The Meme of Seven

Galrahn came calling, so here goes:

Here are the rules:
1. Link to your tagger and post these rules on your blog.

2. Share 7 facts about yourself on your blog, some random, some weird.

3. Tag 7 people at the end of your post by leaving their names as well as links to their blogs.

4. Let them know they are tagged by leaving a comment on their blog.

5. Present an image of martial discord something more relevant to my blog from whatever period or situation you’d like.

To the facts we go...

1) Like the person who tagged me, I too was voted most likely to succeed in high school, although my personality was certainly not an asset. My cynicism was (and still is) legendary.

2) I briefly achieved local fame as the high school student who aced both college entrance exams (SAT and ACT). Yale still rejected my application, although they accepted a double legacy and a football player from my school (this slight has not been forgiven).

3) I knew the difference between a T-62 MBT and a T-72 by age ten. I finished Samuel Eliot Morrison's history of WW2 naval operations at age eleven.

4) I hail from the same state which produced Abu Muqawama (aka Andrew Exum).

5) Soccer is in my blood. My father was a coach, I played as a youth, and I have been a licensed referee for eight years. I have often thought about getting a coaching license (usually after officiating woefully coached squads). Right now I am obsessively following Euro 2008 and supporting the teams which play with imagination and zeal (mostly Holland and Spain).

6)I write sporadic (and usually unfinished) pieces of fiction and creative non-fiction. I also read a lot of twentieth century American authors, including Joseph Heller, Saul Bellow, Hemingway, and Vonnegut. I can't stand feminist and postmodern literary criticism, and I've written academic papers refuting those perspectives.

7) Although I am politically unaligned, I live in one of the most Republican congressional districts in the country. How Republican, you might ask? When Tennessee finally seceded from the union, my region of the state almost seceded from Tennessee. My district has had four years of Democratic leadership since the Civil War.

And now, the tags...

Armchair Generalist

Westhawk

The Strategist

Blog Them Out of the Stone Age

Peter Coates

CDR Salamander (who I discovered through Galrahn's frequent references)

Ghosts of Alexander

I couldn't find a topical picture to include, but since this blog owes its existence to the senseless destruction of human life and property, I thought I'd include the picture below. The Palestinian boy being shielded by his father was killed shortly after the picture was taken. It is one of the defining modern images of the Palestinian conflict and a striking metaphor for the masses of humanity trapped between belligerent parties.