My head is full of phlegm this morning and I can’t make my brain work … Be back tomorrow or the next day for sure. (Note this will not stop me from going to work, because I won’t need my brain there, just my reflexes).

I’ve been meaning to do a better “about this site” page, so this morning I finally got around to it. It’s the post below; feel free to skip over any details you already know.

I’m the one to blame for this mess. If you’re a newspaper editor or anybody
else in the news biz you’re apt to find interesting stuff. If you’re a
media critic you might glean insight into the thought processes of a working
newspaperman. If you’re looking for evidence of the International Liberal
Media Conspiracy, welcome: I am a dues-paying member. If you’re one of
my relatives … well, sorry, you did your best but I came out this way
anyway.

This site is mostly about my work, which at the moment is on the features
copy desk at the San Jose Mercury News, or the Merc as we call it when
we can’t be troubled to type the rest of those characters. The Merc has
nothing to do with the content here, except that having a job there discourages
me from ranting about the folks who pay the rent.

I’ve been in this job for four years, having come to the Bay Area to
witness the high-tech boom, and arriving just in time for the bust. Before
this job I worked for six years doing features design and copy editing
at the Journal Star in Peoria, Illinois, my hometown, a place I moved
away from when I realized that every Peorian who ever became rich and
famous did so after moving somewhere else. My somewhere is a suburb
called Dublin, which is surrounded by lovely rolling hills that will be
continue to be scenic until they build new suburbs on top of them. The
work is well under way.

Before the Peoria gig I spent five years on the news copy desk at the
Tampa Tribune, my first metro daily. The Trib was a nightmare in those
days, but these days people seem to like it much better, from what I hear.
My first job out of school was at the Southern Illinoisan in Carbondale,
Ill., home of the main campus of Southern Illinois University, where I
worked on the student paper, the Daily Egyptian, for four years.

I took my first journalism class at Illinois Central College in the spring
of 1984. I was 22 at the time and had no background in news beyond reading
the paper since I was a kid. I had never worked on any school papers or
yearbooks, which, I suspect, gave me a leg up because I didn’t pick up
any bad habits working on the high school paper. My first journalism teacher
was a guy named Mike Foster; he led me to believe I could be a newsman,
which was a nice thing to do considering I hadn’t done worth a damn at
anything I had tried up to that point.

At Southern Illinois University I learned to think, a bit, and to party,
a lot. While working on the campus paper I figured out that I had a peculiar
aptitude for getting pages to the composing room on time, and writing
headlines that fit the space needed. I also figured out that I really
had no stomach for being a reporter. I don’t mind writing or researching,
but doing both in a hurry was too much like work to me.

Over the years people have encouraged me to keep doing this work, which
is remarkable when my newsroom behavior is taken into account. I’m prone
to cussing at my computer and inflicting poorly thought-out rants with
the poor saps who work next to me. One of these co-workers was so patient
that he introduced me to the woman I married. Or maybe he thought of it
as revenge. In any case I came out the winner.

I’ve been an online junkie since about 1990; I created my first webpage
in October of 1996 and started my first blog late in 1998. More on my
blogging background is here.

I try to keep the tone light and civil around here, though I am prone
to bouts of invective now and then. I apologize here to everybody who
has been wrongly slighted by any posts past, present or future. It’s not
personal, it’s just blogging.

We saw Ramsey Lewis and Nancy Wilson. Summed up here.

The answer to the ultimate question of life, the universe and everything is
42, Douglas Adams said. All I know is, it’s how many years old I am today.

Melissa spent the morning bestowing gifts.

Rather than get me into real trouble and sign me up for the Beer of the Month
Club, she went over to the local Beverages & More … which appears to have
every beer ever brewed … and rounded up this interesting sixpack. The one
on the far left is from Poland; the one on the far right is from Russia. The
most popular title, the beer guy at the store said, is Arrogant Bastard Ale,
the one slightly left of center (hey, just like me!). You know your wife loves
you when she buys you six expensive craft beers with no thought of the consequences
of husband consuming them all in one sitting… imagine the beer farts from
this array.

Anyway, she also got me this fold-up chair for the next outdoor concert I attend.

Note the impressive trusswork — I imagine some bridge engineer built one of
these for his own backyard, and one of his neighbors stole the design and made
millions, and now the two of them aren’t speaking, but the engineer is sleeping
with the neighbor’s wife for revenge.

The best thing you can do for your birthdays is to keep having them. The rest is gravy.

Last week I read an interview with Camille Paglia in which she said most of the writing on blogs pretty much sucks. The link is at salon.com and a pain to click through, so be warned. I felt sort of stung by that so I’ve made a little promise to myself to write better. One of the ways to do that is to write about the deeply personal stuff that you’d normally never divulge in public. That’s what I had in mind with the post below, about one of my defining characteristics, which I have never written about in any of my Web sites, dating back seven years.

I was born with half a smile and it’s been that way ever since.

It’s anybody’s guess why it happened, but somehow I ended up with a seventh cranial nerve on the right side of my face that didn’t work. Well, the sensory part works — you could smack me over there and it’d sting just fine. But the muscles won’t budge, so there’s a permanent frown on that side, and eyelids that don’t close all the way.

How swell it would’ve been to have one butt cheek that didn’t move right, or one toe too many. Something you could put clothes over. But no, I couldn’t have such a low-intensity deformity: It had to be just bad enough that everybody could see it, but just minor enough that I’d have no damn business complaining about it. I mean, I didn’t come out with flippers for arms, I just look a little freaky and people mistakenly think I’m winking at them. See, the other eye closes too tight to compensate for the one that doesn’t finish its job. I can’t think of any time in my life when I purposefully winked at anybody. But by accident, probably billions.

Next week I turn 42, which means I’ve been this way since the Kennedy Administration. Everybody else has gotten over it, or at least gotten used to it. Except me.

It wasn’t exactly vacation at Disney World growing up with this face, but kids were not as cruel as they could’ve been. I never felt the urge to shoot up the seventh grade. But I always identified with Charlie Brown, who craved popularity and purpose yet seemed denied for reasons beyond his comprehension. My Little League team lost all its games, too. Lately it occurred to me that Charlie had it far worse than me … at least I had an excuse for kids not liking me, being a freak and all; he was perfectly normal and they hated him anyway. Now that is injustice.

One thing that amazes me to this day is how people control their curiosity. I can think of two people in my adult life (other than doctors thinking I had Bell’s palsy) who have come right out and said, “Tom, what happened to your face?” “Just a congenital birth defect,” I’d say, “one nerve didn’t form correctly.”

I try to be nonchalant about it, but it’s a lie. Every morning I have to stick a toothbrush in this face and every time it pisses me off a little. But I wonder why nobody asks; I’d be dying to know. But I probably wouldn’t ask either. People are nicer than we give them credit for being.

Of course there’s no problem as long as I go though life straight-faced or sour-faced. It only really shows when I laugh. I try not to, but I fail. Existence is just too absurd not to laugh at it.

So, the half-smile will be with me always. I’m really writing this just to help me get used to the idea. It’s high time after four decades of denial.