Ruadhán J McElroy, also R J McElroy, Ruadhán Jarlath McElroy, and Ruadhán Jowan McElroy (born on July 22 in Toledo, Ohio), is a blogger, writer, artist and musician who lives in Ann Arbor, MI. He usually claims to be between thirty and twenty-five years old. Since he always claims that, as per the Chinese zodiac, he was born in "the year of the Rooster," if one is to assume this as correct, he was most likely born in either 1969 or 1981 -- it may also just be a claim made from his alleged penis obsession.
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.
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.
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. As of 2010, with glasses, his visual acuity is 20/60.
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". 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.
There is very little known of The McElroy Clan, other than the surname originated in Ulster, and has many centuries-old connections in Belfast.
Ruadhán 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.
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 penned two novels featuring unusual gay characters, usually with distinct physical peculiarities.
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.
Other neat shit or what you Earthians call "trivia"
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- 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 marrying.
- He has adult-onset ADHD, which he feels has aided in his intellectual status as a polymath.
- Routinely lies about his age because few people seem to genuinely believe he's the age his state-issued identification card 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.
- His Western Zodiac sign is Leo[1].
- 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.
- Will usually edit Wikipedia articles indiscriminately to conform to his own grammatical aesthetic preferences.
Musical Preferences and Other Bits:
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- 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.
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