The internet presence of Nicholas Dimitri Zeltzer. Also know as Nik Zeltzer, Nick Zeltzer and occasionally Nikolai Dimitri. Long standing resident of Tucson Arizona and appreciator of all things beautiful.

In addition because my habit of naming people by the initial of their last names is confusing to some and annoying to others, I've decided to jot down a brief cast list. It seems a bit of a sell out to me, but I understand that some people desire clarity above all else.

The Players

Mr. B. ... Matthew Besinger
Mr. K. ... Paul Kerschen
Mr. C. ... Christopher McCaleb
Mr. E. ... Eric Stevens

February 16th, 2002

Since I abhor misdirection of any type, I’ve supplied a recent picture of myself above. How recent? Oh, within the last hour, I’m about to go out to get a drink, and well, that’s pretty representative of how I look these days. I chose the 3/4 view since it tends to be the least flattering.

Wow, haven’t touched this page in a while; wonder why… huh. Where things stand… where things stand… on three legs this month, a little more stable than the conventional two. Gallow Tree as it was, is no more. Truth be told, and it always is, that movie has pretty much died. Cue cute little angels with harps; oh, there they go! In its place has risen something not-quite-entirely new, I speak of Castle of a Thousand Cages. Castle is a bit of GT and bit of other… uh, bits, all jumbled together into something that’s delightfully odd. It’s as though all the sub-textual/metaphoric content of GT were made literal… wait, that’s exactly what happened.

Script’s in a fairly good state, and already I’ve gone through two. The second draft took me two sittings to write, a new record for any serious project; normally it’s a matter of months. There’s a fundamental core of about 75 pages that should stay more or less as it is, I’m filling in the few chinks right now. For someone who’s supposed to be a pessimist, I’m awfully upbeat about these things. Mr. B seems to like the new direction more, which is a nice change, and I have to say I’m much more confident about the little things, such as the possibility of selling a completed picture.

We start shooting again in a few months and the briefness of the new story lends a little bit of confidence to the hopes that we’ll actually finish this time; that and a substantially larger budget, 4x! Well, well aren’t I the happy little bugger? When I’m not trying to impale myself on magic markers, that is.
In other news, I’ve been actively not working on the Velocity Box, though I’m sure that by the next time I get around to updating this page it will be entirely complete. If you’ve visited SingeC (link off the main page for you forgetful heathens) then you probably know what state it’s in; missing most of the effects and voice work.

Yup, I'm bent.

October 23, 2001

One of the problems with having CNN set as my default home page versus the Cello is that I’m being very forgetful about my updates. Though, in all honesty, there hasn’t been much material to update with. I’ve been toying with various shades of depression for the past few weeks and haven’t seemed to quite find a hue that appeals to me. However, with the change in light temperature outside and the increased quality of the air reaching my lungs I seem to be finding my energy again. This seems to be seasonal with me, something about the summer leaves me feeling hollow – I think my soul’s vacationing in wetter climates and leaving me to shrivel in this blasted heath.

Regardless, the last few nights have been an organizational party with my bookshelves being the source of constant action. A complete revision of my organizational scheme and a healthy discard pile has left me feeling, well, a bit more at ease. Whereas before I would have guessed that I’d read maybe a quarter of my fiction collection, it turns out that the figure’s reversed and then some. I only have about one shelf of prose hanging over my head, and boy does that make me feel better. Some of the first to be tossed were my film books, that while not as voluminous as my children’s book collection, had become altogether too much. Now it is resides on less than a shelf, equally divided into one part biography, one part reference and one part theory. Nice. My cookbooks have bloomed to take up two full shelves, which is fine by me, and my photography collection is down to a nice and safe six titles. That’s photography reference, and not photography collections, for those who care.

I still don’t own a book of Sudek’s photographs which irks me, but I’m being terribly gnomish when it comes to money right now, so that’ll have to wait. I passed up a book on Foie Gras today, and that must mean something.

Oh, and now I have less than a shelf of what I would deem “trash literature”, that’s something to be proud of. When you’re me anyway… Tomorrow my CD collection falls to the same punishment, and I gather that my small collection of pop will suffer great casualties. Poor Nirvana, I hardly knew ya.
If this fun flurry of activity continues than I might have a livable habitat fairly soon, and with this weather that can only lead to good things.

