My guess is none of these are really random, or even surprising.
1. I am one of those people who loves cats and dogs more or less equally. OK maybe 55-45 in favor of cats, of which I currently I have two. They're unbelievably needy, wrt me and each other (if one of them, say, stays outside longer than expected or has to stay at the vet overnight, the other gets EXTREMELY panicky), so I kinda feel like I'm set for needy and a dog would break me.
2. I like big dogs. I grew up with golden retrievers, and I still love them, but when I get a dog, I want, like, a Saint Bernard.
3. I consider myself a very private person, and yet often find myself saying completely inappropriate things, loudly and in public.
4. Given the above, it surprises me greatly that I've never been in a (physical) fight.
5. I've been vegetarian since I was 14 or so, but I'm strangely ambivalent to byproducts. When my housemate cooks for me, he avoids using, say, anchovies or fish sauce, but I don't really ask about these things when I order Caesar Salad or pad thai in restaurants. I also don't really care about gelatin in say, candy, but I only eat Jell-O once a year (a family recipe that completely rules).
6. I love food, and I love trying new foods and cooking and learning more about food. But I honestly think I could eat burritos for every meal and be insanely happy. Some weeks, I come very close to achieving this objective.
7. I was a theater and mock trial team nerd in high school. Public speaking has never freaked me out (though reading my own writing before an audience can still shake me up sometimes, it's something I've had to practice a lot), but I've had an absolute terror of public singing for much of my life, even though I love to sing. Hootenannies with friends, and karaoke, and drunken singalongs, have gone a long way toward healing this wound.
8. When I was in high school and for much of college, I had a lot of male friends who flirted with me but never seemed to want to go out with me (or, vice versa). That changed sometime in my early 20s, and it came as a pleasant shock. It still sometimes is.
9. In the last year I've made more female friends, to whom I've become close, than I'd had for quite some time, and become closer to some older female friends, and developed giddy snarky confessional relationships of a type I haven't shared for what seems like a loooong time. It kinda rules.
10. One of my earliest, and favorite, memories is this: One Christmas when I was very little, my parents and brother received cross-country skis...but they couldn't find skis small enough for me, so I got a sled. We went out that night in our quiet rural subdivision (it's in the bona fide suburbs now, but back then there was absolutely nothing for miles around). They skiied in the streets, and the border collie/huskie mix we had at the time pulled me in the sled.
11. My mother was an enormous influence on my personality for lots of reasons less obvious than that, you know, she raised me. One is this. Both of my parents are very funny, but had, I think, rather different senses of humor. Dad's sense of humor is a bit on the charmingly mean side (in classic Irish style); Mom was more likely to drop a blithe non-sequitir. I think I've inherited both modalities and suffice it to say, when I delivered her eulogy I made sure it was HILARIOUS.
12. When I moved back in with my folks after college I was massively depressed. Drinking gin and flat tonic water WITH NO LIME depressed (if you know me at all, you know I'd sooner wear a hair shirt, or voluntarily chop off my right hand, than drink a suboptimal g & t). I drove around a lot in the snow listening to "Pet Sounds," an album I now pleasantly associate with holidays and seasonal depression.
13. My friend Mike once described me as a "culture artist." Someone (and I'm too lazy to look it up) coined this phrase to describe the kind of person who looks at something and immediately wants to know, "What is this? Where does it fit in to the rest of culture and history?" It's true. Once I get interested in something I want to PLACE it. I want all the context I can possibly get.
14. Related to the above, I am currently reading Stephen Nissenbaum's "The Battle For Christmas," which details the transition from Christmas as a raucous, public, drunken Carnivale-style holiday to the domestic, family- and child-centered, ashamed-of-its-own-commercialism holiday we know today. I kind of can't handle how awesome it is and given the opportunity will be like, "Did you know that Clement Clark Moore owned ALL OF THE PROPERTY that is now the Chelsea District in NYC?" and then rant about the class significance of St. Nick's "stump of a pipe."
15. I have been this annoying my entire life.
16. Which explains my former obsession with Everything2, and the fact that so many people important to my real-life social life are folks I know, one way or another, through E2-like social channels. If you don't know I WILL NOT BOTHER TO TELL you except that it was kinda like Wikipedia, only, you know, the humor was intentional.
17. Once when I was eight I had a dream that Chevy Chase died. I was upset for the ENTIRE REST OF THE DAY because I realized he was going to die someday. I didn't tell my parents because I knew it would upset them too to think about Chevy Chase dying. To this day I still occasionally think, Oh my God, Chevy Chase is going to die someday, and I freak out.
18. Big Country once did a bluegrass cover of "I'm On Fire" that, after MANY MANY MANY MANY listenings still blows my damn mind.
19. I think most of you are just irritated by the culture of shame and euphemism surrounding sexuality, alcohol and drug use, etc. as I am, and you may even be surprised, since I take a more "traditional" (what does that even MEAN? WHOSE TRADITIONS?) approach to such matters than do many of my friends but do you SEETHE ABOUT IT FOR DAYS when, for instance, you go to the gynecologist and he just ASSUMES you are straight and monogamous? Even if it's mostly true in my case, what the HELL.
20. Oh I get mad about healthism and classism and racism and sexism and ableism too, and also I hate BAD MANNERS in all contexts though my typical response is to make a lot of mean tasteless jokes about the purveyors of same and then feel hurt and sad and angry for days and then make more mean jokes while getting drunk with my friends.
21. MBTI results are in. I'm a textbook INFP. Yes, yes, the crying-on-the-inside kind of clown.
22. I also have no patience for people who don't appreciate humor. Even, or perhaps ESPECIALLY, when said humor is wildly inappropriate. This prejudice stems from my firm belief that gallows humor is the most crucial tool for survival in the modern world and anyone incapable of it needs to go ahead and die already.
23. And give me all their stuff first.
24. The first cat I remember having was named Thomasina. She was a beautiful yellow cat (like the cat from the movie that NO ONE BUT JESS REMEMBERS, "The Three Lives of Thomasina," which Mom and I both loved). The stereotype about cats is that they could take you or leave you, but I have a history of having them fall in love with me and follow me everywhere. Thomasina slept on my chest at night and sucked on the yarn ties on my blanket. Later, she was torn apart by wild dogs. While pregnant.
25. I want to buy you all a drink.