About LowGenius.Net
LowGenius.Net is the personal site of John Henry DeJong. After establishing the site in 2002 and letting it idle for several years, in 2008 John decided to turn the site into an outlet for his voluminous writing, observational humor, opinion pieces on everything ranging from politics to professional wrestling, personal musing and reminiscences, product reviews, collection of links from around the 'net that he finds entertaining, informative, or otherwise worth visiting, and whatever else comes up.
About the LowGenius Websites
The LowGenius Websites, currently comprising LowGenius.Com and LowGenius.Net, are a 'good cop-bad cop' team of sites, with .Com playing the 'good cop' of professional and technical articles, links, and downloads, and .Net playing the 'bad cop' of...well, everything else that one wouldn't call 'professional.'
SubGenius?
No, I'm Dominant.
Sorry, little subculture humor there. So here's the story. Back in 2001, my daughter and I were living in an apartment in Cary, NC. She was being hit with the infamous IQ test at school, and we were talking about it. At one point in the conversation, she asked me if I'd ever taken one, and so on and so forth. I told her - truthfully - that I had taken one in fifth grade, and my IQ was tested then at 151, which was (I said to her) at the bottom end of the scale called "genius-level." (I later found out it's more in the middle, but whatever.)
Her response: "So you were sort of a...low genius?"
And the lightbulb went on. I'd been trying to think of a more 'professional-sounding' domain name anyway; at the time, I owned a now-forgotten little piece of cyber-estate called net-bastard.com...which was great when I was in the professional wrestling business, but not so great when I'm trying to make a living as a web designer.
Although I had been well-aware of the Church Of The SubGenius (NOT Safe For Work! Safe for Slack, however...) for many years - the late 80's anyway - the connection just never arced a synapse until months and months later, after LowGenius.Com was already built, running, and drawing traffic. In fact, it may not have been until I picked up the .net domain like a year later.
I would have included a beautiful lifelike image of Rev. Bob for your entertainment, however I could not find anyone to give me permission, and I'm not gonna cross the SubGenii. The illuminati, sure. The Bilderburgers? No problem. But no way am I gettin in the crosshairs of the good Reverend and his fellow Reverends. They're already mad at me because I haven't mailed the $30 for salvation in yet...
About John Henry DeJong
John Henry was born in 1970 in Kalamazoo Michigan. He began playing the drums in 1978 and spent the next 30 years and counting, off and on, as a touring musician. He also started becoming a computer geek around the same time, learning BASIC and Assembly code on aTRS-80 Model II and becoming, even then, an avid gamer.
The Geek
Throughout the years that followed, John has become the ultimate end-user, learning and developing along with the home computer industry through the years of Commodore PETs, TRS-80's, early Apple ][/e/c/+, MS-Dos, the first Macintoshes, and through to Windows and the explosion of the Internet in the mid-90's. John is proficient in HTML and ASP/VB development and pretty handy with a SQL Server, as well has having significant but aging experience in MS Access/VBA design. From his earliest web presence in 1995 at a Geocities website designed with Netscape Gold, through multiple 'free-hosting' sites constructed with Microsoft's Front Page, and on to his migration in 2001 to development with Macromedia (now Adobe) DreamWeaver, John has always sought to create a unique and entertaining web presence.
Other software John has used extensively over the years includes Photoshop, Fireworks, CorelDraw, Vue, Bryce 3D, Soundforge, Premiere, and a host of other applications both current and long-forgotten ranging from simple utilities like WinZip to advanced specialized APIs such as Pendragon Forms.
The Freak
In between all of this, John spent years touring and gigging, sharing stages across the Great Lakes region with names too numerous and unbelievable to bother dropping. A blues-based hard rock drummer with heavy touches of John Bonham, Peter Criss, Keith Moon, Ringo Starr, Eric Carr, Lars Ulrich, and Niko McBrain, later integrating influences like Bill Bruford (in Yes and King Crimson), Clyde Stubblefield (without whom the entire rap/hip-hop genre would not exist), Aronoff (who has played with so many people in so many genres that any attempt at a comprehensive Amazon link to his work would require its own page), Chad Smith and Jack Irons, Matt Cameron, Dave Abbruzzeze, Neil Peart, Stephen Perkins, and hundreds of others, John's emotive, energetic playing style was once called "everything the drums should be" by a reviewer.
Over the years, John's musical tastes and influences have expanded into a host of interests ranging from the early blues of Robert Johnson and Willie Dixon, through the early rock and roll of Elvis Presley, Carl Perkins, Johnny Cash, and Little Richard, doo-wop, and of course the world of post-Beatles rock with major affinities for heavy rock groups like Black Sabbath, Led Zeppelin, Jimi Hendrix, and Kiss, 70's singer-songwriters like Dan Fogelberg and Gordon Lightfoot, funk from George Clinton and Parliament, art/progressive rock including Pink Floyd, Yes, Rush, Triumph, and Kansas, the southern blues rock of the Allman Brothers, Lynyrd Skynyrd, and Marshall Tucker, and of course the place he cut his musical teeth, the hair and speed metal bands of the early and mid 1980's.
Beyond all that, John cites the groups most often collected under the artificial 'grunge' banner - Soundgarden, Pearl Jam, Alice in Chains, Rage Against The Machine, Stone Temple Pilots, Mother Love Bone, and the defining work of his musical life, the Temple of the Dog album - along with Zeppelin, the Beatles, Pink Floyd, proto-grunge grampa Neil Young, pre-1992 Metallica, and occasionally newer acts like Kid Rock and System of a Down
Outside of music and computers, John spent three years as a ring announcer, manager, and relentless braggart for independent wrestling groups Southern Championship Wrestling and, to a lesser extent, OMEGA. John is an omnivorous reader, starting with 'Red Fox And His Canoe' at age two, graduating to his first real novel - Stephen King's "The Shining" - at age 8, and continuing downwards from there. While King remains a huge favorite, if pressed to name one author whose works he could not live without, John has been known to cite Robert Heinlein.
John enjoys a variety of other interests when time and resources permit, including photography, videography, sound and video editing and engineering; swimming; biking; PC video gaming; the adoration of the female form; coin and currency collecting; political junkie-ism which occasionally becomes activism; public and community service; theatrical, film, and television acting; hanging out with his daughter Amber, born in 1989; and referring to himself in the third person in autobiographical writing.
Quotes of Influence
"I began to sense faintly that secrecy is the keystone of all tyranny. Not force, but secrecy ... censorship. When any government, or any church for that matter, undertakes to say to its subjects, "This you may not read, this you must not see, this you are forbidden to know," the end result is tyranny and oppression, no matter how holy the motives. Mighty little force is needed to control a man whose mind has been hoodwinked; contrariwise, no amount of force can control a free man, a man whose mind is free. No, not the rack, not fission bombs, not anything—you cannot conquer a free man; the most you can do is kill him." - Robert Heinlein, "If This Goes On --"
"America touts itself as the land of the free, but the number one freedom that you and I have is the freedom to enter into a subservient role in the workplace. Once you exercise this freedom you've lost all control over what you do, what is produced, and how it is produced. And in the end, the product doesn't belong to you. The only way you can avoid bosses and jobs is if you don't care about making a living. Which leads to the second freedom: the freedom to starve." - Tom Morello, Rage Against The Machine, quoted in Guitar World
"I've got a photograph I will send it out today; you will see that I am perfectly sane." - Chris Cornell, Preaching The End Of The World
And if there's anything else you want to know, feel free to ask.
-John Henry, exercising his second freedom, 18-March-08
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