Inspiration struck.

1. I should’ve been named J.R. (Jeffrey Royce), after J.R. Ewing from Dallas, but my dad couldn’t keep his mouth shut.
2. I didn’t pick up my first Rolling Stone magazine until the month I turned 18.
3. Same with listening to Mr. Bob Dylan.
4. It took me four years to get used to the taste of beer.
5. To this day I still cringe when I think about the day, nay the moment, we lost the state scholar’s bowl championship my senior year.
6. I have visited 33 states, and lived in over 20 of them.
7. In the last five years, except to go to the Missouri-side of Kansas City, I have not left the borders of the state of Kansas.
8. In fact, I haven’t been farther west than Manhattan, farther north than Lawrence, or farther south than Humboldt.
9. Salsa should be its own food group.
10. Same with beer.
11. Approximately one quarter of the books on my bookshelf are either unread or unfinished.
12. Probably half the books I have ever had in my life are in the same condition.
13. Every person in the past month, when I tell them I have already graduated, have responded with either a silent gasp or a double take.
14. This was not unexpected, but it is very funny.
15. I pissed in the Great Salt Lake.
16. There is a picture of this prominently displayed in the family photo album.
17. My first and only girlfriend was Sarah. I think I might’ve been five years old. I don’t remember her.
18. I had my first kiss two nights before my first Chinese food experience. This was last November, or the month before I turned 22.
19. The Motorcycle Diaries is the greatest movie I will ever see.
20. I made everybody mad when I was a kid because I always messed up their question: What do you want to be when you grow up?
21. I still don’t have an answer.
22. I listen to Metallica. When I’m not exercising.
23. The days of when I used to get by with just eating nachos for lunch are over.
24. Still not through the days of just eating cereal for dinner though.
25. I develop, on average, about 1.4 crushes each week.
26. I ask out, on average, about 1.4 girls every year.
27. I despise the game of baseball.
28. Pro basketball can suck it too.
29. I have the cheapest medium-format camera known to man.
30. When I was in fifth grade in West Virginia, I went to school for about three days during the month of January due to the snow.
31. The summer I was in North Carolina I ‘bent’ my arm.
32. I don’t talk to any of my high school classmates anymore.
33. I had a sneaking suspicion that would happen.
34. I still have my quilt arranged on my bed with my mom’s label always to the upper right, closest to me.
35. I would give up my car for a motorcycle.
36. There are very few places in the U.S. in which I would actually like to live.
37. I am one of the top ten yearbook editors in the universe.
38. That should not be worth anything. Ever.
39. Kathy Ireland got me in trouble at school when I was in sixth grade.
40. Yes of course I blame her for it.
41. My ultimate dream in life has always been to win an Olympic gold medal.
42. I know next to nothing about cars.
43. Same with fishing. And hunting.
44. I always felt like I let my dad down because of those things, which I could’ve corrected but never did.
45. I think I spend more time on the internet every day than I do sleeping.
46. Every once in a while a girl comes along that I am so unbelievably comfortable around that I feel more like myself than at any other time.
47. Then they leave.
48. I can’t see myself ever moving back to my hometown. Which means I’ll probably end up there.
49. This scares the absolute hell out of me.
50. Michelle, this summer: “So you’re a graphic designer & photographer who got his degree in history but used to be in journalism and is now a teacher for politics & economics classes?”
51. Me: “Yeah!”
52. I would become a card-carrying Socialist, were I not afraid of dying in the coming Great Christian Cultural Revolution–see your local theocratic Republican Party apparatchik today!
53. In any other decade, that would be complete satire.
54. The first 10 seconds of ‘Like A Rolling Stone’ by Mr. Bob Dylan is probably the most holy thing in the world to me.
55. At one time I collected various versions of ‘All Along the Watchtower.’
56. For about two years, I spent every waking moment thinking about how I should just leave the next morning at dawn and start driving west until I hit California, thinking that would be the answer to everything.
57. It probably was.
58. I would’ve been the one at Woodstock going “Yes yes, this is all well and good, but when will Mr. Hendrix make a noise so unbelievably enlightening that God himself will come down and say ‘You win’?”
59. I just totally made that up right then.
60. I am a walking encyclopedia of West Wing knowledge.
61. Within two weeks of giving up my cable service, I forgot I even had a TV.
62. I will read anything that Ernest Hemingway ever wrote on a page.
63. The same is quickly becoming true for Eduardo Galeano.
64. I drink at least two litres of water every day.
65. It used to be a gallon.
66. I’ve had a love affair with Barcelona and Spain for 13 years now.
67. I hope to consummate it in year 14.
68. I used to hate KU with the white hot intensity of a nova.
69. When I was in high school I thought I would have to go to a military service academy or else I would always regret missing that opportunity.
70. Hindsight being what it is, I should’ve stayed at Fort Scott Community College and as editor of the newspaper I started there.
71. Continuing on this theme, I should’ve had my first kiss when I was a freshman in high school, sitting on the ground in front of a girl and asked what I would do if I could do anything at that moment.
72. I should’ve drank more in high school. And by more, I mean any.
73. I should’ve been in a band; bassist would’ve been a good fit for me.
74. Four of my six best friends live in Lawrence; one is in California, the other in Maryland, and I don’t talk to them nearly enough.
75. I don’t talk to the others nearly enough either.
76. The new KU football uniforms make me gag.
77. I get speechless around my mentor, and I feel bad because I don’t think he should have to do all the talking in our conversations.
78. When the moment calls for it, I can be a dancing fool.
79. This has not happened often in the history of time.
80. I never played any organized sport except track in high school.
81. Thus my inability to throw a football.
82. Or, as of recent, shoot hoops.
83. I would learn how to rock climb, but I have this wholly rational fear that the mountain will tip over.
84. It’s the same reason I can’t go up in tall buildings.
85. One day I was at Chipotle with Joah, and I ate the wrong salsa and I cried and blew my nose with such consistent intensity that Joah actually asked: “Do you know how much fluid is coming out of your face right now?”
86. To which I replied: “I think I have a clue.”
87. I woke up on the sidewalk of Abe & Jake’s Landing and walked back to my apartment in the early morning hours of 1 January, 2004. To this day I know not how I ended up outside, how I got home, nor how I got the sizable gash across my chin.
88. To this day, I also cannot drink liquor for a damn.
89. I lost 40 pounds between my freshman and junior years of college.
90. I live in a constant, yet quiet fear of gaining it back.
91. I’m a cat person, but lately I’ve been thinking it would be neat to have an Australian Cattle Dog.
92. It would also be neat to live in Australia.
93. You were thinking it too.
94. The day of Commencement, my fortune cookie read: “Your talents will be recognized and rewarded.”
95. I would like to be able to draw.
96. If given a choice though, I’d rather be able to speak Spanish.
97. I went to five proms in five years during and after high school.
98. I was adored by the senior girls when I was a freshman.
99. Last summer I was in the 98th percentile for men my age in bicep strength.
100. Sadly, not so much anymore.
101. Three words: Steel blue eyes.