95 Things You Probably Didn't Know About Me

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I've done something like this before, but thought I'd repeat it for those who don't know me all that well and are wondering what kind of warped background drives my personality and exactly what it's done to me.

1. Unlike most of the male population, I NEVER EVER wear a ballcap or consider one to be part of my wardrobe.
2. I have a deep, dark personal hatred of the "Snuggle" bear (from the laundry commercials) for reasons unknown to me and would take great pleasure in hearing that annoying, high-pitched voice scream in terror as I put him in the dryer on the High Spin cycle. (I'll defer my desire to filet the Pillsbury doughboy for another time.)
3. I once said in a staff meeting (to a co-worker who was acting like an ass at the time) in my best Bullwinkle voice, "Hey Rock! Watch me pull my head outta my ass. Nuthin' up mah sleeve . . . PRESTO!!!!"
4. I have received no less than 5 suggestive letters on Yahoo from gay men suggesting the following in more provocative language than I'll use (imagine the Darth Vader voice): "Luke . . . come to the dark side." Yeah, kinda damaging to your perception of your own masculinity.
5. I believe wholeheartedly in "If you can't handle what might be the answer to your question, then don't ask the question." So if you ask me if those slacks make your butt look fat, don't act as if I've spit on you if I respond with "No, the 3 slices of cheesecake you had last night is what makes your butt look fat."
6. I honestly believe that overalls (or as some states refer to them . . . coveralls) were designed with enormously large front pockets because the designers realized that men wearing those silly things needed something large enough for a sheep's back legs to fit into.
7. I've only had 1 experience in my entire lifetime with an illegal drug (when I was 19). And that joint made me so sick that I have never touched the stuff again.
8. I knew I should have taken that left turn at Albuquerque.
9. My little brother and I had a belching contest one time when we were in our early teens. The sounds we made must have left old ladies sick for blocks. His last belch resulted in his puking. I said, "Okay, you win."
10. When I was 12, I fell off the top of a 3-story brick school building, landed feet first on a concrete sidewalk, and walked away without any injuries or pain whatsoever. The kids at school called me "Rubberband Man" for a few weeks after that.
11. I use to be a pretty good pitcher in my younger days. Even had a tryout with the Cincinnati Reds minor league farm system. Alas, my curveball wasn't good enough for them in spite of a good fastball.
12. I hate the state of Florida. Damn people who live there look at outsiders as nothing more than tourists who should be fleeced for every cent they have. Additionally, Florida has given us a President who couldn't win the popular vote and flight training schools for terrorists involved in 9/11. Screw Iraq. I say we should have bombed Florida out of existence.
13. Had to have rotator cuff surgery when I was 42 . . . one too many fastballs in my youth (see #11).
14. When I was 18, the city of Peoria was hit by a blizzard. My Buick Electra stalled and froze up in the middle of one of the worst snowstorms we had ever seen. In crossing the street to get to a payphone, I got hit by a station wagon that was going about 35 miles an hour. It threw me onto his windshield (which cracked) and then about 15 feet onto the side of the road. I got up, told the poor old man who hadn't seen me in the road because of the snow (ass didn't have his lights on) that I was fine, let him drive away, proceeded to once again go to the payphone, and fell into shock. If my little brother hadn't been with me (not another soul in sight), I might have frozen to death. Sundown-sicle.
15. I'm embarrassed to dance in front of people because women are soooooo judgmental when it comes to how a man moves on the dance floor . . . but I am the FREAKING Lord of the Dance when I'm in my bedroom with the door closed!
16. I love Elvis Presley's music and even enjoy watching some of his cheesy movies from the 60's. What a hoot!
17. I remember watching the original Mickey Mouse Club when I was a kid. Shake it, Annette, you young, lusty wench.
18. The most painful thing I've ever experienced is having a needle stuck in my cajones before a vasectomy. Women can bitch about labor pains all they want. At least they didn't have a doc laughing at the way your face turned different shades of red.
19. I remember when there were only 3 stations on the television and they were all black and white.
20. I can sing "The Rainbow Connection" in a voice that would make it hard for you to determine if it's me or really Kermit the Frog.  (Keep your comments on the physical resemblence to yourself!)
