Well I guess this is where I get to tell everyone who wants to know about myself. My name is John McGuirt. I was born and raised in Bishopville, SC, the home of the Lee County Cotton Picken Festival and the infamous Lizard Man. That is it! Those are the only things Bishopville has or ever will have, unless you count poverty, crime, and the SC max security prison as good things to point out. It was pretty cool having the Darlington raceway only about 15 miles away though. But I am soooo glad to be gone. I now live in the beautiful Blue Ridge/Great Smokey Mountains in Sylva, NC.

I am a 25 year old student at Western Carolina University which is in neighboring Cullowhee. Yes I did say 25 year old student. I have an associates degree in Electro-Mechanical Engineering and a diploma in Industrial Electricity from Florence-Darlington Technical College in SC, so don't think that I have been here the entire time. At this time I am working on my bachelors degree in Manufacturing Engineering Technology with a certification in Industrial Safety. I am on the dean's list here at WCU and have a 3.5 overall GPA. Sorry, I had to add that, it helps my ego. I am also a stay at home dad with my 1 year old daughter Reiko.

Things I do for fun, well, there are many. I enjoy hiking alot and just love living here at the center of the backpacker community in the mountains of western NC. Though I haven't had much time for it this year with a new baby in our lives.
I love to cook. My favorite type of food to cook is Asian food, but I really just enjoy cooking of any kind. My dream is to quit real school and go to culinary school, but at this point in my life I don't see it happening anytime soon. Cooking is something that I have loved to do since I was a kid helping my grandmother in her kitchen cooking good ole southern vitels. My mom cooks all the time too, so I take after her also. I usually watch the Food Network more than any other channel on the TV. Their show Iron Chef is the best thing since sliced bread(though I don't know what is so special about sliced bread, it doesn't take all that much effort to slice a piece of bread yourself). Iron Chef combines two loves of mine, cooking and Japanese culture, you can't get much better than that, at least in my opinion.
I enjoy roller coasters of any kind. I prefer steel or inverted coasters, but any old woody will also do fine by me. We have Paramounts Carowinds here in the Carolinas, but last year I got to go to Paramounts King's Island in Cincinnati with my girlfriend Chris who is from Cincinnati. They have the two longest wooden roller coasters in the world, The Beast and The Son of Beast, and they are just awesome. The Son of Beast even loops which makes it the only looping wooden coaster in the world. The also have alot of other cool coasters. In August we went down to Hotlanta for a weekend and went to Six Flags Over Georgia. They have some cool coasters including Batman The Ride and Superman, which is the coolest coaster that I have ever been on. You are laying down when it starts off then if flips you so you are flying like Supes himself. I hope that Chris and myself get to go to Ceder Point in Sandusky, OH next year because they are considered the roller coaster capital of the world, having some of the fastest and tallest coasters in the world.
I also like to play on the computer wheather it be games, the internet, or school work with design progams like Pro/Engineer and Pro/Desktop.

I am, and have been since I can even remember, very much into martial arts and anything and everything related to martial arts and asian culture, especially Japan. I was taking a course in Japanese Language at WCU and it was interesting to say the least. I enjoyed it very much and planned to continue the course but I have no time for extracurricular classes at this time. One day I hope to spend some time in Japan learning as much as I can about their culture and lifestyles.
At this moment in time I am a shichikyu (yellow belt) in the Trias Shorei style of karate. Chris just received her Shodan (1st degree Black Belt) in Trias Shorei/Shuri-Ryu Karate this September. I started training under Sensei Lorraine Lewis along with Chris in the spring of 2001, though I haven't been to class or trained in any way since Reiko was born. I must say it is a great honor to me to have recieved training from such a respected person in the martial arts/karate community. Sensei Lewis is a two time USKA Female Kata points champion. Sensei Lewis is a student of Dr. Roberta Trias-Kelly. Dr. Kelly is the daughter of the late Grandmaster Robert Trias who opened the first karate dojo in the United States in 1946. I think that's pretty cool.

