The "Dang Disclaimer" - Not-So-Short-As-It-Used-To-Be Version. RETIRED. Mon Jan 18 2010 - Fri Aug 29 2014 R.I.P.

Two things to note. First: this blog's contents are freighted heavy with the anthological. Many posts you see here started as a cut-paste from something I typed someplace else. Either some dang dissertation that I thought should be collected here, or else a turn of phrase I made that I liked, and thought "hey, expand on that later!" I post those into Drafts. Later on, half the time I have no idea where I got it from. It's like a forgotten letter from the subconscious! But if you know me from anyplace else, and/or we've ever exchanged words, and you've ever seen a neat turn of phrase pop out in another context - well, it may well turn up here, too, eventually. It may emerge in a changed form, and probably turned towards a completely different point. That's not to diminish whatever other point it made before! Its point was either made or not - one way or the other, its job was done. Then, later, I needed it for something else - and there it was! Ready to hand.

The second thing you need to know: the entire blog Consider Your Ass Kicked! is fiction. "Fiction" is the genre. If you ever buy one of those books that includes the understated cover blurb "A NOVEL" under the title, be aware that in at least 75% or better of those books, the author does include some details, events, or facts that are true, that are based on or inspired by something that actually happened, and often these are things that happened in that author's own life. Don't be fooled! That novel is still fiction. Those true details were only included to help the story. The technical literary term for what they are after there is: verisimilitude.

Now of course, a blog is in no way up on the high literary plateau that the novel occupies! I wouldn't imply otherwise. But since most blogs are nonfiction, I find it pertinent to point out this one isn't. The novel merely serves as a convenient, high-profile example of the fiction genre - a good comparison for me to draw. And when I go to pains to point out that the novel is fiction, that's not a slight or a smear! I'm not trying to say novelists just make shit up to put us on, and amuse themselves chuckling into their sleeves while counting the money rolling in as the credulous public laps up page after page of totally invented malarkey!

Anyone who levels a charge like that probably needs to schedule one of those big lit-up tube-chamber brain-scans. It would make a riveting episode of "House." I wouldn't be surprised if they turn up a mutant extra ass-cheek taking up brainspace in the cranium! And who knows, maybe there's a procedure for that.

Previous versions of the "Dang Disclaimer"

Here's the better, less snide, medium version: medium version AKA previously known as "the short version."

Here's the long version (not recommended): the long version