July 28, 2001

My head is so full of charts and diagrams that I’m beginning to feel either like a primitive alchemist or a dysfunctional GPS – I’ll let you make the call. The guts of Gallow Tree were spilled out over a table over the last few days and divided into two distinct piles that will ultimately be written into two very different films. One will be a new version (I know… I know…) of Gallow Tree and the other a project I’m currently thinking of as Parsifal.

Last night I was involved in several on-and-off hours of Gallow Tree discussion with Mr. B. After having become so disgusted with that script, it’s much easier for me to sit back now and allow large scissors to be taken to it. To use the Siamese twin analogy – I’d say I’m willing to have one slightly dysfunctional baby rather than two utterly broken children. The end result was this: A structural concept for a new and more focused version of the Gallow Tree story, one which will hopefully allow me to shave sixty pages from this monster. Mr. B had some exciting ideas in regards to the cinematography; so much so, that I imagine a complete reworking of this movie should allow us to exploit some of the implications his photography suggests. In addition: We discussed the actual Gallow Tree photographs, costumes, minor characters and some other sideline issues – everything seems to be prepped for a possibly interesting film, one that isn’t so vacant as the last.

Now, let’s not mince words here: The entire subtext of the last script, which I found to be of extreme pertinence, is gone. It’s being cut. The relation of Celia to her brother and the metaphysical connection between the Gallow Tree, Stephen and Celia’s cancer will have to go out the window along with all the delusions, medical miscellany and terminal finitude. This makes me sad and mad and irritated and angry, but it has to go – mostly because of run-time and also because I didn’t do a very good job in writing it in. It might sound arrogant, but I really see a connection in Eliot’s essay on Hamlet (If I were a true English major, I'd know the title) – I have no formula for sympathy, only the final sum. That’s my paraphrasing, so Mr. K and such; please don’t hurt me.

As I’m writing it, all I can think of right now is this new structure, how it will reflect in the written script and how that written script will reflect with the actors and such to make a movie, so I’m a little obsessed. -And distracted. This structure works very simply with each scene being setup with an equal and opposite scene opposing it, so that theoretically, in a dramatic sense; the net result of the film is zero. It’s an interesting experiment and I’m extending it into the characters by using opposing pyramids, so that a minor character offsets each of the three primary characters, again seeking a net result of zero.

So how does this affect an audiences understanding and appreciation of the film?

Heck, I have no idea, that’s why it’s an experiment. All I know is this: Right now I am obsessed with the concept of films that have their emotional and narrative core realized in the structure of the film itself. A film about apples would be structured like an apple. This all folds back onto my Unified Film Theory, so at least I’ll be able to play with an aspect of that. I really have to think about the structure because I’m trying to hold off from writing until Mr. B has had a chance to get back to me with comments on the last draft – and when I’m excited about something, keeping from it is damn difficult work. So I guess I’ll see what I can do about eBay and work some more on Parsifal – I’m almost ready to write that, and boy, compared to Gallow Tree it’ll be easy.

You'll have to forgive me, I'm really not all that pleased about having to touch this script again, so I'm seeking excitement where I can find it.
I’ve got to go and read. Bye.

July 18, 2001

I originally put the below up on the Singe C page, but shortly after realized that it's proper place is here. So... yay.

God forbid that I ever move out of the by-commission setup and move on to a full-time, day-by-day, show-up for-work-at-nine o’clock life that I’ve so far avoided. Granted, I’d probably work less concentrated hours, but at least from my home setup I can access my printed resources, choose the music I listen to and generally pretend that I’m not a slave. I think the only way I’d ever agree to do that is if it were for something truly special. Someplace where I felt privileged to be employed. -Don’t think there are many of those in Arizona, and I’m not moving anytime soon.

Sitting on my table are two books on dragons, a copy of Remains of the Day and Gravity’s Rainbow… all things I’d like to be reading right now. Things that would be good for me to be reading right now, but you know what? I can’t. All I can do is panic and spin my wheels in regards to a demo reel, which might land me a job that I like a little more than all the other jobs that I loathe. Okay, that’s fine. I can deal with that. The problem is, the real and genuine crisis that is… it’s this: when I do one of these things, these jobs, I’m absolutely single-mindedly dedicated to them. I can’t focus on anything else. I really suffer from a one-track mind. So when I’m working on, say, 877COUPLES… it doesn’t matter what else is on my plate, reading, writing, bills, filmmaking, socializing… whatever. It’s all dead and gone and doesn’t reappear until it’s time to choose a new project. Sadly, this means that whenever I’m working; I’m working. There’s no personal growth or development of skills or anything. I just become a factory and put out product after product. It’s like a set of molds, really.