21. I once ended a debate in a staff meeting by asking the other person if his parents were related BEFORE they were married. (Got a little talking to afterward by the staff supervisor . . . although he had trouble keeping his laughter contained.)
22. I remember watching a funeral on television when I was 4 years old. I honestly do. I couldn't understand why my mother was crying; it was just a funeral on TV and she always told me that everything on the TV was make-believe. And I remember seeing another little boy on the TV saluting when his daddy's casket went by. Rest in peace, JFK.
23. One of my favorite ways to annoy strangers is to find a prime parking spot at the mall, leave the engine running, and count how many people stop their cars and ask me if I'm leaving.
24. I was working at Hughes Aircraft back in the 1987-1989 time frame. My little brother worked over at our sister company, Hughes Communications. Hughes Communications was the forefather of DirectTV and their business was to put television satellites into space and maintain their orbits. My brother is an orbital analyst and invited me over one day to his workplace to watch the shuttle launch (via a live ,closed-circuit television feed available only to NASA and Hughes Communications) - one of the things the shuttle crew was going to accomplish on this particular mission was to release a Hughes satellite into orbit rather than launching it into orbit. I arrived at my brother's workstation just as the launch was beginning, thinking that I would get to watch my brother work his magic on making the satellite achieve a geosynchronous orbit once it was released by the shuttle crew. We watched the shuttle take off and head toward space. I got to see an unbelievable image that day from a perspective few ever do, but it was not of watching my brother do his job because he never got a chance to show me. The name of that shuttle was Challenger.
25. My favorite writer is Dean Koontz followed closely by a little-known author named Ken Grimwood.
26. I've experienced the joy from seeing the beginning of a life in front of me (witness to the births of all 3 daughters), but I've also experienced the horror from seeing the ending of a life in front of me (a man who was run over by a semi less than 10 feet from me).
27. I've saved the life of a complete stranger (a blind man who was in the middle of a road with a drunk driver blowing through a red light and bearing down on him.)
28. I actually like some songs by "The Partridge Family."
29. I worked briefly as a sportswriter for the Peoria Journal Star when I was going to college. And I mostly covered women's high school sports/teams. (heh heh . . . nudge nudge . . . wink wink.)
30. I tend to root for the underdog.
31. Circumstances and finanical status aside, If I could pick one place on Earth that I would love to live, it would be in northern California near the Mount Shasta area.
32. Hillbillies, rednecks, and racists get on my last nerve.
33. I have 2 college degrees. The first was in Biology because I originally intended to go to Medical School. The second is in Computer Science.
34. In 8th grade, I was voted (by 3 classes of 8th graders) as the smartest boy at school and the most likely to be a writer when he grew up. 
35. I am afraid of heights, but have it so much under control that you'd never know. I remind myself of that each time I have to get on the roof to fix a window or empty the gutters.
36. I could eat pizza 5 nights a week.
37. My favorite film of all time is "Dances With Wolves" IN SPITE of the fact that it stars Kevin Costner.
38. I find Native American culture fascinating.
39. Even to this day . . . sometimes, if I’m alone in the car and going down the highway, I’ll stick my left arm out the window, point it toward the road in front of me, and imagine what it feels like to be flying like Superman. Ya think he gets many bugs plastered on himself, too?
40. It’s probably not wise to drink anything in front of me when I’m in an onery mood . . . I try to save the funniest material for when you’ve just taken a swig. There’s not too many things more satisfying than seeing a fizzy soda spew out through someone’s nostrils. If I can get someone to pass an entire cheese sandwich through their nose, I'll die a happy man.
41. Everyone knows that your body begins going through lots of changes when you hit 40, most of them not very flattering or pleasant. The weirdest change I had when I hit 40 was that bee stings started hurting. Up until then, whenever a bee or wasp stung me, it felt as if nothing more than a slight pinprick to me, and my skin never reacted to it. Imagine my surprise the first time I got stung at 40 and that MF-er hurt like hell.
42. I’ve been stung by a scorpion and bitten by a black widow spider. The spider bite was on the hand. The scorpion sting was on the stomach just below the navel. The scorpion sting was far more painful than the black widow’s. Both happened when I was living in Phoenix, Arizona.
