: About Me

Born in Ohio, raised in Hawaii, now moldering away in Spokane, Washington, the right armpit of the United States, I long to live where I can hear the ocean again.

I'm a Gen-Xer that hasn't quite outgrown his angst. I'll be flippant and funny one minute and a dour doomsayer the next; that tends to happen when you think your country of origin is in a downward spiral, and has been for the last twenty years of your life, at least that you've noticed. How do I deal with it? I vent a lot in my writing, and I'm also a serious escapist. I'm a geek/nerd/dork of the first water- video games, fantasy novels, Dungeons & Dragons- if it gets me away from reality for a while, I do it, so long as there are no permanent psychochemical reactions in my brain from it. I'm probably the only person left from the 80s that actually listened to Nancy Reagan and just said no. (Of course, I also hung out with the drug crowd anyway. You'd be amazed how much more entertaining they are when you're sober.)

This fall I'll be defending my thesis and garnering my M.A. in English Literature. After that, it will be off to find myself a university teaching position, or an editing job, or something else to pay the bills while making my writing prolific enough to stand on its own as a career.

My passion is ...

the imagination.

I know too much about ...

everything, and not enough about the same...jack of all trades, master of none.

My parents always told me ...

you're wasting your potential; I said I wasn't wasting it, I was conserving it.

My childhood ambition ...

was to be the next Indiana Jones; that didn't work out quite the way I'd planned...

My favorite memory ...

...whuzzat? I forgot the question.

Why I write ...

So the voices in my head will quiet down for a while.

What I am reading/watching/listening to ...

Frizt Lehber/ Doctor Who/ Corvus Corax

My first job ...

Zippy's restaurant in Hawaii. Washing dishes. Yuck.

My best moment ...

Beating my dad at Scrabble with a word I learned playing Dungeons & Dragons; See, dad, it's not a complete waste of time. =D

My inspiration ...

the sometimes guttering but never extinguished flame of the human spirit.

Politics, News & Issues > War & Terrorism Are we safer now than we were immediately after 9/11, or have we just been lucky?

15 of 44

While terrorists may never again fly hijacked planes into our buildings again, to say we are safer from terrorism six years after the worst terrorist attack on American soil would not be the truth. Our President sees no problem in handing over authority of our ports to companies owned by foreign nations. The argument is that while the business of running the port will be theirs, security will still be in American hands, and security has improved. However, a year ago a CNN crew was able to walk into a cargo yard through an open gate and directly into an open cargo container without being ch...

More..

• Helium Charter Member