Greg-o-ry Klein, That's Who I Want to Be...

Okay, so now that I got the icebreaker blog out of the way, just one more bit of introductory fluff before I can get into more interesting material. Not that the events of my life aren't interesting, but I'd feel better if you knew a bit more about yours truly before we proceed.

I remember my earlier days in Sri Lanka (which will always be Ceylon to me, but that's another story for another time). At that time, I went by the name Faji Rahapaknas, and I was in deep with the Tamil Tigers. They were just a charitable organization then, doing weekend bake sales, cleaning local graffiti, cutting the hands off local thieves...you know, that whole thing.

But then one day Padi, the young upstart in the group, started complaining that we needed to carry around AK-47s to keep the other gangs from invading our territory and picking up the litter. This was unheard of at the time, as differences were settled by a "nice-off," where you kept hurling compliments at one another until the other couldn't think of anything nice to say. Those were good times.

So you can understand our shock when Padi brought up the whole gun thing. Quite a few of us objected, but Padi managed to convince some to fall to his cause. Words turned into a nice-off, where the leader, Lakta, decided to go against Padi to settle things. Well, Padi, sick of the nice-offs, pulled a knife and stabbed Lakta there, right as Lakta was complimenting Padi's eyes. Lakta never saw it coming. Padi took control of the Tigers, and those of us who were against him made a hasty getaway. C'mon, that's a big jump from smiles to weapons...we were completely unprepared to fight them. So I took my wife and our 13 kids, packed up our stuff, and took off for America.

My wife, the gold-bricking whore she is, took the kids and became a traveling band of musicians. She figured, five in the Partridge family, so her profits should increase 160%. Last I heard, they were performing under the name The Polyphonic Spree. I hope they're doing well.

As for me, I crawled out of the bottle I was living in for two months, cut my losses, and took the name Greg Klein to blend in better with the locals. I attended the University of Missouri, became an English major (which is actually a very easy language to learn...who knew?), and moved out to Albuquerque to edit three trade magazines: one for smoke shops, one for tattoo and piercing parlors, and the third to New Age shops.

And that pretty much brings us up to today. Now that we got that out of the way, it'll be smooth sailing from here on out. Now if you don't mind, it's high time to cash in my $50 gift card to Martini Grille.

Have a good night, fooligans.