Someone at work asked me if anyone knew me. A confusing question. The comment was probably based on my hermit-like existence in the office. I walk through the front doors in the morning and don’t see those doors (or much of the building)again until most everyone else has gone home. Not the way I’d prefer to have it, but they usually pay better for work than for three-hour steak and martini lunches (there was a time for long lunches and trips to bars, but that managerial dynasty has gone the way of the Ming). Rather go into a long existential discussion on whether or not anyone really does know someone else, I’ll give you the things I do know about myself and let you the reader (possibly readers?) decide.

• I’m a 30 year old Caucasian male, roughly 6 foot 1 inch tall, a tad overweight, with a wife and a dog and a small Cape Cod style home in New Jersey.
• I have no kids. At least not yet.
• I grew up in a part of the New Jersey that most visitors (and even some natives) don’t believe ever existed. We had more corn fields than subdivisions around us. The local dairy farmer was a friend of the family. I even remember going with my dad to buy 12 dozen eggs from the local farmers co-op and splitting them up among neighbors. And yes, this was in the Garden State, not Pennsylvania. The trees were planted by nature, not the Parks Department.
• I’ve always liked blues music. Don’t ask me why a white bread kid from suburbia should like or even know about the blues, but I do and that’s that.
• I like jazz, too. I pretty much like all music, but I find my ears reaching for Miles instead of Metallica these days.
• I’m also a huge fan of animation. First off, to know that people are willing to spend countless hours with pen and ink to get something that isn’t real to become real will always fascinate me. Second, cartoons like Bugs Bunny and Charlie Brown usually capture the feelings and ideas of the era in which they were created. Few other forms of historical media can do that and manage to make you laugh at the same time.
• I have done some acting, but not nearly enough. It’s the one thing in the world that lets you slip into another person’s skin and be them. Equally fun, scary and a huge adrenaline rush.
• I know enough about electrical work to be skilled, but not adept at it. Had I the talent for it, I probably would have kept my dad’s business up and running. The rest of my home improvement skills are dangerously novice. It’s fun, but in a burn-the-house-down sort of way.
• I’m cantankerous and ornery, more so because I like the sound of those words than because they fit my description.
• I am a bit of a crank (thus the name for this blog). Sarcasm is my coffee in the morning, my midday meal and my apéritif at supper. If I’m not sarcastic, I’m obviously asleep.
• I like the color blue. Navy if you’ve got it. Certain greens have their appeal (the twenty, the less familiar fifty), but I look and feel best in blue.
• I believe that humor is one of the best ways to see the world (other than a cruise ship). Sure I can be pretty moody and sarcastic, but it tends to make people laugh instead of getting upset with me.
• I write this blog and hope to keep writing it so that people will know me and respond to what I have to say. Maybe what I have to say isn’t anything on an Alan Greenspan sort of level, but it’s at least important to me.

Keep reading this blog and you may see a different person. Maybe you’ll like what I write, offer me a book deal, possible movie scripts, cereal branding, animation rights. Maybe you’ll hate me, spam my e-mail, crash mo’time, flame the comments page for every word I post. As long as you keep reading, I’ll keep posting.