The Oracle of Apollo Snippets from the life of Apollo Lee

100 Things

1. I was born at a U.S. Army hospital.
2. The base is one of the ones that remains open.
3. I have a brother and a sister.
4. I had two sisters. The youngest was killed by a drunk driver in May 1994.
5. I love house music, jazz, classical, and lots of other music.
6. I can dance all night.
7. Good thing for me, I live in the middle of deep house territory. San Francisco, represent!
8. I have never consumed an alcoholic beverage or taken an illegal drug.
9. I used to smoke cigarettes, though, which is probably just as bad.
10. I have grand aspirations.
11. I recently resumed writing music again.
12. I was also recently injured in a bike crash.
13. Hell, no, I’m not gonna quit.
14. I ride my bike in traffic if the bike lane is full of glass, doesn’t exist, or is obstructed. As is my right.
15. I can easily find stuff to bitch about.
16. I’m trying to be more adventurous than I have been in the past.
17. I often swear too much.
18. I am a cluttery little monkey.
19. I like good food. Particularly Ethiopian, Indian, Mexican, Chinese, Thai, and Italian.
20. I tend to get up really early in the morning.
21. I have a difficult time getting out the door on time sometimes, though. Particularly on Saturdays, when I end up going for my ride at the last possible second.
22. I’m 34.83 I’m old enough.
23. No, I don’t have a webcam.
24. I have studied more than 25 languages, but I can’t remember anything in almost all of them.
25. I always thought I’d be fluent in 10 or 12, but I’m getting old enough to know that I’ll probably never be totally fluent in anything but English.
26. That won’t stop me from trying. Futility has never been a very good deterrent for me.
27. I find lots of people attractive that I’d never talk to.
28. I have a raunchy and sometimes over-the-top sense of humor.
29. No, I don’t take medication for it. It’s all in my head.
30. I can remember every phone number I’ve ever had.
31. I once got kicked out of Google’s parking lot. Yeah, I was dumb.
32. I frequently feel like my IQ is a lower number than my age.
33. I am fanatically devoted to my statistics.
34. If I had it all to do over again, I probably would do the same stupid things the second time around.
35. Until recently, I was a habitual nailbiter. I broke my jaw, so I really can’t anymore.
36. I love music and wish I could play it better on any of the instruments I noodle around on.
37. I play flute.
38. I play saxophones. Particularly, my ancient silver-plated C Melody.
39. I play harmonica. Chromatic. No, I can’t tell you how to bend notes on your diatonic. I’m not very good anymore.
40. I play piano. I can improvise gawdy new-agey sounding shit and a limited amount of jazz, but my hands don’t work independently of each other very well. Yeah, practice would solve that issue.
41. I play clarinet. I just have to think very hard to read clarinet music. In one register, 3/3 is D and, in another, it’s G. On flute and saxophones, the register shift is an octave, not an octave and a fifth. It takes getting used to.
42. I can play oboe, though I don’t have one.
43. I studied music composition in college, but I’ll probably never do anything with it.
44. I have a library of programming books, including more Java books than I could carry. I will probably never gain advanced proficiency in Java.
45. I am a map geek.
46. I want to tour the country by bicycle.
47. I have calculated dozens of long routes that I’d like to do someday, like a 15000+ mile circumnavigation of the continental US from San Francisco to San Francisco. I will probably never ride or drive any of them, except one.
48. In May 2006, I’m riding my bike from Middleton, Idaho, to Holloman Air Force Base, New Mexico, in memory of my late sister. I’m leaving Middleton on May 4, 2006—twelve years after her death—and arriving at Holloman AFB on May 25, 2006—her 30th birthday. This, I must do.
49. I have already prepared my speech for the GRAMMY® awards. I’ll never win one, but we have to have aspirations, right?
50. I have already prepared my speech for the Academy Awards. I’m not an actor, though. I’ve always thought I might be a good actor, if I could ever decide to try it. Needless to say, I’ll never win an Oscar.
51. I have already prepared my inaugural speech. The only office I’ve ever been elected to, though, was European Club in High School. Obviously, I’ll never ever run for an elected office, much less win the Oval Office. If you’d vote for me, you’re a sick bastard.
52. I sometimes feel like a redneck and jokingly refer to myself as one.
53. I also tend to refer to myself as a hillbilly, again, in good fun.
54. Countryfuck is reserved for those times when I’m feeling particularly inurbane and retarded. “Get up, Apollo, you countryfuck.” I heard a drill sergeant call someone that in basic training and it cracked me up. “Run, Yokum, you countryfuck.”
55. I used to be in the Army.
56. I attended Defense Language Institute at the Presidio of Monterey, California.
57. I studied Korean. It rocked. The school kicked ass.
58. The Army sucked, though. I got out early.
59. I miss my old Pontiac Catalina. Sister wrecked it.
60. I miss my Pontiac Grand Am. Roommate wrecked it.
61. I drive a purple Z-24. In 2002/3, it sat in the same parking spot for almost 18 months before I got the transmission fixed. It still has a bunch of things wrong with it, but it gets me down the road for the little bit I drive it.
62. As of this line item, I’ve been employed at the same place for 421 days.
63. I am a vegetarian. I have been one continuously since 1989.
64. I was a vegan for a few years. Cheese became my downfall. It’s so good.
65. I read ingredients voraciously. I don’t eat anything that contains non-dairy animal products.
66. I don’t wear leather or other animal hides. I always look for shoes that say “ALL MAN MADE MATERIALS.“
67. I don’t really care what you eat, wear, or sit on, though.
68. This computer is an 12″ PowerBook. I’ve had it for almost a year. It rocks. You’re jealous, admit it.
69. I built the front-end of the world’s first digital music Locker™. I loved working at myplay. Everyone rocked.
