Elevator pitch
This is my blog wherein I recount this and that.

To elaborate
I write prose. I write poems. I write blog posts (which is fairly obvious, since I have a blog and all). My blog posts are sometimes poetry, sometimes prose. They are sometimes lists, which are neither prose nor poetry, unless they are one or the other.

My lists are never both prose and poetry. At least not yet. Though they do have the potential to someday be prose poetry. Prose poetry mucks everything up, doesn’t it? Don’t we like our rules, our parameters? Don’t we like to know what we’re getting into when we see a big blob of words laid out before us? Prose poetry does not give us the security, the boundaries, we need.

Shame on prose poetry. A pox on prose poetry. We should all turn and run when we see it coming.

(You know how sometimes you see something and you know it won’t end well? That applies to this about statement. My warning will not keep you from reading on, will it? Don’t say I didn’t warn you.)

I do other things besides writing, in case you were wondering. The non-writing things I do are not that varied or interesting. To my credit, I have a way of writing about unvaried and uninteresting things that makes them seem more varied and interesting than they actually are — at least to me, which is all that matters. Don’t for a moment think I am writing this blog for anyone other than myself. Unless you think I am writing it for [insert your name here], which also happens to be the case.

(I am clearly not very good with about statements. I have an idea: Read the blog, and you’ll soon learn what the blog is about.)

A cautionary note
Don’t mistake this blog for me, since no matter what I write here I am not to be confused with my blog.

Also, please do not confuse me with your left shoe, the rancid separated condiments in your refrigerator, your homely long-lost cousin, or your innermost thoughts. I am none of those things.

To be clear, I am also not your phony necktie, your grandmother’s outdated spectacles, the intermittent wincing pain in your left side, that voice in your head that cackles from time to time, or your nanny.

I am not even your secret stash of Hallmark cards from your all your ex’s, your very next incoming phone call (it’s going to be a telemarketer), the condom you’ve had tucked in your wallet since 1984, your clock radio that only picks up AM stations, the dance mixes on your iPOD, your lime-green plastic tumbler set, the nutcracker you haul out for special occasions even when there is not a single nut in your house in need of cracking, your obsessions and compulsions, the family album from your last marriage that is designed to look like a fine leather-bound book but fails to pass for anything other than a photo album, or the Cheerios that have accumulated under your stove.

I am not your neon tetras. I am not your nearest landfill.

I will never be — or have the potential to be — your shag carpet, that strange thick hair that grows out of your right areola, that useless tidbit you forgot at precisely 11:32 a.m. and have spent the rest of the day trying to remember even though it’s not worth remembering and has proved to be especially good at not being remembered by you, the song you sing when you think nobody can hear you singing, your recurring nightmare, your mistress, imaginary numbers, the entire cast of “That ’70s Show,” your aspirations, your inseam, your self-esteem, all-white rental tuxedos, a 9-1-1 dispatch operator, a prerecorded greeting, muzak, flapjacks, a disco ball, or a run-down wax museum.

An outright warning (and a request)
Even if you think you know me, remember that you don’t. Unless and until you do. And even then, check your pockets carefully. I could just be a ball of lint. Yeah, that one right there. Hey, don’t throw me out. Just put me back where you found me, please. Thank you.

P.S.
This blog will shut down one year from the first entry: That would be Sept. 2, 2008. (Technically, that’s one year and one day from the first entry, but close enough.)