The FAQs about Coises

The first version of this Personal-FAQ was posted on 8 September 1998 as the customary form of introduction to the newsgroup rec.music.tori-amos. This version was updated 13 December 2008.

NAMES

Internet name: Coises

Origin: The real “Coises!” was a black Persian cat who came to live with Carol and me in January of 1991 (just a couple months after he was born). He got the name through some inexplicable collision between The Three Stooges and Snidely Whiplash which took place only within our equally inexplicable heads. I got the name seven and a half years later when I first gained access to the Internet by signing up for a free month with AOL, and it was the only screen name I could think of that wasn’t already taken.
Pronunciation: COY-suhz, as if Curly from The Three Stooges were to exclaim, “Curses!” When properly enunciated by males the first syllable is voiced in falsetto.

Given name: Randall

Nicknames: Randy (what I usually call myself) ; Ran (not a favorite of mine, but some folks just find that second syllable to be too much trouble); and back in Pittsburgh, my penchant for feeding birds and squirrels caused some neighbors to dub me Nature Boy, which I found quite odd, since I’m outside less than anyone I know.

BIRTH

Date and time: January 6, 1958, Indianapolis, IN, 1:28 am Central Standard Time

Astrological Chart: Sun-Capricorn/3rd; Moon-Cancer/9th; Ascendant-Scorpio; Neptune and Jupiter conjunct and rising

Ethnic Heritage: probably British and Greek

Special Circumstances: adopted (privately) at age 6 months

PHYSICAL CHARACTERISTICS

Sex: male; Height: 5′10″; Weight: 155 lb.; Eyes: blue-grey
Hair: curly grey-brown; Facial hair: reddish-brown/grey, though I’ve been shaving it since mid-2007
Glasses: only when I want to see anything over one foot away

HEALTH ISSUES

I was diagnosed with Systemic Lupus Erythematosus in the summer of 1992. Since early 1993, it’s been leaving critical physiological systems alone and concentrating on producing extreme fatigue, sufficient to keep me from working as well as from doing a lot of other things. Fortunately, I’ve always been rather a homebody anyway, so it’s not the kick in the teeth it would be to a more active personality type. I usually feel okay if I can keep my stress level (physical, mental and emotional) way down.

MYERS-BRIGGS

At www.keirsey.com I come up INFP.

IDENTIFICATION AND ORIENTATION

Sexual: Male heterosexual
Religious: eclectic mix of paganism, Taoism and Hinduism; some teachings of Buddha and Jesus added to enhance flavor; may contain Discordian philosophy (to lower pH) and skepticism and/or agnosticism (to retard spoilage); absolutely no artificial colors, flavors, preservatives, or St. Paul
Political: The closest designation I can find is Libertarian Socialist. However, I see politics as inherently incapable of producing satisfactory solutions to most of the problems it is charged with addressing; hence I have no real hope for further advances in human society until we develop something — and I don’t know what that could be — that renders politics as we know it impotent and irrelevant.

RESIDENCE

Current: I’m now living by myself in a second-floor apartment in Rohrmoser, Costa Rica.
Former: Indianapolis, IN -> Bensenville, IL -> Chicago, IL -> Venice, CA -> Austin, TX -> Pittsburgh, PA -> Chandler, AZ -> Mesa, AZ -> Hidden Valley (about 15 miles outside of Maricopa, Arizona) -> Costa Rica (1a, 1b, 2, 3, 4)

ANIMAL COMPANIONS

I don’t live with any companions at present, but Borgia lives downstairs and comes to visit sometimes.

D.J. still lives with Mack “the Knife” Heath, a male rottweiler born 16 November 1998; Charlie, an orange tabby cat born in January 2003; and Coconut Joe, a male terrier/boxer mix born 4 June 2004.

Quinn (the Eskimo), who was my friend since February of 1993, was put to sleep on 17 May 2001. Bobby, D.J.’s male orange tabby shorthaired cat, probably born in the fall of 1993, whom she saved from drowning after someone stuffed him in a garbage bag and threw him in the river, died of unknown causes on 2 May 2002. Nicky, a female African Grey parrot born 12 July 1993 who used to live with us now resides in a parrot sanctuary, where she can fly freely and has made friends with others of her species. Coises!, a black male Persian cat who was born in November of 1990 and from whom I took my Internet name, was put to sleep on 3 June 2005. Basil and Oliver, feline brothers born around 14 February 2002, are no longer with us: Oliver went for a walk in the fall of 2006 and did not return, and Basil stayed with some other cat-lovers when we left Arizona. Boss, a male rottweiler born 30 May 2006, went back to his breeder on 11 March 2007.

