Change of Tactic

To prove to publishers that I do have moments of lucidity that allow me to act like a rational human being when in a business scenario, I craft a nice, industry standard biography that I submit with my 1200 word essays in exchange for rejection slips. Since at this point I do not have a lot to lose, I decided to have a little fun with my cover sheets. Enclosed is the new Author Biography that I will henceforth be enclosing with articles I submit to the print medai for publication:

I was born in 1970 and raised in suburban Detroit, descended from Polish immigrants and a long distinguished line of unrepentant redneck inebriates. I barely graduated from Southgate Anderson School in 1988, forgoing the classic scholastic agenda and focusing instead upon a liberal academic regimen of amateur gynecology and street pharmaceuticals. In 1987, I enlisted in the US Army Reserve and spent the summer between my junior and senior year in the woods of Fort Benning, GA playing with a myriad of various explosive devices and high powered weaponry. If they had only supplied us with copious amounts of alcohol and members of the opposite sex, it could very well have been the best summer camp experience I had ever had.

Faced with the prospect of being forced to jump out of an airplane in mid-flight, before the complimentary beverages were served when such an idea sounds especially ludicrous, I left the Army and enlisted in the US Navy, going through boot camp for the second time in just less than a year. After twenty months of training in electronics repair, I spent four years traveling around the Pacific, drinking my way through Japan, the Philippines, Hong Kong, Singapore, Indonesia, Malaysia, Australia, Korea and a steady succession of little Southern Pacific islands that no one has ever heard of and, due to my prodigious predisposition towards intoxicating drink, I have a hard time remembering.

I left the military in 1994 and went to work for an automotive supplier back in southeastern Michigan, eventually working my way from a parts sorter to an engineer and then to a competitive intelligence analyst. My civilian career has taken me to Mexico, Western Europe and back to Asia. Such extensive travel has endowed me with an uncommon insight into cultures outside of the United States, an almost inhuman tolerance towards strong drink, the ability to get my face slapped in seven different languages and a lengthy repertoire of travel anecdotes that I have recently documented on my blog, The JEP Report ( http://jepreport.blogspot.com/ ). My writing, which combines the exotic locales of P.J. O’Rourke, the exquisite eloquence of Frazier Crane, the psychotic rapid-fire timing of Dr. Hunter S. Thompson and the subject matter of one of the baser episodes of South Park, has developed a steady following and has encouraged me to try and submit my work for publication in traditional print media, where I have since acquired an impressive array of rejection slips from some of the most prestigious publishing houses in the industry. My works are primarily based (rather loosely at times) upon my own personal experiences but in the case of a severe bout of writer’s block, I have been known to manufacture my own literary situations by ingesting a fifth of tequila and a handful of Ex-Lax, then documenting what occurs next.

I currently reside in Grand Blanc, Michigan with my wife and three small children where I am examining the compatibility, benefits and legalities of the utilization of cattle prods and tranquilizer guns in modern parenting techniques. I have a profound love of fishing, football, family and travel. I have a profound hatred of my liver and abuse it regularly and religiously every chance that I get. My primary aspiration is to find a career that will allow me to make a comfortable living traveling to exotic locales, getting my BAC raised up past my IQ and then writing about my experiences much to the disgust of the general public.

Best Regards,

J.E. P.

If nothing else, it should get someone's attention.