anonymity.

2) I’ll talk to strangers, but only if I decide what we talk about.
When I’m in line for something, I’ll make small talk with people, but only if it’s funny. I’ll ask an elderly woman if she thinks the gym socks I’m wearing will make me look fat. I’ll request the serious opinion of the Portuguese man waiting behind me about the alien Elvis clones found by the Weekly World News. But if a random person engages me, their topic is almost always the weather. Sorry, I just can’t stand talking about the weather. Unless it’s mockingly: “We sure are having weather today, huh? I hear there’s going to be more of it tomorrow, but I don’t trust those guys on TV one bit.”

3) I can’t eat most vegetables.
It makes me feel like such a child admitting this. I’ve tried, I really have. I’ve had ex-girlfriends try to force-feed me salads and autumn foliage. I’ve attempted to wean myself onto them because it would make eating healthy so much easier. I just can’t do it. Green stuff provokes my gag reflex almost immediately.

Maybe it’s because when I was growing up, my parents loved to cook large quantities of all the most hideous veggies, including cauliflower and Brussels sprouts. In order to clean my plate and qualify for dessert, I used to take a swig of milk and then stuff one of the slimy green knobs into my mouth, suspended in the milk so that it wouldn’t touch my tongue, and swallow the entire mess whole. That’s enough to ruin anything for a kid, I’d say.

4) My distaste for veggies also extends to beer.
Again, I’ve tried. I’ve attempted again and again to hold my nose, swill that amber bitterness and acquire a taste for it. But that taste always eludes me.

I mean, it’s basically wheat soda. How is this appealing to anybody?

5) I actually loved the movie BASEketball.
Honestly. It’s one of the few comedies I can watch again and again and never get tired of. I know it’s got a bad reputation, and I know it’s a stupid, stupid movie. That’s what I love about it. The filmmakers knew they were setting out to make an idiotic movie, and did their very best to infuse it with as much blatant stupidity as possible. But it’s tongue-in-cheek “smart stupidity”, and that separates it from movies that are unintentionally dumb. Besides, I can’t get enough of seeing Ernest Borgnine complaining cluelessly about “You kids with your loud music and your Dan Fogelberg, your Zima, hula hoops and Pac-Man video games…” while Trey Parker stares at him in confusion. I highly recommend giving it a shot (Hah!).

6) I usually sleep naked.
I thought this one made a nice bookend to the gorilla suit story, somehow. I like clothes. I wear them fairly often. However, I find them restrictive (”Big shocker there,” whispers my bathroom scale aside to the audience). And if I’m sleeping and alone, I prefer to shed them and feel the unrestrained freedom, as well as the cottony softness of my comforter against bare flesh.

Don’t worry: I would never wish on any other person the madness and night-terrors that forever follow the sight of my pasty-fleshed form in sufficient lighting conditions. So I don’t ever walk around naked or anything, I assure you. It’s just one little luxury I allow myself in the solitude of a bed when nobody else is around. And the “little trooper” enjoys the breathing room, too.

So, there you have it. And now it’s my turn to tag six other people for this grim purpose. For those six, my choices are…hey look, a monkey in a leotard!!!