Rajah Dodger, in the virtual flesh

[rdodger]

Rajah Dodger is a citizen of Texas, both by birth and current residence. A man in his midlife (that's as close to demographics as he will authorize), he has been "in computers" for nearly a quarter of a century and makes his living in Houston, not far from one of the world's largest [targets] centers of petrochemical production. He speaks English, used to be able to read some Spanish, and writes in a variety of computer languages.

Once upon a time he cursed the darkness of badly written stories on adult computer bulletin boards. Then a voice came to him (probably from one of the neighbors fed up with his whining), saying "Go thou and show them how it is done, for in truth you cannot do much worse." And thereby hangs a tale -- over a hundred of them to date, with no outraged villagers coming yet to burn his house down. He writes about most anything that catches his fancy, whether it's darkly nasty stroke or socially redeeming fluff.

None of his family suspect that he is a published author; his wife considers him merely strange, and his children don't consider adults to be members of a relevant species anyway. When not working or writing, he plays cards, reads science fiction, listens to classical and rock music, and watches television.

Finally, to answer the inevitable question, his pen name has nothing to do with either the Indian subcontinent or any desire to escape law enforcement. (Well, if you must know... that was a long time ago and he was in the car that got away.) It actually comes from a combination of Charles Dickens and British pilot slang. The rest of the etymology is left as an exercise for the astute student.

As to what he posts to the Academy, it will be selections from thirty-plus years of writing. Most of his stuff is small potatoes here - at least according to the story size categories. It's dismaying to find that a story representing enough work to push up past 3000 words is considered "small". Nonetheless, he will soldier on.

My Rav-posted stories are listed HERE

[Vela Nanashi]

Welcome to the forum

Some of us lunatics (I jest) ahem writers write multiple tens of thousands of words in our stories, and think that long may be not quite descriptive enough for that

[Claire]

Welcome to the academy! Nice to have you here.

And don't worry about the length of your stories. There are plenty of short stories here, so you'll be in good company.

[RapeU]

The rest of the etymology is left as an exercise for the astute student.

Had a giggle at that one. Reminds me of numerous times in math textbooks where they would go.

"The proof is trivial and left as an exercise for the student."

(I hate proofs.)

[Shocker]

The rest of the etymology is left as an exercise for the astute student.

Had a giggle at that one. Reminds me of numerous times in math textbooks where they would go.

"The proof is trivial and left as an exercise for the student."

(I hate proofs.)

My math teacher at school said, that sentence usually meant two boxes of cigarettes and a night of work.

[SoftGameHunter]

I always wanted to write down on a HW set, 'The rest of the proof is left as an exercise for the grader.' Obviously it never happened.

[rdodger]

I always wanted to write down on a HW set, 'The rest of the proof is left as an exercise for the grader.' Obviously it never happened.

Man, even in my dreams I never would have had those stones!