On numerous occasions, I receive emails from TBT readers wanting to know some details about my own life, or how I could author something so perversely weird as Trial By Tenderness, and even "does it really happen?"

I'm grateful that you've given a moment of your time to read my times. My goal in creating TBT is to write nothing less than the best fanfic I can give you.

My name is already known to you, and I live in the middle of the Large Ocean on the Earthrealm. I believe that authors are terrorists, philosophers, entertainers, doctors of the soul, pariahs, and musicians who compose songs without words. Good authors can shape-shift between all of these identities, becoming shark-tongued activists who can transcend the thrill of the pabulum. Bare-fingers unearthing the Muse inside of them: an Angel who's often ready to throw a spitball at the world...or a Devil who is willing and able to hug and love the Ultimate and the Intimate with equanimity and generosity.

I was born with the Mid-us-West, with an Old Soul in my heart and an awareness that "no one ever got poor by giving away everything they have." I am kookcasian, with a pedigree that extends only as far as my nose. Perhaps I'm from Pluto. During a series of bizarre mishaps which included freezing, vomiting, needles, bruises, bleeding, being thrown through windows and having my dignity stolen and rearranged by the deranged, I survived the spacewalk called adolescence. Silly me, I developed an encyclopedic interest in literature and spirituality. No one should read Chuangzi and Sartre at age 8. Homelessness is a state of mind, except when the pit inside Growls.

I escaped into the Frozen Wastelands of Addiction for a few torturous years (tis' true, I sigh!). During a lost weekend that lasted seven years, I learned that I can pilot my life in ever-shrinking circles; and I discovered the delicate art of how to starve myself on the four food groups of heroin, LSD, cannabis and pharmaceuticals. My Soul lived and died a thousand lifetimes during those years of 'high' life.

I've been know to remodel any Earthrealm government in the space of an hour, while ignoring the finer things in life...such as the radio, the TV, professional sports, bowling, beer and air pollution. In a given week, I read four to six books, besides the ganglion logorrhea of Academe that I mustneeds chew on thoroughly before swallowing and digesting. Learning is an ornament that can illuminate and illustrate the Divine.

I have survived several heart attacks, and I have administered several heart attacks to others. I love them all. I pay my bills on time, except for when I have to scrape together tuition. I can Babel on in several Romanesque and Asiatic languages, and do so with a smile. I sculpt sounds for my own amusement using various combfilters and oscillation circuits; but the flawed gems of my sample-and-hold knobbery are usually unamusing to others. I have never been involved with the CIA or the FBI, but I do live with Mood Crusher and MindWord symptoms, episodes of which bring an emotional inertia to my doorstep from time to time. This allows me to occasionally Buck the Trend and escape the cattle chute that most people term "society".

I have co-authored Guide Voice works that have sold over 5 million copies and have been translated into numerous Babels. This is very kewl, because I don't have to deal with celebrity or critics or the illusions that money can bring but never buy. My Poems have won numerous awards in vanity publications because they're so witty and honest. I don't know why. Bending metaphysics to become Light is a primary goal of Poetry...and TBT.

If need be, I can sleep in the vertical position. I am an unselfish lover, a two-penny methodologist, a musicologist of the absurd and inaccessible, an eccentric scholar of Life and Love who knows that "learning is about learning", owner of small lions who stalk the 'jungle-carpet', and I'm forgetfully humble.

As a gakusei at the University of Bananaland, I major in professional majoring. I have graduated, and I am gradualing. Friends don't care about how much one knows, but they do know about how much one cares. Being clean from drugs means being freed from separation and isolation. Tears come easily to me, except when the tragedy is my own.

I practice the art of Yoking one's self to the Inner Within on a daily basis, whether it would be EZ, TM, Prahna, Xian Mysticism, Sufism or Zen. Ringing the One True Bell, I listen to music that no one has ever heard of. I am allergic to rap, hiphop, C&W, pop music and wars, because they all go together so well, just like commercials and shopping malls. I read Medieval Latin when I'm bored. When I'm really bored, I read Archaic Latin or I delight in grab-bagging some escapist manga to indulge my silliness.

Here's a list of some Manga/Anime that like me:

Oh My Goddess (a favorite, well forked); Urusei Yatsura (dated, but insane); Karin (vampiric embarrassment); Love Hina (the magical land of nippleless girls); Spice and Wolf (a new one); BubbleGum Crisis (which color is Nene's hair this year?); Magical Knight Rayearth (shojo rococo, anyone?); Rebirth (what ever happened to anti-heroes); DNA2 (stem-cell research done pretty); Inu Yasha (Ranma's silly younger brother); Ranma 1/2 (oh that sly Nabiki!); Ragnarok (okay, its Manwha, but who cares?); Barefoot Gen (for all those who haven't been to Hiroshima); Outlaw Star (Yamato Lite); Cowboy BeBop (jagged little pills of angst); Rurouni Kenshin (history as it is imagined); You're Under Arrest (you're under what?); Yamato (can you say Chushingura backwards?); Angelic Layer (God, I'm so immature!); Tokyo Mew Mew (brings out the animal in me); Evangelion (too simple, too soon!); Kimagure Orange Road (life really isn't a buffet); Hayao Miyasaki (God's gift to ignorant Americans); Gojira (member of the honorary anime club)...