User:RowanInBlack
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Ruadhan J McElroy, also R J McElroy (born Erin K McElroy on July 22 in Toledo, Ohio), is a blogger, writer, artist and musician who lives in Ann Arbor, MI. He usually claims to be around thirty years old, but his MySpace profile (until recently) listed an obviously incorrect age of 100 and his Last.FM profile lists his age as thirty-six; some other sources put him as young as twenty-five. Since he always claims that, as per the Chinese zodiac, he was born in "the year of the Cock (rooster)," if one is to assume this as correct, he was most likely born in either 1969 or 1981.
He was educated at St. Adalbert's Catholic School from grades K through 6, went to public school from grades 7 through 11 and quit in his senior year, having made the choice to work full-time to pay his rent. He obtained a GED at Washtenaw Community College on a bet to get $50. He is still owed that $50.
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[edit] Personal Life: Not Just Info For Nosy Bastards Anymore
Though a female-to-male transsexual, he identifies as a gay man. Unlike most visible gay male-identified FTM persons, Ruadhan also eschews the bear scene and describes his own gay gender expression as closer to that of a dandy or self-described "art fag" (Ruadhan's personal preference, as it implies a sly vulgarity) and uses both terms interchangably despite the inisitance of different meanings on the pages of Wikipedia.
For the most part, he prefers to avoid discussion of his own gender identity and medical transition as he doesn't see it as relevant to his life as a whole and feels that, though some of his work has themes or mentions of identity crisis (with occasions of gender identity mentioned specifically), he feels that when read or heard properly, any "xxx-identity theme" can be relevant to the audience as an allegory as almost all people go though a period of trying to determine, or just being confused about who and/or what they are. He has said in interview that he'd rather have four or five fans who were anti-gay Christian fundies who correctly read his work as a universally-relevant allegory than four or five hundred fans who just blindly latched onto his work because of what he feels is an intellectually and artistically irrelevant medical condition.
Speaking of medical conditions, through no known fault of his own, his eyes are in a terrible shape. He is nearsighted and suffers from Astigmatism. His eyes are also extremely photosensitive. Though he's never had his DNA make-up examined for it, his eye problems coupled with the fact that he's extremely pale have led some of his past and present doctors to suspect he has a mild manifestation of Albinism (though it's more likely that, like his father, he simply has vitiligo and a hundred other unrelated things wrong with him).
[edit] Family?
His father was a former vagabond and factory worker (and in the summers, a Little League umpire) from Detroit, Michigan. His mother, a former opera singer, biker and later a registered nurse from Toledo, Ohio.
His paternal and maternal grandparents were both immigrants, respectively from Ireland and from England. His parents divorced when he was ten, after his mother came out as a lesbian. He has a total of eight siblings, half-siblings and step-siblings combined making his placement in the birth order at number seven out of a total of nine children.
For all intents and purposes, he is estranged from his entired family. His mother, in 1993, "fell off the face of the planet" (many suspect she and her partner went back to their biker lifestyle). His father died in 2002 from a brain aneurysm at the age of 59. The two had not spoken for nearly five years. He does not speak to his step-mother or any of his siblings and maintains that this is the way everybody is happiest.
He currently describes his "family" as being his room-mate, their two cats and a small handful of close friends.
[edit] The McElroy Clan
There is very little known of The McElroy Clan, other than the surname originated in Ulster, and has many centuries-old connections in Belfast.
Ruadhan has some interest in researching his family name as well as in meeting other Irish, Irish-Scots, Ulster-Scots and Irish-American McElroys.
So far he has determined that, while generally ne'er-do-wells, the McElroy clan has had a long, albeit sporadic, connection to music and the arts.
[edit] Career?
His first job was working the front line at a Mexican deli in Ann Arbor, Michigan. He's since worked extensively in the field of "grunt work and gophering".
For posterity's sake, he's also a former article writer for punk and deathrock zines, and has since been working on a highly allegorical novelisation of his life as a Transman, using a castrato character as a representation of his own Transsexuality. He's also made many contributions to Wikipedia articles that are of interest to him, primarily musicians, but also articles on various kinds of classical music, television shows, quirky and unusual historic events and skin conditions from psoriasis to albinism.
