Photo by Tim Wictor
Thomas Wictor was born in Caripito, Venezuela, and has lived in Texas, the Netherlands, Norway, Great Britain, Oregon, Japan, and California. He earned a bachelor’s degree in history from Lewis and Clark College and has worked as a stevedore, library archivist, conversational English teacher, editor of the world’s first online newspaper, voice-over actor, delivery driver, process server, field representative for a document-retrieval service, scale-model builder, and music journalist.
He is the author of seven books and is the planet’s only expert on World War I flamethrowers, an accomplishment he attained completely by default, since nobody else is interested in them. A former Contributing Editor at Bass Player, he was once a semi-professional bass guitarist in Tokyo.
From July 5, 2013, to January 7, 2014, he was the victim of Mike Albee and Lura Dold, professional grifters who posed as book publicists and defrauded Wictor of his life’s savings. To do so they took advantage of his post-traumatic stress disorder with secondary psychotic features, as well as the “brain fog” caused by Meniere’s disease. Both of these conditions create memory lapses and dissociation, which were exacerbated by the suicides of Wictor’s parents in February and October of 2013.
Albee and Dold knew of Wictor’s afflictions; they monitored his blog and used his books as guides for when to strike.
Wictor is no longer a writer. However, you may have heard of him in regard to the David Frum Pallywood brouhaha. It was a repeat of the Mike Albee experience, in that it involved much misrepresentation. Albee was less destructive; all he stole was money.
The real David Frum story is here. Some unsolicited advice to those who are thinking of publicly defending Israel: Use a pseudonym. If you don’t, be prepared to pay an exorbitant price.
In the former Soviet Union, dissent was seen as a pathology. Broad swathes of American society view difference of opinion as madness, evil, or both.
Thomas Wictor prefers the opinions of cats.
“Truth,” said a traveler,
“Is a rock, a mighty fortress;
Often have I been to it,
Even to its highest tower,
From whence the world looks black.”
“Truth,” said a traveller,
“Is a breath, a wind,
A shadow, a phantom;
Long have I pursued it,
But never have I touched
The hem of its garment.”
And I believed the second traveler;
For truth was to me
A breath, a wind,
A shadow, a phantom,
And never had I touched
The hem of its garment.
—Stephen Crane