43. I’ve already made more than a million dollars in my lifetime (according to my latest Social Security report). Why is it that I don’t feel like a millionaire?
44. My favorite rock band of all time is U2, followed by The Eagles.
45. If I hadn't had my own children, I would have rented kids so that I could go to the theater to see Disney movies.
46. I love older cartoons like "Underdog", "Jonny Quest", "The Pink Panther", and "Bugs Bunny".
47. Scariest moment I've ever had is when I had to save my youngest daughter from drowning.
48. In a fist fight I had when I was 16, I broke the other kid's back (no nerve damage, Thank God). Even though I didn't start the fight, I was so ashamed by what I did in anger that I have not raised a fist to anyone since then.
49. My idea of the best "date" one can have without spending any money is to watch a beautiful sunset with your arms around each other.
50. I love watching NCAA college basketball. Doesn't matter what teams are playing.
51. I am fluent in 8 different languages . . . they just all happen to be COMPUTER languages.
52. My parents moved around a lot when I was a kid, so I ended up going to 6 different grade schools in a span of 8 years.  Man, did that suck.  Mom, Dad . . . could you settle down already?!?!?
53. I love drive-in movies.
54. I love Monty Python and even like the sexist humor of Andrew Dice Clay, at times . . . in small doses.
55. I love Superman and Spiderman comic books.
56. I have a scar on my left hand from when I was 16 and a drill bit went all the way through the hand.
57. I've only broken one bone on my entire body in my lifetime - my nose. But it's been broken 4 times.
58. I've had to deal with two suicides in my lifetime - my mother when I was 16 and my best friend when I was 25.
59. My favorite dessert is chocolate cake, and let me tell you it was soooo hard to pick a favorite!
60. When I sleep at night, I always have a table or box fan running, even in the winter, because it helps lull me to sleep.
61. I have a small scar along the middle of my nose. It's hardly noticeable because it's had 48 years to diminish. When I was 2 years old, I was jumping on the bed like every parent tells their kids not to. One particularly magnificent jump sent me flying into my bedroom window and the resulting broken glass cut my nose in half right down the middle. Can you imagine how terrified my mother must have been when she walked into the room? Sorry, Mom.
62. I have lived in Illinois, Arizona, and California.
63. I graduated college with a 3.84 GPA (on a 4.00 scale).
64. I named my first daughter, Corey, after my mother (with the blessing of Corey's mother, of course).
65. I am a film fanatic, too. Have over 1000 DVD's at the moment.
66. I am about to enter my 7th decade, having been born in 1959.
67. Although I love new technologies (including audio CD's), I miss the days of putting a vinyl record on the turntable and the incredible art that was on some of the full-sized album covers.
68. My first car was a 1968 Buick Electra that had an exhaust system held up by wire clothes hangers. But it had an incredibly large back seat for drive-in movies and other activities.
69. I've NEVER written my name in snow by peeing.
70. I have a small chip out of one of my front teeth. You can barely see it because it's been smoothed out a bit over the many years since I got it (1971). A bully was picking on my little brother. I intervened. Two of his buddies held me down while he used my face as a punching bag. I saw him 10 years after that on the street and wanted to make him eat his own teeth until I got up up close to him and saw that he was now an anorexic junkie. I bought him a meal at McDonald's instead.  I think that's when I learned what it means to really let something go.
71. I think NASCAR is borrrrrr-ing and just don't understand all the interest in it. What's the fascination? Go fast, turn left. End of sport.
72. In 8th grade, I was 6'0" in height and 145 pounds in weight. If I had been born of a different gender, I could have been a super model according to those metrics.
73. The first computer I ever worked on was an Apple II. The next one was an NEC with the CP/M operating system. State of the art with its 8k of memory and 8-inch floppy disk drive. Hard drive? What's that?
74. Budweiser beer gives me headaches. Cauliflower gives me the toots. I avoid both.
75. I believe in an existence beyond this one, an afterlife as it were. I also believe there is a lifeforce, a superior entity that created us and watches over the universe. I just think that it's probably not the God that most people imagine and that we're all probably in for a big shock when we die and cross over to find out what "God" really is.  But whatever "God" is, I'd bet my salary that He is not happy with any of the religions that like to use Him as a reason to kill, terrorize, and enslave others.
