It has finally happened. Someone has taken notice of me long enough to inflict me with the online equivalent of a curse-chain letter: the frightful TAG. Oooooooh, I’m so scared.
Not really. But, I am worried about you lot. You’re the ones who are going to have to read this. Especially Mr. SaintlyDark, the foe who has made the grave mistake of looking my way.
Hehehe, below are the rules (apparently). Eight weird things about me? Oh dear, oh dear, whatever shall I say?

If you get tagged:
1. Post these rules.
2. Each person tagged must post 8 random (hopefully interesting) facts about themselves.
3. Tags should write a journal of these facts.
4. At the end of the post, 8 more bloggers are tagged and named.
5. Go to their page and leave a comment telling them that they're tagged.

Alright, the time has come. Welcome to the Realm of Ral (mutodori, Ral is me, so don’t get all confused again, Esmeralda is nowhere to be seen):


1- Cats. Something’s up with cats and me. They’re either using my stuff to territorially piss all over, or they up-the-ante and piss all over me. But, that’s not all. One time, I was in the middle of giving a lecture to my fellow classmates and professor when Freud (our departmental cat; one guess what department I’m talking about) decides to scamper in and sniff its way around the room. Nobody struck its fancy... that is, until it leapt up into my lap, snuggled under my armpit and stayed put. I wasn’t that perturbed about the whole incident, and a “go-ahead” from my prof had me continuing with the lecture without batting an eyelid. Until Freud started mewing. And mewing some more. Mewing so hard, my classmates were unconsciously shifting their chairs back with a look of alarm; meanwhile, Freud was trying to literally sink into me. To cut a long story short, Freud turned out to be Anna Freud, and the kittens she gave birth to – on me – were really cute. Seems I’m a safe haven for the feline species on the planet.

2- I was held at gunpoint for around 8 hours once. There were three of them. The leader, a short, tiny side-kick, and a lunatic I didn’t see the whole time as he hid behind the long wheat stems and kept up an excited barrage of “Shall I shoot them? Shall I shoot them now?” Not fun, but I still consider that incident a testament to my diplomatic and linguistic skills. I won’t go into any details, but the leader’s mother was a big part of it all. Everybody’s a mama’s boy. And, Mama’s always scary, even to a small-penised, big gun-totting tosser.

3- When I was younger, I liked to run. Fine, you say. What’s so weird about that? True, there’s nothing weird about that. If you disregard the fact that I mostly did it when I was drunk out of my mind, and it usually involved me bucking out of a party with various friends in tow trying to catch up before I do myself any damage. Unfortunately, I’ve always been the fittest person around, so I usually ended up alone in the dark somewhere, happy to stare at the stars. My friends weren’t as amused.

4- I used to get grounded a lot. I wasn’t a “bad” kid, just a mouthy one. That always got me into trouble with my mom. After one such punishment, my mother returned from a shopping trip, prestigious guests in tow, only to find the whole inside of the house plastered with “I have been unjustly punished” posters that took me all day to make. I had a lot of time on my hands, what with being grounded and all. You’d think such initiative from a 7 year-old would impress some people. It impressed my mom so much, she added another two weeks for good measure. I decided to take it as encouragement of what I’d been up to in my “spare” time. We were really stubborn, you see.

5- I’ve had a lot of dogs; sometimes 4 or 5 at a time. All had alcoholic names. No exception. Whiskey, Scotch, Gin, Tequila, Vodka, etc. I know you can all list the rest. So I’ll spare you, if only to keep you in high spirits (no pun intended).

6- Apparently, when I was really young, I used to make up words. Really. The more syllables, the better. And I was very confident about them too. Then again, the first word I ever uttered as a baby wasn’t the typical Mama, Baba or other such variation. It was Batata. That’s Potato in Arabic. My opinion hasn’t changed.

7- Until the age of 23, I was behind a book. Not one particular book (although that would have been weird, huh?); just a series of many, many books. I couldn’t even pass a shampoo bottle without grabbing it and reading the lies and ingredients on the back. I was a fast reader, too. My social life didn’t suffer at all. I learned everything I needed to know from those books, and then when I was ready at 23 and unleashed myself upon the world, it seems I was even better at things than those who had experienced it ten times over. I think they call it overcompensation. I could be wrong.

8- Up until this journal entry, I was a Tag Virgin. I have SaintlyDark to thank for ridding me of this shameful affliction. Now, I shall proceed to do the same to others. Remember, never shoot the messenger; I’m just passing on the love.


Ok, the next tagged members are (evil giggle galore):
~radaism, ~sKyLinKd, ~mutodori, ~vampireempress, ~Jay--x, ~TheStrugglingWithin, ~abuonadeem, *tetbow

I will not apologise to those I’ve named, because then it would just be grovelling, wouldn’t it. And, I’m too tall to grovel. Yalla, get a move on people, we have things to discover. Weird, wonderful, perverse, maybe even a little freaky stuff to unearth. Am I still typing? Damn.