Oh feck, I've been "tagged."

Yes, it's the latest blog meme, highly communicable, and spreading around the SL blogosphere faster than the Black Death. I would have rolled my eyes, said "Oh, for feck's sake," and ignored it, except that it came from Ryan (God'll get you for that, honey). Sigh.

Then the second punch came from Catero, and after procrastinating for a week I thought I'd get it over with.

Okay, here's the rules:

1. Each player starts with eight random facts/habits about themselves.
2. People who are tagged need to write a post on their own blog (about their eight things) and post these rules.
3. At the end of your blog, you need to choose eight people to get tagged and list their names.
4. Don’t forget to leave them a comment telling them they’re tagged, and to read your blog.

I'm going to break rule 3, because 1) half the people I'd tag have already been tagged by someone else, and B) I don't even know eight people in SL who have blogs. That's either sad (Seán has no friends, waaaah!) or encouraging (Seán's friends have better things to do than write blogs). But then again, of course, I'm blogging at the moment, so I think that says enough. Ahem.

Okay, here goes.

1. Given the opportunity I will eat an entire large bag of potato chips in one sitting. It's a sickness. (I'm partial to any flavor of Zapp's Potato Chips, especially the Crawtator, Honey Mustard and Creole Tomato and Tabasco flavors), Tim's Hawaiian Kettle Style Luau BBQ and just about any flavor of Walkers crisps (especially the mad Sensations line) from the UK and Ireland. Oh, and Smoky Bacon Taytos. Yay!

2. I'm a very good cook, at least in the home kitchen; in a professional restaurant kitchen I'd be in the weeds and bleeding inside of five minutes. My specialties are Italian, Mexican and Creole. And I talk about food incessantly, as those of you who know me have undoubtedly noticed.

3. Like Ryan, I'm a nonprofessional mixologist of mad skillz. I can fix you a drink that'll make you weep for joy, and forget you ever had anything of the ilk of a "Green Applepuckertini" (which is an abomination before God and man).

4. I've traveled to Ireland several times, and feel very much at home there. So much so, in fact, that I once got drunk with some locals in Donegal ("drunk" ... actually more like banjaxed, ossified, fluthered, in the horrors, langers, locked, paralytic, plastered, scuttered, stocious, twisted and sozzled after about 18 pints of Guinness), somehow managed to get back to my hotel in Derrybeg at 2am without getting nicked by the Gardaí (Irish police), then found the front door locked ... whereupon I sorta broke it down. The damage is still visible. Photographic evidence here, here and here, thanks to Angie Batz.

5. I once met Clint Eastwood. I was the go-to guy for tours of my department in college, and once upon a time he was checking us out for one of his kids. I got a whispery phone call from the department that I'd be doing my next tour for a "VIP." When I showed up to meet this VIP at the deparment office the following Saturday morning, his back was toward me. He turned slowly ... gave me the quintessential Dirty Harry narrow-eyed scowl, and then, in the quintessential Dirty Harry voice he said, "Are you ... Clancy?" My jaw dropped. I blanched, gulped and said, "Uhhhhhh ..." He then broke into a huge grin, laughed, stuck out his hand and said, "Hi, I'm Clint Eastwood, pleasure to meet ya." I then spent the next hour with him.

He is one of the coolest guys in the Universe.

I also waited in line at Pink's hot dog stand behind Mr. Chekov from "Star Trek" (a.k.a. Walter Koenig), and got to chat with him for a while, and not long after that sat right in front of Mr. Sulu (a.k.a. George Takei) in a movie theatre. Living in L.A. can be fun.

6. I'm a native of New Orleans, Louisiana. I love that city more than anywhere. It's a part of me. I identify more as New Orleanian than as American.

7. Ryan Darragh's my partner in RL too, and I love him an awful lot.

8. I've been to Mexico, Ireland, Scotland, France, Russia, Germany, Luxembourg, Belgium, The Netherlands, Slovenia, Croatia, Hungary, Slovakia and the Czech Republic, but I've never been to New York City.

That is all.