76. I do not partake of mixed drinks. Beer and wine are fine on occasion, but mixed drinks give me a hangover whether I get blitzed or not.
77. I am allergic to onions, which I find depressing because I LOVE onion rings.
78. When I was 16, my mother caught my girlfriend climbing in my 2nd story bedroom window. She had climbed up the trestle. I did not know she was going to do that and I was honestly asleep and shocked when my mother burst into the room and caught her midway through the window. Naturally, she did not believe that I had no inkling of what was going on. 
79. I do not have a toenail on the big toe of my left foot. Lost it permanently from some 250-pound gorilla landing on it with his foot during a basketball game.
80. When I eat mashed potatoes, my ears begin itching like crazy. Don’t know why this happens, but only mashed potatoes do this to me.
81. I have a table lamp that was made from the old power meter on the house I use to own. The meter still works and the dials move when the lamp is turned on. Although most think it is somewhat gawdy, I think it’s the coolest thing! C'mon . . . it's a MAN-THANG!!!
82. Back in 1982 while working as a distribution manager for the Arizona Republic (Phoenix’s daily newspaper), I got tired of our new drivers being late to distribution points because they got lost. I took one of our trucks and mounted a small desktop computer and monitor next to the driver in a way that could be easily seen and accessed with both of them drawing power from a power inverter hooked to the cigarette lighter. I designed and coded a software program that would display the city’s graphical street maps, highlighting the roads they would need to take and give exact directions to them depending on the address they entered (keep in mind this was in the pre-Windows era). The experiment worked well, but my manager nixed putting it into production because of the cost involved. I tend to remember that time when I see how much of a killing companies are making on the GPS devices that are being put in cars these days, and I wonder why I didn’t try to patent the idea.
83. My first job ever was as a burger flipper back when I was 15 (I lied about my age) at a fast food joint in Peoria, IL. The name of the place was Mr. Quick.
84. I love darts! Favorite game is Cricket.
85. My bottom teeth were so crowded when I was a kid that my father had the dentist pull one of them rather than get braces. The resulting empty space caused my teeth to gravitate toward strange spacing and angles, both top and bottom. I finally decided to get dental braces when I was 43 years old (along with my then 12 year-old daughter). 
86. The smell of cinnamon always reminds me of Christmas
87. Vanilla crème-filled donuts . . . food of the Gods
88. I have an audio CD that I made in 1996 called “Now and Then” because it has 5 tracks of some of my original compositions performed with only acoustic instruments that I cut back in 1986 and 5 tracks of my later compositions done in 1996 with only computer-generated, synthesized music.
89. Personally, I don’t see it, but I’ve had several people tell me that I look like Ryan O’Neal (remember Love Story?). I even have a friend on Facebook who still insists on addressing me as “Preppy.” 
90. I used to have a piercing on my ear (left ear) that I got as a 40th birthday present, but I let it grow back together after about 5 years.
91. Favorite toys when I was a kid: Rock ‘em Sock ‘em Robots, Mouse Trap, Creepy Crawlers, and EZ-Bake Oven (no, I wasn’t gay; I was just a chow hound). Man, was my father ever mad at my mother for getting that for me.
92. Soft-drinks of choice: Diet Squirt, Diet Coke, hot chocolate (in the winter)
93. I used to have a cat named “Tootsie” when I lived in California. I normally don’t like cats all that much, but this cat was special. Found her starving as a 2-month old kitten and didn’t have the heart to walk away as if I hadn’t seen her. She was playful, very loving (was hard for me to believe that in a cat), and a good companion, but her most endearing quality was that I think she thought she was really a dog. When she was hungry, she would grab her food dish in her mouth, bring it to me, and drop it in front of me as if she were saying, “Well???” She also did not meow or purr like a cat; she barked at me when she wanted to play. I swear, she barked.
94. My birthday is January 31st . . . an Aquarian. Let the sun shine in, baby.
95. When I was a kid, I had a bad habit of pulling hair out of my scalp one strand at a time. My little brother used to tease the hell out of me for it because I did it mindlessly, kind of like when people tap pencils or their shoes when they’re bored or nervous. I would do it often enough that I had a bald spot on the top of my head for several months until I managed to break that habit. I still have a full, thick head of hair at 50 while my little brother . . . well, what’s that they say about he who laughs last? Bwah-hahahahahahahahaha!!!!!

