Among the weirder and surprising references I found for "me" were these:
* A site equating "Todd Outcalt" with the word Omnilexica @omnilexica.com. Evidently, I'm part of the definition of this word, whatever it means.
* A writer who quoted me in the most recent issue of Cosmopolitan magazine in regard to marital advice. Heck, my wife won't even listen to me, why should young women listen to my sexual advice? And what do I know about sex, anyway? Well, I know some things, like how to calendar it twice a year and save three and a half minutes for it, but other than that . . . .
* A church that calls themselves the "Bath" church that evidently is using He Said, She Said as part of their adult education curriculum. Boy, I'll bet that place is lively.
* A literary magazine that recently published one of my short stories entitled "Tango" which contains a cover painting of an eviscerated corpse. Evidently my fiction makes readers puke.
* A Portland, Oregon radio station that picked up one of the recent essays I wrote about leadership. The radio station must have reprinted this essay, but made it look enticing by reprinting it in full-color.
* Text from a radio interview I did last year where the host asked for my advice about sex and marriage. Again, I was just making stuff up, trying to sound authoritative on the air, and I guess the interviewer thought I was a real Casanova who could actually give advice to those young couples who still have energy for sexual activity. I didn't get into specifics in this interview, but was just expressing a conceptual idea of sex, stuff that my mother told me about years ago but I've never had the guts to try. My best advice for men at this stage of my life would be: "Make sure you're healthy enough for sexual activity, and call a doctor if you have an erection lasting longer than six hours." (Or, if you don't call your doctor, at least brag about it.)
* A website called DocStock, in which I learned that I had a total of 11 "views" of my book Candles in the Dark. I have no idea what this is or what it means.
* A recommendation by the United Church of Canada for my book, The Best Things in Life Are Free. Evidently the Canadian church likes this book.
* A reader's choice poll for a recent fiction issue (in which one of my stories appeared) and for which I received 0% of the vote.
* A listing for the Polish edition of my book, The Healing Touch, on a Polish website.
* My name listed as the presiding pastor in an obituary (not my own obit, but another person presumed to be deceased).
* A church website containing the bio of a pastor who indicates my book, The Healing Touch, was one of the ten most impactful books in her life. (Go figure. And no . . . she is not a relative!)
* An out-of-print magazine that had published several of my stories back in the late 1990s.
* A Religion News Magazine that had recently reprinted/recommended an essay I wrote about ordination. (But really, what do I know about ordination, other than that they are quite beautiful flowers, and I especially enjoy the white ones?)
* A feature story about 4 women who dated 365 men over the course of one year--and one of them quotes me (again) on the importance of "intimacy" and "communication". I don't know why these professional daters were looking to me for guidance, but I had to look up the word "intimacy" in the dictionary so I could spell it correctly. Intimacy? Heck, I've never been intimate with anyone, you can ask my wife. We don't even talk about dinner, and the last time we discussed anything of an intimate nature we stopped immediately and went back to reading the newspaper.
...........
Anyway, you get the picture. Quite frankly, the deeper I went into Google, the scarier things were looking, and I didn't want to learn too much about myself. I still want to remain a mystery to myself so that, when I look at myself in the mirror, I can say without fear of contradiction: "I have no idea who you are . . . and why are you looking at me like that?"
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