Everybody else is doing it: 100 short things about me
Finally, a meme that involves the creation of original content instead of just copying a link. I think I kinda blew the "short" requirement though.

1. I'm doing this because I saw other people doing it first. It annoys me that I didn't think of doing it before then. That says lots about me.
2. My full name is Laurie James Voss. I'm fine with James and like Voss, but hate Laurie because it's a girl's name. And I have enough trouble with people mistaking my gender as it is.
3. I use the name Seldo instead. I spend far too much time thinking about my names, and the motivations behind them.
4. There is a web page explaining where I came up with "Seldo". My website also has an unbelievable amount of information about me
5. There's also a page explaining why I don't think this is too vain or egotistical. I spend far too much time thinking about, designing and writing stuff for my website
6. Somewhere out there there's an e-commerce website that gives people order reference numbers the first 3 and last 2 digits of which, when punched into a phone, spell "seldo". This is because I programmed it that way.
7. The "o" at the end of "Seldo" suggests masculinity, if you speak spanish. I can speak spanish to GCSE level, but am out of practice.
8. I'm currently learning to speak french. I love the idea of speaking in other languages, and the subtle ways language warps thought.
9. I am intensely transcontinental.
10. The five adjectives I use too much are intensely, unbelievably, completely, extremely and ridiculously.
11. I have a bad habit of exaggerating my stories to make them sound more interesting. I'm not as bad as I was.
12. I often express opinions or concepts as quoted speech. "What does that mean?" "I think he's giving us an example." "That's clever."
13. I find my quoted-speech habit a useful IQ test -- it confuses slow people. But that's not why I do it.
14. Above all things, I hate being misunderstood. People misunderstand me, all the time. I think it's my fault, but can't fix it.
15. People who have met me, but don't know me, tend to think I'm arrogant.
16. When I am sure of my knowledge on a subject, I'm arrogant as all hell. Sometimes I'm sure, but am still wrong.
17. I am very open to having my opinions changed and my beliefs modified. I'm proud of that.
18. I am an intellectual elitist. I worship and envy people smarter than me, and I am arrogant and condescending to those who aren't.
19. If I have ever insulted you or made you feel slighted, I'm sorry, and it was probably unintentional. If I dislike and/or want to insult someone, I am not subtle about it.
20. I absolutely detest having to hang around with or talk to people I dislike or find boring. I don't do it.
21. I like nearly everyone I have ever met, but some more than others.
22. I am self-centered to the point of being pathological.
23. I am from Trinidad. I am very proud of being Trinidadian.
24. I like being from a small and unimportant country as it gives me free licence to criticise all the big ones.
25. I am an athiest. At my primary school, the religious education period catered for six different religions, including Ba'hai. I have participated in religious ceremonies for every major world religion, and prayed -- sincerely -- to all their gods.
26. My favourite religious holiday when I was a child was Divali, because you got to eat great food and light hundreds of deyas.
27. I am a pyromaniac, as is every male in my family.
28. I have two brothers, who are 6 and 8 years older than me. I appreciate them more and more every day.
29. I once accidentally stepped into a pile of ash that was still hot. My blood flash-boiled. The scar covered half my left foot, but my feet are bigger now.
30. I wear European size 42 shoes. I never have any idea what my size is in US or UK measurements.
31. Once I was at home alone watching TV, and had it so loud I didn't hear my dogs killing a cat in the garden outside. I felt terrible about that for days.
32. The house I grew up in was huge, and had an enormous garden ( 3/4 of an acre ). It had dozens of fruiting and flowering trees, separate cricket and football pitches, and an ornamental garden. I grew up thinking everyone's gardens were small and boring.
33. My childhood was full of fun, adventure and excitement, and I realised it at the time. I'm very lucky.
34. My family and I spent a lot of my childhood weekends in an ancient colonial-era house on a tiny island off the north-west coast.
35. I am extremely surefooted in boats, and love water and the sea especially.
36. My father owns a medium-sized power boat. They are much easier to drive than you'd think.
37. I learned to swim before I can remember. Swimming deep underwater in clear water is like flying.
38. I achieved white sail 1, which basically means I know how to capsize a small sailing boat and hang around waiting for help.