70. I used to work at the coolest company in the world. I loved working at Apple. Everyone rocked. I can’t believe they hired me in the first place. What luck.
71. I worked at my current company a couple of years ago, before I returned this time around. It was okay. They made me use FrontPage, though. I feel corrupted now.
72. Sometimes, I go to the airport and buy a foreign banknote. It’s silly. I have: 10DM, $10 Australian, £5 UK, 10 Francs, and some Canadian bills from when I actually went to Canada. I love foreign stuff.
73. My favorite game is Civilization 3. And Angband (yes, I play the ASCII version without graphics). And a bunch of console games, particularly World War II shooters on my PS2. I don’t play games that much these days, though. Everytime I play, I can count on wasting an entire day.
74. I am an Esperantist. I don’t speak it, except to myself (because I don’t really know too many people who have ever heard of the language).
75. I have an itch to write a house music album with soulful lyrics in Esperanto. Maybe I should call it “Unua Aventuro Je Ritma Profundeco” (translation: First Adventure in Rhythmic Deepness).
76. I’ll probably never do that, but if you rip off my title, I’ll find out and sue you with a vigor that would make Johnny Cochrane blush.
77. I love movies. I own almost 200 and I have a wanted list of dozens. I am also a deliriously happy subscriber of Netflix.
78. I have never owned any car built outside of North America.
79. I ride a 2005 Trek 520 touring bike. I love it. In the year that I’ve had it, I’ve put more than 7,500 miles on it (7,734.07 mi / 12,446.78 km).
80. I have lost about 40 pounds since I started cycling, without going to a gym even once — and while increasing my caloric intake. That’s more than 16,000 miles on two wheels.
81. On my way to work one day, I was riding through Palo Alto. A woman in a Subaru Outback was riding my tail as I took the right lane of a four lane road (because the road was narrow and had potholes along the right shoulder). She was screaming and yelling and honking her horn. She paced me, rolled down her window, and yelled, “GET ONTO THE SIDEWALK“. Then, she hit her gas, cut me off with inches to spare and turned right across me, honking her horn the whole time. She gave me the finger out of the passenger-side window. On the back of her car were the right bumper stickers: “NO BLOOD FOR OIL“, “KEEP TAHOE BLUE“, “well-behaved women never make history“, “SIERRA CLUB“, and a whole bunch of others that indicated that she was a liberal. It ruled. I’ve never been cursed and cut off by someone wearing a leftist costume (i.e.: closely cropped grey hair, forest green Outback, and environmentalist stickers). I blew her a kiss.
82. Since I’ve had the age of majority, I’ve lived in the following places: Fruitland (Idaho), La Grande (Oregon), Pullman (Washington), Moscow (Idaho), San José (California), Mountain View (California), Sunnyvale (California), and Menlo Park (California)
83. I liked Moscow, Mountain View, and Menlo Park best.
84. I loved used and independent bookshops. All three of those towns have lots of them. Moscow’s Twice Sold Tales was a dusky two-story house with stacks of books all over the place–it was delicious. Bookpeople‘s proprietor remembered every book I bought there in six years of shopping. Books, Inc. in Mountain View and Bookbuyers next door added substantially to my bookshelves–usually with books bought right before I went to eat in a nearby restaurant (I almost always eat alone). Menlo Park has Kepler’s (with great people watching at adjacent Café Borrone), as well as three or four used bookshops within half a mile walk of my old house.
85. I eat lots of Spanish Rice. Either Trader Joe’s brand or Safeway’s store-brand version of Rice-A-Roni. I like the latter better.
86. Tapatío rules.
87. Almost everything I cook at home comes with a flavor packet. That should dissuade you from asking me to cook for you.
88. I always buy store brands if they’re available. If the Safeway brand is an impostor of a major brand, but it’s a dollar cheaper, why should I pay more money for the same product?
89. I do not understand gourmet food. A sassy lemon vinaigrette with sundried tomatoes and extra virgin olive oil is wasted on me. I eat grub. Even though I’m a vegetarian, I have no appreciation at all for nouveau cuisine.
90. If you eat a whole box of Triscuits in one sitting, it will brew in your gut through a 35 mile bike ride. Ask me how I know.
91. Having broken my jaw and been forced to subsist on a liquid diet for a period of time, I can tell you that Ensure is pretty damn good. I had no idea.
92. I thought I’d hide this in the middle of things, but I am a hopelessly fanatic fan of Joss Whedon’s Firefly and the 2005 motion picture based on the series, Serenity. I own two copies of the DVD set of the TV series, subscribe to two podcasts on the subject, own the three-chapter comic series (thanks, Daniel!), a book on the subject, the visual guide to the movie, and will purchase the DVD of the movie as soon as it comes out. I’ve also helped introduce more people, either directly or indirectly, to this magnificent universe than I can count.
93. Yes, I’m single. Are you?
94. If you can’t at least tolerate house music, we won’t get along too well in any sort of relationship. Sorry. I can listen to your music, but I have to have my house music.
95. I haven’t really bothered too much with dating since I moved to California. I’m open to the possibility, but I’m also engaged in several activities that eat voluminous amounts of time.
96. I have lived where I live for a few months. I have three housemates in a big house, my own little music studio, and a small bedroom.
97. Someday, I want to be a professional musician.
98. I work as a web developer, specializing in web standards, internationalization, and making derisive sneers in the direction of Internet Explorer. I also have a strange love for the Monaco typeface.
99. Unlike real life, I’m running out of stuff to say here.
100. I have at some point in the past had unrequited crushes. I’m not going to tell you who, though.

Apollo Phoebus Lee
November 29, 2005
20:49 PST