Football - men beating their chests

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With New Year's Day just around the corner, I'm reminded of the subject of this post . . . I think football is a stupid sport.


Okay, that was the statement that will illicit cries of outrage, questions probing into my masculinity, and accusations of traitorous behavior toward the good ol' U.S.A.  To explain it in further detail, I guess I'm not questioning the sport itself as much as I am the reason why people enjoy it so much.  Let me say first that I enjoy any sport or activity where a certain type of athleticism is involved.  The type of athleticism that I refer to is the kind where the participant displays a high level of coordination, one that is almost graceful.  Like the type where a burst of speed allows someone to dribble a basketball around a person (who doesn't have to contend with bouncing a ball while moving) and zip toward a basket before the defender's reaction time allows it to be stopped.  Or the type of graceful motion where a person dives after a ball that has nearly flown/bounced past, snares it in a glove, makes an underhanded throw off-balance that flies straight as an arrow to another player just in the nick of time to "make the play."  You can find that type of coordination in many sports.  You can even find it in football where the running back zig-zags past a line of men waiting to tackle him senseless and rip the testicles from his body or the wide receiver who makes a one-handed diving catch while making sure his feet remain in the playing field.


But those events in football, while fantastic to see, are rare and aren't representative of the average action that occurs on the field.  The average action involves players hitting each other as forcefully as possible. If bones break, ligaments snap, and blood flows from wounds . . . all the better.  And fans eat that up.  Just like a hockey game where the majority of the fans just want to see two guys beat each other senseless because they've lost their composure and temper. Football . . . boxing with pads and a pigskin. Hockey . . . boxing with ice skates and sticks that can be wielded like instruments of martial arts.


Football is a sport where size is tantamount.  Skill and athleticism are usually the tools that take a team from being good to great, but a team with skill and athleticism but no size isn't going anywhere except to a nearby hospital.  Look at the average player in the NFL.  My God, they are machines seemingly bred to eat the very turf they play on.  Obviously, this is all a matter of perception, but "sport" to me is one where, for the most part, size can be overlooked and what really counts is what the player knows how to do with his body. Unforunately, professional sports are getting further and further away from this, but nowhere is it more obvious than in football. Why would I cheer on the 6'7", 350-pound right tackle for flattening the 5'11", 180-pound quarter back on a pass play gone bad?  Was there ever any question that he was the stronger player with the bigger advantage?  No athleticism involved, just brute strength that nature gave the one player.  You wanna see athleticism, let's put both of them on the parallel bars and see who's more athletic overall.


It's a macho sport. Rock-em, sock-em robots on a 100-yard field.  The "language" of football even mirrors that of war-time mentality:


The quarterback is referred to as the general on-field who facilitates the aggressive movement of his men toward a goal by coordinating running attacks and strategic placement of long bombs.  Their success is determined by their forward movement into enemy territory regardless of field conditions and weather-related obstacles and their successful entry into the goal of their end field.


Compare that to the language of baseball, and you'll see why this nation's fascination with the in-your-face mentality of "let's kick some ass" has made football become one of the most popular sports.


In baseball, we "play ball." And we only play ball when it's not raining.  "Ewwww . . . it's raining now, time to stop playing."  And if you hit me with the ball while I'm waiting for you to see if you can get the ball past me, I get a "free pass" down to the first base.  If I make a mistake on-field, it's just called an "error" and we go on with the game - "Ooopsy, my mistake. Tee-hee."  The object of the game when I'm running is for me to see if I can run all the way "home."


With such differences and nuances in the language that make baseball seem like a game for wimps (or as Ah-nold Schwarzenpecker likes to say, "girly-men"), is it any wonder that Americans are less and less interested in baseball and more interested in the rougher sports where some actual carnage can take place?


If you haven't figured it out by now, a lot of this is done tongue-in-cheek even though I do fail to appreciate the fascination with all the college bowls, Superbowl Sunday, and football in general.

For love of English

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In my previous post I mentioned my love for the English language.  That serves as a nice segue into this post.  Can you imagine someone born of another country, for whom English is a 2nd or 3rd language, trying to make sense of the following sentences?  Can YOU read all of them aloud correctly the first time through?

• The bandage was wound around the wound.
• The farm was used to produce produce.
• The landfill was so full, they had to refuse more refuse.
• Please polish the Polish furniture.
• He could be in the lead if he would get the lead out.
• The soldier chose to desert his dessert in the desert.
• Since there is no time like the present, it is time to present the present.
• A bass was painted on the head of the bass drum.
• When shot at, the dove dove into the bushes.
• I did not object to the object.
• The insurance was invalid for the invalid.
• They were too close to the door to close it.
• The buck does strange antics when does are around.
• A seamstress and a sewer fell down into a sewer line.
• To help with planting, the farmer taught his sow to sow.
• The wind was too strong for us to wind the sail.
• I shed a tear upon seeing the tear in the painting.
• I had to subject the subject to a series of tests.
• I need to intimate this blog post to my most intimate friend?