TRANSPORTATION

Spatio-temporal: After moving to Costa Rica, for the first time since 1990 I didn’t own a car; I got around mostly by taxis and feet. When DJ and I moved to the house a mile up the mountainside, she gave in and rented a GEO Tracker; but we're now both carless again.
Cybernetic: My present computer is a 3.4GHz Pentium 4 with 2GB RAM running Windows XP Home/SP3 that was originally built for DJ by Envision Computer Solutions in January of 2006. I share a 256Kbps ADSL connection with my landlords.

SO

Carol was my soulmate. We shared our various homes from 1982 until her death in 1993. She was 11 years older than I: an Aquarian, intelligent, beautiful and a limitless source of warmth, inspiration, education and anarchy. From April of 1999 until July of 2008 I lived with my best friend, DJ, whom I’ve known and loved since 1980. It’s hard to imagine where I would be now without her strength and support.

SCHOOL

I was awarded the Bachelor of Science degree in Math and Computer Science from the University of Illinois at Chicago Circle in 1979. (That was when a computer filled an entire air-conditioned room; in my first computer class we keypunched cards.)

OCCUPATION

At present, my primary endeavor is keeping my stress level down so my health doesn’t get more seriously screwed up than it already is. Formerly, I did computer programming on IBM mainframes.

HOBBIES, DIVERSIONS AND ALLEGED TALENTS

Keyboard player, singer and songwriter, with no reliable independent evidence of competence at any of these. (You can find some of my efforts here.)
I cook now and then, with some corroboration of success; then again, people might just have been hungry.
I’m a halfway decent Scrabble player and a lousy chess player.
I’ve probably taped, labeled and indexed far more movies and TV shows than I’ll ever get around to watching.
I spend a lot of time with the computer these days.
I listen to music often.

TURNONS

unassuming grace; intelligence; love of music; loyalty to friends; honesty (brutal when, and only when necessary); cynicism, if tempered with kindness; empathy (especially when coupled with an absence of indiscriminate sympathy); a peculiar quality I can describe only as simultaneous love and contempt for the human species

TURNOFFS

pretension; cruelty; social dominance games; anyone who thinks they’re god’s gift to anything; an attention span that can’t be measured without a sweep second hand; loyalty to any institution or authority; uncritical belief in anything; the inability to be quiet when it’s called for; people who cop a knee-jerk negative attitude toward unorthodox drugs, sexuality, religion or politics

FAVORITE STUFF

Musicians: Tori Amos; Jackson Browne; Shawn Colvin; The Cranberries; Sheryl Crow; Crosby, Stills & Nash; Dido; The Doors; Bob Dylan; Led Zeppelin; Sarah McLachlan; Natalie Merchant; Joni Mitchell; Van Morrison; Pink Floyd; R.E.M.; Talking Heads; Neil Young
Movies: Angel Heart; Apocalypse Now; Days of Heaven; The Late Show; Made in Heaven; McCabe and Mrs. Miller; Out of Africa; The Search for Signs of Intelligent Life in the Universe; Shampoo; Short Cuts; 2001: A Space Odyssey
TV Shows: Fawlty Towers; Mad About You; M*A*S*H; Saturday Night Live (original cast); Seinfeld; Star Trek: The Next Generation; Taxi; The Twilight Zone
Alcohol: Champagne; Chardonnay; German white and Italian red wines; margaritas; Bailey’s Irish Cream
Coffee: light roast with no cream and no sugar; expresso with lemon rind; cappuccino
Cuisine: German; Greek; Indian; Italian; Mexican

A FEW FAVORITE QUOTES

“Ignorance is no excuse for the law!” [PalletBob]

“You can’t make an orange out of an orange.” [Mr. Gau, my junior high school assistant principal, when I expressed reluctance to attend a dance because I feared I’d make a fool of myself (which I did)]

“We’ll burn that bridge when we come to it.” [Carol]

“I’m tired of being everybody’s Disneyland!” [D.J.]

