i'm stealing this from giallo, who stole this from someone else. ah, nothing like plagiarism of ideas on the net!

1. i am currently listening to and singing with tori amos, under the pink, in an attempt to drown out the nascar race from the adjoining room.

2. my parents watch nascar on an almost-religious basis.

3. this fact, among others, used to make me wonder if i was adopted, despite the fact that i look just like my mother.

4. i have a fascination with uniform shirts, especially ones that still have someone else's name attached.

5. i work with preschoolers. all. day. long. and i love it.

6. i would rather talk to preschoolers than to many adults that i know.

7. i still find sesame street entertaining, except for anything starring elmo.

8. i hate elmo. especially the tickle-me version.

9. i have only one computer password, because if i don't i get confused.

10. said computer password is the same one i've been using since my freshman year of college, when the computers were still linux.

11. i can type and think at the same time, unless i'm writing poems.

12. when writing poems, i must have a black, fine point pilot v-ball.

13. i am currently between books, which does not mean that i'm not reading, but rather that i'm re-reading certain passages of old favorites at various times of the day.

14. at bedtime presently i am re-reading the kitchen god's wife by amy tan.

15. last week i was reading winnie-the-pooh before bed.

16. i have bizarre dreams that seem to take all night, and generally involve flying, being chased, having superpowers, and falling in love. yes, all in the same dream. they're like feature-length movies in my head.

17. i frequently have dreams featuring the cast of daria.

18. i once dreamed that the cast of friends and i were on a dangerous space mission. in this dream i did a lot of laundry and gave birth to twins.

19. the only type of pants i feel really comfortable wearing are jeans.

20.if i can't wear jeans for some reason, i try to sneak under the radar with cords. otherwise, i have to wear a skirt, because dress pants make me feel ridiculous-looking.

21.i make it a practice to wear outrageous underwear beneath my work clothes.

22. my favorite planet has always been venus, because i read a story once about a group of children on venus who were so jealous of the one girl from earth that they locked her in a closet for the one day that the sun shone on venus. and because it's the only planet i can easily identify.

23. i haven't eaten anything today, because i can't decide what to eat, and i'd rather not eat anything than eat something i don't want.

24. i am currently wearing a shirt with the name josh embroidered across the top of the right pocket over a black turtleneck. tres art-school, no?

25. my friend ali and i have been planning "beatpoetgrrl's quarter-century bash" since january. it will take place in june, and involve lots of 80s music.

26. when i used to work at the salvation army learning center, and i was the last person to leave, i used to sing the national anthem in the gym before going home, just to hear myself.

27. my friend jenn and i once were going to make a band in which we hummed all the instrumental parts, and we were going to call it troy's bucket, after that scene in goonies where mikey tells everyone they can take the easy way out and go up troy's bucket.

28. i read compulsively. if it's in facing me, and legible, i have to read it. this goes for matchbooks, air freshener, etc.

29. i occasionally wake up in the middle of the night craving chocolate.

30. i can read music.

31. i used to play the piano, until i cut off the tip of my pinky at 16, thus effectively ruining my music career.

32. i was classically trained in voice, and once sang i know that my redeemer liveth from handel's messiah as a church solo for the easter service.

33. i used to be extrememly active in the lutheran church, until i went to college and got corrupted.

34.i can change a tire, change my oil, pack a wheel bearing. i also know what a celanoid is, where my distributor cap is, what my catalytic converter does, an have a pretty decent knowledge of an internal combustion engine.

35. my father used to be a mechanic.

36. i have matching freckles on the back of each earlobe. otherwise, most of my larger freckles come in threes.

37. i collect pez dispensers

38. i generally dislike the color pink, but i have purchased four separate articles of pink clothing in the last three months.

39. none of said pink articles of clothing are things that would ordinarily be worn in public.

40. i am actively looking forward to "pajama day" at work. it's this friday.

41. i currently have a very painful bruise on the inside of my left ankle. it is the result of kicking myself with my right foot while walking.

42. sometimes when i wake up my jaw is completely misaligned, and i have to pop it back in place.

43. i have bursts of energy in which i start to reorganize my closets and do large amounts of laundry, but they dissipate quickly and everything gets left in a big mess.

44. i was picked on so extensively in fifth grade that i had a nervous breakdown.

45. i prefer to say that i write poems, not poetry, because "writing poetry" sounds like such a wifty, granola-bar, puffy shirt kind of thing.

46. i have a serious crush on lex luthor (yes the character, not the actor) in the WB show smallville. partly because he's hot and bald, and partly because he seems blindingly intelligent and a little bit nuts.

47. my toenails are currently gunmetal silver.

48. my most recent fabulous purchase was a belt covered entirely with silver glitter.

49. i sometimes think drag queens have the most fun out of everyone on the planet. i also think most fashion designers are secretly making their clothing for drag queens, as they are the only people who really look good in them.

50. on my bedroom walls are: a kandinsky print of concentric circles that my nephew thinks look like sushi, a mark rothko print, a paul klee print, my photographs, poems i love, and a blue and yellow stylized butterfly painting that i found at the market street mission in morristown, among other things

51. i am now starting to realize exactly how difficult it is to come up with one hundred facts about myself.

52. i own not one, but two meatloaf albums.

