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This site lacks animated graphics or audio. Thus it has
FEW PICTURES OF NAKED PEOPLE OR COPULATING ANIMALS AND NO GARBLED SOUND
FILES. If you're looking for this type of material, you've come to the wrong
place. (Send me an email and I'll tell you where to find the really good
sites for maximum depravity.) It also lacks abusive but inarticulate attacks
("flames"), the sort of stuff that excites under-30 editors of
Wired magazine, or more than a few links to other sites. Find them yourself
-- that's what search engines are for. One of the best I've found is Google.
Moreover, this site doesn't take 15 minutes to download
using a normal modem connection. It also lacks techno geekspeak messages, at
least so far. These are among the many reasons it won the "Dullest
Web Site Accessed by Fewest Surfers" award, for God's sake.
If you're looking for really leading-edge graphics, I
recommend that you escape your damned computer or WebTV and visit the Sistine
Chapel. It's in Rome. In Italy. (Southern Europe -- no, I don't know the
URL.) When you get inside, look up at the ceiling.
And if you're looking for leading-edge fiction, I don't
know where to send you, but you might enjoy taking a look at a new story I
wrote and posted here on February 24, 1999. It's called "The Day I Almost Found God at Walgreens" and is written
in the style of Donald Barthelme. This is my description, not Mr.
Barthelme's. It's only about 1800 words long, so even the slow readers won't
be overburdened. (If youÕd like to read stories by the real Donald Barthelme,
go here: http://www.jessamyn.com/barth/.)
A
Little Background Information ... Perhaps More Than You
Wanted (As If I Care)
First, as Ronald Reagan once said, I paid for this
microphone, so here's a little about myself, Tod Roberts. My actual birth
name is Thorold Erskine Roberts. The "Thorold" part comes from my
father, Thorold Eugene Roberts (1907-1957). When he was born, his mother,
Louise Lipps Roberts, found the name "Thorold" in a book, the title
of which has slipped into the dark recesses of history, along with her and
millions of other people. The "Erskine" part comes from my maternal
uncle, Samuel Erskine McClymonds (born 1916, I think). "Erskine"
did not, however, originate with him. It goes back many generations among my
mother's Scots-Irish ancestors (don't say "Scotch-Irish" or the
pedants will pummel you -- "scotch" refers to the whisky of that
name ... an excellent drink, but more on that later). The
"Roberts" part is fairly obvious -- it was my father's surname,
probably of Welsh origin, but we're a little weak on genealogical facts on
that side of my family. Incidentally, my father's nickname was
"Greasy," reputedly acquired because of his fondness for pork
chops. My entire gene pool is carnivorous. This is one reason I founded PETA
("People for the Edible Treatment of Animals").
UPDATE ON "THOROLD" (22 Nov 2002) ... I found the
following amusing drivel on a website soliciting money for information about
the meaning of names. I was very surprised to see "Thorold"
included and even more surprised when I read the following nonsense at http://www.kabalarians.com/male/thorold.htm:
The
name of Thorold creates a very likable easy going and good-natured
personality with a love for people. You will do anything to avoid friction
among others. You could have musical or artistic talents but find it
difficult to concentrate your efforts in one area long enough to accomplish
anything. Spontaneous, happy-go-lucky, and expressive yourself, you like to
see people happy and go out of your way to create harmony amongst them. You
find it difficult to discipline your desires and emotional feelings. Too
idealistic and impractical through the use of this name, you would not find
it easy to make a success in the business world. You are inclined to
procrastinate and let things slide and to make promises that you find
difficult to fulfil although you have the best of intentions. Your health
would be affected through the fluid functions, liver trouble, or a weak back.
Obviously, the writer of this description has never met
me.
When I was a little tyke in the 1940's (born in 1943 in
Newton, Kansas, delivered with the help of my grandfather, Dr. R. C. McClymonds -- I could sense
telepathically that you were eager to know this), my mother nicknamed me
"Tod" in order to distinguish me from my father. This was probably
not entirely necessary because, in addition to being considerably smaller
than my father at the time (click HERE for visual proof), I
was clearly a different person in many other respects. But such eccentric
behavior was common for my mother, Elizabeth Vance McClymonds Roberts (born
1913, died 1998). The entire family has experienced many such Shandean
moments, but I have only about 5 MB of space on this site, so I cannot go
into much detail. Please restrain your gratitude.
My mother's death on Nov. 21, 1998 brought about great
sadness in my family but also an opportunity to share some wonderfully
entertaining reminiscences about this remarkable person. One of her friends
recalled a great story about the time Vance ordered three Moscow Mules at a
party with friends in the early 1950's in McPherson, Kansas and had to be
carried to her room. (As soon as I work out all the legal implications, I'll
provide full details.)
You can read all about my mother's GILCHRIST relatives
and ancestors on a genealogical website that I created in 2002. Go to http://www.todroberts.com/gilchrist/gilchrist_reunion.htm.
