I haven't looked this good in years.
I haven't looked this good in years.
... was delivered of Mrs. Deborah Krumbach Lewis and Mr. Donald Christopher Lewis on the stormy night of 22 January 1982 at St. Vincent's Hospital, Little Rock, Pulaski County, Arkansas, to the delight of his family and the great relief of his mother; this makes him a Aquarius, Libra Rising, born into a Yang Metal Rooster year (siderial determinism is a myth!). His early life was simple, as it involved becoming a human being rather than an externalised foetus, and was centred around walking, learning to speak, grasping a sense of the world,
and inventing Calculus(get out of here! We're done being facetious! *sigh* Sorry). When he was 22 months old, he broke his leg in the incredibly shortsighed attempt to pull down his playpen; to this day it has left no noticable marks save for a bump under his right knee. There are also stories that he held a snake at bay whilst on a boat in the Buffalo River, but this fact has yet to be relevant.His father, a classically trained sign painter and graphic artist, held several jobs at various sign companies before entering the employ of the now-defunct Ace Sign Company; necesscarily, the family moved several times throughout Southwest Little Rock, eventually settling at 4408 Western Hills in the Westwood neighborhood shortly before Jacob's sixth birthday. He attended Western Hills Elementary School (highly recommended) whence he learned a) that reading can be fun; b) that most people his age were idiots (still true today); and c) said idiots can be very cruel to their non-idiot peers. He also developed a love for music and one A-- S--, whose whereabouts are currently unknown (and whose mutual affection was less than assured, a trend which continued well into his adulthood).
Shortly after graduating from the sixth grade, Jacob attended Henderson Junior High School on the mistaken assumption that he wanted to be a doctor. Instead, he discovered apathy, disgust, and drugs in short order at what can only charitably be called a prision school; no doubt his mistrust toward government, authority and insitutionalized learning stems from those years. One highlight of this period was the instantanious friendship (after the departure of Jonathon Light, known everywhere as a grade-A wanker) with one Carlos Perez, with whom he still maintains contact and a deep brotherly affection. These were also the years in which he entered the Boy Scouts, and during which he developed a love for nature and uniforms, both of which worked to his advantage.In his fifteenth year, Jacob attended Parkview High School, and was fortunate enough to arrive there before it, too, went the way of prison and mediocrity. There he studied art, science, and Latin, among other subjects, and made friends with, among others, Ross Werner, Erica Silvey, Jason Sidor, and Carol Mullins (who along with Carlos brought the sum total of good friends up to five). At this time he also began working at Cove Creek Scout Reservation, where he taught first-year scouts and, when they let him go, the natural sciences, being Eco-Con Area Director for two years (until he got in a row over low pay and quit, disgusted and shaken, in the first year of college). There he met his brothers David Howlett, Drew Walker, the Brothers Argo (Sean-Michael and Ian), Justin "Hags" Haggermeier, and the indominatable Grizz, through whom he met Ana and was "adopted" into her family; thanks to the last, he now has a very extended family, and assimilates his friends into family with great speed. Between High School and Summer Camp, Jacob grew as a person, began to read the right books, make connections, and--most importantly--think for himself; here were the earliest seeds of his inevitable (and inenviable) goal of being a Good Man.
In the Winter of 2000, he made Eagle Scout, and the following Spring was graduated from High School with honours. He went on to the University of Arkansas, where he studied Latin (are you sensing a trend here?). Here he made fairly good grades (after a disasterous first year in which he took things he'd already taken and pissed them away, for which he got well-deserved 'C's and a few undeserved 'B's (thank you Dr. Fredrick)), ending with a 3.5 GPA. There were several adventures, many of them involving Classicists (and one Comp-Sci major, whom we will not name), a few of which did not end in tears and/or massive debt. After a Medieval Latin class in the spring of 2002, he discovered a love for all things Medieval, as a consequence of which he a) went to England (but did not marry an actress named Kim) in the summer of 2003, where he studied things medeival at Cambridge, and b) went on to write his Honors Thesis on a survey of Masculinity in the time of Constantine (you may not see it). He was graduated cum Laude in the spring of 2004.
After a lifetime of saying that he would go to school because they would eventually start paying him, Jacob began Graduate Studies in the English department at the University of Arkansas in the Fall of 2004, where they subsidised his education with a tuition waiver and a nominal fee in exchange for which he now teaches. He has gained many friends and new family, including Grant Bain, Sally Edwards, Craig Crowder, Craig Parker, Amalie Holland, Sammy Larkin, Christine Hoffmann, and Jackson Jennings. Thanks to a rousing series of eye-opening digressions by Dr. M. Keith Booker, he is now openly an utopian Marxist (left-leaning sentiments had been brewing for years, since the days of Greek I, Mattie Speece, and Utah Phillips). He is currently working with Dr. W. A. Quinn on a utopian investigation of medieval studies, the details of which, like the conversation which spawned the project, are a little hazy.
In addition to the requisite "liking reading and teaching" and all that, he also likes music, cooking, movies, etc., though you can keep the pina coladas and long walks. He's also an inveterate grouch, though whether or not he in fact he has a heart of gold is up for debate.