Each time I gear up for a new project, I draw from my own personal taste and experiences, only in recent time I haven’t had a chance to develop those at all… so I feel like I’m working from the same palate I had as an eighteen year old. That’s terrible. And if you feel or believe as many do that your ability to absorb and learn new things decreases, as you get older, well, it becomes tragic. I’m shooting myself in the foot, really. I’m locking myself down to become an incredibly experienced individual who only knows as much as he knew in high school. Forget that second language, or the ability to understand music, or that trip to Prague or that book on Blake… it’s all gonna fall into that pit of shattered fantasy sooner or later.

All I want to do right now is work on Gallow Tree. There’s honestly enough there that I need to tackle, personally and otherwise, to keep me busy for months. Instead, like so many, I have to work and work (read: chug and chug) and none of this GT stuff is going to get approached until a month or two before shooting. And you know what that mean? Well, it means that I’ll walk in as personally unprepared as ever. As bad as or wore than the last two summers. That’s always been the issue with school or work or whatever… it’s like driving down the freeway in one direction and then throwing myself into reverse… nothing good comes of that. You get a lot of busted gears, that’s all.

And the most terrible thing of all is the realization that I have it better than most. I’m not making rent each month (though my car payments balance out to the same) and I’m not working in some shit-ass construction pit, slinging concrete. No, if I were doing that, I would’ve sucked the cobalt straw quite some time ago. It’s just the recognition that a few years ago I really could’ve done this with less hassle. It’s more and more work each time. I keep thinking that if only the film hadn’t busted the first two times out… and then I catch myself. So what if they hadn’t? I would’ve finished some substandard product? No, I don’t think that’s necessarily the truth either. I think I just tell myself that in order to save myself from the pain. Yeah, I do think the current film’s better than the one we set out to shoot three years ago, but that’s because it’s larger and more ambitious. And all of this is because now… now, there’s something at stake: everything. Still, it just boils down to the best it can be for what it is, and what it is keeps changing as the importance of success rises and rises.

Now, I know I can’t walk away from film at this point. I’ve just put too much into it. But I’m frightened that I’ll have to sell myself short at some point, just in order to eat, to live and to breathe in my accustomed fashion. Those ideals, which are supposed to fade with age… I don’t want them to fade. I want to be able to do what I want to do my way, or no way. Worst of all… I know what I want to do; I know exactly what I want to do. But what happens when it comes down to a choice of compromising or not doing it all? I think that’s when I really will have to make a decision, and that’s one I’m not looking forward to. Since I’m so dedicated to sincerity, I think I’ll just have to call it quits and dedicate myself to a life of commercial pursuits. At least when I animate, I’m not purporting that it’s anything other than gloss.

So there it is… if I want to do what I want to do with film and etcetera, I need these moments to dedicate myself to that pursuit. I need time to read and to study, and to try and hone myself, essentially, for such a purpose. Since, however, that doesn’t pay at this point, I find myself instead becoming a tool for advertising. So really, I guess I want to know what I’ll be when I grow up… a sculptor or a brush? I’ll say right now, that it’s looking more and more like I’ll be swimming in paint sooner than I’d like.

Really… whether or not I have a shot at my fantasies depends on the next couple of months, and on Gallow Tree. Even if the film doesn’t make a cent, doesn’t get sold or picked up or released on video… if there’s a positive reaction; that’ll be enough. It should and could buy everyone involved some breathing room. What anyone does with that is up to them. Myself? I need to do so much outside of film in order to make myself the type of filmmaker I’d like to be, because for me, there’s not a whole lot untapped in cinema right now.

July 07, 2001

Okay, it’s late now and I feel the need to update. 4:31 AM Tucson-time and I’m working on shirt designs for some upcoming convention. It’s kind of nice to be under a deadline (makes the blood rush) but the coffee’s cold, the refrigerator’s broken and TCM is showing some musical which I’m really not digging at this exact moment. In short: I wish I were sleeping. For some reason the June Bugs have chosen my room to die in. I’m sure on a microscopic scale it has all the elegance of an elephant graveyard, but from way up here it just looks like a lot of dead bugs. Note to self: vacuum tomorrow. That said; I feel I should impart some sort of coherent narrative – something that someone would care to read. I’m thinking… I’m thinking…

Right.

