Born and raised in the South End of Boston, I lost whatever illusions I may have had about life at a very early age. In order to avoid becoming terminally depressed, I moved out of Boston in 1971, and have traveled extensively since then, finally settling in southwest Virginia. In my writing, I have taken a relentlessly satirical approach to my perceptions, and am furnished with an endless supply of material by the ridiculous universe in which we are all trapped. Since there is clearly neither point nor remedy to any of it, laughter really is the best medicine. Some major influences: Dante, Chaucer, Shakespeare, the King James Bible, Omar Khayyam, William Blake, Arthur Schopenhauer, Henry David Thoreau, Mark Twain, Edgar Allan Poe, T. S. Eliot, George Orwell, J. R. R. Tolkien, H. P. Lovecraft, Joseph Campbell, Bob Dylan, Monty Python, Douglas Adams, Robert Anton Wilson.

Ph.D. in Mathematics, University of Virginia, 1974.

Soon to be released: The Filthy Lucre Trilogy, a monumental satirical paean to the greed and stupidity that have helped to make our world such a delightful place to live and raise radishes. Also in the works are further adventures of Anton Pesticide, the real hero of The Filthy Lucre Trilogy. Although he sometimes puts people off with his philosophical claim of nonexistence (based primarily on other people's wishful thinking), Pesticide is a true hero for the twenty-first century. He maintains a veneer of amiable, well-educated civility, but makes his living by petty thievery, stays drunk much of the time, and really doesn't give a rat's ass about anything.