Curt Brandao began his journalism career as a high school intern in the art department of his local newspaper in 1986, cutting Amberlith for weather maps and occasionally drawing anthropomorphic vegetables donning chef hats for the Food section. He quickly rose in the ranks to Copy Boy, though after convincing a runner-up in a local teen beauty pageant to go out with him one weekend, he insisted everyone refer to him as "Copy Man."

All was fine until the editor's assistant asked him to fetch some Folgers coffee grounds from a downtown market. He left his post and wandered the one-way streets lost for days. Disgraced, he considered joining the Foreign Legion (if they can bury your past, surely they can get cappuccinos delivered), but he couldn't find that, either.

He resurfaced years later to write "Curt's World," a weekly exercise in attention-deficit narcissism published in The Tech Talk, the student voice of Louisiana Tech University, a school well-known for its excellent journalism department (and its can't-miss exit ramp right off Interstate 20).

After four years, however, he still wasn't ready to stop wearing warm-ups 24/7, so he went to graduate school at the University of Tennessee, where he drew a daily comic strip ("Cuff & Rubin" was a finalist in the 1991 Charles M. Schulz College Cartoonist Contest) occasionally taught copy editing classes, and in two years took his turn buying his post-graduate friends a round of beer not fewer than ... three times.

After enduring the rigors of endorsing Guaranteed Student Loan checks and woofing down $6 pitchers for six semesters, he awoke one day to find himself wearing a cap and gown with a slightly accentuated gold trim collar, an experience so mesmerizing he barely noticed that hours later he was being politely ushered out of academe.

In the midst of a successful, albeit difficult to Google, 12-year professional career as a newsroom manager for a slew of daily newspapers, Curt decided it was time to siphon back some of the creative spotlight, and "wow" readers with his deft improvisational typing.

"Digital Slob" debuted in 2002.