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Call me Ishmael. Some years ago - never mind how long precisely - having little or no money in my purse, and nothing particular to interest me on shore, I thought I would sail about a little and see the watery part of the world. It is a way I have of driving off the spleen and regulating the circulation.
Whenever I find myself growing grim about the mouth; whenever it is a damp, drizzly November in my soul; whenever I find myself involuntarily pausing before coffin warehouses, and bringing up the rear of every funeral I meet; and especially whenever my hypos get such an upper hand of me, that it requires a strong moral principle to prevent me from deliberately stepping into the street, and methodically knocking people's hats off - then, I account it high time to get to sea as soon as I can. This is my substitute for pistol and ball.
With a philosophical flourish Cato throws himself upon his sword; I quietly take to the ship. There is nothing surprising in this. If they but knew it, almost all men in their degree, some time or other, cherish very nearly the same feelings towards the ocean with me. There now is your insular city of the Manhattoes, belted round by wharves as Indian isles by coral reefs - commerce surrounds it with her surf. Right and left, the streets take you waterward. Its extreme downtown is the battery, where that noble mole is washed by waves, and cooled by breezes, which a few hours previous were out of sight of land. Look at the crowds of water-gazers there.
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Danthrax is my chosen Internet name. Five years ago (nineteen-ninety-nine) I started to dabble in anagramming. Why, no sooner had I begun posting these gems of high wit and humor, than I found reward for the effort: the monthly Anagrammy Awards for worthy wordplay!
Early successes left me believing (seen from now,foolishly) that in the very limited (zero) unused time I possess, I could design anagrams worthy of first-place status. Then, not only were our awards relocated to a 'Forum' less available and familiar to me, but also the increasing requirements of fatherhood stole my spare home time. So my writing efforts have lapsed. But I've retained the huge desire to win out over peers who post in the contest here.
My brother also chanced to participate. He opined that lots of English writing should use letters in similar numbers. So yours truly has returned with zeal and intent, vowing to achieve certain victory (I wish!) in this recent effort, though I horribly lack the pure focus to hone great masterpieces. (Hush!) On a whim, I've applied my twin's belief to this popular literary work, 'Moby Dick' by H. Melville. His use of letters (while higher in the vowel 'E' than I would have wanted) was fairly well-suited to my purpose. With Anagram Checker I've bounced slowly between scribbling, hopping in a seemingly endless loop. O.K.! The result (which is here): the quite perfect re-arrangement of the first part of his work, utilizing every letter (amazingly without 'theft')! I should post ASAP!
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Call me DFOOFNIK... usurped from the D and F of the "weird monsters" list, which I viewed
in a comic named "Plop". It was originally in Mad Magazine, which reveals the truth behind
"foofnik" -- Yiddish for something ersatz. For over thirty years in comic book fandom,
I've gone by this unique "phony" pseudonym.
Besides my writing in comic venues, there's generally something to conveniently gobble up half my spare hours. First I beat all comers on the "Brainiac" internet trivia game. Then, in the last three years, I've played the "Blockdot" solitaire games as part of the highest international group.
But my twin and I are (properly) natural competitors. He interested me in these letter games, where I won a few Anagrammies. I am quite proud of a couple of my efforts, while Dan still credits me with "demystifying" the Long format. It's not the LETTERS, but rather how the WRITING makes the great winners dazzle us. With a few exceptions, long blocks of English share similar percentages of the same letters. We only have to get the proper word variants. (while you use up unwanted vowels? Uh huh. :-)
As in one recent writing contest, my brother's Special effort includes too many parenthetical phrases. He rightly avoids that higher error of the "Web URL" or lots of bad, unrelated words. Yet we're uncertain if his obsession with this proves as perilous as Ahab's in the Melville allegory.
Though I've understood how it feels to fail, it's usually worse when you don't ever try.
A white whale hunt, anyone? Hurry up!
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