10 random things about me, a.k.a. If I were a Catholic this is what my time at the confessional would sound like:
1) Believe
it or not…..I am actually a registered Hillary Clinton supporter. Has nothing
to do with support of her – I’m trying to sabotage things by helping her cause
in the Democratic primaries against Obama, for reasons that make sense only to
a devious, evil, Republican. 
2) When
I was 5, I started reading World Book encyclopedias. Mom told me, “Ben, just
remember, they’re in alphabetical order.” Only problem was, she hadn’t put the
books in correct order. For a long time, I thought “J” was the first
letter of the alphabet.
3) When
I was little, my favorite color was pink.
4) My
Chinese name is actually a girl’s name.
5) After
reading about U.S.
interrogation practices in Newsweek, I decided to waterboard myself
to see what it felt like. I got a hose, put a heavy towel over my face, lay
down, and put the hose on direct flow on my face. I don’t think I did it right,
because it didn’t do anything to me – I didn’t smother or suffocate. I lay there for 5 minutes and was thinking, "You know, maybe Guantanamo's not so bad after all."
6) Speaking
of suffocation, something happened 13 years ago that still gives me nightmares.
When my youngest brother, Tim, was a baby, I was 7 years old and was once
covering him with blankets in his crib. Being unnoticing, I put several heavy
blankets over his face and didn't think about it again until hours later. He's
perfectly fine, but even today, I still wake up with a jolt suddenly in the
middle of the night, thinking about how he could have suffocated.
7) My
right wrist was dislocated when I was 12 and the bone was never really put back in place.
Sometimes when I type for an extended period of time, it starts to hurt. Really,
really bad. To make the pain go away, I will lie on my bed and throw a football
at the ceiling, sometimes for hours on end.
8) There
is a porcelain rooster sitting on my desk. (Ask Karen for the story.)
9) When I was
6, I was at a Children’s Institute in Houston
and the teacher was asking all the kids what their favorite animal was. Most of
the kids replied: dogs, cats, parakeets, hamsters, etc. My favorite animal was
the bombardier beetle.
10) Another memory
from the same Children’s Institute: On the first day, the teacher said she was
going to take all of us kids to “The Big Arena” – where all the large groups
met for songs, story telling, etc. Well, I remembered from reading Foxe’s Book of Martyrs that an “arena”
was a place where Christians got fed to the lions. I made a huge fuss...
| 
