Probably the stupidest affectation that I’ve ever had was smoking little cigars in college. I didn’t particularly like them and got no noticeable nicotine buzz, but I thought that they made me look cool. It seems particularly stupid now because I recently acquired a small white growth on my tongue. It hasn’t grown larger, and my doctor assures me that it’s probably just a hypertrophied taste bud, but still… I’m having it clipped off on Monday and analyzed.

Clothing: I wore a long scarf for a brief time in high school, indoors, in warm weather. My freshman year in college, I wore a bandana wrapped around my left wrist because I had a poster of Joan Jett wearing one and I had a mad crush on her. I found out later that some people assumed that I was hiding suicide attempt scars. I wear black or dark underwear and socks almost exclusively, and black or dark clothing most of the time that I’m not at work. This is actually quite practical, because some weeks I can get by with doing one load of laundry for the entire week.

Greetings: I used to answer the phone with a variety of greetings: “Spacely Sprockets” “National Security Agency, this call is being taped and traced, how may I help you?” “Ya-tah-hey!” “What ho!” (stopped when “ho” became part of the common parlance) Lately, my standard IM greeting is “What transpires?”