A little bitty about Billy: 10th Anniversary edition

I know it's a few months off, but just for kicks I went back to my very first substantial post on Blogger, from late September 2003. Fascinating time capsule, that: I wrote a little mini-bio that reflected where I was at the time. I thought it high time, with all this recent talk about the ups and downs my life has taken, that I update it, both for your amusement and as a sort of waypoint check for myself. Ready? Here goes!

(2003 text in italics.)

Name: Bill Spiropoulos, aka Billy S., aka Moogyboy.
Nothing changed there.

Hometown: Columbus, Ohio, USA
Current residence: Roselle Park, New Jersey, USA. One of a bazillion little boros and towns making up Union County, New Jersey, the hair and nail salon capital of the Known Universe!

DOB: March 10, 1974
Yada, yada.

Family: Mom & dad; two older brothers, both married with one daughter apiece.
Now one has two. And the third is a now drop-dead gorgeous teenager who drives a car.

Occupation: Graphic design. Semi-professional musician. Also working on a screenplay at the moment.
Current job: Marketing Associate/graphic designer. Keyboardist/guitarist in local neo-psych-rock collective Floorian.
Notable past jobs: Art director, All-Stater Sports Magazine. Designed two CD covers and a video box for jazz-organist pal Eddie Landsberg. Played bass in local jam band Brokedown Sound.
Now working in a high-end supermarket. It boggles the mind, the twists that life takes. No music scene around here. No microbudget movie scene either that I'm aware of. But I have done a lot of aimless noodling and some solitary recording, evidence of which may be found at several points online.

Education: The Ohio State University, 1991-96 (BSID degree in Visual Communication Design). Fachhochschule Wiesbaden (Wiesbaden, Germany), September-December 1995. Grades 9-12 at Linden McKinley High School, 1987-91. Grades 4-8 at Holy Name School (Roman Catholic, defunct), 1982-87. Grades K-3 (less 2) at Medary Elementary School, 1979-82. One month of Grade 1 at Indianola Alternative Elementary School, 1980. I started school when Jimmy Carter was president and finished right around the time Bill (not me, the other one) was allegedly (allegedly, mind you) getting his rocks off with Monica. What an old fart I am!
Bla bla. What an old fart I am!

Socioeconomic: Lower middle class, I guess you'd call it. Educated, talented, skilled (handsome, too!)...and barely able to make the bills even though I live rent-free in the campus-area house my parents own that I was born in. I have a pathological distaste for the upper-middle class, possibly treatable.
The rent-free bit...ha. No more. As for my socioeconomic status, well, call me what I am: just this side of abject poverty. Working poor. Hand-to-mouth, paycheck to paycheck. And, as I've discovered, a survivor. If anything, my dislike of the suburban bourgeois nouveau riche has hardened into dogma, even as I've resolved to bang my way into their class, just to show them.

Political: Liberal, strong socialist leanings with some libertarianism thrown in. Note: socialism =/= communism; I favor the kind of democratic socialism found predominantly in Europe. Virulently anti-war, anti-imperialist, anti-Religious Right, and pro-civil liberties. Will probably vote Green in 2004. The Bush administration is very very bad. Bin Laden is a schmuck. Sharon is a schmuck.
Bush is gone, Bin Laden is dead, and things just keep on keepin' on in the Middle East. Anyway, I've moved pretty solidly toward left-wing libertarianism. Still some socialist sentiments, but I've become rather cynical about government, seeing that it very often works against average people trying to get by and maybe even *gasp* get their fair share of the American dream. I've become a power-to-the-people type, I guess you'd say. Real big on liberty, personal freedom, and the right to self-ownership. I still loathe the GOP, Fox News, the Tea Party, religious wackos, gun wackos. But what I really loathe, regardless of party, is coercion, legal barriers, stacking the deck in favor of some people at the expense of others, and the attitude that I don't know what's best for me.

Religious: Raised as a Greek Orthodoxer, currently non-religious. No, I don't want to be saved, I just wanna be sane. I've seen too much evil in the world done in the name of the Lord. Every last denomination insists it's the One And True Way To Salvation, and all the others will fry in hell if they have anything to say about it. They can't all be right. So I'll assume that they're all wrong and believe what I want to believe. I guess my "religion," if you can call it that, is a moral code based on Christianity but stripped of all traces of dogma, worship, divinity, supernatural creatures, rituals, rules, smug arrogance, intolerance, and other trappings of organized religion. Kind of an extremely personal, secular Christianity, in other words. I don't pray or worship, I just live it. I do want to get married in church someday, though. A Greek Orthodox wedding. I do have to admit that Greek Orthodox services are way cool.
More or less the same, except I don't really care one way or the other anymore where I get married. Although I'm nostalgic about the trappings of church, theologically I just do not and never have gotten it. I have dabbled a wee bit with Wicca and it's very appealing, and fits in with my philosophy, but I don't think I have sufficient capability to reeallly believe in the supernatural to practice it seriously. I'm basically an open-minded agnostic. Religion's value to me has to do with teaching ethics and morals; if it has an interesting culture, history, and traditions, so much the better.

