Bio for my softball team.

•Full Name: William Bryce Lopez Estrada [Guillermo is Espanol for William.]
•Nickname: Gurg
•Age: 24
•Date of Birth: May 12, 1982
•Place of Birth: St. Joseph's Hospital, Phoenix, Arizona.
•Astrological Sign: Cthulhu
•College Major or Area of Study (if applicable): Biology and Society; Creative Writing
•Favorite book: To Kill A Mockingbird
•Favorite movie: Edward Scissorhands
•Favorite band: Sarah Mclachlan
•Favorite breakfast cereal: Steak'ums.
•Favorite smell: Freedom
•Favorite sound: Laughter, even ridiculous annoying kinds.
•Favorite place: Home base.
•Favorite color: Dark grey, almost charcoal. With a yellow racing stripe.
•Favorite time of year: Whenever it's warm.
•Favorite time of day: The Witching Hour (Roald Dahl style.)
•Personal heroes: Jon Stewart.
•Personal anthem: Take On Me by A-ha.
•If you could have a super ability what would it be? Deadly wit.
•A genie grants you three wishes, what are they?
1. Avocado and tomato sandwich.
2. God to throw me a party.
3. Remove my deadly wit so I stop accidentally killing people.
•If you could be the lead singer of any band, what band would it be? Any celebrity fundraising musical ensemble.
•Which Hollywood actress/actor would you like to have dinner with? Portman. Natalie Portman.
•Do you play a musical instrument? I can make familiar but painful noise on a violin and a harmonica.
•Do you usually tip the waitress at Sonic? If I pay in cash, yeah. And I believe the correct term is "car hop".
•Have you had any major physical injuries? Busted me noggin open when I was a lad. Broke a toe. Nothing that kept me off my feet.
•If you were a Transformer, what would you transform into? I would constantly be transforming but never turn into anything (so a lot of wah-weh-woh sound and fury signifying nothing.)
•What do you want to be when you grow up? Happy together.
•What are your hobbies: Softball, reading, wacky animal biology, writing, running, biking, mischief-making.
•Have you ever had an encounter with a ghost? That's what I tell people whenever I wet my pants.
•What attributes would you say define beauty? I'm gonna have to go with the butt.
•You need a heart transplant and you have to get it from an animal whose 'spirit' will then influence your personality. Which animal's heart do you choose? Sonic the Hedgehog's.
•A nurse shark fights a jaguar, who will win? In deep or shallow water, a nurse shark. On terra firma, the nurse shark's cartilaginous skeleton would snap under its own weight.
•You've heard of those who cook/eat the turducken (a chicken stuffed inside of a duck stuffed inside of a turkey), what's the most bizarre, three-animals-stuffed-inside
-each-other dish you can come up with? Nurse-shark-Jaguar-Sonic The Hedgehog.
•Pigeon: friend or fo? Filthy sky vermin. Their day of reckoning will come, unless they all learn to to perform in magic shows like the rest of the doves.
•What are you going to be for Halloween?
Intoxicated in public.

Today's THING I HAVE NEVER SAID BEFORE:

"I wonder what a whale booty call sounds like? Mmmmwroooooo....mmmmmmwroooooo...."

As I rode my bike to work this morning, a little old woman told me to have a great day. I consider myself a person that respects my elders but seldom listens to them, but I figured this was good advice so I took it. I was already in a good mood because I had a piece of peach pie for breakfast.

The woman often walks in the morning and I try to smile and say hi whenever I whiz past. There is a guy named Tim who I've seen riding to work also. He doesn't wear a helmet and always wants to race. I oblige him, and although I am at my fastest when I am late to work, I have yet to beat him. He's pretty spry for a 43 year old. Also, he takes corners like they were nothin'. I am of the motorcycling tradition and when faced with any doubts about the integrity of a riding surface, I ain't stupid enough to try any fast cornering. Not unless I know friction's got my back.

