ABOUT THIS SITE. 

The little yellow room was something I put together in 1996, back when the internet was still young and it seemed like anyone who could put together a website did.  Over the years, my motivation for maintaining the site had waxed and waned, but the idea of pointing to a URL and saying "This is mine" has always appealed to me.  I remember agonizing over a catchy title for weeks when I was in college, before finally going for something more understated and simplistic.  I'm not very proficient with computers, so I knew whatever I assembled would be relatively small (little), and I planned on using yellow and black as the predominant colors of the site (yellow), and while I probably wasn't consciously aware of the connection, my desire to create this site does sort of parallel whatever Virginia Woolf was talking about in A Room of One's Own, except I'm a dude (room). 

Since I'm a little unsure how to proceed with this, I thought I'd format the rest of this as a Q&A session. 

Q: Who the hell are you?

A: My name's Mike Smith, twenty-something chemist, amatuer writer, and king of all monsters.  I was born in Kentucky, which I continue to maintain is the greatest of all fifty states, however most of the childhood I remember was spent in southern Illinois.  Beginning in 2004 I went into voluntary exile to Indiana, in order to accept a job offer after my employer in Frankfort started making overtures about laying me off.  Anyone reading this probably knows me best as either a bespectacled, good natured  kid who attended UK between 1995 and 1999, or as a bearded  malcotent who's been writing comics fan fiction since 1998.  Or you remember me from UseNet, which I find doubtful, since I barely remember anyone else from there. 

Q: No, really, why yellow?

A: Yellow is my favorite color, probably imprinted upon me at an early age when my parents would dress my brother and me in different color clothes to tell us apart; blue for him and yellow for me.  In any case, I've sort of adopted it as my unofficial trademark, since I've never really run into anyone else with the same preference.  I've found, looking at the friendslists of other LJ users, that the colors they associate with me are often yellow and black, the same as how I formatted my own blog, so I guess sticking to this theme has made me more identifiable.  In any event I use it because I think it looks pretty, and it's easier to read than, say, navy blue on maroon. 

Q: What kind of stuff goes on the site?

A: In general, whatever I write down that I think anyone else would want to read.  Part of the reason I never worked hard on keeping this site maintained is because I never felt like I had enough material for it.  Lately, I realize that I've been pumping out tons of content on Livejournal for years, and so I'm re-orienting lyr to archive some of that. 

In addition, I have a lot of fan fiction as well, and I've always wanted to keep it in one central location for everyone to find.  For the most part, this includes short stories about superheroes like the Thunderbolts, X-Men and Steel, but I've expanded into anime in recent years, by way of Superman crossovers.  My feeling is that if it came from Japan and it's a cartoon, Superman can fight and/or team up with it.  I draw from time to time, so maybe I could get some of that on there, but I doubt it. 

One day, I wouldn't mind using the site as a larger archive, for things that weren't written by me, but given my infrequent updates, that's probably not gonna happen soon.  Point is, this is a site with stuff for you to read.  Maybe some pictures here and there, but mostly words. 





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