Caveat: Much of what is below is old or nonsense or both

What to say about myself here... I have a great fondness for music, poetry, philosophical mental masturbation, circus, freaky people, fire spinning and fire of all sorts. I am a Canadian who grew up in Ottawa, lived in Vancouver BC for 3 years and moved to Seattle in 2001 when my company was bought by the Evil Empire.

In philosophy I resonate as follows: morally with the Wiccan Rede, personally with some sort of Taoism, and recreationally with whatever epistemological, ontological or other abstract theories seem the most fun to play with at the moment.

Burning Man also resonates with me on a philosophical as well as artistic, spiritual and recreational level. I don't take it too seriously or become a zealot (as some can at times) but I enjoy its annual ritual and daily social influence.

Seeking beauty. Practicing child-like states of awareness and wonderment and being. Immersing myself in social circles of delicious freakdom filled with fascinating and energetically rewarding people. Trying to balance the pressures of a professional career with its high expectations against a desire to live a full and social life connecting with others.

Being outgoing and personable. Remembering and dredging up snippets of poetry or songs or stories that experiences and conversations bring to mind for me. Gleefully making a fool of myself long before it occurs to other people to do so. Striving to follow conventions, rules and traditions only when I feel them resonate with me or when I see their reasonableness... and actively flouting then for fun and profit in most every other case.

My Utilikilt which I wear almost constantly.

In books I spend most of my time reading "mind-candy" sci-fi or fantasy to escape a little and to pass the time on the bus. When I want something more well-crafted or profound or meaty I have truly enjoyed "G�del, Escher, Bach: an Eternal Golden Braid" and other books by Douglas Hofstadter, "The Sun, The Moon and the Stars" and every other book by Steven Brust, Nick Bantock's "Griffin and Sabine" series and other books, "Mister God, This is Anna" by Fynn, Neil Gaiman's novels and graphic novels and comics, A.A.Milne, Lao Tzu, Shel Silverstein, Eric Fromm, Dr. Seuss, Bertrand Russel. The Ethical Slut is always recommended reading too.

In poetry some that come to mind are Ranier Maria Rilke, Dorothy Parker, Ani Difranco, Tori Amos, Richard Brautigan, e.e.cummings, Roberts Frost, Service and Browning, Isaac Terpstra, Leonard Cohen, Jim Morrison, Rumi.

In film I tend to enjoy art house and foreign films, but I am open minded. Some past and present favourites that come to mind include Juno, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead, Amelie, Requiem For a Dream, Fight Club, Sex and Lucia (Lucia y el Sexo), Trois Couleurs: Bleu, Rouge (et Blanc aussi, je suppose), Delicatessen, Dressed to Kill (Eddie Izzard), Kissed, Usual Suspects, La Reine Margot (Queen Margot), Dead Again, Peter Jackson's Lord of the Rings films, almost anything with Gary Oldman in it. Also I've watched The West Wing entire box set a couple of times through.

In music, off the top of my head, I resonate as follows:

- Powerful female word smiths and songstresses such as Ani, Tori, Sarah, P.J., Bj�rk, Amy & Emily, Lisa Gerrard, Suzanne Vega and lesser known ladies such as Veda Hille, Kinnie Starr, and Tegan and Sara.

- World music such as Sheila Chandra, Dead Can Dance, Ayub Ogada, Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan, Geoffrey Oreyema, Afro Celt Sound System, Mari Boine Persen

- Goth industrial music such as NIN, Ministry, VNV Nation, The Cure, MSI, 242, good 80 club tunes, Project Pitchfork, Juneau Reactor (Pistolero)

- Movie scores such as Requiem for a Dream, Dead Man Walking, Searching for Bobby Fisher, Time of the Gypsies and La Reine Margot, other good Elfman, Horner and Williams stuff

- Cool rock/pop like Blue Man Group, John (Cougar) Mellencamp, U2, Tragically Hip, older GnR, AC/DC, CCR, Barenaked Ladies

- Classic rock Beatles, Stones, Doors, Joplin, Hendrix, etc

- Folk bluegrass like Yonder Mountain String Band, Taarka, Phish

- Spoken word like Utah Phillips, Laurie Anderson, Henry Rollins

- Country music such as Johnny Cash, Kris Kristofferson, Mary Chapin Carpenter, Garth Brooks, Shania Twain

- Tons and Tons more...

In foods, Poutine is the French Candian ambrosia of the gods. Take starch, deep fry it in fat, add chunks of fat on top and then smother it in fat sauce. French fries with cheese and gravy. I have made it vegan for a friend before with miso gravy and a vegan meltable.

