About Me

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e. l . wood is a native of birmingham, alabama. he grew up on the urban streets of dallas, texas before attending college at houston baptist university where he earned a b. a. in english and psychology. after a year of teaching high school english in the public schools of houston, e. l. wood attended sam houston state university where he earned a master’s degree in english. after bouncing around the deep south for several years, he finished his ph. d. in american literature before 1900 at the university of southern mississippi. e. l. wood has been teaching in some capacity since 1992 and has taught for a local community college since 1995. in his spare time, e.l. wood enjoys reading, movies, and the outdoors. he is personally acquainted with several search and rescue teams around the southeast. he is married to the lovely and gracious a. c. they have a daughter (special k), and one dog. They reside in h'burg, deep south. in addition to being the sole proprietor of the gandy dancer billiard parlor, e. l. wood dabbles in folk art and the occasional cultivation of a handlebar mustache.

Wednesday, April 29, 2009

my own dr.s frankenstien: albert marsh and william hoskins



the above is a result of a quiz which rae ann, she of i'm a hoe, not to be mistaken for a rake or a shovel fame, turned me onto. i'll leave it to both of the viewing audience members who know me as to whether or not the results of the quiz are accurate. i must confess, i was stunned upon discovering that i have been labeled a toaster. you too can find your inner inanimate object here .

Monday, April 27, 2009

happy hour indeed!

i though about calling this photo this little light of mine, but it sounded kinda sacrilegious. so, i'll just call it, papa's a pretty cool dude 'cause he took me to sonic.

Friday, April 17, 2009

the wojtowicz's, franklin, and douglass



patrick, melissa, and gabrielle wojtowicz have become my newest heroes. after reading an article about them in the 4/14/09 issue of USA Today (having trouble linking to the article - sorry) and a subsequent article by peggy noonan , I decided to check out the wojtowicz’s blog (i can't figure out why this link says the blog doesn't exist, but when it says that true north doesn't exist, click on true north and it will take you to none other than true north).

these guys figured it out. as patrick says in the USA Today article, “The idea of living a fuller, more satisfying life seems simple to us now. . . . We would basically buy stuff to feel good. . . . When that stuff stopped filling the voids we had, we started analyzing what it was that we were really missing. . . . Money, cash, credit, maybe they don’t matter. Maybe, just maybe, it is those things that impede our ability to be truly happy.”

patrick is right. and the path the wojtowicz family are on embodies ben franklin’s ideas of self-reliance, specifically virtues #4, #5, and #6: resolution, frugality, and industry. i hope and pray, that the wojtowiczs are indicative of a whole movement back to an agrarian life style. if they are, and if there is a shift in american culture back to an agrarian mind set, maybe an unintended consequence of BIG GOVERNMENT’s meddling in the american way of life could be a positive.

in his Self-Made Man lecture of 1859, frederick douglass said, “Self-made men are the men . . . who they are, without the aid of any of the favoring conditions by which other men usually rise in the world and achieve great results. . . . They are the men who, in a world of schools, academics, colleges, and other institutions of learning, are often compelled by unfriendly circumstances to acquire their education elsewhere and, amidst unfavorable conditions, to hew out for themselves a way to success, and thus to become the architects of their own good fortunes. . . . If they have traveled far, they have made the road on which they have traveled. If they have ascended high, they have built their own ladder. . . . I am certain that there is nothing good, great or desirable which man can possess in this world, that does not come by some kind of labor, either physical or mental, moral or spiritual. A man may, at times, get something for nothing, but it will, in his hands, amount to nothing. What is true in the world of matter is equally true in the world of the mind. Without culture there can be no growth; without exertion, no acquisition; without friction, no polish; without labor, no knowledge; without action, no progress and without conflict, no victory. The man who lies down a fool at night, hoping that he will waken wise in the morning, will rise up in the morning as he laid down in the evening.”

i think franklin and douglass would've been proud of the wojtowic family.

hard-working hands gain control, but lazy hands do slave labor. Proverbs 12:24

Tuesday, April 14, 2009

go get 'em america!

god bless the new crop of sons and daughters of liberty who are participating tomorrow in the tea parties around the country! may your voices be heard!

Friday, April 03, 2009

a stack of money with eyes, a gecko, and a karaoke singer walk into a bar . . .




this video is for my daughter who really likes all things geico. hopefully, she will not grow up with some sort of unhealthy paranoia.

Thursday, April 02, 2009

tell me tommy boy; what is it good for?

as an amateur ornithologist, my ears perked up when i heard about the newest cyber space rage - tweeting. or is it twitting? or twittering? anyway - as a technological neanderthal, i’m doing well to figure out how to post a blog every now and then, much less tweet every two seconds. how does one keep up with tweeting and why? i mean, when i don’t blog for weeks at a time, it occurs to me to go to confession. which is strange. but if stephen king can crank out books a year, shouldn’t i be able to crank out blogs a month? so along comes the twitter. which i still have not gotten a straight answer about from my students. which alerts me to the fact that tweeting or twittering or whatever is either a) so new they don’t even know what it’s good for, or b) it’s not really good for anything. anyone besides the cartoon network got any insight for those of us being left behind?