Incidentally, the name "Tod" in German (pronounced
"tote") means "death," as in the famous morality play Everyman: "Ich bin der
Tod. Ich rufe Dich, Jedermann!" ["I am Death. I am calling you,
Everyman!"] It's fun showing off one's knowledge of a language still
unfortunately associated with genocide and very bad movies about World War
II.
And
Now On to the Present Day
(January 10, 1998, as I write this)
As the more perspicacious among you may have sensed, I
enjoy a great deal of idle time, being semi-retired (semi-employed). Further,
I am blessed to be married to an extremely talented, hard-working woman who
tolerates -- indeed, subsidizes -- my slothful behavior. Thus, I decided to
subscribe to the @Home Internet service and start surfing the net in earnest.
Except for pre-World Wide Web explorations when online services were almost
entirely text-based in the late 1980s, I'd never done much surfing on the
net. In fact there really wasn't a mass-communications Internet back then.
(As we learned recently, it had to wait on that Renaissance genius, Al Gore,
to be invented.)
Being an AOL user hamstrung with a mere 33.6K modem and
my aging Macintosh Centris 610 computer, I found plodding around the World
Wide Wait to be about as much fun as watching the Weather Channel.
Well, not even that much fun when you consider how incredibly sexy the
Weather Channel reporters are. Even the geekiest ones are attractive,
especially when they have violent weather to announce. And those El Ni–o
reports -- to die for! During hurricane season here on the Gulf Coast of
Florida, I actually tape the Weather Channel broadcasts while I'm sleeping so
as not to miss a single orgasmic moment.
The COMCAST people installed high-speed cable in our
neighborhood in Sarasota, Florida in 1996. My interest in this development
began when I wondered why the hell a crew of swarthy, half-naked men who
spoke little English was digging up my yard and the yards of my neighbors up
and down the street. Aha, I thought: these are the aliens I have heard about
on news reports, the ones who seduced those misguided nincompoops in
California into leaving for the "mother ship" while absurdly
dressed in brand new Nikes and what appeared to be rented Star Trek Halloween
costumes.
As I researched the matter further, I discovered that the
reason these guys were digging up our yards was to install our new
hyper-fantastic, faster-than-the-speed-of-light, higher-than-high-tech
on-ramp to the Information Super Highway. And all this was happening in a
neighborhood where the average resident is 76.4 years old and is skeptical
about using "them new-fangled pushbutton phones -- I hear they cause
cancer." Amazing, I thought. I half expected Vice President Al Gore to
show up and deliver a boring speech about the Information Age, but he was too
busy saving endangered species (no, make that "specie") in Buddhist
temples.
How
I Came to Create This Prize-Winning Dull Web Site
(Very Brief and Relatively Painless
History)
I did nothing about this fiberoptic invasion until
November 1997, when an ad in the the Sarasota Herald-Tribune (or SH-T, as we locals
call it) announced the incredibly low price of $49.95 for installation of the
@Home service for those lucky persons whose neighborhoods had already been
dug up by the swarthy, half-naked guys. I surmised that my aging Macintosh
computer might not be up to the task of handling the warp-speed 500 to 1000
kilobit-per-second throughput (compare this to the poky 55.6 Kbps available
on the fastest modems you can use today over a regular phone line), so I
upgraded the old dog with a faster processor, bigger hard disk, new system
software, and so on (for technical details, check elsewhere on the net). Soon
I obtained a color monitor to augment my huge 19" Radius grayscale
screen, plus a new color scanner and color printer. One of these days I may
invite in my neighbors, the ones who are worried that TouchTone phones cause
cancer, just so they can ooh and ahh over my new stuff. I hope they don't
call the police.
Incidentally, the "Dullest Web Site Accessed By Fewest
Surfers" Award was given to me by DullWebWatch©, a fast-growing
subsidiary of The Stephen Duck Society / Internet Division, about which you
may learn more if you revisit this site.
But I digress.
An
Exciting Future Is Not Planned (I Know You're Disappointed)
I may try to add photos of myself and my family to this
web site as soon as I obtain all the necessary legal release forms (the kids
are holding out for bigger shares of the royalties), plus ongoing commentaries
on the world around me: life in Florida, the Shunsign State ... my views on
history and culture (yawn) ... my eccentric but cogently argued positions in
favor of smoking, drinking, sedentary living, exploitation of nature, and
high-fat-with-high-cholesterol diets ... quirky theology ... my native land
of Kansas (not the land of Oz or Ozzie) ... various unfinished tales, rants,
and screeds ... and all sorts of stuff that used to be discreetly and
properly confined to a hand-written journal before the Internet made such
shameless vanity-publishing possible on a global scale. I may even invite
rejoinders from the few people who visit this site, but I reserve the right
to ignore them. Please don't mistake my bluntness for rudeness. It's actually
worse than rudeness.
Speaking of bluntness, I have posted the myth-shattering
insights of Dr. Hans Heinrich: Diet and Exercise
Guidelines from the American Hearth Association. Please click HERE to read this latest
contribution to the ongoing debate over what's really good for us and what
isn't.
