5-15-01

Who was that masked man?

May fifteenth in the year of our Lord, 2001

Greetings from BFE...

Forward this e-mail to your friends...it's like chicken soup for your soul...or at least preparation H for your you-know-what.

Old business:

1st.) I have no idea why last weeks rant came across with the blue background...My best answer: Yahoo is possessed.

2nd.) Some of you e-mailed to let me know that my first installment of "The Sword of God" came across with a bunch of html trash on AOL's e-mail program (what can I say other than AOL sucks), but if you're interested in reading the installments without the html trash, you can visit my website at: http://www.racox.com/excerpts.htm#sog

E-mail regarding last weeks newsletter.

Q.) I am appalled that you find celebrity crimes entertaining. I doubt Ron Goldman's family would have found your little diatribe funny. Please remove me from this list!

A.) *note to self -- They love the sardonic looks at pop culture, do more, more, more...

Q.) What is your "Day Job"?

A.) All I will divulge is this, thank God it has nothing to do with keeping subscribers to this list...

Got a question or comment, drop me a line at: racox@officetex.com

If you're wondering why people love me so much (hopefully there is enough sarcasm there to register clearer than last weeks rant), you can check out past installments of my newsletter at: http://www.racox.com/photo.htm

+++

Okay, here's the naked truth about these newsletters, I have no idea what I'm going to write about until I sit down in front of the computer and begin hammering the keys, see this is as much an exercise for me, as it is torture for you...

So as I sit here wondering what I'm going to write about this week (and wondering who I'm going to piss off with it) I get an e-mail that asks me about pseudonyms.

Funny thing pseudonyms...

Truckers call them their "handles", military pilots call them their "call signs", and cops refer to them as "aliases". Any way you slice it, they allow us to be something or someone of our own invention. Ordinarily this would be a pretty sweet proposition...leave it to me to have a pseudonym that is more neurotic than the real person.

Trust me, you'll see what I mean by that comment as you read "The Sword of God" installments.

I still remember my first pseudonym with fondness. Chance Griffen was his name and he was born around my eighteenth birthday. Chance started out as my face on a terribly fake looking drivers license. He was older than me at the time -- twenty-one in fact. (imagine that, legal age to purchase alcohol) At first Chance didn't have much of a personality, he was just someone old enough to buy beer. But later, when I met women in bars I didn't want calling me, Chance took on a life of his own. Yup, ol' Chance was a helluva fun guy...and still wanted in a couple of states.

This email is inadmissible in court -- right?

I can understand why some writers use Pseudonyms. There was "Anonymous" that wrote PRIMARY COLORS -- a man that obviously didn't want to go through an IRS audit. And I bet Salman Rushdie wishes he'd used a pseudonym. But why did Stephen King choose to write under the name Richard Bachman? I've read THE REGULATORS by the pen-name Bachman...frankly it reads just like your run of the mill Stephen King novel. I guess the only rule regarding Pseudonyms is that there are no rules. Some people do it because they just feel like it. A singer calls himself &%$@, or the Artist formerly known as Prince, because he's a kook. There's a rapper that calls himself Dirty old Bastard. Now that's a pseudonym that gives you a heads up on the character right away.

Because unless your schizophrenic, that's all a pseudonym is really -- another character. There's got to be a tax write-off in there somewhere. I'm just left to wonder if anyone out there is writing under the pen name Long Winded Hermit from BFE -- and what the symbol would be for that?

+++

At last another Cox family kid quote from Rhoan. When told it was my birthday last weekend, Rhoan said he had a good birthday present for me. Lunch at Chucky Cheeses. That's my boy!

+++

I want to thank everyone for their comments on "The Sword of God" and I hope everyone is enjoying it. The second installment will come out Sunday May 20th. Installments will also be posted on my website at: http://www.racox.com/excerpts.htm#sog

Until next week, don't take any wooden nickels from a man with a symbol for a name.

R.A.

"Superman -- Where?" ~ Clark Kent