Whilst discussing a young man we both know, a friend told me tonight, “What’s the big deal? Why can’t you date him? You’re friends, after all. You’ve got common interests.”

Actually, we don’t. I have no idea at all why we’re friends. We don’t like any of the same things. The reason we’re friends is that we caught each other at a difficult and ugly period in our lives, and when the dust cleared we were each unavoidably part of the other’s infrastructure. Otherwise? Nothing.

That got me thinking about what does interest me, and whether that might be related to the fact that I have a really hard time making new friends. Well, let me qualify that – I have a really hard time being myself with people who don’t know me very well. Because we don’t…really… share that many interests.

Things That Interest Me

Beetles
Social insects
Sharks
All cephalopods but especially squid
Sailfish
Native mythology
Def Leppard
Dinosaurs
Folk stories
Russian idioms
Paleolithic megafauna
Spiders
Peak oil
Food writing
Obesity
The social model of disability
Hell
Early Christians
Gems and minerals (all types)
Victorian art
The Renaissance
Leonardo da Vinci
Bioremediation
Ancient Rome
Birds
Urban legends
Samurai (especially Samurai 7)
Bats
Mars (especially soil composition)
Sex
The Olympics
Cloning
High fashion, especially from Holt’s
Eugenics
Cults
Island biogeography
Cats
The CBC
Poisonous plants
Narcotics
Trephination
Robots
Conspiracy theory
Shackleton
Shakespeare
Polynesian exploration and history
Neodarwinism
Vinyl toys
Japanese ghosts
Realdolls
Zionism
Centralia, PA
Fluoride poisoning
Shonen ai
Piano rock
Ninjas
Fairy tales
Ireland

And that’s only a partial list, just off the top of my head. Dang. Seriously. No wonder people don’t talk to me at parties.