You have landed on the website Biting the Bullet. Perhaps on purpose, or maybe by accident, but whichever, please feel free to make yourself at home. Enjoy the photos, or peruse my written words to see if they prove entertaining, teach you something new, or provide a different perspective on some aspect of life that you had not encountered or considered before.

If you are here to assess my editorial skills, my portfolio displays a wide range of samples that showcase my acumen in the various editorial mediums, as well as my working knowledge of a number of different subjects. While I have attempted to be inclusive in all of the fields and mediums I have worked in, the samples remain limited in some, though I add to the portfolio when I come across old work of interest or when I complete appropriate new work.

Should you be here more for the potential entertainment, I suggest you stick with my personal blogs, and perhaps the few old fiction pieces posted. However, be warned that some of this material may be provocative. I do not abide political correctness, pull punches, nor hesitate to utilize humor that is often inherently found within the more delicate or controversial issues that affect our lives.

Thus, should you be of the easily offended, politically correct ilk, I suggest you embark on a quest for a sense of humor. Should that prove futile then please take your outraged grumpy self and skulk about on some other website.

The origin of “Biting the Bullet” comes from my first writing job out of university–that is working for a small town newspaper (and then two) in what seemed to be the middle-of-nowhere North Carolina. While it was an especially slow-moving locale in which to begin the on-the-job honing of my nascent skills, the experience was invaluable, and I thank my editors for helping give legs to my emerging writing profession.

Part of those legs consisted of “Biting the Bullet,” a weekly column which my editor(s) let me write for publication in their small-town newspapers. A column in which I was allowed almost total free rein with regard to subject matter and content.

Fools!–Mwahahahaahhaha!–What were they thinking? 

Actually, I took it easy on them and did not get too radical, and they in turn–firm believers in “freedom of speech”–let me spout out at will.  It was a lot of fun and one of my favorite tasks during my Podunk-town employment. I produced about 150 columns during my time there, and looking back…

…want to gag they’re so bad. OK, so they’re not that bad, and there are even a few random gems, but on the whole they’re pretty sophomoric. But hey, what do you expect, I was young and foolish. Still am. Well, maybe not so young….

Anyhow, this current “Biting the Bullet” is in honor of those early efforts, and you might even find a sample or two among all the other writing on these pages.

And if you happen to like any of the stories, articles, columns, blogs, essays, reports, assorted drivel, humor, photos, poetry, etc., please let me know. If not, well then feel free to criticize. I’ve got a thick skin, but–and more importantly–I can apply logic to eviscerate the fallacies within your ill-fated attempts at critique (of course, there’s always the chance that I’ll get undone by my hubris).

Cheers,

MJM

P.S. The Latin quote—Scire tuum nihil est, nisi te scire hoc sciat alter—essentially means “knowledge is nothing when no one else knows that you know it.”