I promise nothing, but you're welcome to dog-ear (don't
use "bookmark" -- a pathetic attempt at metaphors by people who
have no idea what a metaphor is) this page and come back to visit. I have reluctantly
added a little guestbook and a neat, if somewhat nonfunctional, digital
counter to show how many times I visit my own page. After inserting the
guestbook, I immediately sent myself highly complimentary messages such as,
"Hey, rad site, man! I dig the, uh, like PROSE. Cool!"
Flash
Update: Tod Seeks Income (not work, just income)
Since discovering that I was not a big winner in the
March 28, 1998 $24 million Florida lottery, I have regrettably been forced to
seek some form of income beyond unconscionable dependence upon my
hard-working spouse. Thus, I have been wandering the web in search of gainful
employment as a writer, editor, or general factotum, whatever the hell a
"factotum" is. Recently (June 17, 1999) I have even begun passing
myself off as a web site creator (stop laughing). You can read my ad at THIS LINK and could have even seen a couple of examples of my work
done for clients who paid me real money -- that is, before both organizations
went out of business. I guess that, technically, I am thus a professional web
designer. This is especially amazing considering that I barely passed art
class in kindergarten at Roosevelt Elementary in McPherson, Kansas back in
1948-49, and all I had to do was smear wet paint on a sheet of paper with my
stubby little five-year-old fingers.
I don't really expect this job-hunting effort to pay off,
but just in case some benighted soul happens to find my credentials listed
somewhere and sees a reference to my web "site," I hereby provide a
summary of my professional qualifications. It took me quite a while to figure
out how to treat this as a separate section of my site, but I'm glad I've
been able to do that and thus avoid boring the few visitors who come here
seeking a unique brand of enlightenment.
ANYONE WITH MONEY TO PAY ME, PLEASE GO TO THE RESUME NOW.
BETTER YET, JUST SEND THE MONEY DIRECTLY TO ME AND SKIP THE RESUME -- IT'S
TEDIOUS, MENDACIOUS NONSENSE ANYHOW.
Click HERE for
Tod's Checkered Background and Credentials.
LINKS
AROUND THE INTERNET
Please visit my page about RAF WINGS
OVER FLORIDA: Memories of World War II Air Cadet Training in Arcadia and
Clewiston,
which contains information on this fascinating book edited by me and authored
by Will Largent, my late father-in-law. You'll almost be able to hear the
drone of training aircraft over the skies of central Florida in the 1940's.
(Not really -- just use your imagination if you have any.) I'm pleased to
announce that in June 1999 this book was accepted for publication by Purdue University Press in the United States and became available
for sale in October 2000. You can find it on Amazon.com and at the Barnes and Noble web site (www.bn.com) and in various book stores. It is also mentioned in a
PBS documentary about Riddle Field in Clewiston, Florida, produced by
filmmaker Mark Baker at WPBT in Miami. An obituary
and remembrance of Will Largent are available at this link.
If you're a dog lover (and all the best people are),
please check out a tribute to my old dog Jack Daniels (1981-1994). The kindly
folks at Small Dog Electronics have given our canine
friends a nice spot on the Internet to show off their stuff. If Jack (Dog #64
under the "Dog Friends" link) were still alive, I know he'd be
right at my side while I surf the net for about 16 hours a day. Of course, he
would insist on going for walks, thus indirectly helping me lose weight and
improve my cardiovascular fitness. In his absence, I continue to spread out
like a toadstool after a heavy rain. Our dog Tato is also on the Small Dog
site (#307). When he goes for a walk, he is in full control, dragging me down
the street at break-neck speed.
Update 29 Dec 2007: I have sent a photo of our current three dogs (Lily,
Charlie, and Ginger) to SmallDog.com and will add the number for that listing
soon. (I am sad to report that we lost our beloved Tato to kidney failure in
January 2006.)
To counter the sloth that I indulge as a frequent habituˇ
of the 'net, I now spend (once in a while) 30 minutes on the miraculous Chi Machine, the ultimate in sweat-free aerobicise
for LOF's (Lazy Old Farts). Read about it here.
I used to have a small web presence on America Online,
but it would do little more than refer you to the page you are currently
reading, thus trapping some innocent web surfers in an ELCM (Endless Loop of
Cybersurfing Madness). The only cure for this is a hefty dose of Laphroaig single-malt scotch, about which you
can learn more by clicking HERE. (See, I told you I'd
eventually get around to the scotch.) WARNING: "You must be over legal
drinking age to access this site." However, no country or state is
specified. (In Scotland, the legal drinking age is, I think, 12 years.)
Laphroaig has a special place in my life. My friend John Miller and I made a
pilgrimage to the Laphroaig distillery on the tiny Isle of Islay (pronounced
EYE-luh ... leave it to the Scots to confound their enemies with totally
irrational linguistic practices) in the Inner Hebrides west of Glasgow in
1989, a journey that I may one day describe in greater detail on this web
site. Stay tuned.
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