Christopher T. Shields
                (aka "BLACK ECHO")
                (aka "The Dark One")

... is a jaded misanthropic loner with the mind of a scholar, the heart of a warrior and the body of a poet.   He doesn't take anything in life seriously, not even himself.

... casts a cold stare on life in general and the human race in particular.

... has more than four decades of experience working with those strange, little humming boxes that can compute Pi to the millionth decimal point while making annoying little beeps and displaying incoherent messages like "Abort. Retry. Fail."

... is a truly amazing individual; a rebel, a lover, a jack of all trades, a true Renaissance Man for the 21st century. That and he's just pretty damn cool.

... is a loner by nature. He can count his friends on one hand. With a few fingers and a thumb missing.

... is befriender, protector, and keeper of cats.

... has a thing for older women, older cars, and older stuff in general.

... thinks scars and eye patches are sexy, especially on women.

... prefers redheads and brunettes, in that order.  He can't stand blondes.

... is turned off by short hair on women, tattoos, women who shave, women who smoke, body piercings, drug users and low IQ types.  These are game killers for him.

... lost his virginity his junior year in high school to a college student; a woman who was two years older than he was.

... can cook (really well), he cleans up after himself, he can do laundry, he's learned to tie his own shoes, make his own bed, and he can dress himself (sometimes really snazzy).

... writes complex html code and knows how to make fire.

... isn't black.

... carries a Zippo lighter with him everywhere he goes.  He does not smoke.

... does not base decisions or friendships on sex, race, creed, color, religion, national origin or planet of birth.  He is simply much higher on the food chain than that.

... can be extremely vulgar in four different languages, he mixes dirty words and phrases together in complex chains that sometimes make no sense at all but provide a great outlet with which to vent his anger. He tries not to do this in public. Very often.  Heavy emphasis on the word tries.

... likes the comic strips Dilbert and Redmeat.  He's also a big, big fan of Calvin and Hobbes, The Far Side, and Bloom County (RIP).

... is potty trained.

... wears classic Ray-Ban Aviators when he wears sunglasses.

... wears harness boots, most of the time.

... played football in first grade and basketball in high school.  Every team that he was a member of went on to become the champions of their divisions that year.  He takes some small credit for his part in making this happen.

... cleans up nicely when he needs to.

... has a natural scent that most women find highly attractive ... or so he's been told many times before over the years.

... designs his own jewelry and prefers to wear jewelry that no one else owns or has.  It's part of his arts fetish.

... has a fondness for old stuff, antiques, old books, things from his past and from the past in general.

... has a fetish for rust and a natural curiosity about entropy.  He once left an old bicycle out in the elements for years just to see what Nature would do to it and how long it took her to do it.  He was not disappointed.

... makes syrup-like sweet tea which has become a legend in its own right throughout the years.

... has a weakness for Hershey's Special Dark bars, especially the minis.

... never goes anywhere without his Aladdin 52 ounce insulated Mega-Mug ... and a spare straw.

... has a personal fight record of 19 and 4, his favor. 

... has had no broken bones in his life.

... has totalled out two cars and three motorcycles.  None of those were his fault.

... has had a total of three speeding tickets in his entire life and none since 1997.  

... his first speeding ticket, received at the age of 16, eventually led to a 13 month long romantic affair with a woman 26 years his senior during his junior and senior years of high school.

... owns, maintains, and enjoys really fast Japanese sport bikes and high performance American sports cars. He is both an accomplished rider and driver.  

... wears fingerless black leather driving gloves every time he gets in or on anything that goes fast. 

... has been riding gas powered vehicles since he was 10 years old and has been driving cars and trucks since he was 13. If it has wheels, he can drive it.

... can't stand Harley Davidsons, or the inbred rednecks who worship and glorify those ridiculous road going dildo yachts.

... does most all of his own maintenance and repair. He can swing wrenches with the greatest of ease. He collects shiny tools and tools that have plug in power packs that make the tools go "rhuuurrrrrrrrrrrrrrr" or "breeeeeeeeee". He believes that you can never have enough tools.

... is a tool using creature, which ranks him pretty high on the food chain as well as the evolutionary ladder.

... doesn't measure his self worth by how often he has sex or with how many different people he has sex with.

... hates professional sports and professional atheletes.  He can't stand how the lowest common denominator in our once great society has elevated the likes of atheletes to near godhood status and he can't understand how people can lose their mind over a simple ball game.

