Nathan Bransford - The Forums

I enjoy designing three layer wedding style cakes using 180 Pampers diapers for baby showers.

"I wish" is my middle name, and I wish life came with a 'do-over' option just like kick ball does.

I'm an Internet junkie.

I plan vacations that I'll never take in excruciating detail.

Daydreaming is my drug of choice.

I'm 39 and still don't feel like a grown up.

-Allie

I can't speak for Michael-- somehow I don't think he'd want me posting random stuff about him on the internets while he's on vacation. As for me:

*I don't drink caffeine
*I have several forms of synesthesia (honestly not as exciting as it's cracked up to be)
*I speak almost fluent Japanese, though I write it at about a 3rd grade level (I'm being generous)
*I'm allergic to flouride

sbs_mjc1 wrote:*I have several forms of synesthesia (honestly not as exciting as it's cracked up to be)

How fascinating. I'd never heard of this and just looked it up. I had never thought it pertinent to mention that I have always assigned gender and personality to numbers, letters, colors, and the names of the days and months. I've been doing it since kindergarten at least. It really has been a great memory tool. I don't experience numbers having a color, though. I suspect I'm not diagnosable but (as we say in psychology) I have features.

Maybe it's the caffeine deprivation. :) I don't drink it either.

You might want to prepare yourself for a shock
It's true.

1. I find it hard to stay focused. When I'm writing, I'll constantly get new ideas for other works, leading to me getting sidetracked rather easily. But I've been
working on fixing that (especially now that I have crit partners who might be counting on quick responses).
2. I graduated high school at fifteen, despite my sometimes questionable work ethic (see number 1). I attribute it to luck and determination rather than brains.
3. I daydream LOTS; practically half my waking hours are spent doing it. Seeming innocuous details could set me off on mental tangents that span hours. It's crazy.
But at least they (usually) go somewhere useful.
4. Sorry Margo and sbs_mjc1, but I practically live off caffeine.
5. My immune system is a total crapshoot. A-choo.
6. Whenever I get fed up (read: too distracted to go any further) with writing/editing/critting, I play either video games or the piano. Sadly, with the former, I
tend to lose track of time. Yet another thing that needs fixing...
7. I was in pretty much the same mold as Watcher in high school (perhaps a bit lower on the food chain), though thankfully I avoided the latter treatment
somehow. Maybe because I was so small and hard to catch.

Fenris wrote:7. I was in pretty much the same mold as Watcher in high school (perhaps a bit lower on the food chain), though thankfully I avoided the latter treatment
somehow. Maybe because I was so small and hard to catch.

I was the "you're gonna kick my @, but you're gonna know you were in a fight" guy. I hated bullies and I used to p them off on purpose. None of them fought me more than once.

Watcher55 wrote:I was the "you're gonna kick my @, but you're gonna know you were in a fight" guy. I hated bullies and I used to p them off on purpose. None of them fought me more than once.

Ah, the chivalrous knave. If I had been any good in a fight, I might have been that way. Still, there were other ways of getting them back...

mudpuppy wrote:I love ranch dressing on just about everything.

Including ice cream? lol

I can pour coffee from the Black and Decker coffee-maker carafe without dripping coffee all over the counter.

I hate math, but am obsessed with numbers.

Also, like Fenris, I daydream waay too much.

I was on The Weakest Link.

I've been kissed my Muhammad Ali.

I prefer to lick the cheese off the nacho-cheese Doritos rather than eat the entire chip.

I still, to this day, won't stay in a dark bathroom because I fear spontaneously saying 'Bloody Mary' three times.

I, too, have synaesthesia: I sometimes get temperature and sound-volume confused. I don't know how often this happens; the first time I noticed was when I got some fajitas at a restaurant and caught myself shushing them instead of blowing on them to cool them off. And I have a LOT of trouble deciding if I'm supposed to turn down the radio or the air conditioning in the car.

I really hate living in Florida. I'm too far north for the 'tropical paradise' thing the tourism boards like to talk about, and all the people are ugly with strange double-chins, even on otherwise slender women.

I prefer reading reference books to novels, including dictionaries and the Dungeons & Dragons Monster Manual. I worry that this does not bode well for my writing career.

I prefer bad movies to good ones, although there are plenty out there that are so bad I can't enjoy them. (ZARDOZ, for example.)

Due to a childhood trauma, I am terrified of crabs, lobsters, and other crustaceans, but bugs and spiders are just fine.

JohnDurvin wrote:I prefer reading reference books to novels, including dictionaries and the Dungeons & Dragons Monster Manual. I worry that this does not bode well for my writing career.

I have a friend who is really intelligent, but he refuses to read fiction and would much rather read a textbook. He once said that when he was a child he thought if he read too much fiction there wouldn't be enough room left in his brain to learn things. He majored in Psychology and is now working towards his Masters, but there has been a couple of times when he had to read fiction for a class. One was a book by John Grisham which he used to kill a fly and said something along the lines that fiction was good for something.

God I love this thread.

It's like the Ripley's Believe It Or Not of Bransford Forums.

Hey, I've contributed. I'll try to think of some more.

Moni12 wrote:I have a friend who is really intelligent, but he refuses to read fiction and would much rather read a textbook. He once said that when he was a child he thought if he read too much fiction there wouldn't be enough room left in his brain to learn things. He majored in Psychology and is now working towards his Masters, but there has been a couple of times when he had to read fiction for a class. One was a book by John Grisham which he used to kill a fly and said something along the lines that fiction was good for something.

Yeah, but that guy's not trying to be a writer--that's what concerns me.

Also, I thought of another one--a great one for somebody to steal and use for a character, I won't mind. I used to be really nervous and shy, possibly with Social Anxiety Disorder, but a few years ago I somehow got out of it and am just fine now. Last night I think I figured out what happened: my misanthropy set in. The more I was around people, the more I realized they sucked, and if some obese jackass with a lopsided toupee gets to feel important, so do I, damn it. This idiot double-parked to come into the store where I work to yell at me because he bought a ten-dollar pen that doesn't have refills, and while I have to just sit there and take it if I want to keep my job, I can feel better when he leaves because, frankly, he's a moron and I'm not.