Maybe I’ll just take some time to prattle on about Gallow Tree. It’s all the world seems to exist for right now. Gallow Tree you wonder? What’s Gallow Tree? Well, if you know me at all, have ever heard of me or even read the previous posting in this space than you’ve heard of Slipknot. Well, Gallow Tree is Slipknot, only more so. Our footage came back from our previous film effort and we examined it closely. It was fine and it was good, but it wasn’t what we wanted. So here we are again. Again. We’re starting that gigantic engine up once more for our final attempt at this increasingly ambitious project. And really… ambitious doesn’t even begin to cover the scale of this monstrosity. Between Mr. B. and myself we’ve really cooked up one doozy of a film here – it’s just crazy-dense.

So what can I say about it? Well, the script is new again. Right, I know, it makes it seem like we’re sloppy, now that we’ve had three distinct screenplays for this one project. But really, it’s been a hard little tale to nail down. But nailed down it is. This new version, I believe, safely encompasses all that we ever hoped for. Also, a plus, it makes a whole lot more sense than the last. Really, you want confusing… that one made about as much sense as The Big Sleep, which has always been famous for confounding even it’s own writers. We’re shooting Super-16 this time around at Mr. B’s suggestion, which should breath some new life into the photographic presence. Oh we thought about another format, a less expensive one, such as video or even Super 8mm. While both those formats could yield a good movie and even a good Gallow Tree, we decided to stick with the most expensive option. Really, when it comes down to it, Mr. B. and myself are a pair of old-school sort of guys. What else? More money and more time. Two things which are easy to say, but really mean so much more than at first glance. We’ll be able to burn film this time (more anyway) and that, plus the time factor, will allow us to play in places where before we were forced to play safe. We’re going to have our equivalent of dailies this time around; we’ll call them weeklies, the end result of which is that we will know definitively when we’re done shooting. Oh, that’ll be so nice. So with all of this we’ll hopefully make it through this time with a higher quality product and even more hopefully, without killing our single man crew.

In other more personal news… I wrote children’s book, or rather a draft of what could be the text for a children’s book. I’ve been meaning to sit down and illustrate it, but the time has been difficult to find. I’m intent on it however, so it’s only a matter of time before a bound and illustrated copy emerges.

Um, my head is pounding now so I think I’ll have to stop this. Really, I promise to write in this page more often – the little monkey hanging from my lamp says it’s good for me. Ah, you don’t believe me. You don’t believe there’s a little monkey hanging from my lamp. I’ll just have to put a picture up to prove it. Maybe I’ll add one of myself while I’m at it.

December 13, 2000

A brief message to let you know how it stands:

Loosely with a slight wobble, of course.

I’m going to take time now to discuss a little bit of the history surrounding me and the website that was The Grey Cello. Previously hosted at http://www,isdnet.com/grey this site was more or less my attempt at an online portfolio and graphical magazine. It was meant to be more than a personal page – though, it never was.

Back in 1997 I got the idea into my head that I was going to be an artist. I had recently left high school on less than good terms and found myself with at least a years worth of free time. I was going to take the time to build things and take photographs and do all sorts of fun and wacky projects. I recognized that since I couldn’t draw, paint or even sculpt that I was bound to be in need of some schooling. Hi ho college! I dug out the dusty Peterson’s and set my sites on finding a good art college, preferably somewhere on the west coast. Setting my sites on the San Francisco Art Institute. SFAI was in San Francisco and favored a good portfolio over a high-school transcript; even better, they had recently adopted a digital media program and were (it seemed) looking for people to fill it. So was born the idea of Cello. I would make up a fun little site that showed off my talents, I would fill it with my best work and burn it to a CD to be included with my application. This application would be an actual pop-up book, specifically tailored to what I thought the particular interests of the school were.

Construction began both online and off. Projects galore were underway at E18 Studios (the apartment I shared with my then roommate Adam Smith). From The 39 Absurdities through Anatomy of a Fuzzy Dice, things started getting done. I hadn’t felt this motivated in years. Granted: My personal life died a horrible death and the apartment more than once smelled of the octopus I was using for various projects, but still life was good. I actually thought it would all pan out. I believed that I was more or less “Out of there”.

This was all before Erebus.

