Wednesday, June 18, 2025, 10:15PM EST Watching: n/a

"A set of 22 questions, in no particular order, meant to explore a person's thoughts, interests, and life experiences." By Dallas of BIOMECHABUG!

1. What's your name? How old are you? How would you describe yourself? My friends call me Key! I'm 41, and mostly a big nerd with too much time on their hands. I love rainbows and spend far too much time on the computer.

2. What was your upbringing like? Er... bumpy. Next question.

3. What are your hobbies? How do you like to spend your free time? Oh man there's so many dude. I love building and maintaining websites (I have four!), I collect a bunch of different stuff (including enamel pins and little glass vials on a string, each with a souvenir or curio of some kind in it), and scrapbooking--I currently have a junk journal that's bursting at the seams.

4. What kind of music do you like? Just about everything. I'm really into Ghost currently, and Lordi will always hold a special place in my heart. Other highlights of my playlist would be Ninja Sex Party, Billie Eilish, and Dethklok. A lot of the music I like best come from movie and video game (especially Sonic the Hedgehog) soundtracks, and nerdcore (The Stupendium, TryHardNinja, JT Music) also takes up a large chunk of my playlist.

5. Favorite movies / TV shows? The original Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles movies are very special to me; I used to watch them pretty much on loop as a kid/teen. Mostly I enjoy comic book type movies (though I'm sick to death of most Marvel properties), animated movies, and the occasional comedy. As for TV, I really don't watch much of it anymore, but my roommate and I like to watch Customer Wars, Neighborhood Wars, and Parent Wars over dinner, lol. Of course there's the animated series I'm a little obsessed with, too, such as Invader Zim, Metalocalypse, and Mighty Ducks: The Animated Series, which I think will always be a fun watch for me.

6. Do you like any video games? I've always loved the Sonic the Hedgehog franchise, and especially sunk many hours into the Genesis era games. I've spent countless hours in Minecraft over the years, and I also enjoy Don't Starve Together and Stardew Valley (especially with lots of mods lol). I also used to like a little pixel game called Core Keeper, but they released an update last year that made it so my computer can no longer launch the game. :(

7. Favorite literature? This could be a novel, a book series, a comic, etc. Hmm. A big favorite of mine growing up was the young adult novel "Under Alien Stars" by Pamela F. Service, a neat story where a human kid and a teen of the aliens that invaded earth have to team up to save the planet from an even bigger threat. I still like to read it from time to time, lol. I also love a good mystery, especially the Poirot detective series by Agatha Christie and "The Cat Who..." mystery series by Lilian Jackson Braun.

8. How has art affected your life? In so many ways, oh man. My grandfather (my mom's dad) was an art teacher, my mom has two Masters degrees in art, so both of them greatly encouraged me to explore various types of art, from drawing to sculpting with clay and more. With my mom, I was quite often in museums growing up, even some in Austria and Germany when I was really small. I credit her so much with giving me a great appreciation for all types of art. My third grade teacher was a big influence on me as well; she introduced me to creative writing and encouraged us to write, and I ended up being a *very* prolific writer well into college. I still write sometimes not nearly as much as I did then.

9. What are your hopes for the future of humanity? Hoo boy. I hope and pray that we can get past the current hellscape and have some semblance of peace and normalcy again. And I really, really want human rights for all and freedom of expression, be it artistic or gender or anything else.

10. Any hopes or aspirations for your own future? I'd very much like to be in better shape. I don't want to die young from something I could prevent. It's going to be a lot of work but I've done it before, I know I can do it again. I'm also hoping to maybe get more into doing videos of my invertebrate pets for YouTube, mostly because I find it fun.

11. If sentient extraterrestrial life were to exist, what would you want to tell them about humanity? I swear we're not all just the fucking worst! Some of us don't suck!

12. Do you currently have / have you had any pets or livestock? I currently have a dog with my roommate, a lil' chihuahua/terrier mix named Toki. He's adorable. I also love raising invertebrates; currently I have isopods, but I've also had brine shrimp (yes as pets lol), fairy shrimp, and clam shrimp as pets too. I'm hoping to get a jumping spider this year (I have the cutest little spider house for a baby spood) and I really want millipedes too. As a kid I raised rabbits--I had champion show mini-lops, and for a while I had a breed of meat rabbits too. As a teenager we had a bunch of different critters; goats, sheep, turkeys, Sika deer (yup), and by the time I was in college the family had horses and bison! Hand-feeding (through a fence) a beast whose head is about as big as your entire body is a wild experience.

13. How do you hope people remember you? As a creative and eclectic, happy person, a good person and a good friend.

14. Do you have any advice for younger people? Hang in there. I promise it's worth it. Things really suck right now but I'm positive it's going to turn around in time. We just have to survive until then. Also, if someone's mistreating you, tell an adult. If they don't help you, tell another adult, and keep telling adults until someone helps. Don't give up.

15. Are you religious? Not anymore. I spent my teen years in an evangelical Baptist church in Texas (and I mean 'speaking in tongues' and falling on the floor like you're having a seizure but it's 'the holy spirit'). Once I moved out on my own, I went one time before realizing it just wasn't for me. I did try re-reading the Bible in my early 20s, but that honestly pushed me harder into being agnostic.

16. What do you think the meaning of life is? 42.

17. Do you have any fears? I'm pretty afraid of heights, to the point that I'll get vertigo or straight up have my legs fail on me if I'm up too high (for instance, the nosebleed seats at a baseball game). And ironically, despite loving jumping spiders and generally thinking spiders are pretty cool, I still have a pretty big dose of arachnophobia that triggers sometimes (especially for spiders with really tiny bodies but long spindly legs). I'm trying to get over it though.

18. What makes you happy? Chilling at my desk or on my bed, with my computer, is a happy place for me. My pets make me happy; my gosh Toki cheers me up greatly when I'm feeling awful. Being around my loved ones, spending time with my parents, my brothers, and more, is especially a happy place.

19. What kind of food do you like to eat? Like favorites? Mac and Cheese (especially Velveeta), chili dogs, avocadoes, potato anything, and good antipasto salad, yum!!

20. Do you have a favorite animal? Several! Isopods, jumping spiders, thylacines, hedgehogs, and Diabloceratops (a super gnarly dinosaur related to the triceratops!).

21. Do you have a favorite color? Rainbow! Not just any rainbow but the nice bold 'Crayola' colors rainbow. If I have to narrow it down to one color though, it's teal.

22. What do you wish you had known earlier? To stop taking Paxil in my early 20s, immediately . I strongly suspect it as the cause of my sudden neurological symptoms that led to my being disabled, so knowing the danger before the damage was done would have been nice!