In the beginning...

I've been meaning to start working on a personal blog for a while now. This is the initial effort to spike those finicky boundary marker stakes around that claim, to reserve that little bit of cyber space I need. What I'm planning to do is to use this space as a a soapbox, a platform to talk out loud about a number of subjects. There will be running discussions on music (sitting ones too if I want to get into more depth), commentary on culture and the media, and other ideas I've had mulling in wine for a while. You may also see a picture or two, and there will still be enough room, I'm sure, to throw in anything else that might come to mind.

Good deal?

A first thing to cover: Where does this Doctor Underscore Cloin thing come from?

Many years ago, if 30 or so years can be thought of as many, I had (and still have) a good friend by the name of Walter. Now this particular individual has always been a wild and crazy kind of guy in my mind, a good guy mind you, and in many ways a like mind. Walter has, how shall we say, a way with words and it was he who originally called me Doctor Cloin (which is, of course, the honorific of the spelling of my first name 'done sideways' as I like to think of it). He once explained something to the effect that he got the idea because he thought of me as a doctor of philosophy or something.

It was him officer. He was the first guy who called me that.

And, like gum on the sole of a shoe, it stuck.

And for inquiring minds that want to know this kind of thing, the photograph of me was taken by that nice plastic fellow, my bestest friend (and a heck of a good photographer in his own right), Sid Plested.