At Times I Am Downright Maniacal

I was born and raised in the ruined remains of a pirate ship planted atop a rocky plateau in northern New Jersey. I was named, in the language of my tribe, “asnosmaniac,” meaning “one who has no sense of smell and is kinda crazy.” Once again, the village elders were spot on with their naming tradition. My family made money by growing a crop of Russet potatoes that we would then sell. We sold some at local farmers markets, but primarily to the British. Thanks to the exchange rate, we made roughly five thousand dollars per potato. As an infant, I did typical infant things. I ate, burped, vomited on myself, and fought vociferously for a lowering of the British tariff on American potatoes.

At the age of four, I enjoyed scribbling on bits of paper with my crayons. I was lucky enough to have the box of crayons with the attached sharpener, which came in handy for sharpening my crayons to a point fine enough to defend against deadly assassins. I eventually discovered the principle of lift. However, when my mother informed me that Bernoulli had in fact discovered this some years before, I cried and cried until I was put down for my nap.

At seven years of age, I learned that I was quite adept at composing sonnets and epic poems. I frequented trendy coffeehouses for open microphone nights. One memory that sticks out most clearly is sitting, sipping my mocha, when a young Edgar Allen Poe approached the mic. He read us a poem about a man lamenting the loss of his wife who was pestered by a brightly colored macaw.

“Eddie,” I recall saying to him, “Eddie, why not make it some sort of scarier bird? Perhaps some type of crow?” He looked at me and nodded. “And,” I continued, “I love the repetition of the ’-ite’ sound, but don’t you think it would sound a bit better if there was a repetition of words that rhyme with ‘ore?’” I distinctly recall, even though it was a spoken conversation, specifically saying “ore” as in raw iron and not “oar” as in primitive boat locomotion. We lost touch, though, so I never got to hear a final draft.

On my twelfth birthday, after a year of rigorously playing Pokémon (the red version) I spun my cocoon out of silk and fecal pellets (better to deter predators) and entered my pupal stage.

I emerged roughly a dozen years later, tall and hairy. I quickly discovered that I had lost the ability to compose poetry or even understand poetry written by others. This skill had been replaced with an incredible ability to totally nail any really hot chicks that I saw. I got a job working in a coal mine, murdering canaries before they could ignite pockets of natural gas. I continued this career until I realized that I could still, in fact, write works of fiction. I immediately bought a typewriter and began composing my autolieography. Despite the urgings of my parents to return to the potato farm atop the plateau or at the very least finish my schooling at the College of Robot Mechanics, I pressed on. Once my opus was completed, I hired a Sherpa to guide me to a hidden temple of monks, who I then forced, at gunpoint, to transfer my typewritten pages onto a computer. Also onto a grain of rice, just for the hell of it.

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