It has come to my attention that a lot of you crazy people are reading this blog. Which, for the record, is awesome, though it does lead me to suspect that my words have some kind of narcotic effect, or that perhaps my blog exudes some kind of nicotine haze. I certainly don’t know why you keep coming back. Or why you follow me on Twitter. I’m an ass.

I don’t have the good sense God gave to a brain-damaged trilobite.

(For those of you with alternate religious beliefs, replace “God” with: Zeus, Buddha, Ahura Mazda, the Devil, genetics, Papa Legba, Shiva, Wash from Firefly, Godzilla, or John Quincy Adams.)

Regardless, here you are.

Which I totally appreciate.

As such, I figure it’s a good time to get to know one another. Here, then, is a random slapdash written-in-no-sensible-order list of things you may not know about me. It bears no rhyme, no reason. It doesn’t even strive to be all that interesting, really — it’s more or less a conglomeration of meaningless facts about yours truly. With that in mind? Let us begin.

…

I only recently learned how to belch. Or burp — whatever term you prefer. Now I go around burping because I can, and because it is wonderful. This is not good news for my wife because I am like a kid with a new toy. What’s interesting, and this may be entirely coincidental, is that once I learned how to burp, I no longer get heartburn. True story.

Mice ate my buttplug. To clarify, I did not have a buttplug for my own buttplug pleasures but rather, because a friend gave sex toys as gag gifts one year for the holidays. (Though I am not knocking said “buttplug pleasures.” I think that in this world you do whatever you like to enjoy yourself — I make no judgments on your sexual peccadilloes.) I ended up with a buttplug which went into a drawer where I forgot about it. At the time I was living in a double-wide trailer (“the carriage house”), and I had mice. The mice, I discovered, had eaten into many objects of mine (including books, the little fuckers). I opened a drawer at one point to find that mice had eaten the buttplug package and the buttplug itself, and then made a nest out of the rubbery buttplug materials. Which makes them the weirdest mice in the history of mice, living in a nest made of a buttplug. Be advised: “Mice Ate My Buttplug” is a great name for a band. Be advised also: the mice shit on my silverware. Since I am not a fan of hantavirus salad, that earned the mice a death sentence.

Speaking of death sentence, it is Squirrel War up in this bitch. For the squeamish, you have my apologies, but so far two squirrels have… lost their lives in this war. The same principle is at work: they are shitting on our front porch. They leave a line of little squirrel turdlets along the railing. That is the lesson for all animals out there: if you shit on my things uninvited, you have written your own ticket. Actually, that’s probably true for humans, too. If some dude wanders onto my driveway and takes a dump on my car, I’m going to shoot him. And I think that would be excused in a court of law.

I wrote a short story called “Squirrel Skin.” It was about squirrels who steal the flesh of humans and wear dudes like suits. That story is in this anthology — Vermin — which is apparently out. I’ve seen no payment for this. I don’t even think I realized it was out. It was a woefully mismanaged, long-delayed anthology. It’s part of why getting short stories published is a pain in the ass. Worth the trouble sometimes, but not always.

Have you read “Hell’s Bells“…? A short story about Coyote (like, the mythic character) in Hell. It features sandwiches. And the Devil. And Dybbuk. Is it any good? Eh. Funny, maybe. Wrote it five, six years ago.

I believe in ghosts and grew up in a haunted house and believe I have proof that ghosts exist. My earliest ghostly encounter was when I was about five years old as I emerged from the bathroom. I had not yet put my “boy parts” back in my pants when I saw footprints appear in the carpet in front of me. I ran. Correction: I ran without having put my “boy parts” back in my pants.

When I was a kid, I did not fear the supernatural or monsters or any of that. I feared two things very distinctly: serial killers and nuclear war. I shouldn’t have been afraid of those things so early — frankly, I shouldn’t have even been aware of them at that point. So it goes. Now I write fucked up horror stories.

The first horror book I read was Stephen King’s The Shining, but I didn’t really “get it.” I was, I dunno. Ten? Eleven? After that, I didn’t read any more King novels until high school — but I did read one helluva lot of Dean Koontz and Robert McCammon. Stinger, Swan Song, Watchers, Strangers.

I do not like eggplant. I used to not like tomatoes, fish, mushrooms, Brussel sprouts. I now pretty much like everything I didn’t used to like. With one exception: eggplant. Because, really, fuck eggplant.

I used to run a BBS when I was in high school. It went by many names: Shadowlands, BizarroWorld, Unreality. There may have been a fourth name? I used to call BBSes, too. One time I ran up a $500 phone bill because I didn’t realize calling Philadelphia was a “long distance call.” To this day, I am genuinely surprised my father did not attack my computer with a hammer. The threat was made.

I once had a hedgehog, name of Poppy. She was not a happy animal. You see some hedgehogs being all cute and shit, but not her. Angry, xenophobic little lady. Cute, though, even still.

The first short story I had published was “Bourbon Street Lullaby,” a kind of Poppy Z. Brite-esque ghost story about these dead twins and their older, still-living brother. It was a good early lesson on the value of editors and so-called “gatekeepers.” Editor (John Benson) saw something good about it, but wanted changes — I made those changes gladly, resubmitted, and boom, my first publishing credit. That was, what, 16 years ago? And the pay rates for short stories haven’t gotten better. They’ve gotten worse. But it did teach me that you can get paid for this crazy gig. And, more importantly, you should get paid.

I’m probably going to die of cancer one day.

I used to think I was going to be a cartoonist. I drew a comic called Odds N’ Ends. Starring hedgehogs. One was a surfer. I had a copyright on it. Still do, I guess. Turns out, I wasn’t very good at it. Or, maybe more importantly, I didn’t want to become better. Writing, though — that’s what eventually drew me.

Not sure why, but I used to be fascinated by surfing. And surfers. This despite the fact that I was somewhat hydrophobic. Hell, maybe because of it. Maybe because surfers conquered the ocean, and the ocean is basically one big scary hungry watery mouth. And there they are, astride the churning hell-waves. Or maybe it was because there were a lot of bad-ass surfer chicks in tight suits. Who can say?

I was once stung by a lot of bees. Ran into a nest of bumblebees. I was more afraid of bees before that. Not sure why, but getting stung by a fuckton of bees (and being coated head to toe in pink Calamine lotion) cured me of my “bee fear.” You don’t hear that very often. “I was afraid of being trampled by wild boar and then stabbed in the face by natives. But when it actually happened, I was like, hey, this isn’t so bad.”

My Dad used to give me a .22 revolver as a kid, and we’d put .22 CCI shotshells in the cylinder, and I’d shoot carpenter bees who were trying to eat our barn. I still have that .22.

Someone bought our property a couple years back and tore it down and build a shitty-looking house. Our house was old. But, it’s gone. And the dickwipe also tore down the barn. A red barn. If you live in this area, you know that red barns are kind of “a thing.” Jacks the value of your house to have an original red barn and this guy kicks it to splinters. It’d be like buying a house with a Jacuzzi tub and then filling it with cement and then taking a crap on the cement. Nice job. Asshole.

I love bacon but I suspect it’s becoming overrated. I think sausage is the next big thing.

That’s not a dick joke.

That’s it for now, folks. I think I’ve bored you enough.

Your turn, if you so desire.

Flit down the comments, and drop into them one thing about you that I probably don’t know.