Just another cuddly, pseudointellectual goofball. I tend to be passive, and I can be shy, but I'm friendly and loyal, and I stick up for what I believe in. I'd rather not have the spotlight, but I've got enough stupid stories and stock jokes to hold my own if I wind up as the centre of attention.

It's taking a bit of willpower not to change the end of that one sentence to "that in which I believe," but I promise that I'm not normally quite that nerdy.

People tend to know me before I know them, which never fails to weird me out. "Oh, you're that guy who (always wears Hawaiian shirts/works at the bookstore/played paddy-cake with the school president at the Relay for Life/gave that really stupid answer in my first-year zoology class)." I once met a girl who works for the Guelph Humane Society, and apparently the bored patrol van staff kept track of when they see me biking around town. Creepy.

Just finished my BA in Sociology at the University of Guelph, and now I'm a grad student at the University of Toronto, damned to flounder in the triangle-lidded turkey that is Robarts Library for the next few years. What am I going to do with my degree? I'm going to hang it on my wall, of course.

Because neither that nor my gorgeous basement lair (the low rumble of the nearby subway tunnel might annoy some, but I've been in places with louder furnaces, and the tradeoff is more space than I know what to do with) is free, I work part-time at a big chain bookstore. The money's good (it'd better be after eight years there), the people are cool, the work is easy, and the perks are awesome (free books!), so I stick around.

Puns, trivia, baking, and hugs. I also have an utterly embarrassingly high falsetto (if you bring me to karaoke, you're going to hear "Take on Me" or "I Believe in a Thing Called Love"), and I play a mean game of Scrabble.

I was known around Guelph campus as "the Hawaiian shirt guy," though I generally only wear those on special occasions now. Once people get past the lack of fashion taste, it's either how overly friendly I am, how I tend to be slightly paranoid (I have this weird quirk where I can't stand to have my back to the door), or the ongoing and inexplicable debate over whether my hair is brown or blond (I just don't understand this one. It's brown, dammit).

BOOKS: I work in a bookstore; you'd better believe I read a lot. I tend to lean a bit on the pretentious highbrow-lit side of things (David Foster Wallace, may his tortured soul rest in peace, is pretty much my hero, with silver medals for David Mitchell and Haruki Murakami). I also love Douglas Coupland and Kurt Vonnegut, and Chuck Palahniuk is a guilty pleasure, though he's been losing his touch lately. That said, I still love big dumb fantasy epics and cyberpunk.

MOVIES: Oh Lord. I am so cinematically undereducated. I like movies, though! A good comedy or satire, a clever action/martial-arts film, a screwed-up foreign film (ever seen La Moustache? YOUR HEAD WILL SPIN), whatever. Movies are definitely a social activity for me, though. I need somebody to laugh and dissect with. This goes double for really, really bad movies; giggling at the absurdity of something like "Master of the Flying Guillotine" or "Battlefield Earth" is almost as fun as watching something of genuine merit.

MUSIC: Music is life is music. I play guitar, bass, and viola (hell yeah, I was a band kid), and almost always have some kind of music playing at my house. The band-kid upbringing means I love my classical and jazz (the Holy Trinities: Saint-Saëns, Bach, Mahler and Coltrane, Miles Davis, John McLaughlin), but I'm also a big dork about metal (Mastodon! Opeth! Dream Theater! Pain of Salvation!), classic rock (Zappa! Led Zeppelin! Pink Floyd! Blue Öyster Cult!), prog rock (Porcupine Tree! 3! The Decemberists!), and my new Toronto friends are getting me into all kinds of wonderful indie bands. 90s relics with big guitars (Matt Good! Our Lady Peace!) are also the best kind of nostalgia. And, uh, Primus sucks.

D) If it's not onions, I'm all over it. I eat a lot of Thai food, and I've been dabbling in half-assed vegetarianism (step 1: I now love tofu, and am getting in touch with my legume-loving self), though I doubt I'll ever fully kick the meat habit. Living in Little India last year also got me majorly hooked on curry, and I'm continually searching for the Perfect French Fry (current winner: the gyro place on MacDonell in Guelph) and the Perfect Beer (no such thing, but damned if it ain't a fun search).

1. A musical instrument. 2. Tasty, tasty food. 3. Books. 4. Music. 5. Good conversation. 6. Hugs.

The future. The past. Human nature, and what a strange thing it is. How I'd do things differently if I were King of the World, ruling from a castle made of tires and green glass.

I've also almost always got a song stuck in my head. If not, I'm probably writing one and hoping that I write it down before I forget.

Usually working at the bookstore, sadly. Always ready for anything after the shift ends, though. This usually winds up meaning hanging out with my friends and being loud and random.

I think I've got a bit of insomnia. Every once in a while, I'll just give up sleep for a few days, then crash.

Also, I recognize people from this site in real life (at my workplace/on the subway/in Robarts) all the freakin' time, and there's this weird internal battle between really wanting to say hi and realizing how goddamn creepy that would be if they don't recognize me (or maybe even if they do).

your profile doesn't use the "I won't bite...hard" joke, and/or you want to show a Toronto neophyte your favourite parts of the city.