Another thing I enjoy as you may be able to tell from my website is pro-wrestling. My website origanlly got started as a place to trade wrestling tapes and over the past few years has gotten to be more personal and less wrestling oriented like it is today. That doesn't mean that my love of wrestling has faded though. I started, or more so was forced, at about the age of 3 or 4 to sit quietly by my great-grandparents while they watched NWA Mid-Atlantic Wrestling on Saturday morinings. I guess it runs in the family because I have not stopped watching and keeping up with the pro-wrestling scene since. Growing up in South Carolina in the heart of the Mid-Atlantic/WCW territory was the greatest for a true wrestling fan; which I have always openly admitted to, unlike most people who just now started to say they are fans in the last 2 or 3 years since wrestling has gone "main stream". I got to see all of the legends live such as Ric Flair and the Four Horseman whoooooo!, Dusty Rhodes, the Koloffs, The Road Warriors, Ricky Steamboat, the R&R Express and all the others who are now considered legends of the sport. I have been to alot of WWF live events including a PPV over in Florence, SC of all places, "The night the lights went out in Florence". I have also been to WCW Nitro countless times, and seen ECW live twice. As of right now the only big name pro-wrestler who I have not seen at a live event is the hardcore legend himself Terry Funk. In 2000 I got to attend the Brian Pillman Memorial Show in Cincinnati and it was just awesome. It was an all-star event with wrestlers from all the organizations(WWF, WCW, ECW,HWA, and other independents) at the same show. I hope that they plan another one soon.

My other true love, besides Reiko and Chris, is reading. I can not read enough, though it has to be something that interests me first. My favorite book is easily The Lord of the Rings. My favorite author though is not as easy to name.I read so much that I can't name one favorite though some of them that I do favor are Dean Koontz, Anne Rice, and Stephen King, James Patterson, Michael Cricton, Robert Ludlam, and so on and so on and so on. Thanks to "Mr. Can I Be Serious" Lance Storm, I just discovered another great author F. Paul Wilson and his series of Repairman Jack novels. They are great. I also just started reading Laura Joh Rowland a year or two ago and I have fallen in love with her books. She writes samurai mystery novels set in 1600's Japan. Any good horror, thriller, spy, fantasy, sci-fi, and certain true crime stories I will read though. And I love a good humor book every now and then. I also can't get enough of history books.

If you did not notice from my list of movies, I love movies almost as much as reading. Martial arts/action movies being my favorite type. My favorite martial arts movie would have to be Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon. It is simply a great movie. It has tons of martial arts, romance, great and beautiful scenery and music, and just a great story overall. My favorite movie though is The Lord of the Rings, just because it is my favorite book and kept really close to the book unlike most movies. Spiderman also kicked ass because Spidy is my favorite comic.

Before I leave you, let me tell you about my "family". I met my girlfriend Chris in a VP Excite chatroom in the fall of '99. She is 22 years old and from Cincinnati and I guess I am, as HHH would say, "just that damn good", because since July 2000 she too lives here in BFE western NC. Sorry, it's that ego thing again. She is also attending WCU and she majors in pre-veterinary medicine/chemistry. She was attending the University of Cincinnati before moving here. She really can say she doesn't have time for other stuff because its true in her case. Working full time (12 hr. nights), student full time, karate weekly, and parent full time. I don't know how she does it, I couldn't and wouldn't.
On Dec. 2nd 2001, a new addition was added to our family. A little 8lb 3oz girl by the name of Reiko, meaning soul/spirit child in Japanese. She is the most beautiful thing I have ever beheld. I can truely say that I am excited with the prospect of being a parent. There are just not enough parents in this world, actually just our country, today. Anyone can father a child, but it takes more to be an actual parent of a child and that is a subject that I am very adement about. I should really quit raving now though before I get started on government, religion, education, religion, the environment, dumb ass politicians, or some other thing that bothers me about our country and our "great American society". Raising a child is definetly something I have never experianced before and it is definelty a job, but I am enjoying being a stay at home dad immensly. I now have much respect for women who stay at home and raise their kids, especially those who have more than one. I have also learned that I have taken sleep for granted for way too long.
I also have five other females in my life besides Chris and Reiko, and no I am not THAT damn good, because these five females are our cats. I am a cat lover at heart and have never, not had a cat in my life. I cannot see a cat and not fall in love with it. That's why I avoid pet stores and shelters because I would take them all home if I could. I got Isis in '98 and she was a very young stray kitten that had had one hell of a hard, short life. She was all beat up and her tail was broken. It fell off a few weeks later giving me a real scare. Needless to say it was very freaky because I saw it happen. It must not have been all that bad because Isis just turned around and started playing with it. Chris and myself got Sasami in September of 2000. She too was a young, stray kitten and just showed up on the doorstep one day and I could not refuse her a home. She was only about 8 weeks old and very hungry and now she is just the sweetest thing ever. The other cats came from shelters and they are Dinah, Sumi-neko (Charcoal Cat, because she is black), and Tora-koneko (Tiger Kitty, because she is striped). I am ashamed to admit it but we also have two dogs, Pontius and Mirabella. I am not a dog person at all, but Chris is. We have had Pontius for about two years now and he is fun to beat up on and wrestle with. For some reason Chris thought that we should get another since our life was not hectic enough with a newborn child and 6 animals in the house already. So she went and got a puppy. So far I can't say that I like Bella the way I do Pontius. All she does is make messes, chew things up, and snack in the litter boxes. Maybe I can find her a "good" home while Chris is at work. I never thought I would say I liked a dog, but Pontius is very fun to wrestle with, beat up on, and to make chase things. Thats about all he's good for though. Well enough of my rambling about our animals. As you can tell we have a VERY FULL HOUSE. Pictures of the animals and ourselves can be seen on the pictures page.