Because we've used it since we first learned how to speak, we take English for granted, but I sometimes imagine how difficult it must be for the many East Indian contractors at my place of employment.  Seriously, English can be one crazy language.  There is no egg in eggplant, no ham in hamburger, and no apple or pine in pineapple.  English muffins were not invented in England.  French fries did not originate in France.  We take all these words for granted, but for those new to English, these words must be the reason why the curse words are usually the first words they learn.


And then there are the paradox words.  We know that quicksand works slowly at sucking you down into it.  Boxing rings are square in shape.  A Guinea pig is neither from Guinea nor is it really a species of pig.


And who decided what the verb forms would be when derived from nouns?  Why is it that writers write, but fingers don't fing, grocers don't groce, hammers don't ham, and jewelers don't jewel.  And what's with the plurality of certain words?  If the plural of tooth is teeth, why isn't the plural of booth, beeth?  One goose, two geese.  So therefore, one moose, two meese?  Is it just me or is it nuts that you can makes amends, but you can't make only 1 amend - there has to be more than one wrong to correct it?  And what if you have a bunch of odds and ends - what do you call it when you discard all but one of them?


If what teachers did in the past was "taught", do we call what preachers did in the past, "praught"?  Why do people recite a play and play at a recital?  How can slim and fat be exact opposites, but a slim chance and a fat chance both mean the same damn thing?  Yet a wise guy and a wise man are at the opposite ends of the spectrum.  You simply have to marvel at the unique lunacy in the English language in which your house can burn up as it burns down.


An American comedian, Steven Wright, has made his fortune with routines and skits that play on the nuttiness of the English langauge.


Why is English not considered a language of morons then?  BECAUSE . . . English was invented by real people, not computers.  Like its creators, it evolved over time to accomodate and reflect all the nuances of its creators, the human race . . . which of course, is really just a collection of people and not a race at all.  Go figure.

Word of the day - Gobadee

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"Gobadee" is a word I coined when my daughter, Corey, (now 28 years old) was around 2 years old. Pronounced [gob-ahh-dee], it rhymes with "lob a pea."  The reason for the creation of this word stems from Corey's inability at that age to roll her tongue and make the "L" sound.  "Love" usually came out as "wuf." She seemed a little irritated that she couldn't make the "L" sound, so she began to avoid using that word and any other word that started with the "L" sound.  Well, I didn't want my little girl refraining from telling me or her mother that she loved us, so I made up a word for her.

On a whim one evening as I was tucking her in bed, I said "good night, Corey . . . and gobadee."  She looked at me quizzically, wondering what this new word meant.  I explained to her that when she was a baby, she couldn't speak "grown-up" talk; she spoke in "baby-talk."  And the baby-talk word for "I love you" was "gobadee."  I told her that I liked the sound of that word and wanted to keep using it with her and ONLY her.  She was intrigued by the word and clapped her hands like any new kid exposed to something viewed as magical or a shared secret.  And thereafter, we said that word to each other when I tucked her into bed for the evening.  Her mother thought it was sweet, and she began using it with Corey, too.

Years passed and Corey eventually mastered the "L" word, but she would still say gobadee to me at night and use it in birthday cards and Father's Day cards to me.  For no particular reason and without some sort of grandiose announcement, she stopped using gobadee for the most part when she reached her teens.  I thought the word would fall into the category of lost languages like Aramaic . . . until she used it in her closing with ae letter I received from her not so long ago.

It's a pleasant feeling when something good out of the past strikes you in the present and brings back so many memories and emotions.  Right now, her use of that word has made me feel pretty old, but it's a good feeling of being old.  Perhaps "old" is the wrong word.  I feel enriched and blessed to have had some pretty wonderful things in my life.  Corey is one of them.  I have a feeling she's going to pass that word on to her children when that time comes.

Legacies can come in many different forms. One of mine will come in the form of a make-believe word. Somehow, with my love for the English language, I find that strikingly appropriate.

Here thar be tales . . .

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Welcome to my place on the web - a place where there are no Facebook and MySpace limitations on the amount of prose you choose to write/share.  A place where I can rant and rave (two words that seem to go together like "sick" and "tired") to my heart's content.  A place where I can take some liberties with traditional grammar rules (such as this sentence fragment illustrates).  And hopefully, a place where I can not only share information in greater detail than the aforementioned web sites allow, but also where I can provide entertainment occasionally and spin some tales to amuse and educate.

Cover me.  I'm goin' in.