On a related note, greyhounds handle like bicycles. [To any animal lovers out there, I do not say this from personal experience.]

In Sad Panda News, Ya Ya the panda crushed one of her cubs to death during her sleep. Fortunately, nearly half of panda pregnancies result in twins so there's still one left. Chinese officials are joined by the rest of the world in hoping and praying that the baby Ya Ya crushed was the evil twin and not the good one.

There is an odd line in the article in the section that discusses the mating history of Ya Ya and her mate, Ling Ling: "The pandas watched a mating video before breeding."

What?! The article says nothing else about the panda pair's penchant for pornography. I imagine that could be an article in and of itself.

Woo hoo!

01SEP06
1930

Location:Somewhere between Phoenix and a sunset the sooty orange of cigarette ash in a tin of watercolor.

Brian, Mollie, and I have struggled through a morass of traffic for the past several hours. A few moments ago, on this overworked two-lane stretch of the Interstate 10 (towards the ocean, Mollie chimed), we encountered the cause: a car accident (a phenomenon unique to the world of man in that it is a catalyst for inaction.)

Firetrucks lined the shoulder of the road, crushing the low shrubs and claiming their new territory with a frenzied display of flashing lights. A pair of helicopters spun their blades lazily as paramedics scurried and stabilized the wounded before attempting a sojourn through the dusk to find better odds.

Cars littered the scene. Broken windows, twisted metal, wheels raised to the heavens in prayer to some machine god (a novice god, theologians agree.) Healthy vehicles queued to the horizon. People, shiny with sweat, milled about their cars. We drove on, sympathetic to their plight but thankful it was not us.

I am in Los Angeles, fighting against the forces of evil. The above photo was taken during one of my training sessions with Cadet Flanagan. In order to develop as many random skills as possible, one must be open-minded about occasionally fighting off-planet, even if it's far outside our territory and may cost the lives of many tiny, green, three-eyed men. But I admit I can't feel too bad; they're soulless puppets living their fake plastic lives in hollow hope of becoming one of the billions of images that flicker across a squarish electric box. Truly alien.

I'm having a great time. I hope you are, also.

[assignment: Brief History of My Experience With Science Fiction and Fantasy, or, Would You Like To Know More? completed well ahead of schedule]

As I look back on my academic misadventures, I realize that I have the dubious distinction of being sent to the principal's office in elementary, middle, and even high school for thought crimes.

Well, not exactly thought crimes. They weren't even my thoughts. They were other people's thoughts and I just found them to be much more interesting and informative than the majority of the subjects my teachers prattled on about.

I would consistently get in trouble for reading in class. Much of what I read was science fiction, fantasy, mythology, and a brief flurry of "young adult" pulp thriller type novels (i.e., Christopher Pike.) I wasn't much of a discriminate reader; I didn't even think to look for specific authors. A sticker on the spine of a little rocketship circling a planet was enough to get my attention.

Still, a few novels stood out. Dune, Dragonlance (Dragons of [season]'s [time of day]), The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, The Lord of the Rings (although I admit skipping the poetry the first time), The Chronicles of Narnia, Slaughterhouse 5, and a lot of Ray Bradbury.

Today, I am enamored of China Mieville (who I believe is the exception to Dr. Cook's rule against mixing fantasy and science fiction), the graphic novel Transmetropolitan, the cancelled but still alive in our hearts animated series Futurama, and I just finished Snow Crash by Neal Stephenson and it was even better than Diamond Age.

I've attended a few Comic-Cons in San Diego and spoken (albeit briefly) to Greg Keyes, Ray Bradbury, David X. Cohen.

Our culture is living science fiction. I often go to technovelgy.com to see which fantastic ideas have become reality while I slept. Science fiction, and writers who choose to convery how technology can be catalyst and crucible of the human condition, may prove to be the next great force that shapes American culture.

Well, besides the internet, I mean.