39. When I was learning to sail, I got caught in a freak storm that caused hundreds of thousands of dollars in damage. We capsized instantly and waited for help, while our more competent peers stayed up and smashed into other boats at high speed, causing lots of damage.
40. When I look back at my childhood, there were lots of clues that I was gay, and I formed lots of male crushes.
41. I was completely unaware that I was gay until I got Internet access and found porn.
42. I was extremely gay-friendly when I thought I was straight.
43. I used to look forward to being a rich straight white male who could fight for the rights of the poor, gays, non-whites and women without being accused of doing it out of self-interest.
44. I am an ethnic minority. I hate it when people mis-use that term when what they really mean is "non-whites".
45. I abhor racism. I also hate calling african people "black"; their skin is various shades of brown, not black. "African descent" is no good either; in evolutionary terms *everyone* is "of African descent".
46. I think it's insane that people from Pakistan and people from China are both described as "Asian". I think "indian" (little i) and "oriental" describe the two sets of racial characteristics much better.
47. I hate the hypocrisy of people who can tell the difference between a German and an Italian but claim that Chinese, Japanese and Korean people all look the same.
48. I have a really huge forehead, and really big lips. People often take my lips as a sign that I have african blood. I have always wished I was a little bit african, so I could have some credibility.
49. By standard measures I am 1/4 German and 3/4 English. I am however 100% Trinidadian.
50. Secondary school was the low-point of my life, and I hate my school for doing that to me.
51. I am very seldom hungry, because I snack all the time. I was gratified when I found out this was healthier than eating big meals.
52. I once skipped 3 days' worth of meals and didn't notice until my body became weak from malnutrition.
53. I don't like eating for the sake of eating. I consider it a boring refuelling exercise, and wish I could pop an anti-hunger pill once a day and never have to eat again.
54. I resent the time that eating and preparing food takes out of my life.
55. Today, I have eaten half a bowl of cereal, a chocolate bar and a packet of wine gums. My stomach is growling. I am ignoring it.
56. I have a terrible sweet tooth. I have dozens of fillings and my teeth are a mess, generally.
57. I intend to be rich enough to afford dental surgery to fix these problems.
58. I always eat the separate portions of my meal separately (all the meat, all the potato, all the greens...) in the order of my preference for them.
59. I almost never completely finish a meal which has been served to me by someone else, because the portions are always too big.
60. I have very slight myopia (+1.25) but I hate it. I used to think television was unnaturally detailed until I got glasses and realised people were seeing the world in much higher resolution than I was.
61. I never watch TV anymore. I dislike having to arrange my schedule around TV times. I download TV shows and watch them when I want.
62. I read nothing but science fiction. There's a page about that on my website, too.
63. I don't drink alcohol, ever. My reasons for doing so are varied and unclear, but boil down to it being bad for me, in a number of ways.
64. When I was 8, I had a series of fairly intense homosexual experimentations with a friend. We called it "pretending to be a man and a woman", with no further explanation.
65. We alternated sexes, strictly. And we were wearing speedos. We had no idea what we were doing.
66. We have never discussed it since; he is apparently straight now. And I have never mentioned it to anybody before now. I only remembered it a couple of years ago.
67. I love computers, programming, writing and graphical design, but don't consider myself particularly good at any those things.
68. I grew up alone, but not lonely, with few friends my own age. I was frequently alone in the house for long stretches, and I did an enormous amount of reading during that time.
69. I love solitude. Few things make me happier than being completely alone, with nothing to do, in an empty building, knowing that nobody is going to show up, or call and disturb me. It gives me time to be.
70. I only ever had two or three good friends at a time, until I was about 16.
71. People tell me I make friends easily, but I don't understand how I do it, or why other people can't. I just try to be friendly.