That's it about myself, well at least all you need to know now. Thanks for stopping by and checking out my page and I hope you enjoyed your time here. And in the famous, actually semi-famous, words of the Clampetts--"Ya'll come back now ya hear."
Below is my list of some of my favorite things.

Colors: BLACK, WHITE
Scents: RAIN, TREES, A CLEAN REIKO
Flowers: OPIUM POPPY
Animals: CATS
Board Games: TRIVIAL PURSUIT
Computer Games: VIETCONG, SPLINTER CELL, SHOGUN TOTAL WAR
Sports: PRO-WRESTLING, COLLEGE FOOTBALL
Sports Teams: USC(South Carolina), CLEMSON, WCU(Western Carolina), UC(Cincinnati), OHIO STATE, CAROLINA PANTHERS, CINCINNATI REDS
TV Shows: CSI, WWE RAW, ACCORDING TO JIM
Cartoons: THE SIMPSONS, FUTARAMA, FAMILY GUY, DRAGONBALL Z, TENCHI MUYO
TV Channels: FOOD NETWORK, HISTORY CHANNEL, TLC, CNN, FOX, ABC
Types of Movies: ACTION-ADVENTURE, COMEDY
Movies: CROUCHING TIGER HIDDEN DRAGON, INTERVIEW WITH THE VAMPIRE, LORD OF THE RINGS, THE BORNE IDENTITY, THE MATRIX
Actors: TOM CRUISE, BRAD PITT, JACKIE CHAN, MATT DAMON, BEN AFFLECK, OWEN WILSON
Actresses: KIRSTEN DUNST, NICHOLE KIDMAN, GWENYTH PALTROW, CAMRON DIAZ
Celebrity Chefs: TYLER FLORENCE, MING TSAI, MASAHARU MORIMOTO
Types of Music: METAL, CLASSIC ROCK, SKA/REGGAE, POPULAR ROCK
Bands/Singers: NO DOUBT, SUBLIME, PINK FLOYD, BOB MARLEY, DISTURBED
Magazines: COOKING PLEASURES, CAT FANCY, PARENTING
Types of Books: See BOOKS link
Books: See BOOKS link
Authors: See BOOKS link
Sunday Paper: N/A
Sections of Paper: LOCAL, FOOD, COMICS
Breakfast: CRISPY BACON, SAUSAGE, GRITS, HASHBROWNS, and BISCUITS
Sandwiche: TURKEY and HAM with CHEDDER, LETTUCE, TOMATOS, WASABI MAYO, and YELLOW MUSTARD
Dinner: TOO HARD TO DECIDE
Meats: ALL SEAFOOD, BEEF, CHICKEN
Vegetables: EVERYTHING EXCEPT EGGPLANT and RAW ONIONS
Fruits: ORANGES, PINEAPPLE, COCONUT
Snack Foods: COOL RANCH DORITOS, SALSA and CHIPS, SUNFLOWER SEEDS
Candy: CARAMELLO, MILK DUDS
Desserts: SORBET
Alcoholic Drinks: BEER, SAKE, TROPICAL DRINKS
Non-Alcoholic: ICED TEA (without the ice), MOUNTAIN DEW, WATER