collaborations I write and edit with several people who are amazingly talented, hilarious, committed, responsible, personable, weight-concious, semi-pretensious, neurotic, obsessive, compulsive, unpredictable, thieving, political, and sometimes diabolical. Without these wackies I'd be up a creek. Here they are: It could be argued that I only associate with these people because of how bizarre their names look when in a list. People who have birth-given-odd names such as these tend to stick together because they've all had roughly the same number of beatings. That's what you get in junior high for sticking out, you know. Only one in the above list is a “stage name” as they call it...and I'll let you guess which one that is. The funny thing is, his real name is just as odd as the one he's given himself! Many thanks to lux, kie, and keoki for their hours/days/weeks of writing and editing on my behalf.