I spent a weekend playing with myself on the Internet. My editor told me to do it. At first, I wasn't sure if it was a good idea, but after a while I started to have fun. The name I entered into the Google search engine was not Chasey Lain, a porn star, or Anna Kournikova, a tennis star, but Andrew Wells, a computer executive, a lobbyist, an herbalist/astrologer, a librarian and a karate instructor ... but first of all, a San Antonio real estate agent who doesn't return e-mails. This is to say nothing of the 'Andy' Wellses.

My activity was masturbation all the same.

Self-searching on the Internet is an act of vanity. Like a vanity mirror reflected on itself, the results can as intriguing as they are endless and meaningless. Writing about the activity has its perks; I have a practical reason to refer to myself in the third person, a behavior usually indulged in only by Celine Dion, schizophrenics and other justifications for Thorazine. While engaging in such disassociative activity, I could have used the expertise of Hollywood, but Ed Norton was acting retarded and Sally Field was sobbing on a taupe davenport somewhere for some reason. If I was to find myself, it seemed, I would be doing so by drifting alone on the information superhighway. I hoped things wouldn't get too pervy.

Facile notions usually found in cheaper fortune cookies and self-help books with watercolored covers began to pop into my head. Was there a common thread between all who had been dubbed such as myself? Would there be a primal, psychic kinship when I discovered the "Other Andrews?" Would there be a literal kinship? If there was, I'd best avoid hooking up with their daughters. "Cousin lovin' puts freak in the oven." I got that morsel of down-home wisdom out of a fortune cookie from a Planned Parenthood in Appalachia before a gang of Baptist boys known as the Blue Bloods torched the clinic with moonshine molotov cocktails.*

During my fishing expedition, I snagged many Andrew Dubyas in the South Pacific.

"Oil runs in the veins of anyone who has ever worked in the oil industry," said Andrew Wells, a former oil executive and current CEO at Advantage, a New Zealand computer firm. This explains the blood circulation problems in Dick Cheney's heart and Dubya's head. Wells, who kills spare time with steam engines and model trains, describes himself as a "garagey sort of bloke." Garagey? So, your toilets flush the wrong way and suddenly none of the rules of grammar apply? Mangling English is best left to professionals with deadlines and public schooling like myself. "Garagey sort of bloke." What does that mean? Not to dis them yo, but you never know with those inscrutable British monarchists. Ask for a "snog" or "food" in a London pub and you had better brace yourself. Fortunately, my uncle (by marriage), who hails from New Zealand, explained to me that Wells probably meant he likes to putter around with cars.

In Australia, Andrew Wells is an associate professor who teaches politics, history and Australian studies at the University of Wollongong. Professor Wells is the author of Constructing Capitalism and an editor of such tomes as The Maritime Strikes of 1890s and A History of Wollongong. These books were the only products not placed in "Survivor 2," although Michael got a nasty paper cut while thumbing through Wollongong in a hospital waiting room. Wells is "currently working on Australian Communism," which I assume to be a book, an act of futility, or both.

Another Aussie namesake recently left the National Library of Australia for unspecified reasons. Andrew Wells' departure was especially shocking since his Request for Tender draft information paper, finished only six weeks after the initiation of the 1997 Networked Services Project which spawned it, was huge. I mean colossally clusterfucking stupendous. RFT was the biggest thing to hit functionary clerical work in Oceania since the "Tsunami" inter-municipality cooperative filing memo of '86. Boat drinks my man, your spark keeps the fire burning.**

Back here in the Western Hemisphere, Andrew Wellses lean to the east. Karate instructor Andrew Wells' "most [sic] favorite pastime [sic] is Fishing [sic], Fishing [sic] and more FISHING [uncle]!" After graduating from Bloomfield High School in Bloomfield, Connecticut in 1979, Wells began to train in varied martial arts such as tae kwon do, Green Dragon-style and Bamboo Branch Praying Mantis-style kung fu. Andrew, from one Andrew to another, the Praying Mantis kung fu expert stuff doesn't fly with the ladies. I have the 5,000 embossed business cards moldering under my bed to prove it.

And if your back seizes or your spleen conks out while you're in the Los Angeles area, give Santa Monica herbalist and acupuncturist Andrew Wells a call. After your Qi is unclogged, Wells might be able to draw on his experience as an astrological consultant to determine if that screen test for Battlefield Earth 2 will pan out. Although you might have better luck with that project if take Santa Monica Boulevard up to the Scientology Celebrity Centre in Hollywood. All major credit cards and John Travolta accepted as your personal saviors.

Like spitting into a strong wind, it's a natural and stupid idea to expect self-revelation simply by finding others who sound like the same make and model. I can't say I found out anything about myself, or much about other Andrew Wellses, but I learned enough. To paraphrase a Navy SEAL on the Discovery Channel, it's not that I'm great, it's just that the competition sucks.

*Excuse my stream of consciousness, which was recently declared a Superfund hazardous waste site by the American Psychological Association. The impact statement traced most of the contamination to a devastating television habit and popular breakfast cereals laced with red dye #40.

** At this point, a six-inch syringe to the breastbone was required to get Andrew to make sense again. --Ed.

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