... mourns deeply the death of the American space program, a more than worthwhile endeavor and the conduit for installing into the fabric of human history one of the greatest epocs of our existence and one of the greatest technological achievements of all time; the 1969 Moon Landing.

... lives for the scream of high performance engines, the rush of adrenaline, the throaty roar of a V8, the shrill whistle of a turbocharger, the wind whipping at him as he goes faster and faster, the whine of the engine as it comes into its power band, and the primitive smells of high octane and burning rubber. These are a few of his favorite things.

... writes haiku and some other types of poetry.  Not often, but he does on occasion, just not lately.

... follows and dabbles in modern art.

... never ate paste as a child.

... likes candlelight and mood lighting.

... creaks and pops more now when he gets up in the morning and walks down the hall to the kitchen for his first glass of sweet tea of the day.  This, he has been told, is the price that he will continue to pay throughout the rest of his life for a life more lived when he was younger.

... has flown small single and twin engine private planes before over long distances.

... used to skateboard in the 1970's and early 1980's and even owns a custom six wheeled skateboard of his own design.  It is very smurfy.

... wears three different badges across four different jobs.

... likes knives.  He has several of each, you know, just in case and for reasons.  All of them are very, very sharp.

... has never been abducted by space aliens. Well, ok, once, but they only took him as far as the local K-Mart and then he had to walk home in his urban camo pajamies.  He thought it was a pretty gyp ride.

... has never had an Elvis sighting.  Yet.  But he's hopeful.

... has been stabbed, cut, shot at and nearly run over (twice).

... has never seen Bigfoot (the mythical hairy ape-man-like creature, not the big ol' monster truck).

... has ridden a Honda sportbike up and down the stairs of a fraternity house.  Several times.  One time he even rode his sport bike through the fraternity house.  It wasn't his fraternity.  He was banned from that particular fraternity for doing that, like he cares.

... is an Eagle Scout and Order of the Arrow recepient and can survive in the wilderness on his own.

... carried a Victorianox Swiss Army Knife long before "Macgyver" was ever a popular TV show.  His is black and has his name on it.

... his beard has caused three different women to have orgasms just by rubbing it softly against their neck and shoulders while whispering sweet nothings in their ear.

... has had two different women orgasm just by thinking about him when he wasn't around.

... is never bored.  Ever.

... likes to collect junk and has several large storage containers full of old plastic bottles, small plastic pieces and interesting shapes and parts which he uses as greebles and molds in some of his artwork.

... has a large collection of rusted metal.  He is currently using it as the basis for an ongoing art project titled "The Tetanus Diary".  It's a work in progress.  Rusty things make him smile.

... considers himself to be somewhat of an artist but not a starving one.  He dabbles in art about like the New Orleans Saints dabble in winning football games.

... loves art walks, creating art and looking at the art of others.

... prefers amateur stuff to professional stuff, prefers rough and natural to glossy and processed.

... does not collect unicorns, dolphins or dragons.

... never had a Beanie Baby(tm).  Not one.  Ever.

... has a Kung-Fu Grip (tm).

... loves "Star Wars" but thinks that George Lucas is a revisionist hack.

... has a personal study full of old science fiction pop art from the 1970's as well as science fiction hardbacks, paperbacks, game books and other pieces of reference.  He has spent the last twenty years recollecting his childhood memories and preserving them to share with others of his generation.

... can pretty much quote the entire script of "Smokey and the Bandit" as he watches the movie.  He can drive like Bo "Bandit" Darville, too, when he needs to.

... loves to collect and work on '80's high tech sports cars.

... his dream car is a 1995 Acura NSX-T - red with a black or tan leather interior and a stick to row through the gears with.

... loves Pontiacs.

... is an optipessimist.  He looks forward to seeing the bad side of people and they usually don't disappoint him.

... can count higher than 10 when he runs out of fingers.

... has been to a personal best of 167 mph on a sport bike.  He's been to personal best of 157 mph in a car.  He was in control of both at the time.

... owns a very rare Chevy 406 cubic inch stroker small block V8 built by John Lingenfelter. 

... studies Japanese culture and language.  He likes to follow Bushido, when his somewhat steerable morals allow him to do so.  He can't stand sushi and strangely enough he's never really been attracted to Asian women, either.  He just likes the culture.

... loves black.  Black is his color for everything but food, music, and women.

... is only wearing black until they invent something darker.

