: About Me

About me? Hmm-that's always a tough question. What's important? What's not? Will people want to know it? Anyway, here goes.

I'm from Virginia originally, Southwest Virginia, the Old Dominion's piece of Appalachia. I was born and raised and went to school there, studied Music Education and moved to San Francisco, CA after a few years in Richmond. The San Francisco period lasted 15 years. Then I moved to British Columbia for a while, and now I live in Beaverton, a suburb of Portland, Oregon.

My interests run to a variety of areas including politics, religion and spirituality, jazz/blues, astronomy, ontology, computers, and science fiction-to name a few. Work-wise, I'm self-employed, performing various communications-related and administrative services such as business writing, database management and transcription. My professional pursuits are geared toward technical and professional writing.

I am an old fashioned Southern boy, loyal, proud, principled, stubborn and dependable-someone you can count on.

Okay, I believe that's sufficient information for this context. Anything more is not your affair unless you choose to get to know me better, which you're welcome to do. ;)

My passion is ...

I don't believe in this "passion" business. It's just another fad that will vanish in a few years like the pet rock did.

I know too much about ...

Politics.

My parents always told me ...

Get your education and you'll do well. It's a major lie that parents shouldn't tell their children.

My childhood ambition ...

To be an astronaut. Even now, if I had an opportunity to visit another planet, I'd drop everything and go.

My favorite memory ...

When I was a child we got our water from a natural spring. I remember going to that spring, and the water was clear, pure and icy cold even on the hottest summer day. Peppermints grew around it, and you could smell them as you walked up. This sums up my best conception of whatever is holy and worthwhile in life.

Why I write ...

Why wouldn't I? Because I can and because I like to do it. Besides, I have way too many opinions to not write.

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

Oh, any kind of science fiction or horror, classics like Wuthering Heights, Tom Sawyer, Sherlock Holmes, etc. - too many political blogs, and I love jazz, blues and gospel.

My first job ...

Census taker.

My best moment ...

I was sitting in a little bar on 8th Street in San Francisco, chatting with some friends, when the realization came to me that this was my life, this is how it turned out and I had "nothing to do but this." In other words, that life is now - not yesterday and not tomorrow - but now. Getting that is like dropping a hundred pounds you've carried for miles. Or perhaps the moment was singing with the choir on the steps inside the national cathedral. We sounded like choir of angels in there.

My inspiration ...

Snort!

Creative Writing > Satire Satire: Culture

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The Root of American Cynicism American children are conditioned to expect basic needs to be met by three supernatural creatures, i.e. - the Tooth Fairy, the Easter Bunny and Santa Claus. Ah, childhood - a blissful time when the fairy provides funding, the bunny brings the sugar fix, and Santa Claus is good for anything and everything. It doesn't last. Pacing the treadmill of corporate cynicism, thoughtful adults can realize the path to their current perdition leads backward through the sequential downfall of these familiar icons of yesteryear. Consider - the first of these beneficent figur...

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