Member Profile: Tim Kettering

Aliases – Timster, Timmy, Vag

Carb of choice – Mac and Cheese

Representative icon – Tina Turner

World of Warcraft Character: Brutallia

Profile: I think what makes Tim interesting is that if you try to identify a distinguishing characteristic, you’ll come up short–is it the facial expressions, the camera whirr, the abs, the not speaking? After reading the responses to my interview questions, and perhaps unique knowledge of the effort involved in obtaining the “Insane in the Membrane” achievement, I would analogize Tim’s body and mind to a car. A car that had a radiator that could never fail, a fifth gear that did 250, and a transmission missing the 2nd through 4th gears. If he gets married to a hearing climber, I’ll have to read Shakespeare to find an appropriate method for jealousy provoked suicide.

Interview:

Why do you play Alliance?

I hopped on WoW on Day One. The first day it was released. Me, my friends and every other person on WoW that night had no clue what server was good. Somehow we all settled on Garona and I rolled my first toon, a human warlock because one of my friends said there’s no fucking way he’s playing anything other than a night elf hunter.

To be fair, he’s still playing the hunter. And I’ve since moved on to playing a (formerly draenei) death knight. However, Brutallia has made the move to Horde-side Proudmoore. Brutallia is going to be a lipstick lesbian blood elf death knight.

Introducing Brutallia, lipstick tank.

How many level 80’s?

Believe it or not. Just one.

How do you deal with raiding’s frequent reliance on Ventrilo as a deaf person? Deaf guild? Translator?

I dont raid that much. And the last guild I was in did require Vent, but they made an exception for me because I didnt suck as a player. I know not to stand in the fire. I know that when Onyxia deep-breaths, you bloody get to the sides and dont aggro the whelps. (Actually I just pop AMS, but thats another thing…) I just need to know the fights in advance. I’m really more into WoW for the social aspect than anything else. I realize that many guilds carry on a guild chat over Vent rather than the guild chat room. Not much i can do about that. If a guild’s chat room is dead-er than Saloon on a wednesday night, then I’ll just go elsewhere.

After I friended you on Facebook, I had some deaf gay guys hit on me, and then blow me off as soon as they found out I was a hearing person. I was a little sad cause they were kinda hot. Comment.

Some deaf gays feel more comfortable dating other guys who are deaf. Or they might have been overwhelmed by your deep intellect and sparkling personality. I wouldn’t sweat it. If they blew you off because you were hearing, then they wouldn’t have been good dating material.

The deaf people I’ve met are more reliant on vocalizing words than you are. The only benefit I can think of is that hearing people learn to sign, but I’m curious about your motivations… why no likey the deaf voice?

Some deaf people are better at talking than I am. Some of them are less self-conscious about talking. Some of them might not even care if you understand them. I on the other hand don’t trust my own speech. And if I try to talk, then it gives the other person the impression that I might be able to understand them talk. Then they talk at a hundred miles a hour to me. And lipreading is something i do even worse than talk. So by taking that off the table, I ensure that communication (although as unwieldy it is) remains within avenues that have greater success such as gestures, using my iphone as a notepad, or just writing on paper.

What’s your safety word, or rather, safety sign?

Maybe it’s a sign of how vanilla I am, but i havent been in a situation where I’d need to have a safe word. But if I ever were, ‘cupcake’ would be. Definitely would be. OH BABY JESUS MAMA CUPCAKE.

Most bizarre sex act in a porn you successfully jerked off to.

Not for public consumption, sorry!

My greatest regret in Las Vegas was that instead of finagling a threesome with you I stayed up all night puking in a bathroom. Comment on how good it would have been so I can feel even worse about it.

As a general policy, I dont kiss and tell, but I think you can go to bed tonight knowing full well that quite possibly could have happened. The shower definitely would have been big enough for three. […] Curse those chocolate martinis!

Dom/sub, top/bottom? Give percentages.

Hmm, I cant really give a ratio. It really depends more on the actual chemistry there. Some guys — I just wanna go to town and top. Certain others, I wouldn’t do anything but bottom. Some.. we’re like, hey lets mix it up.

Curse those chocolate martinis!

Defend the 5.10’s and the Evolvs to the haters.

How can people possibly hate 5.10s? I mean, they build their heelbox big enough for Dolly Parton to squeeze her rack in. That feeling of unshakable confidence you have with those 5.10s when draggin a heelhook with a inch of dead space rattling around is the only thing keeping you from doing a barn door swing off that tenuous crossover into a sketchy landing. And Evolvs? I dont know about you, but I think four climbs is a perfectly reasonable number before you burn a hole through the rand. Its a tough economy out there and someone’s gotta keep the fine folk at Rubber Room in business. I had no idea that people hated 5.10s and Evolvs.

Here’s my secret… Evolvs resoled with 5.10 rubber.

After five years of a philosophy I would loosely describe as “Hedonism”, I am growing a bit weary of it. But I definitely don’t want to go back to the philosophy before that, “Finding meaning.” So now I don’t know what to do. You’ve done the whole fuck everyone else’s world, I’m a gonna go climb in a cabin for months. Do all things become mundane, or is there a life available where the novelty never fades?

If 36 years on this little shit of a planet has taught me anything – just do what your heart tells you to do. Look around and see the beauty of the world, its people and creations. (Yeah I know I just called it a little shit of a planet – both opinions are equally true). Living and climbing in Bishop is one of the most amazing things I’ve ever done. But so was traveling europe for three weeks. Driving 11,000 miles over 3 months all the way from San Francsico to Key West and back. Living, eating and romancing in cities on both sides of the coast. Snarfing a pot cookie and staggering down Mission completely stoned outta my mind. Getting that “Insane in the Membrane” title in WoW. Taking my VW Passat up to one-oh-twenty-five on some texas back-road, cows by the road be damned. Swimming in the lake in front of my grandparents cabin. Fixing up a 40-year old motorcycle and bringing it back to life. Enjoying a donut and coffee for breakfast. But if i tried to do any of those things for too long, I’d get sick of it. I think its just like sex.. you gotta keep mixing it up.

The question you wish I would ask, along with your answer.

I wish you’d asked me what my take is on how LOST should have ended.

And then I would answer that the writers should come up with this brilliant idea where on the final epsiode of LOST, there’d be some sort of crazy event, or shit going down on the beach, perhaps at the very same spot where the show first started. So you’d get all those members of LOST who have piled up over the seasons all together in the very same spot on the beach. And then BAM! Clear outta the blue, another plane falls right out of the sky and smooshes every last one of the cast.

So now the network can kick off another season of LOST with a whole new (read.. cheaper) cast, the same sets, a ready-built rabid television audience and a whole new bag of mind-fucks. Like, the new cast would be picking around the wreckage and finding gory body parts and going “dude… this person wasn’t on the plane with us.” And that is HOW it should have ended.