nobody asked…

I choose to be cremated, not preserved and planted in the ground. I will not have a tombstone. Ashes will be temporarily stored in an urn, or empty mayonaisse jar — whatever is convenient, before being dumped into the Tennessee River at the south end of UT’s Neyland Stadium in Knoxville. The Tennessee to the Ohio to the Mississippi to the Gulf of Mexico, and from there to the four corners. Once again I will be one with the planet. Cremation is a much cleaner and less expensive way to check out of here. If I have an epitaph, it will be on the urn and should say nothing more than…

He was a pretty good guy.

That is also the short answer to the fifth and final question in Em’ s interview:

What do you want people to learn about you from reading your blog?

Actually that was Em’s second question, but it seems to be a good way to bring closure to the interview. My Who? Why? page includes this remark: Perhaps [my writing] will bring some focus to who I am, what I have become, and what I might be IF I choose to grow up.

To flesh out that statement a bit, I add these random thoughts on what I hope and/or expect you learn about me from reading my posts:

• If you have paid attention and read my answers to the previous four interview quesitons, you’ve already learned it.
• I am a complex guy made up of very simple pieces.
• I know some stuff, but nowhere near enough.
• My life has been a stream of constant interruptions.
• If it wasn’t for my failures and successes, I would have nothing to report.
• I have a strange, curious, wry sense of humor that manages to show its face regardless of the topic or context.
• I have vast, unrealized potential to be a great failure.
• I am a very simple guy made up of baffling complexities.
• Like Al Capp, I am an expert on nothing, but have opinions on everything.
• I have potential to be a decent writer with nothing to say.
• Your opinions genuinely matter to me.
• Patience and gentleness triumph over quick and harsh in most endeavors.
• I see humor and absurdity in almost all things.
• George W. Bush and his many failures are not funny.
• I am honest to a fault, sometimes to my own detriment.
• Above all else, I constantly strive to be fair.

I thank Em for the stimulus that initiated this public self-abuse. He did a marvelous job of pulling together a set of interview questions that probed my depths, made me think, and in many ways hurt like hell. Hopefully, I have not fallen too far short of his expectations.

My skills in assembling such an inquisition have never been tested, but I can almost assure you the result would not be pretty. Nevertheless, if there is one among you who would like to be abused interviewed by me, please let me know either by comment below or email, address shown on my Contact page.