Somewhere along the line I got it into my head that I was going to make a movie. It would be shot entirely on video and feature a bunch of kids running from computer animated wind-sharks and a carnivorous couch. I enlisted the help of my Friend Mr. K to rewrite a chunk of script and dug up a few of my remaining high school friends to act. I even grew a nice beard and swore that I would not shave it off until I had come to the end of my first film.

Big mistake.

From the incredibly boring static camera work (shot by myself) through the hideous lighting job and spatula applied makeup jobs, this movie sucked. Hard. It was pretty obvious; we were spending every single waking hour either being miserable and sober or being miserable and drunk. We hated everyone and everyone hated us. No good. Eventually one of our actresses stopped coming and the movie just fell apart. I am still in the possession of several tapes that would make even Ed Wood grimace.

So that was the brick wall and I was the rubber bouncy ball that had just collided with it at a fairly zippy 2,000,000 mph. Ouch.

Enter depression, stage right.

I gave up then, I just sort of let everything fall apart. I more or less gave up on the notion of Art School and applied to the local public university, a good school, to be sure, but not what I had wanted. I moved. First with my roommate to a nice little house and then eventually back home. I settled into a period of vigorous consumerism and spent most of my free time editing light pornography for a local company. I ate little, went out less and spent my social hours with a bottle of whisky and Nintendo’s Mario.

I ended up writing down a few ideas here and there, but nothing terribly serious. Things gradually did gradually get better, I had some close friends who tried their best to convince me that it wasn’t completely my fault that Erebus had gone awry; they argued that the project was just never meant to be. I didn’t accept their logic, but still, it helped. Eventually I started to think about short films. I had done a few little fun pieces on video with friends. The idea with the films was, of course, being that we spent as little time and effort on them as possible. Still, in the end I found that I had grown rather proud of them. Their lack of pretension was, I felt, refreshing. I decided that I would get creative again, just this time on a much smaller scale. I tossed around ideas for a while and finally settled on a little conversation piece called The Incompetent Op. It was to be demonstrating some technical prowess, but mostly, it was to test my new dialogue skills. Mr. C introduced me to an actress who seemed generally interested in the part and planning began. This project never came around, though. Slipknot killed it.

Slipknot. It was like mad-libs with laserdisc jackets. I was sorting through my collection and was weeding out a few of my recent favorites. A pile had developed of the films that had recently struck me on some significant level. Nostalghia, Ikiru, Man Bites Dog (C'est arrivé près de chez vous) and David Holzman’s Diary. Something got in me then, and I started to develop this story. It would be the story of a documentary crew looking for a missing photographer, who may or may not have murdered his models. The film would be incredibly low budget. Inspired by the production style of DH's Diary the narrative would be strung together from snippets of other media – I would use the character’s own video cameras, security camera footage, sound recordings, photographs and telephone calls. An epic La Jetée, if you will. I ended up having the idea pried from my lips by friends one evening and it seemed to strike a chord. Whenever conversation turned to The Incompetent Op someone would invariably bring up Slipknot and ask why I wasn’t pursuing that instead. The obvious answer would be correct; I was scared.

Mr. B, over many a cup of coffee and a more games of pool convinced me that I was being a fool to waste my time on another short film. He argued that shorts could always be done, while getting together a cast and crew for a film would become increasingly difficult, as we grew older. I enlisted him, first, as cinematographer, and eventually full partner and then finally our producer.

The movie changed. Not for the worse, I think, it just became different. The experimental nature took a backseat to a straight narrative punctuated by burst of media. A script was written; a long and twisted crock of dialogue and desert locals. It was a mess of a story but it was most surely interesting. Actors were brought in (a whole whopping mess of three) and things moved into production.

Our timeline? One summer.

Our budget? Five thousand dollars.

The result? Semi-complete-semi-failure.

The movie just wasn’t going to happen for five thousand dollars. The shooting was rough; we had difficulty getting access to our locations, thousands of little technical problems and we were moving either too fast or not fast enough, depending. We lasted a little over a week of 12-15 hour days before the money ran out. To top it all off, neither Mr. B, nor myself, were terribly happy with how the actual film was turning out. Neither of us had ever attempted anything of this magnitude before and I think we just both believed that what was going into the can had to be about the most awful tripe ever devised. Well, perhaps I’m speaking too much for him – I was definitely concerned. The light readings were low and it looked like our entire film was going to be one underexposed mess.