He also has a sound collage project (he objects to it being referred to as a "band", despite the project's use of original composition) called This Is Where the Fish Lives. He's working on a This Is Where the Fish Lives album, tentatively titled Ersatz Music For Ersatz People. He's an accomplished, albeit former, choral singer as well as a self-described "guitar noodler". He's noted for playing a solid-body electric viola in This Is Where the Fish Lives.
He paints murals on comission, and claims to have once sold a watercolour "portrait" of David Bowie's crotch from the film Labyrinth for a packet of Djarum Black clove cigarettes and a bottle of Wild Turkey.
For extra cigarette money, he makes pin-back buttons, sold on consignment at boutiques in his hometown. Many are his own designs, but some are almost definately copyright infringement, to which he says "sue me! you'll get a fat Tranny's clothes and a dirty cat-box." This was, of course, before he procured the viola, which he's quick to point out is a Chinese knock-off of a discontunied design from the electric bowed-instrument luthier company, Zeta.
[edit] Crap In Planning:
Ruadhan is also planning a multi-media project, including a band, projected video and/or slide shows, as well as paintings, sculpture and photography to coincide with the relese of his novel.
The band is still in its remedial forming stages and so far is being colloquially and interchangably referred to as Ice Cream to God (after a song by the relatively unknown Swedish experimental/punk band, Kitchen & the Plastic Spoons[1]) and d'Art (in homage to Visage, a British New Romantic group named after the French word for face — "d'Art" means simply "of Art"). No date has been set for an album or mini-tour just yet, though Ruadhan expresses interest in recording the album in limited numbers on Elcaset to connect the album with the early 1980s, when most of the book takes place.
[edit] Other neat shit or what you Earthians call "trivia"
- He grew up, in part, in London, England with parental duties administered by his sister and brother-in-law, who are about fourteen years his senior. His brother-in-law is Chinese and from Hong Kong and he and Ruadhan's eldest sister have lived in the UK since 1986.
- Routinely lies about his age because few people seem to genuinely believe he's the age his birth certificate says he is.
- The name "Ruadhan" is Irish name meaning "little red one", which he chose because he's a Socialist who, coincidentally, looks very good in red and quite frankly, always has.
- Religiously speaking, he's a practising Hellenic Reconstructionist who feels drawn to Apollo, Dionysos, Athene, Eros, Hermes and Pan as his patron deities. He really can't stand most other modern Hellenic Pagans, including other "purist" Reconstructionists on account of the fact that most of those whom he has made contact with are, quite frankly, gits.
- He is also a SubGenius who has never taken Paul Rubens' name in vain.
- Was once contacted on MySpace by one of his musical inspirations, Karl Blake. Blake has done work with Danielle Dax, whom Ruadhan once claimed he's go straight for a day for.
- Has a strong fondness for British and American camp and, conversely, regional satire with a specifical appeal to the American Midwest and rural Canada (which he considers, culturally speaking, almost indistinguishable from Northern Michigan, specifically Michigan's Upper Peninsula, Wissconsin and Minnesota). His favourite television programs, for example, include Pee-wee's Playhouse, Are You Being Served? and The Red Green Show.
- Has almost died twice, before the age of sixteen. Once from a severe case of chicken pox at the age of ten. Once from an allergy to the prescription drug Lithium, which was prescribed to him at the age of fourteen for bipolar disorder -- the resultant near-death which has since led bipolar, in his case, to be determined a misdiagnosis.
- Watches a LOT of detective dramas on television. A LOT of detective dramas. These include, but are hardly limited to, the Law & Order franchise (with a strong preference for Law & Order: Criminal Intent), Monk, Psych, and Columbo. (He also totally recognises the similarities in the main characters of each of these mentioned shows.)
- His Western Zodiac sign either Leo in the Tropical Zodiac in the year of his birth (July 22nd is on the cusp of Leo and Cancer and while usually in Cancer, is somebomes found in Leo). In the Sidereal Zodiac, his sign is a solid Cancer. In a more-rarely used Solar Zodiac[2], he's a Cancer near the cusp of Gemini.
