Christopher P. Nagel, Ph.D., is my best friend, and has been since sometime during our college years. We met while he was trying to start up an underground newspaper, an endevour that became our own little miracle, on and off, for the next couple of years. (His roommate, Doug Dyer, also contributed what can only be called "discontinuity," and several other contributers added their own oddities from time to time, including noted author Steve Sherrill, who just had his third novel published.) We had suprisingly little in common; he dabbled in poetry, but was more heavily inclined towards drama, particularly the absurdist plawrights of the mid 20th century. I absorbed alot of that, and it began flavoring my early works. I think, maybe, that my struuggle to find my poetic voice and form influenced his work, but that's probably just hubris. He got me drawn into philosophy, and I damned near minored in it. (Philosophy, too, has influenced my work, for good or ill.) My point, in fine, is that I owe the son-of-a-bitch a bunch.

After college we went off to separate grad schools, where he became an astounding success while I became an abject, if willing, failure. After gaining his Ph.D in Philosophy, specializing in Continental philosophy, specifically Phenomenology, he taught at whatever small college gigs there were to be had, before finally moving west to CSU Stanislaus (which, of course, we call Cow State Santa Clause) in Turlock, California, where, after many years, the department chair continues to yank his chain, refusing him a tenure-track position while giving him lucrative year-to-year contracts. The Doc is a gourmet cook, an aesthete like myself, an intellectual, a union organizer/disturber, and the most completely honest philosopher in the trade. He's also a damned fine travelling companion, a good and stalwart friend, and an acute observer of all things socio-politico-cultural. Despite all this, he is continually wracked with guilt, doubt, self-loathing, and maintains a general all-purpose funk for your dancing, not to say boogying, pleasure. More measure of his mete and tenor can be found, natch, on his own web page. The P, by the way, is silent.