I have been asked to explain the picture of me that currently accompanies this blog, shown in its full glory to the right - unless you're reading this post many months from now, when I've wisely substituted a picture of my cat - and in stunning close-up to the left.

This is me, dressed as Emoticonman, the character I went out trick-or-treating as this past Halloween. "Emoticonman" is a portmanteau word combining the words "emoticon" and "conman." Emoticonman is one of the lesser-known Batman villains. He is a swindler who always tells his victims to "Have a nice day!" making him slightly more odious than the Joker, who at least has a sense of irony. I like dressing as Emoticonman because his jowls never sag, his brow never wrinkles, and he seems happy despite the jaundice.

When I do get around to using a picture of a cat as my avatar, as I notice so many bloggers do, I will probably use the picture at right. This is Declawed Debussy. Dee, as we refer to him around the house, is an Indorsian Accessorizing Cat. Indorsian Accessorizing Cats have been genetically engineered to change the color of their eyes to match whatever they're wearing. Dee is usually proficient at this, although in the present instance he has fallen somewhat short of the requisite polka-dots. If he demonstrates any further failures along this line, he will be deemed broken, and we will have to have him fixed.

A blog? Really? Just to promote a fun kids' book called What We Found in the Sofa and How It Saved the World? Which isn't due out for another ten months?

Can I do this?

"Blog" is what Lewis Carroll would have called a portmanteau word. Portmanteau comes from the word port, meaning left, as when a ship turns to port, and manitou, meaning a forest spirit. So a portmanteau word is a word left by a forest spirit. Lewis Carroll was weird. If you've ever read him, you already know this.

The portmanteau words left by the forest spirits - I see them sort of like eggs left by the Easter bunny - are words formed by jamming two other words together. The words smoke and fog,  jammed together, make smog. (Cars and trucks, jammed together, also make smog, so there are exceptions to the rule.) If you jam google and blintzes together, you get googleblintzes, meaning many, many blintzes. (Why would you need this word?)