The Mad Bull’s Blog, Version 3

This list is a continuation of a previous list of 25 things about me. Eventually I hope for this list to reach 100 items. Wish me luck getting there, and enjoy.

1) I used to try to be a playa. I wasn’t very good at the whole playa thing though. I tend to get attached to women when I spend too much time with them. Since those days of “wild oats sowing”, I accepted that I am not a playa. I am now the monogamous type. I only let my eyes do the roaming nowadays…

2) I don’t really play favourites… some people can tell you what their favourite anything is… their favourite actors and actresses, their favourite car, their favourite movie… I don’t really have a favourite anything,,, except maybe a favourite colour. That is blue…. or is it yellow. I’m not 100% sure… See what I mean?

3) I love dogs. About the only thing I don’t like about them is bathing them! My favourite kind of dog? Didn’t you read the previous item in the list? I like bigger dogs more (much more) than little dogs.

4) I have had a number of dogs over the course of my life. Most of them have been mongrels, some very much so, and others mixes of two full breed dogs. I have also had a few full breeds as well. I have had two types of full breed dogs so far. One dog was a Cocker Spaniel (I wasn’t impressed) and the other dogs I had that were full breed were German Shepherds.

5) My favourite dogs so far have been mongrels. One was my very first, named Bully. I have no idea what breeds were part of his ancestry. He was a HELL of a fighter, bwoy! (That is actually what led to his being named Bully. Another was Yute, who was half Belgian Shepherd (Groenendael) and half German Shepherd, and now Simba, who is a pretty irie animal himself, who seems to have Labrador and Chow Chow in him (though I can’t be certan).

6) I am not vegetarian. I eat chicken, pork, beef, goat, and fish. I have had turtle a couple of times, and I would eat it again, though I don’t think I will ever be able to say that I eat turtle regularly. I have never tasted iguana, even though I was recently given the opportunity to do so. I couldn’t “stomach the idea”. Pun intended, not sure if it really made it though.

7) I mostly eat chicken, followed by beef. Even though I am not a vegetarian, I do eat lots of veggies. I will even eat cucumber, which I don’t really like. I eat all types of starches as well. I also try to eat a lot of “pussy cat” too. Yes, Rasta! I man bow! Strictly speaking, since I don’t chew it up and swallow it, I guess I really more drink than eat “pussy cat”. I dunno why people always speak about eating pussy cat?! I also dunno why so many Yardie ppls dem fight against the whole bowing business. I do believe that most Jamaican men bow, and then they tell lies that they don’t. Is fool fool dem fool fool, you hear!

I love to read novels. I first started with Enid Blyton, and the Bobbsey Twins at about seven or eight, graduated through the Hardy Boys, Nancy Drew (Yeah, I read Nancy Drew), Tom Swift and so on up to when I was about twelve years old, then on through Louis L’Amour and Zane Grey westerns, Nick Carter, the Destroyer series and the Executioner Series (and, of course, the occasional Beeline novel (porn novels)) till I was about fifteen. At that point I embarked upon novels by Sydney Sheldon, Robert Ludlum and many of the other authors I still read today.

9) I come from a “reading family”. We were all that way. When I was living in Orange Grove, we used to have a bedroom which was devoted solely to being a library. My father constructed bookshelves which went from the floor to the ceiling, along all four walls, and the shelves were chock full.

10) When we moved away from Orange Grove, we moved into a much smaller house in Norbrook. There was no space for the library. The books went into numerous cardboard boxes, which were then carted from house to house as my family moved around Kingston over the years. We had those books in boxes up to recently at the house my mother now lives in, in Oakridge. I believe that my sisters may finally have gotten rid of them between last summer and October of last year though. I am glad they are gone. Keeping books in boxes is a waste of time and space… you never take them out and read them, and no one benefits from them.

11) My son, Dylan, is following closely in my footsteps in this reading thing. He reads copiously for a nine year old. He has read and re-read the entire Harry Potter series. He has read many other books besides, but I mention the Harry Potter series because some of those are rather large books.

12) I loved my father, lots and lots and lots and lots! He was the most excellent father that ever lived! I mention this because I know that many people do not have such father figures in their lives and many also hate their fathers. Whatever problems I have (few and insignificant though they may be), they do not stem from my father. Dad rocked!

13) I am not saying that my problems stemmed from my Mom either. My problems are all my own! My Mom rocked too. Well… maybe I should say that she salsa-ed.

14) My favourite author is Wilbur Smith. Yes, when it comes to novels, I do have a favourite. There are other authors I like a lot as well, but Wilbur stands head and shoulders above the others. In this one area, I definitely do play favourites!

15) My affair with Wilbur Smith’s novels began when I was introduced to his work by a bredrin from high school, Eddie Miller, when I was in about Fourth Form in high school. The first of his novels that I read was “Eagle in the Sky“, which Eddie loaned to me. Eddie read that novel because he was fascinated about flying aeroplanes and the book was about that very thing. He read many other books on that topic. I was much more attracted to the other aspects of the story, and whereas Eddie may not have continued reading other Wilbur Smith novels, (most of which are not about flying), I did.

16) Eddie went on to become a pilot. Unfortunately, I did not go on to become a rich man from one of the top class families of Southern Africa, who had very beautiful women flocking me and who was filling my time with increasing the wealth and power of myself and/or my family, hunting the dangerous wildlife of the South African veldt, or fighting in every little war that presented itself (these are the things that most of Wilbur Smith’s novels are about). Still, I can dream, can’t I?

17) I am a dreamer. Natty says I am always dreaming about something, and she is right on that score.

18) I have read most of Wilbur Smith’s novels. I may even have read them all! In fact, I have read them and re-read them, and then re-read them again, several times.

19) My interest in things African was sparked by my reading of Wilbur Smith’s novels. I hope someday to visit South Africa. I probably won’t because unfortunately I can usually find nore important, more necessary things to do with my money, but the idea of visiting South Africa is definitely there, so much so that I think I might prefer to visit there than other more popular places such as London or France or Italy (though if you want to buy the airline tickets, provide accomodation and spending money for me to go to any of those destinations, I will definitely consider it. Let me know in your comments to this note).

20) I went to St. Georges College, the premier boy’s high school in Jamaica. There are one or two people who will say that this is not the premier high school in Jamaica. They are wrong and I am right. (as I usually am in most things )

21) I mostly enjoyed my time at St. Georges College, although my first three years were negatively clouded by a grievous lie that another schoolboy told about me.

22) I spend a fair amount of my leisure time nowadays playing pool. I am decent at it, though I know a fair number of people who are better than me. One of these fine days (sooner rather than later, I hope) I want to buy a pool table for my home. I am sure I would have bought the pool table this year, but then there was this damned global financial crisis! Those careless bankers who gave out the worthless mortgages have a lot to answer for, bwoy!

23) I am not a gambler. Not when it comes to gambling for money, anyway. I hate to lose money via gambling. Once I pay out a little bit of money, I start to think about the opportunity cost, i.e. what I could have bought with the money that I would have enjoyed more. Two examples of more enjoyable ways of spending money are alcohol, or using it as tips in a strip club, or going to the movies, or playing pool. I no longer spend money or time in strip clubs (Natty wouldah slit my throat), but I still spend money on alcohol, pool and movies.

24) I have done some gambling on pool. I did find that gambling to be fun, and I did gamble out a fair sum of money that way. Still, I enjoyed the process of losing it (playing pool).

25) This list of 25 things was written at the request of some of my friends on Facebook. It is also posted there, though number 25 there is different than number 25 here.