Black and white cartoon of Bryan painting some wildlife. Drawn by artist Bryan Skinnell.

I’m hexed with an awful malady. Bear with me as it’s quite embarrassing to even have to admit this because it will no doubt jeopardize my stud muffin reputation which I’ve been working so long and hard on all these years. But I might as well fess up here and now as it might help explain some things. For better or for worse, I’m prone to sudden and unexpected bouts of giggling for no apparent reason. And perhaps you are too you cackling devil! If you’re a dreamer of obscenely funny and ribald thoughts that compels you to giggle at the most inopportune times, we really ought to get together and commiserate about our misfortunes some day. We can meet at my place and I’d pour you a glass of flat root beer while having a good laugh together at what silly misfits we really are. Hope you like flat root beer because I forgot to put that darn bottle back in the fridge. If you don’t care for it well there’s no harm done. I can spike it with some of this leftover coffee so that it doesn’t go to waste. Root beer flavored coffee is the universal beveridge of choice among hopeless bachelors with a miscalibrated sense of humor. It’s quite easy to prepare, acceptable for any occasion, and complements the aromatic tones of this leftover pizza I’ve got laying around better than anything I can think of. I won’t say how old my pizza is because that’s confidential information. But I promise you that it still tastes good and that’s all that counts. Even if you need to soak it for a minute in your root beer coffee before you are able to chew and swallow it.

But, as I was saying, I was born with a rascally and mischievous imagination. Which side of the family dumped that on me there’s no telling as my bloodline is populated mostly with saintly and hard working folks who tilled the fields and cleared the land and just stayed too busy to laugh about much. But I inherited that goofy giggle gene from somewhere for as a child I giggled often and regularly for no clear and obvious reasons. Well… no reasons other than the fact that I was surrounded by goofballs of course. As a young man finding his way in a man’s world I found, to my chagrin, that trying to suppress that constant urge to giggle while maintaining some kind of professionalism was often in vain. Ahhhhh, to hell with it. If a fellow can’t laugh he surely can’t live. And that’s no life for me.

And now here I am, a couple decades deep into the twenty first century as a middle aged doofus, and I still giggle as much as I ever did. I assumed I would outgrow this juvenile tendency but I’m still as much a chuckling fool as the days when I was young. I ought to tell the good doctor about that just to see what he thinks. But charging me a few thousand bucks just to tell me I’m a hopeless case and my root beer-coffee and petrified pizza diet is rotting my brain is definitely not funny nor practical for my bohemian lifestyle. So I’m right back where I started. Which means I’ll just have to learn to live with this pesky affliction as best I can. And I only have one thing to say about that.

Hee hee hee!!!

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Why hello there! My name is Bryan Skinnell and I am a middle-aged (50-ish) artist and neighborhood kook who is living the artistic and creative life out in the boonies of Bedford, Virginia. Bedford is one of the largest counties in the commonwealth of Virginia and, for the most part, it’s still a mostly rural one that bridges the gap between Roanoke and Lynchburg. You could say, in more ways than one, that Bedford is the heart of Virginia. I can’t argue with that although I usually think of Bedford more as Virginia’s belly button myself.

I grew up right here in Bedford and have lived and toiled most of my life on our infamous red clay. The sort of clay that makes the stickiest mud known to man after a rain and which clings like super glue from God to anything and everything it touches. If you are so foolish as to get it on yourself you’ll wind up tracking and leaving a trail of red goop everywhere you go for days afterwards to the delight of your family and friends. But I wouldn’t want to live anywhere else and Lord knows I tried as I’ve wandered from one end of the country to the other. But Bedford has my heart and that’s where I’ve chosen to live my life today. In my free time when I’m not stuck in my studio making art I do love being outside gardening or hiking or just pestering the neighbors.

Every day I try to write something that’s original, entertaining, and half-way thoughtful here on my blog while sharing my happy-go-lucky attitude and zest for life. Quite often I don’t have the foggiest notion of what I’ll end up saying in a post. But, whatever I end up writing about, I do hope you enjoy it!

I do keep a mailing list for interested readers and fans. If you would like to get in on the action and follow my musings and rabble-babble, that can be easily arranged. Just give me an email address that you would like for me to send my blog posts to and I’ll see that you get it.

Thanks for stopping by!
Bryan Skinnell

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