Marty is my real name. Not "Martin," not "Martius," just "Marty." That's all I get. It's on my birth certificate, with its diminutive -y suffix stamped indelibly on my life forevermore, as though I were going somehow to beat the odds and stay a child forever, never growing up into the aging, balding, and somewhat corpulent fellow you would see before you today, if you happened to be here at the moment. Granted, I have a middle name and a surname as well, but my surname is so common as to be useless-- even in middle school, where boys almost universally use their surnames in addressing each other, I was still addressed as Marty, as I will continue to be addressed (albeit with, I suspect, less and less frequency as fewer and fewer people are interested in talking to me) until I lie gasping upon my deathbed, after which point in time I will referred to simply as "the deceased," though of course I won't be around to enjoy it. I suppose I could have done as many of those dissatisfied with their names do, and demanded to be addressed by my middle name (or as, say, "Wolfchild Starsong"), when I went off to college. But don't you just hate people who do that? Besides, the truth comes out eventually anyway, and if the party in question is sufficiently unpopular (as I certainly was), this weaselly maneuver becomes simply another rhetorical blunt implement with which to further briuse and batter the reputation of the sufferer. No, with the self-flagellating Calvinist stoicism characteristic of the Midwestern farming stock from which I spring, I chose to take my lumps and struggle under the clownish yoke of the name "Marty" until the sweet release of Death gently lifts this burden from my shoulders, staring fondly into my eyes as tears of gratitude stream down my cheeks. Admittedly, this tender scene will take place as I'm being struck down by a massive and excruciatingly painful coronary, but you can't have everything.

I'll begin with an introduction, though it needn't be good or even accurate, since it will drop off the board in a week or so. I may not know much about the subculture of cyberblowhards in whose turbid waters I am even now dipping a toe, but I do know this: We are not dealing here with a narrative format that involves a beginning, a middle, and an end. Rather, we treat here of narrative as yard goods, a never-ending succession of middles extruded and chopped into largely uniform bite-sized chunks. Like an endless movie or a cricket match, one strays in well after the thing has started, consumes it until one feels one has consumed enough, and leaves long before it ends-- indeed, without even the knowledge that it will ever end. Nonetheless, this is actually the beginning, and old habits die hard, so am actually going to go through the formality of actually commencing, however haphazardly. Hello. My name is Marty. I enjoy cigarettes, whiskey, fatty foods, and anything else that I feel has a reasonable chance of killing me slowly enough that I won't notice. My turn-ons include puppydogs, unicorns and rainbows; among my turn-offs are rainy days, pneumonic plague, and Hitler. I am also a semi-professional writer. This means two things. First, it means that although I do get paid to write, I don't get paid enough for writing to avoid having to have another job as well. Second, and possibly more important to anyone who may end up reading this, it means that any genuinely good ideas I have will of necessity be sold to the highest bidder, leaving only the most hopelessly uncommercial, embarrrassingly pointless, or disquietingly personal of my thoughts for expression in this forum. This should not pose a problem, however, as I foresee no conceivable circumstance in which this record would ever be read by anybody, or indeed, even have its existence known. I can say virtually anything here without fear of discovery. I wear ladies' underthings. The PIN number for my bank card is 6547. I become sexually aroused by roadkill. Any of these things may be true, or they may not. It doesn't matter.