Editor’s Note: As dedicated readers know, Marlow is always on the cutting edge. This morning he is cutting the dust off his old bio, part of a coordinated information campaign useful in our global marketing structure. It is anticipatory in nature, but expected to fully conform with emergency public health policy adopted by our Governor earlier this week. I will update mine after seeing the Governor’s standards.

– Vic

Socotra House Bio Notes

Coastal Empire

Vic, Arrias, Point Loma, Tacitus, JP, other unnamed associates and unindicted/uncancelled co-conspirators,

As times they are a-changin’ and our Socotra House author bio notes become ever more dust laden and uncommunicative, I have given some brief thought about how, based on our scribblings, we might consider describing ourselves either in bio revisions or attached addenda. I want to emphasize that only from time to time does this occur.

For our younger readers, I initially tried to do this in emojis, but I gave up. Give me real words — they’re so much easier. It was a ⚓ or situation and I found myself drowning. So here we go . . .

I would start by saying you all are cool cats, while I’m more from the skinny-assed, big-bellied dog world.

As I see it, most of the SH clan are blues music creatures in how we see and experience the world and live our lives without all the howlin’ and a-moanin’. We grew up in the last decade when parts of our American cars were still wood. At the end of that decade, we were driving and styling in all-steel, big-finned, chromed out leviathans that topped out at over 20 feet in length and 3 plus tons in displacement. I suspect that may have affected us as a group in ways we’re still figuring out. Thank God for modern pharma and plastic surgery.

In my poorly shaven, mal-proportioned scrawniness, I may have scared our former coworkers with occasional emotionally unstable outbursts and an underlying tendency towards proposing sociopathic reprisals in response to threats to myself, family, friends, and our country. Part of this may be due to my childhood asthma, TB, other fevers, assorted maladies, as well as mold, pollen and occasional Marxist exposures.

You are the hip ones — quick witted, sharp as tacks, good-natured dudes. You were athletic in your youth, possessed of Detroit’s coolest cars during your formative years, and closeted members of the original Gonzo club. Writing on the “show” connects all of us house writers as we try to capture the wacky, bizarre, and often surreal adventures of our countrymen and women.

In my (and sometimes your) more dyspeptic moments, I may tip towards violent, psychotic reactions, losing my mind occasionally in a cumulative process resulting in me becoming a screaming bullhorn with eyes dilated and flaring teeth. In my better moments I can be open to trying new things with low to no emotional brittleness. This is especially so after I take my meds and get my therapeutic dose on.

You have fan clubs with wide and broad interests and appeal. You remind me at times of the Jimmy Buffett I saw in Key West in the early 70s — you know — the one with a White Sport Coat and a Pink Crustacean. Vic, as our titular leader and trend setter, occasionally disappears for reasons still unknown even when ostensibly anchored in the Big Pink and the Imperial City’s Seas of Consultancy. Secret mission tale rumors abound.

The cat and dog show tales we house inkers relate on what is DC possess a rare form of continuity over the years, proving that it’s not a viral or bacterial illness that underlies their odd presentations to us lesser mortals.

Just so you know, my secret ambition since my bone-skinny younger days was to develop huge pectoral muscles and have a professional wrasslin career with the ring nickname of “Mad Dog.” Instead, I became a denizen of secure, cypher-locked, trigraph vaults and an afloat cyclic ops briefing mutt.

I would pen you house writers’ childhood ambitions here but common decency and the Privacy and State Secrets Acts prevent me. We could pulse another listserv’s CCP contacts for that info, should your memories fail.

When inebriated I tended to slip into lame verbalizations a la Peter Lorre along with a marked propensity to laugh like a diabolical Lon Chaney. Chick magnetic that act was not with more than one SYT calling me a sick monkey or a lawyer. I decided I couldn’t walk away from these urges and so embraced my imbecilic, fat-headedness. That as you know was a rare winning combination for a Cold War-era spook career.

I have been told that I had but still cannot describe my softer side.

You are red, white, and blue, pugnacious, Scotch-Irish types with slight-purplish prosed brains the size of Rhode Island. You’re considered to be iron super chefs of thought and word scientists of first rank always eschewing the nonsensically stupid. Strangers are heard to mutter “barrel-chested in thought” yet “kindhearted” when first in your presence.

Upon my successful wooing of W, my trademark facial expression became a shit-eating-grin that keeps my tongue from hanging out. When W uncorks a nice bottle of red wine, I get excited and mutter things like “Joooy” a la Larry Fine of the Three Stooges. I, like you, have a fixation for the sensory pleasures of fine food and crunchy snacks.

Our publisher on the other hand at happy hours slightly tilted his head and briefly glanced at his ‘tender, when his wine glass needed recharging. And bottles of the finest white wines were opened and refilling was done with a smile and flourish. Quel panache!

We try not to show it but none of us have overly huge ranges of emotion.

Much of what we sense and draft is like the stuff we did for our friends’ personal amusement when we were in our college and Naval heydays. That stuff is still funny as hell, if you ask me.

We have fun with ideas and entity identities that should not and cannot exist according to those who set and enforce the Imperial City’s standards and ethos. We can be aggressive and somewhat foul. For example, I still believe that the DC Beltway was the birthplace of mankind’s flatulence. Even our critics smirk at our occasionally aggressive attitudes towards totems, relationships, stereotypes and parody.

As I am running out of my daily word allocation, here’s one last item — none of us likes to have our underwear ironed.

Peace, shipmates.

Write on!

-Marlow

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