[edit] Grammar Usage:
- A staunch Socialist, he pays homage to The New Left of the 1960s, by adopting the spellings of "America" as "Amerika" and "United States" as "United $tates", as well as other "political misspellings".
- Despite having never lived there, many of his friends on-line are Australian. As a result, he has picked up much Australian slang.
- Raised in both the UK and the US, he's used to the idea of both American English and British English being technically correct, but chooses to maintain many UK grammar rules in his own writing for aesthetic purposes.
- Uses gender-neutral language within reason. Pronouns like "ze", "zir" and "zirs" to replace "she/her/hers" AND "he/him/his" is asinine.
- Will usually edit Wikipedia articles indiscriminately to conform to his own grammatical aesthetic preferences.
[edit] Musical Preferences and Other Bits:
- His first band was a "sort of glammy rhythm & blues" outfit called 13 Chester Street (after a song recorded by 1960s' British R&B outfit, The Pretty Things), he was the singer. They recorded three songs on reel-to-reel tape. The tape was later destroyed in a coffee-table accident and no known copies survived.
- McElroy jokes that he was raised "by church choirs and the music of Frank Zappa." His mother was an enthusiastic Frank Zappa groupie in the late 1960s.
- As a result of his upbringing, he appreciates most genres of music and can find either socially or artistically valuable or relevant musicians in almost every genre, but maintains that musicial snobbery is a necessary and good thing as both a musician and a fan.
- He was a one-time muse of Wendy Frye-Henderson who, in 1993 (when Ruadhan was still living as a girl) wrote a song about Ruadhan for Frye-Henderson's Christian alternative rock band, The Deep. The song is called "Erin". Frye-Herderson and her husband, Mike Henderson, were youth ministry pastors at Rasin Center Friends Church, an "Evangelical Quaker" organisation.
[edit] TMI Report:
- Is unashamedly honest about his sex-life in mixed company, including aquaintences and strangers.
- Used to perform in pornography.
[edit] Socio-Political Bollocks Nobody But He Really Cares About:
- Thinks Americans in general, no matter how "open minded" they may claim to be, are still uptight Judeo-Christian conservatives at heart who instinctively believe having an orgasm is somehow "oppressive".
- A huge fan of Abbie Hoffman and The New Left of the late-1960s. Honestly believes the conspiracy theories that Hoffman was strategically murdered by the US Government rather than the official report that Hoffman's death was suicide.
- If you ask him, the US government had more reason and better means to kill both John F. Kennedy and Martin Luther King Jr. than their official assassins.
- Generally describes himself as a feminist, but finds the typicially feminist belief of a patriarchy ridiculous. Society is messed-up and sexist as all get-out, but quite frankly everybody is to blame.
- Believes "intellectual property" is a Capitalist lie and while unopposed to musicians and other artists making money, believes Infosocialism (wherin an artist, writer or musician ["the artist"] registers with the state; and the state then pays the artist a regular salary to allow for the otherwise low-cost or no-cost distribution of the artist's "arts", possibly with the artist being allowed the option to procure additional income off of hi/r own creations through performances, gallery showings or "hard copies" of books and music) is ideal, as it creates the ability for any artist to maintain a financially adequate lifestyle on hi/r skills alone without the need for publishing houses, talent agencies, record companies or other Capitalist scams that have been bankrupting the genuinely gifted for the entire Twentieth Century.
- After noticing that humanity has a long history of inventing things and then (relatively speaking) promptly forgetting that technology for several hundred years, he maintains a strong interest in archaic technology, especially musical technology, and believes that all past and present musical and artistic technologies and techniques should be preserved. You know, in case we ever need to know how to record on honest-to-corn wax again.
[edit] Quotes
"My penis is bigger than the Internet!"
"You're too stupid to be graced by my pressence when you either need or want me to explain the film Zardoz to you."
[edit] External links
- Ruadhan's blog
- This Is Where the Fish Lives
- Ruadhan's Last.FM profile
- Ruadhan's del.icio.us links
- Ruadhan's deviantART account
- Ruadhan's LiveJournal
- Ruadhan's eBay ID