Production was halted with intention of picking up again during the following summer. The movie was now less than 40% complete. Money was non-existent, so while we paid for development we ended up performing a home telecine by projecting the film against a wall and capturing it with a video camera. This is where things got weird.

It had a look.

It had a good look.

The performances seemed, visually speaking, better than fine and the camerawork and exposure was dead on. I cut together brief demo reel of some raw scenes and put some music in the background. If it weren’t for the flickering caused by the projector’s shutter you’d think we knew what we were doing.

Well, after seeing this we knew we had to finish. The budget would be larger and a rewrite would be done to make the film a little less costly and difficult to realize. The goals seemed simple: raise $7,000 to finish off the rest of the film, and perform a moderate rewrite on the script to make it a bit more accessible. This wouldn’t have been too difficult if it weren’t for lousy timing on the part of my appendix. It went sour and so did everything else.

I spent Christmas in the hospital learning to walk again. They had taken my appendix as well as a considerable length of my colon. I was left with a nine-inch incision that oozed the most uncomfortable yellow. I didn’t go back to school that spring, instead I focused on healing, work and rewrites. For money I worked on more web porn – mostly developing interfaces for CD-ROMs. The majority of the funding came from a collection of nude music videos that I shot and edited. The rewrite went well; too well. Instead of revising the script I rewrote it from bow to stern. In the end only a few tiny monologues were kept, the rest was entirely new. In retrospect I feel there’s a lot to be proud of in the original story, but it just doesn’t make half as much sense as the new draft, which I affectionately refer to as Slipknot Version 2.

We started 2.0 in the summer of 2000 and ran short on time. We still managed to get around 70% in the can. Theoretically, as I write this, the film we shot will be going out for development and telecine today. We’ll be analyzing and editing these 5+ hours of footage to see what sort of movie we have and what (if anything) needs to be reshot. The goal is to have a nearly complete edited version before we finish the film during the upcoming Spring Break. The more I think about it, the more convinced I am that we actually have something here. Granted, it’s not the genre-breaking epic that I originally hoped for, but it’s probably going to be good and in the end it will be a whole lot cheaper than film school.

Two days ago I shaved off the “movie beard”.

So these days I’m feeling a bit happier. Mr. B and myself have nearly finished our first feature film, and at 22 I’m feeling like that may just be an accomplishment. I’ve been working on some minor projects in the background and a few major “secret” ones as well. School begins anew for me this upcoming spring, and after a year of pornography and other web-work I’m looking forward to it. The secret being that I’ve come full circle and am preparing an application to a nice college that’s a heck of a distance from dear old Arizona. All in all it seemed like the perfect time to come back to Cello and make it what it was always meant to be: Half-portfolio and half-graphic magazine an attempt at digital-installation-art.

When finished, this site should contain most of the material from the original Cello. Some of it's worth repeating; some isn't. In addition to the yummy smattering of photographs and other assorted artwork will be a few new treats. I'm planning to put up some never before seen images and a few new projects as well.

New projects?

Yes, new projects. Dolli will be making a return as a tour guide of sorts and she'll be bringing along a few friends. The cinema section, which was rather tiny in the previous version, will be expanded greatly. You can look forward to dedicated pages for most of my film/video projects. If I feel particularly daring I will post segments of new and old script works, some of which nobody has ever seen. The largest area will be devoted to, of course, Slipknot. Slipknot’s area will be featuring outtakes and scenes at various levels of completion. Both drafts of Slipknot will be included, and for the few that care, I will be posting the original treatment for the film as well as several written scenes that never quite made it.

Now I’m not one really for written content; I’m a little embarrassed by my lack of grammatical talent. Still, if I can convince my normal editor-of-sorts Mr. K to help me I will post a few rants and raves for general consumption.

Now since my expected readership totals fewer than five; I’m beginning to feel like I may have just wasted five or so pages on personal therapy.

Oh well,

-Nik

P.S. Sorry about the lack of pretension and sly quips. I'll get working on those for later.

After diddling around in some search engines I’ve reached the decision that I should make clear who I am. It seems that when people run searches for my name they usually stumble across message-board posts by a video game maniac who also (coincidentally, I’m sure) shares my name. So all you search engines out there take note: this is the home of Nicholas Dimitri Zeltzer. Also known as Nick Zeltzer, Nik Zeltzer or Nikolai Dimitri as the case may be. That made clear; I can rest easy that any old chums searching the web for proof of my existence may be satisfied at their results.