Puritanism: The haunting fear that someone, somewhere, may be happy.

It's looking grey out over the waterfront area of Hobart. Rain you say? A fair chance, I'd wager...

Yesterday I received the good news that I was to receive a prize. No, not the Nobel, Booker, Pulitzer or “Best Team Man” for the Lindisfarne Two Blues Under-8s, I have been humbled by “The Honest Scrap” award!

Tony – over there on ßench – has seen fit to honour my fine work here at this blog, and rescue me from the daily torment of having to think of something to write about. For that I am eternally grateful.

That said, I am also a contrary bugger, and award everyone who reads this post the award. Call me lazy generous, but I can’t just pick ten others, for fear of disappointing any of the two billion or so bloggers out there on the INFORMATION SUPERHIGHWAY.

As a recipient, I am to “tell ten true things about themselves in their blog that no one else knows”. On this point, I shall also be breaking the rules by posting five things today, and five things on Friday. I do this to save me from thinking about something to write on Friday best entertain you fine readers.

So here we go, part one of Ten True Things About Me:

• I really don’t like the name Darren. Really. I hate it, actually. If someone comes up to me and says “Hi, I’m Darren”, it takes all my willpower not to spit on the ground in disgust. The Darrens that I have met in my life all seem to be bad eggs.



• As an enthusiast of the sweet science – think geometry and physics fused with repeatedly hitting someone in the head – I was delighted when my childhood favourite to legally change his name to from ordinary old Marvin Hagler to the far more entertaining Marvelous Marvin Hagler. For a brief period there, I considered adopting the moniker Curious Kris McCracken.



• Despite, or perhaps because of, spending a few good years of my life mired in the ‘grand’ works of Postmodern and Post-structuralist philosophy – think Baudrillard, Lyotard, Derrida, Deleuze, and Kristeva (amongst a myriad of others) – I am reasonably certain that (a few interesting enough questions aside) for the most part it is a load of indulgent, po-faced, relentlessly negative and poorly written nonsense. I’d call it intellectual masturbation but masturbation is supposed to be pleasurable.



• I have always had a thing for Romania. No idea why. You would think growing up with Ceauşescu as the standard bearer would have put a boy off, but it didn’t.



• I subtly – too subtly it seems – tried to seduce my lovely wife in the winter of 1999. She did not properly fall for my immense charms until the late-autumn of 2001. In this sense, think of me a romantic form of hepatitis.