I am 25 and recently graduated from Otterbein College in Westerville, OH. I was a Creative Writing major with a Theology minor (it was a double major until I realized I couldn't graduate on time if I kept them both, so I made the hard choice to drop Religion down to my minor instead, I am only one class short of a double major though). Otterbein was my second go-around for college. I first went to Indiana State when I graduated high school (Greencastle '00) but quickly found I wasn't quite mature enough at the time to plan out my future. I took two and a half years off and recorded two full length albums. Mostly those years were spent wallowing in the mire that is the period after high school when most make the transition into adulthood. I however, still have not made that complete transition! That is a bit of my scholastic history, now onto the hobbies.

As mentioned, I am a musician. I recorded my first demo back in '99 with my band Midterm. In '01 I recorded a full length album that was a project I called Infinite which never materialized into a real band, but the album is recorded none-the-less. The next band I was in formed in '03 called What Next. Following my departure from What Next the four boys went on to reform under the title TGL. Right now, I play at and sometimes host open mic night at the Blue Door on Wednesday evenings from 7-9, then often a few of us will go to Toppers and play the rest of the night there. I am also currently playing with a few guys that may possibly turn into an actual band, but I don't want to mention it just yet because being Irish, I'm superstitious (oh, and slightly stereotypical and sarcastic as well).

I can generally be found drinking hot tea (I love black tea with milk and splenda) and eating a bagel. Sometimes I will break out in sporadic, spastic dance routines (it generally used to occur in the aisles of Kroger/Meijer at school around 2 a.m.), but the dance is never quite structured I will admit. Parties were never my thing, so despite my infectious personality, you will not generally hear me telling jokes and laughing loudly (or whatever it is that makes one the life of a party) in the public forum. I've always enjoyed spending time in smaller company or alone at home where I read, play guitar, or piano. I don't watch much of the tele, but I never missed an episode of The O.C., and still love House whenever it decides to be on the air. Other shows I watch mostly involve History, National Geographic, and The Discovery Channels.

I love writing, which is why I majored in Creative Writing after many other more practical majors just couldn't quell the yearning in my soul. Practicality is overrated I believe, but money is something that is very near the point of being needed as well. I generally write poetry, but one field I discovered in college was the Personal Essay, and memoir. Before I took the class on memoirs, I only knew they were what outgoing presidents wrote. After taking the class, I realized it was the perfect style for me due to the constant digression possibilities. I would write great opinion columns, but there are enough of those at the moment. Besides, opinion columns without action are simply hot air blowing and further adding to the depletion of the polar ice caps which I find to be beautiful and necessary to the current state of the globe.

Like most Americans in the past 15 years, I have been diagnosed with A.D.H.D. I took the medicine for it for a short time and noticed my handwriting getting better, though I also couldn't sleep. Handwriting legibility had to then go to the wayside because I believe sleep is more important, especially in the computer era when writing is no longer necessary. Though for all you 1984 fans, I am not saying speakwrites are anywhere near the same as having a piece of paper, as Winston also found out shortly before the Thought Police captured him.

At the Banner, I am enjoying what I am doing. One reason I never actively pursued Journalism in college was due to my ethical beliefs and what I so often find reporters doing these days for a good story. I retain that standard of ethics still, but found that writing jobs are impossible to come by outside of journalism and technical writing. I had a few interviews for Technical Writing positions in Nashville, TN but they quickly realized I know about as much technical information on computers as a first grader knows of trig (though it is now called Prob. and Stat. for those of you young-ins out there).

I believe that is enough to whet the appetite of the few readers who may find my life interesting enough to click on a blog entry in the Pshaw Blog. Most of my blogs will be similar to this I imagine, though I'm sure sometimes I will go on tirades and what I call old-man syndrome (which is a clever way of saying verbose mostly) rants about whatever. I may also decide to write some essays in here as well, those will be distinguished by titles such as "On the hypocrisy of Western Children who need more training in arms race with East African kids…" or something of that sort. That, I must cite, was a story in the Onion, a wonderful paper that can be viewed online at Http://www.theonion.com

Peace

Kevin Andrew Crafton