To leave no more for the reaper the desiccated corpse of one who lived each day like the last.

Institution: College of Self-Righteous Disgust, School of Hard Knocks
Location: United States of America
Degree: Masters in Cynicism
Date of enrollment: September 1968
Date of completion: Election Day 1994

Institution: Ivy Hype University, School of Medicine
Location: Inner City, Eastern Seaboard
Degree: Doctor of Medicine
Date of enrollment: August 1994
Date of completion: Open for discussion

Institution: The Local Music Scene, Rocky Mountain Chapter
Location: Cowtown, CO
Degree: Honorary B.S. in Persistence and Patience
Date of enrollment: Autumn 1985
Date of completion: The Second Coming

Taskmaster: College of Urban Decay
Location: scene of '68 riots
Work detail: Writing instructor
Duties: To edify working class students trained by Philly's shitty inner schools to be illiterate sheep, while reminding myself of the ethical obligation to refrain from flirting with frosh whose grades I held in my palm.
Duration of toil: One school year, hard labor

Taskmaster: Bad Band Names, Inc.
Location: the street where you live
Work detail: Band leader
Duties: To articulate the intuitive exotica of Planet Paul to my band mates in terms of verse chorus verse, to haul equipment to and from gigs, and to collect minstrel's wages from such Denver venues as Herman's Hideaway, the Deadbeat Club, the Lion's Liar and Cricket on the Hill.
Duration of toil: One school year, heavy lifting.

Taskmaster: Another NIMH
Location: Level 42
Work detail: Mouse keeper
Duties: To clean the cages of cannibalistic bitches who ate their weak pups and to pad my paycheck by spending hours on the clock exploring the Health Sciences Center's bowels
Duration of toil: About twenty-four months, served over a period of ten years

Second Millennial Eyes of Surprise Prize, given for best dramatic interpretation of cradling in one's arms the bullet punctured skull of a dying shooting victim

William Carlos Williams Existential Schizophrenia Fellowship Recipient, received for the egocentric inability to establish reasonable expectations

The Coveted Golden Shovel, awarded for excellence in obnoxious alliterative excess expressed imaginatively uninsightfully

additional fictions available upon request