... prefers to dance close and slow, he prefers candle light and soft music to smoke filled bars, pop music and loud restaurants.

... can't stand crowds.

... listens to '80's heavy metal when he's driving hard and fast.  He also listens to '80's heavy metal in order to relax.

... likes to collect and listen to movie soundtracks, especially epic action films.  "Last of the Mohicans" is still his favorite movie soundtrack and he's been listening to it since 1992.

... likes Ambient and Trance music.  He can't stand Hip-Hop or Rap.  He tolerates country music, especially Alt-Country as presented by groups like "The Drive-By Truckers".

... does not line dance, a type of movement which he feels is a curious form of socially evolved redneck foreplay.

... believes that while country music is good for your soul it's too bad it has to go through your ears to get there.

... takes his whiskey neat. He doesn't drink beer. At all. His occasional vice is a glass of red wine. He can't stand white ....

... can maintain and operate complex firearms and melee weapons. He practices martial arts (American Kempo) and knife fighting. He is very good at being very bad.

... has a life that is so full of weird occurrences and just bizarre experiences that it could be taken out of an episode of "The Twilight Zone."

... is a weirdness magnet.

... likes zombie movies and hates sparkly vampires.

... will find it hard to hide his enthusiasm when the apocalypse finally does occur.

... works out to improve his physique ... from time to time.

... is a certified PADI scuba diver and has been since 1988.

... does not hunt, fish, or watch sports.

... trained his wallet a long time ago to obey him. Therefore, when he goes out in public, he doesn't have to keep his wallet on a chain like some other people do.

... hates neck ties. He thinks the neck tie was invented so that smart people would have something ready at hand to use to choke the stupid people that they meet.

... writes cyberpunk as well as hard science fiction and some fantasy. He has won several awards for his literary works. 

... has been playing Steve Jackson Games "OGRE" and "GEV" since 1977 and Car Wars since 1980.

... scratch builds sci-fi models and kit bashes, when he has time. He's created some pretty amazing things. His favorite garage kit artist is Kow Yokohama who created the trend setting SF3D line of models.

... takes a great interest in Manga style comics and Japanimation. His favorite Manga artist is Masamune Shirow, the creator of APPLESEED, Dominion, Black Magic 66, and the breathtaking OAV Ghost In The Shell.

... is one of two people in the world who didn't like the computer game "Myst".

... does not find Aqueous Humor to be particularly funny.

... his sense of humor knows no bounds and is fed by the thousands of megabytes of useless data that he has accumulated from many sources including so-called higher education. Useless data that was put there in school, in college, and from watching too much TV. He is a victim of the '70's and the '80's era of bad TV. The sad thing is that all of this useless data is floating around inside, occasionally colliding, creating spontaneous outbursts of laughter or enlightenment that he feels the need to share with those around him.

... hates stupid people. He does not consider this to be a weakness. He believes that God must truly love stupid people as He created so many of them. A vast majority of them live in Lamar, Jones, Jackson, Harrison, Hinds, Walthal and Jeff Davis county, MS.

... is an accomplished computer repair technician with more than a small following of loyal, happy users.

... owns his own custom graphics company, Sons Of Nippon, which is dedicated to owners of high performance Japanese sports cars and sport bikes. He has sold merchandise to import owners around the world. Maybe you are one of his customers ... ?

... is a dreamer and a hopeless romantic.  He watches a lot of sunrises and sunsets and he is always moved by the colors that God uses to paint the early morning and late evening skies.

... prefers the mountains to the beach.

... suffers from the solitude of persistence.

... may have ADHD but he doesn't suffer from it, he enjoys it to its fullest.

... does not worship the devil nor does he play golf. Two activities that he finds strangely related ....

... defies stereotyping.

... in D&D, his alignment would probably be "Chaotic Good."  In real life he's more of an Anti-Hero in nature.  Fictional characters like Colonel George Taylor, Snake Plisskin, Han Solo, The Man With No Name and Malcolm Reynolds tend to be close to how he lives his life.

... is perplexed when people around him tend to really like him and want to congregate around him.  This tends to interfere with his misanthropic nature and messes up his loner lifestyle.

This page is not only a virtual monument to Christopher's glorious yet temporary presence here on the third stone from the sun, but also his own space on the web where others might glean some tid-bit of enlightenment from an individual who has only one personal motto that he lives by:   "I don't ask God for things that I don't need. God doesn't give me things that I don't want."



 

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