smSECTION SEVEN
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BILL ANDERSON
(Photo by CCR Consulting/Athena)
Bill Anderson says he became a vampire in Australia. That's where a lot of strange things happen, down under and far away from the rest of the world, where even the animals are "different." Isn't Australia where some creep recently killed three dozen or so innocent tourists for no good earthly reason just a while or so ago? Was this creep a vampire, too? He certainly was out for blood. A lot of it.
"I don't like the taste of blood," Bill insists, as if to argue that he's really just a normal everyday guy, even if others find him sort of like a junior Albert Einstein-type who never was able to make it to Princeton or MIT because he lacked either a normal or formal education. That's because he spent three and a half years in reform school when he as just a kid. Was he a vampire then, too?
"My mother killed my kid brother when he was 14 months old and then she blamed it on me," he explains matter-of-factly. "I was just seven years old at the time. She slipped a plastic bag over his head. Later, she committed suicide with an OD of dexetrine."
By that time, Bill had five sisters. There was also an older brother who had died. From natural causes? Bill didn't say. Bill's childhood was horror story enough without having to turn it into a fictional horror story.
"My father remarried six months after my mother's suicide," Bill says, adding, "Not that I blamed him."
Little wonder Bill eventually ran away from home as a teenager and lived on the street for five years or so, accumulating a resume which he says includes having been a stock boy, a warehouse laborer, a panhandler, a thief, an escort, a cashier, a security guard, a
Bill shares my
contempt
for the people who
write computer manuals
construction worker, an auto mechanic, an auto body prep specialist, a meter reader, a bicycle messenger, a Toyota salesman, a software engineer, a video game designer, a painter, a graphic artist, a network consultant and engineer, a systems analyst, an audio consultant and a manager of information systems and a consultant to Paine-Webber and Drexel Burnham Lambert, among others.
Although I certainly don't claim to be a vampire, Bill shares my contempt not only for the assholes who write computer manuals but also for the silly nerds who think they can understand and explain the manuals to everyday idiots like me. Bill says he learned all about Cybernetics on his own, just as he learned about everything else on his own. He's also a self-taught musician and songwriter, can play almost any instrument he picks up, and heads his own band, about which he can tell stories of hilarious fuckups.
He first got serious about computing in the early 1980s when he lost his job as a real estate appraiser and started programming computer games on his TRS-80, now considered a prehistoric machine. I met Bill through my old friend Bruce Colfin, now one of New York's oncoming copyright lawyers, who, in partnership with attorney Jeffrey E. Jacobson, has established an outfit they call "The Firm" at 156 Fifth Avenue. As "The Firm's" computer consultant, Bill has set up its website http://www.thefirm.com, where Bill also has set up his own home page, which he calls "Nakedhoof" in honor of his dog, Merlin.
"I call him Naked Hoof when he is not wearing his collar," Bill says, explaining his logo, which is based on a paw print. "I know it's a paw, not a hoof, but 'hoof' is the sound Merlin makes sometimes, kind of a doggie whisper."
Bill says Merlin's fangs are as potent as any doggie's. As for Bill's fangs, although Bill says he doesn't like the taste of blood, what he does like about vampirism is the sexual control his vampire immortality gives him over women. Oh, yes, vampires never die but always stay young in the supernatural manner of Dorian Gray, the fictional character who keeps a portrait in his closet which does his aging for him. You must've heard of Dorian and his decrepit portrait, written by Oscar Wilde. But, multi-talented as Bill is, eternal youth is only one of the things Bill has over the rest of us. Wouldn't you like to be a vampire, too? Perhaps Bill can arrange for your own immortality, or are you allergic to fang bites?
Bill won't say how he got to be a vampire. He wants you to read the details in a highly autobiographical novel he's writing which has as its working title, An Artist and a Vampire. I've read his first two chapters and I've told him the story has a lot of dead spots, but what else can you expect from a vampire? If you want to know more about Bill you can click your mouse right HERE to read his novel and his bio and also to listen to samples of his music.##
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