It’s been some time since this blogger found himself tagged; that is to say, tasked with a blog entry whose topic is preordained by the poor unfortunate who was tagged before me. Today, I find myself twice blessed in that way, having been tagged by Loretta and The Merman nearly simultaneously.

My mission is to report five random or weird facts about myself, and then pass that honor along to five fellow bloggers, leaving comments on their blogs to speed the message along, and hoping that they will not send ruthless thugs to assassinate me as a way of saying thanks.

Here, then, are five little-known, odd, strange, random, off-the wall facts about this writer.

1. I once amazed myself (and left a barmaid wishing she’d not used her favorite challenge on me) by tying a knot in a cherry stem with my tongue.
2. Because my fiancee’s specialty is dealing with autism and related disorders in kids, I have taken several online tests to find out where I am on the “autism spectrum.”  If the scores are to be believed, I’m neither autistic nor Aspie, but I have definite tendencies in that direction.
3. I have never seen even one of the Rocky movies.  This means that all the Stallone references I hear go pretty much right over my head.
4. I have seen the movies “Wargames” and “Iron Eagle” so many times that I can almost recite every line from memory.
5. I was almost arrested once, as a teenager, when a friend and I decided to build a black powder potato cannon and test it in a nearby farmer’s field.  The field, as it turned out, belonged to a deputy sheriff. :(  On a more ironic note, my partner in crime later became a police officer.

There you are, then.  Five completely useless facts.  A real blog about a real subject will follow closely on the heels of this one.  Stay tuned.