Bio: Ipsit Dixit

It occurred to me that I was a bit of a cipher to readers of this blog, and that the “profile” section was too artificial and restrictive. So, I decided to pull the following from my biographer’s last press release. (For those of you who already read it in the New York Times or The Economist,, I apologize for the repetition.)

Ipsit Dixit was a precocious lad, born at the age of 9 speaking three languages, including Atlantean, Venusean, Vulcan, Wookie, an obscure dialect of Low Gondwanalandish, and just a smattering of Laurasian. Unfortunately, though geniuses, his parents—brilliantly successful Hottentot contract scientists in das Deutschemarsautonomereichserlichkronkolonie (the famous domed Imperial German Autonomous Mars Colony, not die Volksübersiedlung, the notorious hardscrabble underground warrens so tragically championed by the Austrian anarchists)—failed to recognize any of little Ipsit’s native languages and so made no effort to speak anything but the corrupted version of Esperanto common among the coarser sorts of day laborers, which—interestingly—sounds like nothing so much as an unbroken string of curses enthusiastically enunciated by a drunken sailor who has simultaneously stubbed his toe and dropped his wallet off the pier. As a result of the fourth law of thermodynamics: “Use It or Loose It”, he quickly became a monolingual boy wonder. (You know the sort: You look at a person and say, “Boy, I wonder if he was dropped on his head as a baby?”)

Ipsit Dixit was orphaned at the tender age of 41 when his parents faked their deaths in a bizarre malfunction of an experimental trans-temporal modulator/toaster-oven. Abandoned on the teacup ride in EuroDisney, he was adopted by a pack of roving Civil War re-enactors who taught him 101 uses for fake blood (including as part of an excuse for speeding or leaving work early) and introduced him into the ways of dactylology, dandelion wine, the Dewey decimal system, document fraud, dilettantism, and dumpster diving. He rose high in their ranks and their esteem until they discovered that he had attended law school on the sly, becoming a lawyer. “We thought he was just sneaking off every night to turn tricks. When we found out about the J.D., though, we realized that the corruption had reached the core. We couldn’t risk exposing impressionable children to such so-called “alternate lifestyles”, so we cut all ties and disowned him. He’s dead to us. And if the 27th Hawaiian Volunteer Regiment ever sees him in front of us again, while we’re running headlong in a rip-roaring bayonet charge, he’ll be dead to himself, too.”

Mr. Dixit is now a male “before” model for commercial advertisers, works on the side as a petty bureaucrat, and snags occasional weekend gigs as an object lesson for local Sunday School programs. He is on the run from authorities and lives under an assumed name with his dog. He and his inflatable wife are estranged, though he is optimistic about a reconciliation, citing his recent acquisition of a digital pressure gage.

Ipsit Dixit came to know Gorgius Vegetius long before Gorgius started blogging, before he entered the witness protection program after rolling over on Ipsit to turn state's evidence, and even before he had delusions (of grandure or otherwise). Their friendship goes back decades, and Ipsit wishes it to be known that he holds no ill will to GV, or Frankie “the weasel” Consigliore--as Ipsit once knew him--as he goes about his new life at 142 W. Kudzu Ln. in Poughkeepsie. Gorgius Vegetius declined to be interviewed for this bio.

Mr. Dixit met 5toeSloth while working his way through law school. “When little Ipsit snuck away from the re-enactors' encampment every night,” 5toe said, “the Hawaiians actually had it half right. Clerking for me was as close as you can get to turning tricks without eliminating the middle man.”

Hokusuai Octopi and Ipsit Dixit have been friends ever since they met in a city that has threatened to sue if it is ever uttered in the save breath with Mr. Dixit. Ipsit credits Hokusuai with introducing him to his wife. “Yes, she may have been a mail-order bride, but it is true love. They have so much in common intellectually and spiritually that you would have to call them soul mates,” said Mr. Octopi.

Asked tell his adoring readers about himself in 15 words or less, Ipsit Dixit said “It’s been a long, interesting slide from precocity to depravity, and when I close my.”