User:Vcczar

Timeline
1979 Born March 11 in Dallas, Texas.

1984 Begins memorizing maps from National Geographic Magazines. Is attracted to Soviet Russia due to its size and Darth Vader-like personal with regards to the US.

1985 Begins watching the Dallas Cowboys regularly. This starts a lifelong interest in the sport. His heroes are Danny White and William "Refrigerator" Perry.

1986 Repeats kindergarten.

1988 In the elementary school library he begins his lifelong passion for history. It begins with the American Civil War, but soon encompasses American History and Russian History. Begins collecting football, baseball, and basketball cards. In a strange case of OCD he begins constantly reorganizing his cards and memorizing all the facts on them. This also leads to his compulsion to have to make long lists for absolutely no reason.

1991 Reads Romance of the Three Kingdoms by Luo Guanzhong for the first of eighteen times. It's 2,200 page Chinese epic. While he finds Cao Cao more appealing he soon learns he has more in common with the hero Liu Bei. The video games based off the book also become part of his daily routine. Begins making his own comic book based off of the crumbling Soviet Union. Almost does not pass 5th grade as he fails to turn in most of his math homework. Also, begins a comic book series starring a Russian trying to deal with capitalism in his new country.

1995 Begins High School where he is classmates with Tony nominee actor Stark Sands and baseball all-star Chris Young (pitcher). Begins reading William Shakespeare. Also focuses on European History. Begins watching the Three Stooges to go to sleep every night. This carries on until he moves to San Marcos.

1996 Spends a year as an American Civil War reenactor. During this time he takes part in the Battle of Chickamauga.

1998 Graduates from Highland Park High School in Dallas. Works as a video game manager for Blockbuster Video. Writes his first and second poem of his life. He does not write poetry again until 2000. Wins a small high school award for playwriting. Wins an award for checking out the most books in the high school library. Wins his only basketball championship in his final year of eligibility in his local Dallas league after a ten year basketball career. He starts in the championship game.

1999 Spends a year or so playing Ultima Online when he's not working. He picks up the habit once again during the summer of 2004, when he creates of the more controversial players on the shard. Begins playing in laser tag tournaments.

2000 Writes a series of four line poems dedicated to a woman, mostly in bad verse. He doesn't write again until 2004.

2001 Moves to San Marcos, Texas to attend Texas State University.

2002 Visits New Orleans for the first time. Visits Austin, Texas nearly every day where he meets the band Young Heart Attack and Tony Scalzo numerous time at recording studios while hanging out with the Pocket Symphonies. Begins playing chess regularly at The Coffee Pot Espresso Bar which, at the time, is a center for intellectual pursuits in central Texas. He takes the first of five military history courses of which he becomes enamored with the Thirty Years War and Napoleonic Wars.

2003 Takes his first poetry class entitled Eros in Poetry where he is intrigued by E. E. Cummings and Pablo Neruda. Visits New York City for the first and second time. Greenwich Village particularly Macdougal Street and Bleeker Street become his primary areas of preference. He continues to stay at his friends apartment in Long Island City in Queens. Visits the Cathedral of Saint John the Divine which he considers the most underrated structure in New York City. The Manhattan Municipal Building, which catches him by surprise during a stroll down Broadway, quickly becomes his favorite skyscraper in New York City. This opinion is shared by Joseph Stalin.

2004 Visits New Orleans for the second time. Visits New York City for the third time. Finds Gnosticism which becomes a natural spiritual fit for him. Also at this time Confucianism, Taoism, Deism, and the idea of meritocracy become another part of his regular philosophy. Becomes obsessed with the Myers-Briggs personality types. He scores consistently as an ENFP. He becomes high attracted to INTJ and INFJ personality types. He eventually gets 330 people to take the test and has full memory retention on who scored as what. The band Neutral Milk Hotel becomes his favorite band. Diagnosed with dyscalculia. Begins working in the Philosophy Department as an aid to three professors. Runs unsuccessfully for president of the Honors Program.

2005 Graduates with a bachelor's degree in history with nearly a 4.0. His first poem is published. Begins his master's degree in creative writing. Takes a class on the Renaissance Epic where he reads and thoroughly enjoys Orlando Furioso by Ludovico Ariosto. His term paper is on on epic similarities between European epics and the Eastern epic Romance of the Three Kingdoms. Visits New York City for the fourth time. Visits Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Comes upon books written by Harold Bloom which introduces him to scholarly aspects of poetry. He writes Harold Bloom, who replies, about his omission of Anne Carson, the Comte de Lautreamont and the Sherlock Holmes stories by Arthur Conan Doyle from Bloom's book about the Western Canon. Meets Pulitzer Prize winning poet W. S. Merwin. Meets and befriends Steve Smith (pool player) one of the best in America. Invited to the Distinguished Alumni dinner.

2006 Visits New Orleans for the third time only months after Hurricane Katrina. Visits New York City for the fifth, sixth and seventh time. Visits the Alexander Hamilton U.S. Custom House created by Cass Gilbert at the end of Broadway and declares that it has the most awe-inspiring foyer he has ever seen. Walt Whitman officially becomes his favorite poet, and pays homage to him on each New York City trip hereafter by reciting Song of Myself in Battery Park. Attends a reading by Maya Angelou. Meets and befriends Pat Colleccio and Jules Alexander of the famous 60's band The Association who live in San Marcos. Nominated by Texas State for an AWP Award.

2007 Visits New Orleans for the fourth time. Meets Poet Laureate of the United States Charles Simic. The award winning poet Cyrus Cassells becomes his thesis supervisor. Takes classes from Kathleen Peirce. Reads and thoroughly enjoys The Battlefield Where the Moon Says I Love You by Frank Stanford. Begins self-study of world politics. Begins adding and editing articles on Wikipedia.

2008 Attends the AWP (Association of Writers & Writing Programs ) Convention in New York City. Talks to the following famous poets: John Ashbery, Robert Bly, C. K. Williams, Christian Bok, and Paul Hoover. Naomi Shihab Nye becomes his thesis supervisor. Attends a Barack Obama ralley and shakes hands with Senator Ted Kennedy. Completes his master's degree in creative writing. He moves to New York City. Works at the Strand Bookstore for about a year. He sees Al Sharpton, Ashley Olson, Chuck Palahniuk, Amy Hempfel, and others.

2009 Unemployed partially due to the Late-2000s recession. Gets an amazing girlfriend despite this. Meets/sees the following poets, John Ashbery, Cornelius Eady, Galway Kinnell, Patricia Spears Jones, Tom Healy, Billy Collins. Richard Howard, Anne Carson, Carolyn Forche, Sharon Olds, Naomi Shihab Nye, Mitch Sisskind, Philip Levine, and others. Invited to a private dinner for Ashbery.

2010 Has a poem published in one of the top poetry journals, Drunken Boat.