Issuing supreme power to you...one moment.

My self-summary Propose an edit

You know what charm is: a way of getting the answer "yes" without having asked any clear question. --Albert Camus, La Chute (The Fall)

My name is Brandon, and I'm twenty-seven and currently living in Tampa. I have a full-time job at Delta Airlines, and I also have a car and my own apartment. For fun, I like to relax with good company, or go to a movie or a bar. I love to read and write--those two things are my passions. I also love to travel and see new places. I'm a very sarcastic person, and I love to make people laugh. I also have a tendency to retain weird facts I pick up from my day-to-day goings-on, then spit them out several months later. I can bore you all day long with useless trivia. I also quote liberally from my favorite books and movies. (Extra credit if you can tell me, without the aid of Google, who said, "Always do sober what you said you'd do drunk. That will teach you to keep your mouth shut.") And I'm not going to write about what I'm looking for, since I think that relies on having too many expectations from someone before you've even met him or her. That's the kind of thing that inevitably leads to disappointment.

If you still want to chit-chat, my AIM screen name is YourPalBrandon.

Hey: I'm perfectly secure in my insecurities.

What I'm doing with my life Propose an edit

... Currently working at Delta Airlines. I'm also considering going back to college, but I have yet to decide on a major. It'll be English Literature, most likely.

I'm really good at Propose an edit

... Reading. Writing. Discussing all kinds of topics, from literature to politics to music. (However, if I don't know anything about a particular topic, I tend to make puns and intentionally ignorant jokes about it.) I've been told I'm good at playing guitar, but I haven't played in a few years.

The first thing(s) people usually notice about me Propose an edit

... My glasses?

Actually, it's probably my voice. It's very deep.

My favorite books, movies, music, and food Propose an edit

Books: House of Leaves, Only Revolutions, the Inferno, Foucault's Pendulum, The Raw Shark Texts, 1984, Remainder, Cat's Cradle, Pride and Prejudice, Slaughterhouse-Five, The Satanic Verses, Brave New World, Then We Came to the End, Blood Meridian, Kafka on the Shore, Darkness at Noon, The Stranger, The Secret History, Les Liaisons Dangereuses, Paradise Lost, The Remains of the Day, Wicked, The Road, The Yiddish Policemen's Union, A Man without a Country, Smilla's Sense of Snow, As I Lay Dying, Beijing Coma, Don Quixote, Ulysses, and Sex, Drugs, and Cocoa Puffs.

Authors: Mark Z. Danielewski, William Shakespeare, James Joyce, Dante, George Orwell, Franz Kafka, Paul Auster, Edgar Allan Poe, Umberto Eco, Jane Austen, Cormac McCarthy, Michael Chabon, Jonathan Franzen, Kurt Vonnegut, Orhan Pamuk, Haruki Murakami, Albert Camus, Arthur Conan Doyle, Kazuo Ishiguro, Leo Tolstoy, Geoffrey Chaucer, Friedrich Nietzsche, John Irving, and William Faulkner.

Movies: Pulp Fiction, Casablanca, Pan's Labyrinth, American Psycho, Se7en, The Godfather, Wedding Crashers, Dawn of the Dead, Ronin, The Wizard of Oz, Vertigo, Schindler's List, Jesus Camp, Batman Begins, Ghostbusters, Reservoir Dogs, The Thin Red Line, Hotel Rwanda, Training Day, The Crow, Raiders of the Lost Ark, The Truman Show, Forrest Gump, Monty Python and the Holy Grail, and American History X.

Music: Opeth, Deicide, Chimaira, 3 Doors Down, Alice in Chains, Deftones, Meshuggah, Edge of Sanity, Lacuna Coil, Mastodon, Nine Inch Nails, Pantera, Cannibal Corpse, Stabbing Westward, Type O Negative, Depeche Mode, In Flames, Morbid Angel, Slayer, Strapping Young Lad, Bloodbath, Cradle of Filth, God Forbid.

Currently reading: Beijing Coma by Ma Jian, Against the Day by Thomas Pynchon, the Inferno by Dante, Dubliners by James Joyce, The Metamorphosis and Other Stories by Franz Kafka, and Collected Poems 1947-1997 by Allen Ginsberg.

The six things I could never do without Propose an edit

1. Books. Particularly The Norton Anthology of English Literature, Seventh Edition, Volume Two.
2. My cell phone.
3. My car.
4. Coffee.
5. My job.
6. Internet. For "stalking" purposes.

I spend a lot of time thinking about Propose an edit

... Pythagorean Theorem?

Actually, lately I've been thinking a lot about Thomas Pynchon's Against the Day and whether or not I'll finish it before the end of the year. What a massive book ...

OkCupid keeps informing me that I should increase my personal "essays" by a certain number of characters to reach a certain percentage. I know I shouldn't care, but I still find it bothersome. So: how about a drinking poem?

Why, if 'tis dancing you would be,
There's brisker pipes than poetry.
Say, for what were hop-yards meant,
Or why was Burton built on Trent?
Oh many a peer of England brews
Livlier liquor than the Muse,
And malt does more than Milton can
To justify God's ways to man.
Ale, man, ale's the stuff to drink
For fellows whom it hurts to think:
Look into the pewter pot
To see the world as the world's not.
And faith, 'tis pleasant till 'tis past:
The mischief is that 'twill not last.
Oh I have been to Ludlow fair
And left my necktie God knows where,
And carried half-way home, or near,
Pints and quarts of Ludlow beer:
Then the world seemed none so bad,
And I myself a sterling lad;
And down in lovely muck I've lain,
Happy till I woke again.
Then I saw the morning sky:
Heigho, the tale was all a lie;
The world, it was the old world yet,
I was I, my things were wet,
And nothing now remained to do
But begin the game anew.
--from "Terence, This Is Stupid Stuff" by A. E. Housman

On a typical Friday night I am Propose an edit

... Usually working. On days off, I'm usually at a bookstore or coffeeshop. I meet the most interesting people at bookstores. Like the Frenchman I met at Barnes & Noble a few months ago; he was touring the US, apparently. He was pretty enamored with the novels of Ken Follett, so much so that, after I confessed that popular fiction didn't really interest me, he offered to buy me a copy of The Pillars of the Earth. I was tempted--"A free book? Sure!"--but politely refused. In the end, we just wandered up and down the aisles, pointing out our favorite (or least favorite, in some cases) books.

The most private thing I'm willing to admit here Propose an edit

... With few exceptions (Kurt Vonnegut being the most notable), I despise most American literature. (Go ahead and sic the Patriot Act on me.) In fact, most of the books I own are translated or otherwise written by foreign authors. No, I can't really explain my preferences--I just find that most American literature is tedious.

I also judge people based on the books they read. I realize this is terribly shallow and pretentious of me, but I just can't help it ...

You should message me if Propose an edit

... You aren't dense. If you like to read. If you're pretty well-rounded (and I mean intellectually). If you read Kurt Vonnegut, Albert Camus, or Michael Chabon. If u CaN aCtUalLy TyPe A cOhErEnT sEnTeNcE, THAT DOESN'T SEEM LIKE YOU'RE SHOUTING AT ME, aNd ThAt DoEsN't ReQuIrE me to learn an alternate form of English. If you appreciate irony. If you can laugh at yourself. And if you can talk shit--I like people who are quick-witted, people who can verbally spar with me.

You get the idea. You don't have to share all my interests; you just have to keep me interested.

(And finally: you didn't really read my "essays," did you? Liar! You went straight for the pictures!)

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