I get hung up on the details. I adore pop culture and culture in general. I like lame jokes and puns and talking in silly voices. I'm probably more like a Steve Carrell character than I'd admit and, no, this doesn't qualify as a confession.

I winces if I have to say "Coke" to refer to ginger ale, despite many years spent in the south. It's "pop", dammit.

My dream home would be California in the dead of winter, if winter lasted all year long. My parents used to call me "Mr. Freeze" because of how I run the air conditioner wherever I live. Probably the finest week of my life was when I moved into my first real apartment with my friend Bob and we ran the air conditioner so hard the place felt like a hotel room. It was Georgia in July and we wore sweaters and used blankets and drank hot cocoa. Bob is dead now but we had a habit for spitting in the eye of the universe.

I've spent my life since 18 collecting friends who are assertive nerds, ironic pirates, stranded vagabonds, white collar thieves, friendly carpetbaggers, exiled Yankees, middle class hobos, cynical philosophers, and people who would reach to be anything they thought didn't exist yet.

I also have a habit for using the "turtles all the way down" story (Google it if you don't know it) to explain EVERYTHING. My undergrad senior project was a play based on it. I've used and abused that story to be a symbol for everything.

Also? I believe in fate. I am alternatively terrified of the inevitability it represents and even more terrified that it isn't real at all and that nothing adds up. So I run away from any kind of sure thing but, y'know, I'd feel a lot worse if all the little clues and details and weird coincidences didn't lead somewhere great eventually.

Telling stories for the wee ones and the not so wee ones. Acting. Some writing. Working on my (potentially impractical and useless) Master's Degree.

I'll just give you my Clifton Strengths Finder results. If you're on here, you probably love typologies anyway:

Ideation
Connectness
Command
Strategic
Futuristic

I'm often told that I'm tallish, I usually have pretty full facial hair, and have been told I have striking blue eyes when I get enough sleep.

I walk like a high school principal or a super-hero.

I can rock a thrift store jacket.

My name has been verbed so there's clearly a set of things that strike people pretty quickly. I never met a pun I didn't like, if only grudgingly, and I hyper-analyze stuff. Let's brainstorm the little things! Yay! This drives everyone crazy and is probably also my most endearing trait.

This is the most important section. Literacy of this stuff is the prime criteria.

There will be a test. Questions? Bueller? Anyone? Anyone?

(A)
Ray Bradbury, Tom Robbins, Neil Gaiman, Shakespeare, Cervantes, your classic nerdy books like Stoker's Dracula, Sherlock Holmes, collections of folktales and fairy tales, science fiction but the kind that focuses on lame puns and/or human interactions rather than, say, the laws of robotics.

I love me some The Phantom Tollbooth, The Velveteen Rabbit, and Choose Your Own Adventure books.

It's a foregone conclusion that I should have read Harry Potter but I haven't yet. Other books I should have read but haven't include Gravity's Rainbow, Flatland, The Perks of Being a Wallflower, and Life of Pi. I also need to read some more Steven King.

(B)
500 Days of Summer, Big Fish, Breakfast at Tiffany's, Citizen Kane, Dirty Dancing, Dr. Horrible's Sing-A-Long Blog, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, Finding Forrester, Ghostbusters, Hamlet (Zeffirelli), Harvey, It's a Wonderful Life, The Majestic, The Princess Bride, Royal Tenenbaums, Stranger Than Fiction, Star Trek (2009), Superman: The Movie, The Truman Show, What Dreams May Come.

In general, if it's genre-y, nerd-y, or comic book-y, I'm there.

I'm a rom com addict. Favorites include She's All That, Ten Things I Hate About You, You've Got Mail, Anything Else, and Castaway. You've got to squint a little bit on that last one but it's totally about a man's forbidden love for a volleyball.

Gotta love John Hughes movies. Also, classic musicals like Singin' in the Rain and Camelot.

(C)
90s-Early 2000s SNL, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, The Colbert Report, Community, Deep Space Nine, Doctor Who, How I Met Your Mother, It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia, The Office, Psych, Seinfeld.

Shows that I need more of but am leaning towards liking: Mad Men, Big Love, Battlestar Galactica.

(D)
The Ataris, Barenaked Ladies, The Beatles, Ben Folds, Cake, Death Cab for Cutie, Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeros, Eisley, Gary Jules, The Hush Sound, John Mayer, Matchbox Twenty, Modest Mouse, Radiohead, The Refreshments, Regina Spektor, Toad the Wet Sprocket, Weezer, White Stripes

If it's cheesy and from the 60s, 70s, or 90s, I'm probably a fan. You gotta be willing to rock the awkward, nerdy white person dance.

Here's how it goes: palms extended like you're about to Macarena, bob your head, thrust your chin, bite your lower lip, shake those elbows like you're doing an impression of a chicken. If you run into somebody else doing it, you pantomime surfing and then if there's a connection, you start doing the John Travolta moves from "Saturday Night Fever."

(E)
Cheeses (especially muenster). Bratwursts and sausages -- summer sausages, venison, pork, you name it. Sushi. Seafood. Pretzels. Cupcakes, donuts, and baked sweets in general. Novelty quiches. Novelty pizzas.

I had the world's best pizza not long ago and it had squid on it and was made with an Alfredo sauce.

Overanalyzing

The grotesque

The sublime

Inappropriate laughter (either because of the topic or the type of laughter)

Love (Coffee works as an acceptable substitute in a pinch)

The number "six". I could do without "seven" because seven ate nine. Also, creepy movie.

The wrong things. How to make better headphones. The ingredients in junkfood and how to make it junkier. How to design a better videogame. Quirky analysis of societal behavior and social norms.

Probably grabbing a coffee or tasty adult beverage at a place with music and conversation, not sleeping, chillaxing.

I've always found the southern accents (all of them) to be a turn off, about on par with Brooklyn speak. It's aristocratic and judgmental and I'm probably living in entirely the wrong climate to avoid southern accents. Meanwhile, a nice neutral radio voice, California inflection, midwestern-to-Fargo speak, and Canadian accents are hot.

That's not to say there haven't been exceptions. Although I've never met a Canadian girl I didn't find attractive, regardless of anything else. She could have a ZZ Top beard and be tattooed from head to toe to look like a human tiger and as long as her status as a Canadian was constantly reiterated (appreciation of the arts, casual acceptance of elements of French culture, supportive of socialized medicine, knowledge of Canadian actors), I probably wouldn't notice.

I'm ashamed to say that I can think of at least five girls I knew and three or four actresses that I wasn't at all attracted to in my teens and twenties who instantly (and momentarily) jumped up to become a 9 out of 10 on the hotness scale just by riffing on midwestern accents. I don't know whether I could tolerate longterm exposure to such a heavy accent but, believe you me, it's always been confusing as hell to work with actors who slide in and out of those accents and I have way too many friends who riff on it. I've never had the heart to tell anyone this is a trigger for me or ask them to stop.

You don't absolutely need a reply.

I don't reply often. I go long stretches without logging in. I'm here largely for the quizzes.