Hmmmm... I am a pack rat who has too much accumulated crap, but my actual needs are very, very few. I usually get by for days at a time away from home with the clothes on my back and my Urban survival kit in my utilikilt pockets: buss pass, ID, cash and card, phone, keys, hair ties, 128MB flash disk, sometimes my digital camera stuff.

I could do without all of that stuff, though, as long as I had: love, touch, conversation, music, poetry and poutine.

Update years after writing this:
If I tried I could likely collapse those six above, looking along any of several different axes of symmetry, into perhaps two meta-properties of some deeper, formless archetypes.

I could try using the circle of light cast by these word-glom-piles-of-kindling
1 - PoutineWarmLoveFoodTouchSustenance
2 - ResonateMusicConversationPoetryEcho

That leaves room for me to include in this arbitrarily bounded list more of these bundles of concept shadows cast from the same wordless cores... like:
3 - BloodSugarSexMagik
4 - CrazySexyCool
5 - Mu
6 - Pu

Odd recreational philosophy. Currently I am (by which I now mean "Four years ago I was") mulling over and babbling to people about the "fuzzy buckets of truths" that everyone has a tendency to carry around and tends to use as a source of "true" or accepted premises that are never subjected to scrutiny for consistency or completeness. I have scribbled out a few mildly amusing descriptions of how different sorts of people might manage their "buckets" and what might be in or not in them. Perhaps I will write some of them here later. Update: For now I will just wave my paw and say either "Pu", "Mu" or simply "Bah".

I also often wonder about the validity of accepting the completed infinite and the various ways that it is used by Cantor and others when dealing with infinity, transfinite concepts and set theory. I don't really buy it in my gut. Ever since I first learned it in grade 9 (or whenever) the idea that 0.9999... was literally and exactly equal to 1 seemed flawed and dishonest. I often bug my coworker about it, and other petty squabbles in mathematics. I apologize if I just got geek all over you.

Updated years later: Lately it has been the word resonate that is my emotional and aesthetic panacea. Regardless of the inescapable truths about each of us being terminally isolated from everything except (perhaps) our deeply Cartesian "ergo-sum"s, I find nothing terrible in that supposed abyss. The dead-can-dance mechanics of musical instruments have taught us something simple, like a 12-string guitar. When an entity vibrates, other sufficiently proximate and compatible or complementary[1] entities may also begin to vibrate in harmony... to resonate. That may be how a princess like me can sing with the voice of a dragon and vice versa. What might touch be but resonation at a descending Heisenberg level of faith in each others existence and harmony: organic-cellular-molecular-atomic-quantum-particle-wave-etc.

Isolation, where is thy sting?

[1] complementary - the oscillating mobius continuation of the continuum of compatibility

(I warned you I enjoyed mental masturbation. Caveat lector.)

More interestes:

awesometacular, dihydrogen monoxide, the Wet Spot, Garden State, Waking Life, Mad About You, Invader Zim, Counting Crows, Rilke, Chomsky, Noam Chomsky, wordplay, Girls with glasses, Monty Python, massages, massage, talking, sex, Napoleon Dynamite, lovemaking, Trainspotting, StarCraft, metaphysics, Delicatessen, cuddling, Rocky Horror Picture Show, G�del, Godel, Escher, Babes in Toyland, Homestar Runner, Strong Bad, Shawshank Redemption, Veritas, Carpe Diem, Tao, Pu, Pooh, Story telling, intentional community, TAZ, Calvin & Hobbes, Zen, not Zen, Mu, Dr. Suess, smart-assery, Run Lola Run, The Princess Bride, Bill Watterson, sexuality, A Weird Life, hetero-flexible, etymology, fire dancing, freedom, silliness, playa-spice, defenestration, cake or death, Burning Man, Burningman, d20, polyamory, rhetorical tensions,the spice of imagination, etymology

Who knows? I live moment to moment. It is likely that I am being social somewhere, probably with rather exceptional and interesting people. I'm really lucky like that.

On the whole I tend to be very open about almost anything in my life, resulting in occasional complaints about apparent "TMI"s in conversations. I'm an exhibitionist and extrovert who enjoys being nude. I don't even keep close track of which things I actually do keep private. Ask me about something if you want to know, and it is very likely that I will simply tell you.

One incriminating fact: I have seen the movie Dirty Dancing at least two or three dozen times and count it among my favourite films. "Nobody puts Baby in a corner.

Update note: When I clicked on the Dirty Dancing interest search the only other male I found was This guy from Germany, and he said he hated it. Update again: Perhaps is shows once again that at heart I am always a touch more Juliet that I'll ever be Romeo :-T

Message if you want to, have anything interesting to say or share or you find me interesting. Oh... and you may need to be very patient. I do not check things online with any consistency or frequency, so replies may come very late ... very, very late if at all.