Economic: Virulently anti-big business, especially regarding mega-huge, omnipotent media conglomerates. I favor government or civilian regulation of large corporations, nationalization of certain industries (utilities, for example; health care, for another), and advocate small- to super-small local businesses. My term for this kind of economic grassroots approach is "microcapitalism." Disney is evil. News Corporation is evil. Bring back the Bell System. And cool-sounding telephone switching equipment. Panel pulsing and city-ring kick ass. http://www.wideweb.com/phonetrips
I'm no longer sure about the nationalization part. And other than nostalgia, I don't know what I was thinking with the Bell System. I suppose I could be forgiven; this was written before I became acquainted with cellphones, and way before I'd ever heard of a *gulp* smart phone. I'm still wary of big business, but not nearly as unhip to modern technology. Disney, except for its admirable association with Pixar and Studio Ghibli, is now too ridiculous to be evil, even if it did spawn Hillary Duff, Miley Cyrus, and the cast of High School Musical unto the world.

Wheels: 1985 Mercury Marquis, black (body by Scheib), 130,000 mi., 4dr, V6, auto, ps, pb, pw, dive flag sticker on rear bumper, makes unnerving clunking noises, uses antifreeze and transmission fluid like a mother. Also own an almost road-ready gray 1991 Nissan Sentra. Past wheels in reverse order: 1998 Ford Escort ZX2, 1986 Renault Encore, 1984 Volkswagen Rabbit, 1982 Ford Courier.
Of all the autos listed, only the ZX2 is still in the family (owned by my brother). Not mentioned is a 2004 Pontiac Grand Am GT. It too is gone. It lives on only as a stain on my credit report.

Favorite time-wasters: Playing guitar/keys/bass, drawing, recording demos of songs that aren't exactly songs, websurfing, reading, thinking, sleeping, playing with the telephone, finding obscure and mundane things to get completely fascinated by, using bathroom, listening to strange bleeps and bloops and automated voices on shortwave radio, plotting success and fame, telling self impromptu stories while in bed trying to fall asleep, making musical and imitative sounds to amuse self. I do have one particular jones which I won't mention on this family-friendly blog, but you may be able to guess it if you stick with me long enough.

Favorite time-wasters that are not really not time-wasters, but actually things I am quite good at and proud of: Music, art, photography, writing, movies creative/artistic activities in general. I'm an amateur student of movies--I dig movies! Actually working on one right now--writing the screenplay, will be involved in production, and I may even act in it. I am a PADI OW-certified scuba diver and am planning on getting my Advanced certification next summer. Love underwater stuff.
Oh, the good old days! I could even add a passing interest in cooking (I make mean pasta dishes) but with the gas off even that's had to go on hiatus.

Computer allegience: Apple user since Grade 9, Mac user since Grade 10. Only in the last year or so have I seriously, grudgingly begun to use, accept, and even like M$ Window$ (but still not a Gates fan). Not nearly the Mac fanatic I used to be. Big fan of Intel-based stick-it-together-yourself hardware approach. Linux/BSD curious.
My credo now is: use whatever works that you can afford. OS wars are for pricks. I currently use an iMac; it's not a bad computer. I used Windows XP on my other computer before it self-destructed. It worked great and was a lot cheaper. It now has Ubuntu Linux on it, which I'm anxious to try out once I get a new video card. Windows is probably the best balance overall imo. Apple's just too smug, arrogant and autocratic--and expensive--for my taste. Linux appeals to me philosophically and as a play-around system but I don't trust it for getting real work done.

Internet software allegiences: I have resigned myself to Internet Explorer's dominance (former Netscape diehard, also used iCab and another freeware web browser at one point), but still use Eudora Pro 3.1 on my home Mac. Former ICQ diehard, now mostly AOL IM. At one time I was a serious USENET junkie, primarily with NewsWatcher and its descendents. Now dipping a curious toe into the Sea of Blog.
Now a devoted Firefox user.

==

Okay, now that my moment has stretched out to an hour and a half, I am REALLY beat. This should be enough bioinfo for any curious bloglookers stumbling on my page. Starting here I think I will adopt a more endearingly conversational tone. Dude! I am like so out of here. Just kidding. You did chuckle, didn't you?

A more endearingly conversational tone? More like a gut-wrenching groan of anguish, dressed in self-conscious verbosity, that just droned on and on and on...

And that is it for now.

bfn

Billy S.