After fifty plus years of writing Russ Hatler is toggling off the laptop, dusting off his Roget's Thesaurus, and hanging up the metaphorical gloves. In one last valiant effort to achieve those twin elusive goals of notoriety and wealth, he has compiled an eclectic collection of literary works from various periods throughout his illustrious career into this slender compendium of short stories, poetry and philosophy. After half a century of coaxing written words to romp unfettered across the cybernetic page, he has reached the inescapable conclusion that it is far, far better to have earned a living programming big mainframe computers, and spent his leisure time writing novels, than it would've been to do those self-same things the other way around. Cheers!