72. In primary school an ugly girl called Sonya had a crush on me and would chase me around the school trying to kiss me. Annoyed, I retaliated by inventing "Sonya germs". This got totally out of hand, alienating her from the entire student body and making her miserable. Sorry about that. She grew up to be tall, slim and beautiful.
73. I can't believe how long this is, how long it's taken, or how much you can learn about someone in 81 bullet points.
74. I have a surprisingly large number of visible bodily scars. I once fell from a height and bit through my tongue, which had to be sewed back together.
75. I can go cross-eyed, and move my eyes independently of each other in a variety of other ways. This was my neat trick in primary school.
76. Boxers. And I don't care what you wear. Uncut. Likewise.
77. I have extremely good memory for song lyrics, and almost nothing else. I memorise important things by setting them to music.
78. I enjoy dancing a great deal more than I enjoy sex. I'm not sure whether this is a good or a bad thing.
79. I occasionally have heterosexual dreams and impulses, and am just as unbalanced by them now as I was by gay feelings when I thought I was straight. I'd like to try straight sex, at least once. Just in case.
80. I worry that if I came "in" as bisexual, none of my gay friends would understand. And I do not relish explaining it to my family, either, because my parents will say "I told you it was a phase".
81. I almost didn't include that last point.
82. It is not a phase. It is not a choice. It is not a lifestyle. There is no community. There is no right way. I can't tell you how to do it.
83. I'm no expert, but I think both the pleasures and problems of anal sex are greatly overrated.
84. I am a terrible procrastinator. I did this instead of working on my project.
85. I think the X-men are all pretty sexy, especially Nightcrawler. I have fantasies involving his prehensile tail. There are stories on the web written by people who share this opinion. Go read them.
86. My favourite colour is sky blue, and I love blue hair. See: nightcrawler fixation.
87. My wardrobe: 4 belts, 12 pairs of trousers, more than 70 tops, 6 jackets, 35+ misc white t-shirts, 14 pairs of boxers, over 40 necklaces and 8 bracelets. I have complex rules that ensure that I take 5 minutes to get dressed and seldom have trouble deciding what to wear.
88. I consider the Internet to be one of the major influences on the course of my life, having so far been a determining factor in my place of education, my career, a great deal of my social life and my sexuality. I love the Internet and everything it makes possible, even the illegal stuff, because freedom is more important than morality.
89. I have never had a Trinidadian accent, and I cannot even imitate one accurately. A teacher once accused me of deliberately attempting to sound British as an arrogant posture. My accent is a mixture of my mother's English-Trinidadian, my father's Trinidadian-English-German-Barbadian, and television's American. So no wonder nobody can work out where I come from.
90. My sense of humour comes from the books I read and stand-up comedy. If you read Terry Pratchett, watch Monty Python and listen to Eddie Izzard, you will recognize 90% of my jokes.
91. I often cannot draw a clear distinction in my memory between chatting to people in real life and online, because when I chat to people online I am picturing them in front of me.
92. My mind is extremely visual; I cannot solve problems until I can visualize them. I am almost incapable of solving problems involving more than three dimensions.
93. My spine is curved laterally (front to back). This makes my belly and butt stick out prominently, gives me an odd stance and makes me walk funny. I constantly try to hide all of these things. On the plus side, it makes it possible to do dance moves that a straight back can't do.
94. He must be smart, sexy, we must have interests in common. Sexy can be almost anything, but being overweight, having bad skin, and any kind of drug addiction (nicotine counts) are all big negatives.
95. I was a caesarean section, which gives my strict darwinist (bordering on eugenic) principles some difficulty. But then I'm gay, so it's not like I would breed anyway.
96. I would like to have kids some day. I will adopt, but I'd like some of my own genes around as well.
97. I love to visualize (non-sexual) fantasies, especially to music. I frequently come up with videos for songs that I'm listening to.
98. I usually dance in time to the lyrics, not to the beat. I have an informal "library" of dance moves that correspond to certain words or phrases. I will usually dance pretty much in the same way to a song every time.
99. I frequently fantasize about having super-abilities, especially teleportation. See: nightcrawler fixation.
100. I ran out of space before I ran out of things to say.