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Our Fearless Leader

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This is my senior class picture, taken in August 1997.

Useless Information:

• My full name is Benjamin Ryan Collins.
• I live in Ventura, California, about two hours up the coast from LA. Yes, California. You may stop drooling now.
• My birth date is December 13, 1979.
• I'm 6' 3" tall and weigh 260 pounds. Yes, I'm a big boy. No, I'm not a football player; that requires the ability to throw a football, and I think I have a football-throwing disorder.
• I'm left-handed, which explains a lot, including my football-throwing disorder.
• I currently attend Ventura College, and plan to stay there until I'm 40.
• I love The Simpsons. Isn't that painfully obvious?
• As for other TV shows, I'm the biggest TV snob you'll ever meet. I think most other shows suck, especially those Generation X sitcoms (Friends and imitators thereof). How much humor potential is there in a bunch of guys and girls sitting in a living room insulting each other?
• My dad was the original voice of Moe Szyslak, and my own impression isn't too bad.
• I can do a flawless Beavis impression.
• I can do a not-so-flawless Butt-head impression.
• My musical tastes consist mostly of the distant past (Led Zeppelin, The Doors, The Beatles, Pink Floyd) and the recent past (The Cure, Depeche Mode, the Chili Peppers, Nine Inch Nails). I'm open to whatever the current one-hit-wonder machine spits out this month, but not so much that I have a new "favorite band" every week.
• My musical distastes include the Backstreet Boys, N'Sync, 98 Degrees, Britney Spears, Christina Aguilera, Jessica Simpson, Sugar Ray, Limp Bizkit, Blink-182, gangsta rap, and techno.
• My most intense musical distaste is Country and Western (is there a difference?). I can't tell Garth Brooks and Brooks & Dunn apart, and I'm proud of it, man.
• My political views are somewhere in the moderate-liberal-progressive range. In other words, I'm no Communist-leaner, but, in true Simpsons spirit, I annoy the hell out of Republicans.
• I firmly believe in the "live and let live" philosophy. There's little I dislike more than somebody who believes his or her way is The Only Way, and won't rest until everybody else thinks the same way. This goes for everything from tastes in music to religion and personal morality. That, of course, will never happen, so, in effect, Mr. and Ms. Moral Crusader will never go away. Whoever you are, you can rest assured that I have no problem with your tastes, beliefs and assumptions; all I ask is that you afford the rest of us the same respect and don't hurt anyone else.
• I write poetry, most of it the depressing, brooding type.
• If you've made it this far, congratulations. You can resume your life now.