Tonight I received an email from myself. Well at least I thought it was from me. It was from Dan James, but not the usual Dan James I’m used to hearing from while singing in the shower. It was ANOTHER Dan James if you can believe it. While my uniqueness and individuality took a hit the email caught my interest. With his (my) permission here it is:

hey dan james-
my name is dan james, seriously. In the interest of curiosity i thought i should contact you. I found your picture on google and we even kinda look alike ( a bit of a stretch). I am envious of your prime position as dan james on google, i am currently trying to infiltrate the search engines and climb the hierarchy of the internet community that is dan james. There are a lot of dan james out there. once i emailed danjames.com, but he didn't respond. it old him that by owning danjames.com he was our represntative to the world. He is also an illustrator. He probably thought i was crazy, but that's sort of the beauty of the anonymity of internet communication. Nobody can punch you in the face. Anyway, i'm glad to read that you are a CEO. I am an illustrator. I am not sure what all this dan james stuff means, but i feel like it's a good name, so maybe someday we'll have a huge dan james bar b que or something. If nothing else it would be a breeding ground for awkward humor and lame jokes. keep up the good work............. dan (r) james (see his site)

While I’ve always thought that activities or clubs for people who have things in common such as owning a Saturn or wearing pants were stupid, people with the same name as I seems to have a special connection. Are we related? Has our name shaped us or have we shaped the name? Do we pronounce it the same way? In the tradition of great petitions started by a silverorange member, I officially launch the Dan James list. If you’re name is Dan James sign up by replying. Please let us know a little about yourself as well. [The humor and irony of having a petition/list with all the same name is not lost on me]