53. i dye my hair far more than is good for me.

54. i always feel good the day after i dye my hair, which may explain #53.

55. i don't actually own a desk. i own a hoosier cabinet (hutch on top, counter space, drawers beneath, all in one convenient-but-massive piece of furniture) that i use to store books and to write at. i used to keep my computer on a piece of wood balanced across two crates, but now i just use the family computer.

56. i live with my parents, mostly because i can't afford to do otherwise.

57. i sleep with a teddy bear. his name is bear. original, i know.

58. the text across the photograph in this diary layout isn't supposed to be legible.

59. for those of you who are going absolutely crazy trying to read it, it says "and we never knew how close it was...funny how life turns out."

60. i'm afraid of the dark.

61. i like snakes, bats, and mice, but have a real problem with moths.

62. i cry over sad movies, television shows, and harry chapin songs.

63. i have a hard time crying when i'm actually sad, because i think i'm just being silly.

64. i was a theater geek in high school. i was the reporter in little shop of horrors, grandma tzeitl in fiddler on the roof, and an old busybody in the music man. and i still know all my lines.

65. i count backwards in my head to put myself to sleep. on a very bad night, i start at 500.

66. my favorite method of writing is on a summer night, outside, with lots of candles in old glass soda bottles instead of electricity.

67. i got my eyebrow pierced one week after getting dumped in college. sort of a socially-acceptable mutilation, if you will. it grew out five months later.

68. my favorite color is red, though i generally wear black.

69. i wear black because it makes me feel put-together and is easy to match, not because i'm depressed or trying to be deep.

70. ever since i read a story in which one of the characters always had something red on, i have tried to wear one colorful thing every day.

71. i have an entire trunk in my bedroom filled with items from my past.

72. in that trunk are old love letters, dried flowers, photos of old crushes, stuffed animals, tea sets, and at least one journal for every year since eighth grade.

73. i have two cats, named jezebel and luna. i call them my babies. luna is black, and likes to sleep on my white sheets. jezebel is a light calico, and likes to sleep on my black plush vanity seat.

74. every time icq goes off, the CD stutters. i could probably fix it, but it sounds really neat.

75. i finally gave in to hunger and ordered italian take-out. cheese ravioli and garlic bread yum. of course, you wouldn't want to be within breathing distance of me now

76. i desperately need to do laundry, as i didn't do any last weekend, either. though it is gratifying to know that i have enough clothing to get through two weeks of work.

77. the five items i can't live without:

1. cigarettes

2. caffeine

3. books

4. a fuzzy blanket

5. pen and notebook

78. i should probably add corrective eyewear to that list. though i suppose i could just squint a lot, if it came down to giving up one of the other things on that list.

79. if i could be anywhere at the moment, i'd be somewhere warm and sparsely populated. preferably with a lot of sunshine, trees, and a river.

80. i have a tendency to borrow other people's stories as my own, or at least to change things from "my friend's friend" to "this guy i know" in order to improve the flow of a narration.

81. i am, indeed, a virgin.

82. i scored a 71 out of 80 on the verbal section of the PSAT test.

83. i have failed one college english course twice. it was literary criticism, if you wanted to know. and i failed it because i stopped going both times, because i was bored to tears and would sit there and watch the professor's perfectly groomed hair bounce back and forth in one big unbroken wave across his forehead.

84.best (or worst) lie i've ever told: to the First Boyfriend: 'it's not you, it's me.'

i should have said, 'you are a raging psychopath, and i am going to run far, far away now.'

85. i have a set of beliefs that i refer to as beatpoetgrrl-ianity (using my real name, of course. which, if you know it, makes that joke funnier.)

86. among said tenets are: people are funny, things will be what they will be, beauty is everywhere, and don't expect too much from anyone, so you won't be disappointed.

87. at any given party, i will usually be the one holding the puking person, keeping the drunk guy from falling out a window, or cleaning up the spill. i have no idea why this is, but i will say that i'm damn good at it.

88. my hair has finally gotten long enough to pull most of it back into a ponytail, something that hasn't happened in a good three years.

89. i am bitterly regretting the urge i had back in october to give myself bangs, and have hidden al scissor-like implements to ward off any other temptations.

90. i once dated a guy who bore a striking resemblance both to jim morrison and a muppet.

91. a good quarter of my freshman english class in junior high cheated off my tests. they all passed, of course.

92. i never look good in pictures that other people take of me, but ones i take of myself tend to turn out wonderfully.

93. my great-grandmother used to go through all art and national geographic magazines and draw clothes on all the nudes.

94. i can still count all the people i've kissed on my fingers. after ten years, it's thankfully starting to get crowded.

95. i am embarrassed by my crooked teeth, but not enough that i have stopped smiling, except in photos.

96. i drink far too much coke.

97. i am absolutely terrible at keeping in touch with people, though i often think of them and wonder how they are.

98. i have no intentions of living with my parents longer than i have to, and yet i get obscurely unhappy when i hear them talk about selling the house. probably because i've lived here since i was 3 days old.

99. it has taken me over a year and counting to get over my last crush.

100. i have fantasies about being on earth for some larger purpose, and sometimes daydream for days at a time.

there, now, aren't you just thrilled to have learned so much about me?

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