: About Me

I'm in it for the writing. That's it. That's what I want to do with my life. It took me a while to figure that out, but I finally did. I love writing. I've been a fiend for fiction most of my life (mostly science fiction as done by H.G. Wells and Jules Verne, and adventure stories with a paranormal twist to them...which means anything involving Indiana Jones or Hellboy). But lately I've been getting into nonfiction, mainly outdoorsy stuff like Thor Heyerdahl and Edward Abbey. I don't mind Henry Thoreau, either. I'm a young man and I want to travel, I want to fly (with a commercial pilot's license, someday) and I want to write. Freelance magazine contributor: that's where I see my life going. Maverick cargo pilot and world traveler, too, but that's a story for another day.

I have a bit of experience with writing, too. I started out writing rather corny short stories about animals taking road trips or fighting wars, back in grade school (if I'd gone to grade school, that is; I was homeschooled from third to eighth grade). In high school I started up a debate team and wrote myself into the constitution as its president, which meant a lot of statement drafting. I was also on the yearbook staff during my senior year, and wrote a lot of copy for clubs, classes, and events. In college I had a swell time writing short but pithy opinion pieces for the school newspaper on the most off-the-wall topics I could think of. I got a job at the university's IT department and was its first and only technical writer. I wrote instructions for software and hardware use and put them up on the Web, edited technical documentation, tested and reviewed programs, created advertising materials for the department, and was also the unofficial proofreader. On the academic side, my creative writing classes were a real kick. I managed to rewrite the entire "Phaedrus" dialog using Star Wars and the light and dark sides of the Force as the underlying metaphor. I also wrote a piece of short fiction about a hallucinating plane crash survivor in the Sahara Desert that I thought was brilliant...and I usually don't think my stuff is brilliant. Now that I've discovered this site I've been an article-writing machine, and have been enjoying every second of it. I hope to write a long, epic work of fiction someday. I've already started on the first installment.

Feel free to read anything into my writing that you like, and critique it harshly if that strikes you as the thing to do. I'm interested in the truth (about my writing, not necessarily to life's great mysteries).

My passion is ...

telling stories.

I know too much about ...

vintage warbirds.

My parents always told me ...

to tell the truth.

My childhood ambition ...

was to be a zoologist.

Why I write ...

for the sheer, immaculate fun of it. If I don't write, I'll explode, I'm sure of it.

My first job ...

was working in a feed store...and I have hayfever. That figures.

My best moment ...

is when I say something off the top of my head that gets a big laugh.

Entertainment > Entertainment (Other) Modern society has become obsessed by media-driven entertainment

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Modern society is addicted to media-driven entertainment. This is the reason that there are televisions in people's bedrooms. The reason that cell phones and hand-held devices that can download music, video and games are profitable propositions for electronics companies. The reason that media themselves are blending together: cameras and music players embedded in cell phones, and television shows and movies uploaded to YouTube (which, according to unofficial sources, has hundreds of millions of viewers every day and is available in twelve languages). Contemporary society is gaga for the in...

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