“When you’ve got a bunch of people running about complaining that the Reptoids from Zeta Reticuli have planted an Unobtainium bug in their ass, you really have to polish your kookdom to a high gloss in order to stand out in the crowd.” [attributed to “jonathan d mc”]

“He was running around like a chicken in cut-offs.” [origin unknown]

“Fuck the doomed!” [“Richard Nixon” in Where the Buffalo Roam]

“I am the living embodiment of the Sixties. Whatever came along, I did it. Even if I didn’t know what it was.”
“I was seeing God everywhere. He kept giving me the slip. I was looking for the meaning of life — and all I wound up with is recurring flashbacks of the original Mouseketeers.” [“Jim Ignatowski” in Taxi]

“I know I’m an acquired taste — I’m anchovies. And not everybody wants those hairy little things.” [Tori Amos, Rolling Stone interview]

“Never let your sense of morals prevent you from doing what is right!” [attributed to “Salvor Hardin” in Isaac Asimov’s Foundation Trilogy]

“We smoked a lot of hope.” [Shawn Colvin, Round of Blues]

“I love the child who steers this riverboat,
But, lately, he’s crazy for the deep.
The river seems dreamlike in the daytime;
But someone keeps thinking in my sleep.” [David Crosby, Delta]

“I was built for comfort, honey, I ain’t built for speed.” [Willie Dixon, Built for Comfort]

“There’s no one to hear; you might as well scream.
They never woke up from the American dream.” [Melissa Etheridge, Nowhere to Go]

“I know — no one’s going to show me everything:
We all come and go unknown,
Each so deep and superficial
Between the forceps and the stone.” [Joni Mitchell, Hejira]

“Cancel my subscription to the resurrection.
Send my credentials to the house of detention:
I’ve got some friends inside.” [Jim Morrison, When the Music’s Over]

“I want to rock your gypsy soul
Just like way back in the days of old
And together we will flow into the mystic.” [Van Morrison, Into the Mystic]

“People say you should get to know a person before you sleep with them. I say, sleep with him now, while you still want to.”
“We longed to hear the pitter-patter of little feet. So we got a dog. Well, it’s cheaper, and you get more feet.”
“I love my dog, and he’s not a child substitute. At least, that’s what his pediatrician says.” [Rita Rudner]

“Jesus died for somebody’s sins, but not mine.” [Patti Smith, Gloria]

“Reality is a leading cause of stress amongst those in touch with it.”
“When I look at my family, I feel like a detached retina.”
“You’re not so damn Zen after all. You’re passive-aggressive! Somehow we both mistook that for spirituality.” [characters in Lily Tomlin and Jane Wagner’s The Search for Signs of Intelligent Life in the Universe]

“But one man loved the pilgrim soul in you,
And loved the sorrows of your changing face.” [W. B. Yeats, When You are Old]

“And I know she’s living there, and she loves me to this day.
I still can’t remember when or how I lost my way.” [Neil Young, Cortez the Killer]

“All her friends call her Little Wing,
But she flies rings around them all.
She comes to town when the children sing
And leaves her feathers if they fall.
Little Wing, don’t fly away
When the summer turns to fall.
Don’t you know, some people say
Winter is the best time of them all.” [Neil Young, Little Wing]

Finally, here is a just a small part of a great poem, Howl, by Allen Ginsberg:

I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness, starving hysterical naked,
dragging themselves through the negro streets at dawn looking for an angry fix,
angelheaded hipsters burning for the ancient heavenly connection to the starry dynamo in the machinery of night...
...who bared their brains to Heaven under the El and saw Mohammedan angels staggering on tenement roofs illuminated...
...and rose reincarnate in the ghostly clothes of jazz in the goldhorn shadow of the band and blew the suffering of America’s naked mind for love into an eli eli lamma lamma sabacthani saxophone cry that shivered the cities down to the last radio
with the absolute heart of the poem of life butchered out of their own bodies good to eat a thousand years.
What sphinx of cement and aluminum bashed open their skulls and ate up their brains and imagination?...
...Moloch who entered my soul early! Moloch in whom I am a consciousness without a body! Moloch who frightened me out of my natural ecstasy! Moloch whom I abandon! Wake up in Moloch!...
...Oh victory forget your underwear we’re free
I’m with you in Rockland
in my dreams you walk dripping from a sea-journey on the highway across America in tears to the door of my cottage in the Western night

No Justice to make Order of Chaos,
No Truth to make Reason of Madness;
Only Love to find Beauty in the Mystery. [Randy aka Webmaster@Coises.com]