It is lovely to sit on a patio and drink a beer with friends. Such a goodness, to have a nice conversation and enjoy a pleasant drink. What a lovely evening.

A bike ride on a cool spring morning fills my heart with joy. Birds sing, demanding from one another their morning coffee. The still-low sun casts long sharp shadows. The road whizzes past underneath, ferrying cares away as it goes.

Okay so my single largest time commitment is grooming my mustache. It takes about 3 hours in the morning to wash, condition, blowdry, comb, wax, sand, and shellac, and about 4 hours in the evening to bring it back down. It takes an awful lot of effort, but I was raised protestant and I guess I still have that "quitters never prosper" work ethic.

I find that I have some use for money, so I've taken work at a software company, deleting the bugs out of programs. Sometimes I'm persuaded to replace the buggy parts with new, working parts, but I mostly enjoy the deleting. "Take that!" I scream, slamming my hand on the backspace key. I feel a rush of adrenalin and look around eagerly to see if anyone saw my triumph.

I spend the little remaining time riding my bike from place to place. Since it takes 4-5 times as long to bike as it does to drive, I usually arrive around the time everyone else is getting ready to leave. It's a pleasant enough existence, but it can get a little lonely--so I make sure to bring a book with me wherever I go.

Complicated jokes--the sort that have many layers, none of which are funny on their own, but which, taken together, make you really angry that you put so much effort into getting such a dumb joke.

The first is my mustache; it's obviously my mustache.

The second is my great roaring guffaw of a laugh. Can you believe that some people cover their mouths when they laugh? What abuse must they have suffered as children! To hide a laugh? The purest, most joyful of sounds a human can make or hear? Well I say no! I laugh long and loud, from the ends of my toes to the tip of my teeth!

My favorite book is Zen And The Art Of Motorcycle Maintenance. Or at least, it was the last time I read it, which was far too long ago. My favorite book that I've read recently is Among Others, a part-fiction part-memoir story of a young SFF nerd in postwar Britain. It's heartbreaking at times, but it's the first work I've ever read where I truly had a moment of catharsis.

I'm not very good at highbrow movies. Christopher Nolan's Batman movies are plenty enough for me. I like how they're character driven, but also there are people jumping off buildings and things blowing up real good.

I don't watch much TV, but that 30 Rock's a good show.

I don't listen to any music except for rap and country. I try to listen to as much as I can, to make up for the people who don't. I believe all Americans should help keep these unique domestic art forms alive.

My favorite food is a nice thick soup, maybe with a cream base, and some bread to dip in it. The nice thing about a creamy soup is it's really easy to eat in a dignified way, which isn't a strength of mine. Noodles end up flailing around and spraying sauce on my shirt, and rice just flies all over the table. Salad...I don't want to talk about salad. I'll just say "Passersby were amazed by the unusually large amounts of blood," and leave it at that.

Building things out of light and imagination...although if I've been very good, Santa lets me go sing karaoke.

You intimidate the people around you.