Disobey: The Creator, Morbus Iff

October, 2005: the first time I've updated myself since, pff, I dunno, 1999? Quite amazing how stale your words about yourself can get, drowning in coats of ego, id, and splak. My O'Reilly Media bio has stood up rather well over time, so let's start with that:

Kevin Hemenway, coauthor of Mac OS X Hacks and author of Spidering Hacks, is better known as Morbus Iff, the creator of disobey.com, which bills itself as "content for the discontented." Publisher and developer of more home cooking than you could ever imagine, he'd love to give you a Fry Pan of Intellect upside the head. Politely, of course. And with love.

I chose "Morbus" as a pseudonym during the BBS days because Nostradamus supposedly predicted it as the name of the third antichrist. After re-reading the same book in which I thought I had found the name, I could not recover the reference. Many years later, I discovered it also means "disease" in Latin, something which I now like much more than my original intent. The last name, "Iff", is from the character Simon Iff of Aleister Crowley's book "Moonchild", and is also short for "if and only if" or "Identification Friend or Foe".

I use the two names in clearly defined ways: "Kevin Hemenway" is when my work is being affected by the all-mighty dollar. "Morbus Iff", on the other hand, is when I hold all the cards and call all the shots. While you can expect brilliance in either form (heh, heh), that Kevin fellow is probably being restrained, curtailed, censored, or manipulated in some way.

One of these days, I'll begin the monumental task of compiling my own compleat works, though I fear the amount of time it'd involve (lo! the wonders hidden within my personal correspondence). Until that day, though, just engine me. I'm everywhere.