For the second, long overdue update to CoolVeryImportantPerson.com ( aka CVIP[dot]calm ),I decided what better person to profile than my own brother.

As the only person I can say without hyperbole that I've known my whole life, I've watched Steve Spalding amass a list of pretty impressive credentials. For 20 years, I've watched his small scale dreams of taking over the world through massaging his way into positions of power become increasingly larger and larger scale dreams.

So to avoid this from being overly-precious or sickeningly sentimental, I decided that I'll break format and I won't talk about what makes Steve a great person. There'd be too much stuff to type, and you already know about all of that stuff. Instead I have something special for you:

Below is a short list of Steven Spalding's personal, professional, creative, and spiritual failures over the past 22+ years:

• 1993 : Imitating WWF wrestlers, Steve gives his younger brother (Shaun Spalding) a suplex knocking out his front tooth.


• 1994 : After purchasing the board game Crossfire, Steven puts half of the ball bearings that came with the game into his mouth despite the fact the instructions explicitly stated not to. He neglected to follow the instructions but that wasn't his failure.
  His failure was that he allowed his younger brother (Shaun Spalding) to imitate him.
  
  Older, wiser Steve was able to spit out all of the ball bearings after he lost interest, while Shaun (lacking in fine motor control) swallowed two of them and almost choked.



• 1997 : Steven sends in a request to the US Patent Office for a patent on an invention almost directly based on Iron Man's armor. Using a lot of complex science jargon, Steve explains to his brother (Shaun Spalding) who doesn't understand how the invention would function in the real world that it's powered by a "beta particle generator". The patent office sends him a friendly letter and a pamphlet with more information about patents.


• 2000-The Foreseeable Future : Steven fails to buy his brother (Shaun Spalding) a Christmas present. Not even a little one.


• 2007 : Ten years after sending in his patent request and graduating with an Electrical Engineering degree from a well-respected university, Steve still doesn't fully understand what a "beta particle generator" is or any of the technology that went into the invention he tried to patent a decade before.


• September 2007 : Steven agrees to let me write something about him for this site.

Steve's Titanic sized ship of success has capsized too many times on Mt. Everest sized icebergs of failure while sailing on the sea of life. It's a wonder how he remains afloat.