Wurdguy's profile

View all favorite photos

Relationship

Married

Hometown

Smallville

Places I've been

CONUS, the Caribbean, Mexico, and Europe.

Education

• Life, I can both read and write. - 1946 to 2009

Work

• The Man, subservient to - 1960 to 2009

Military

• USMC - 1967 to 1970

More about me

About me? Okay, here goes, toots.

I was born poor. Not bragging, just a fact. I was never hungry or anything, but seems as though times were always tough. Like a lot of kids from my neighborhood, I didn't do well in school; however, even at that, I exceeded expectations. I was dirty, small, and I probably smelled bad.

Remember JFK's inaugural address?  As a boy, I could quote entire passages from it, and I actually believed that crap. How embarrassing.

College was a piece of cake. Out of there in three years with multiple majors and a degree. Big mistake.  I mean, seriously, what was the rush?

In order to avoid the draft, I joined the Marine Corps. Sometimes Fortune favors fools, and I spent my tour behind a desk in an air-conditioned office stateside.  Believe this as you will, but I looked good in a uniform and I scored high on tests, so I was given a computer MOS and a cushy job in base headquarters.  Heck, I'd never seen a computer and couldn't even type. Wasn't a problem, they said, I could learn. I did, and it wasn't a problem.

I'm not altogether proud of the way I spent my time in the Corps -- there's more to one's obligation to serve than merely obeying orders and showing up for work.  So many of the young men I started out with didn't make it home, and I know this because I had access to the All-Marine Corps Recorder. I was not there with them in my time as I should have been.

Jack Kerouac's On the Road, which I'd read in college, had a profound affect on me.  Like him, I wanted to see, do and feel.  I've done a lot of things, and there were a few things I did I was quite good at.  Were you to read my stuff, you'd get a sense of what I've done over the years. 

I was twenty-three when love found me.*  I'd returned to the university, and there she was.  Saw her onstage four years before, and she was from a family my family had known for more than five generations -- since before the Civil War.  We've been married thirty-six years, and while we never had children, it wasn't for a lack of trying.  

Not having offspring might have been a blessing for some unborn child.  Besides a penchant for neatness, I can't think of anything about me that would suggest I'd have made a good father.

I write. Been paid for writing, so maybe that would satisfy Capote's definition of a writer, one who's paid for his words.  More than a little time has passed since anyone slipped me any coin for my efforts, but do I care?  I do, though right now, there are writerly things I want to accomplish, and money isn't so important....  Yeah, whatever.

There was an evening not so many years ago, I was sitting with an old friend, she of high moral principles, big vocabulary and tenure. After a couple of hours of catching up, she leaned over to me and asked all innocent, "What are you looking forward to?"

Man, don't ask me questions like that. I take 'em seriously, and that one floored me with it's cosmic grandeur. What am I looking forward to? That goes to the heart of the failure I call my life. What, indeed? I have no answer to that. I have never had an answer to that.

What are my virtues? I'm honest with other people's money, and I'm loyal. 

My faults?  I'm lazy.  Lazy to the point I can attest my sins have been the sins of omission. If one is lazy, one needs no other faults.  Check it out, the late Dr. Scott Peck, author of The Road Less Traveled, said that sin is the avoidance of justified pain.  To me, that is the essence of laziness; ergo, one needs nothing else for one's slide into oblivion.

Do I believe in God?  Yes, and without qualification.  Do I have questions I'd like to ask our Creator? Respectfully, yes, I do have a few.

I'm totally surprised you read this far, and when were you going to realize none of this is sexy? Go away.

______________________

* Apologies to Pablo Naruda.

Activities

Reading stuff. Thinking good thoughts. Exuding positive vibes.

Favorite Charities

Salvation Army, PETA, Humane Society. Each of these groups speak for those who have no voice, and we should all be heard, even if only by proxy.

Favorite Music

The truth is, I rather much enjoy baroque, classical and East European romantic. Why, you ask? Cos that's the stuff I listened to as a child. Me mum had a record player and a small stack of 78 RPMs, and that's the kind of music there was on those platters. That and Edith Piaf. I certainly enjoy some popular music, examples being Vangelis' L'Enfant and a lot of stuff by Enya, but not really much more than that. My bad, and sorry I don't fit in.... Not.

Favorite TV Shows

When I was a kid, I was allowed to watch TV on Saturday nights. I was a fan of Have Gun Will Travel and Gunsmoke, but I'd find it painful to have to sit thru one of those programs now. Might like to watch Syd Caesar again, and maybe Jack Paar, as he was in his heyday. There was a Saturday in the late fall of 1972 when I realized I enjoyed watching three shows, and did so every chance: The Mary Tyler Moore Show, All in the Family, and Paul Sands Friends and Lovers. When they were gone, I quit watching again.

Favorite Movies

The Gods Must Be Crazy, The World's Fastest Indian, The Quiet Man, The Straight Story, and a recent addition to my list of favorites, Everything Is Illuminated.

Favorite Books

I read a lot, and it'd be difficult to say which were favorites. This is a hard question to answer.

Favorite Quotes

I'll paraphrase a favorite quote from Henry D Thoreau: "If we kill time, do we not also harm eternity?" After much thought, I believe the answer is, yes.

Favorite People

My mother's sisters, each and every one. I really miss those ladies.

Favorite Places

Wherever there is good conversation, that's not a bad place to be.

Favorite Animals

Dogs. I like dogs. Cats, too.

More "About"