Photo Credit: Sherlock77 on Flickr

"Hey, it's just me, calling to see how y'all are doing. I'm dying to know how that thing turned out... Hope you're well. Give me a shout when you have a chance."

That's the message I would sometimes leave on strangers' answering machines when I worked in telemarketing. It was back in the days when people still had answering machines; before most had the technology that identified such nuisance calls. I would sit in a cube with nothing more than a land line, and paper and pen, making notes in the margins of my dot matrix print-out — just steps from where I'm perched today with my smartphone and laptop. Greetings from downtown Athens, Georgia.

This is the place I call home, and it feels great to be here. A visit to the old stomping grounds always reminds me of college days when work was something you did to pay for bean burritos and beer. Otherwise, your job was simply to expand your mind. That happened in lectures and libraries, on tests and in term papers. But as much as anywhere else, it happened on Salvation Army couches on porches with friends — the place where it was safe to explore any topic and get honest feedback from your peers... where you could say any crazy thing that came to mind, and someone would stop to think about it. Different forum, same freedom: it was not unlike this blog.

I should totally track down some of my old Journalism professors to show them what I've become. I'm sure they'd be as proud as my parents to see this impressive portfolio of self-published features. The first thing they'll want to know, though, is what it's about. So I made one of those "tag clouds" as an at-a-glance representation of its content:

naked		drunk midget
velcro	Beaver
itchy feet		Milli Vanilli	Bonus Toe
Bustin' a Cap		paparazzi
Hoochie Mama		D i l d o
		MILF	redneck
Shadow Dancer			Little F*cks
Gay Cotton Pickin'
idiot	Speed Freak		BONG

Yes, my parents are proud, indeed. But what can I say besides: Hey, it's just me, leaving this message on the world wide answering machine. Hope y'all are well. Give me a shout when you have a chance.