AN: Author's Note.
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Howdy.
I think Ian MacKaye is incredibly awesome (hence the intentionally misspelled username¹). Born in New York, raised in rural Virginia, now living in the boring town of Beltsville. At some point, I'll either move to sunny California or abandon civilization for a cabin in a forest². For those of you who value pictures over words, I identify strongly with this photo of my spirit animal. Every time I take a personality test, I get a different answer: INFJ, ENFP, ENTP, INTJ...
Despite the length of my profile³, I'm actually quite skeptical of this site--have fun figuring out when I'm being ludicrous and when I'm being serious. I prefer the Something Awful forums over 4chan over reddit. I'm trying really hard to see the world as it could be, not as it is (however, I'm not always successful). Part-time Pastafarian. Wannabe squirrel whisperer. Cat person. Dog person. Happy person⁴. Opinionated person. Buspreneur. Monarch.

1. Apparently, I'm actually the "David Foster Wallace of OkCupid."
2. A decommissioned missile silo in the Midwest is another option.
3. Nearly all of my photos on this site are deliberately upside down.
4. I do have my days, though, where I'm less than happy...

What I Do for Fun:
When I can, I like to spend my Saturdays and Sundays out exploring DC. My favorite haunts are Tryst, E Street Cinema, Kramerbooks, and the chess tables in Dupont Circle. I really like Black and Orange Burger, but that place is a guilty pleasure. When I remember to do so (which is almost never), I take my DSLR with me into the city because I want to photograph every single monument, museum, and cultural attraction available. I also enjoy hiking, camping, kayaking, rock scrambling, or whatever outdoor activity that catches my fancy. Ah, the joy of being a member of the Cult of REI...

However, I'm just as happy sitting at home with a good book to read (e.g. Gulag Archipelago by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn) or a really bad film to watch. Birdemic, anyone?

I like cooking things for breakfast and dinner, but lunch is my enemy. I have an electric guitar named "The Guitar Formerly Known As Bob" that I don't get to play often enough. I'm intrigued by the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis/linguistic relativity, which is one of the reasons why I like learning about different cultures and languages. Mosh pits make me happy. I like going on paranormal investigations. I may one day go storm chasing.

I study traditional 合気道 ("aikido"). I'm a brown belt with four stripes (kari-shodan). All I have to do to receive my black belt is survive 乱取り/多人数掛け. Seems easy, right? NO, NOT AT ALL. I also go to the gym four days a week: cardio in the form of Insanity and weight training in the form of free weights. My workout buddies are muscleheads. We talk about stacking and various protein powders after our workouts. I AM NOT A BRO, I SWEAR!

I'm into STEM and startups and the entrepreneurial scene, which means I'm always looking for hackathons and the like. I'm also a DC Tech Meetup regular. However, I've no problem talking about the arts. My artistic side is well-hidden, much like the gerbil in Richard Gere's butt.
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What I Do for a Living:
My job is to baffle the hell out of my boss on a daily basis while having an impact on the internet experience for hundreds of millions of people around the world. Continually, I find it hard to believe that I spent my early years wanting to fight The Man, but now I'm giving him high fives in the conference rooms of a Fortune 15 company in Silver Spring. What I love most about my work is that it makes me feel as if I can go anywhere and do anything. I just want to conquer the world. (AN: Ties in with the "You should message me if" section.)

Grad school is in the not-too-distant future. Master's degree? MBA? PhD? Engineer's Degree? All of them? Hold the utterly tasteless sense of superiority that often comes with the last two, though. People who use their education, degrees, or the name brand of their school as ways to demean or exclude others befuddle me.

1.) Being extremely stubborn. I'm not above changing, but I'll do so of my own volition. If someone can convince me to change something about myself, that person should be proud! Why is this personality trait considered to be a bad thing? We expect our politicians to hold their ground, so why can't we expect the same from each other?
2.) Being honest. My occasionally caustic (occasionally bitter AND caustic) words have endeared me to many people both at work and in my personal life. It's a perplexing situation, but I'm not complaining. I guess I'm just a more iconoclastic version of Henry Rollins?
3.) Being an outsider. I like coffee cold, soda flat, PCs over Macs¹, food without bacon, pictures without smiles, and television without Arrested Development or Doctor Who. (AN: So I don't like those things. So what? SO WHAT?)
4.) Being utterly inscrutable. My friends tell me that I'm "endlessly fascinating." According to one person I met through here, it's "fucking annoying."
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1. However, I do own a MacBook Pro. It's just okay.

Here's my boss' description of me: "You are Eminem in an Indian person's body." My new movie, "12.8747 Kilometer," should be out soon.

AN: Hipsters of OkCupid, please forgive me for having slightly pedestrian tastes.
Books:
Fiction - Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, Earthweb, The Time Machine, The Gunslinger, It, The Stand, Christine, Hearts in Atlantis, The Running Man, Carrie, 2001: A Space Odyssey, 3001: The Final Odyssey, The Light of Other Days, Battlefield Earth (AN: The book is MUCH BETTER than the movie.), War and Peace, 1984, Necronomicon, Dreams of Terror and Death: The Dream Cycle of H.P. Lovecraft, Old Man Logan, Dark Knight Returns, Maus, Watchmen, Wuthering Heights, Things Fall Apart, World War Z, Wizard's First Rule, Timeline, The Lost World, Great Expectations, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, and the Sherlock Holmes canon.
Nonfiction - Get in the Van, American Hardcore: A Tribal History, The Worldly Philosophers, This Book Will Change Your Life, The Princeton Companion to Mathematics, Guesstimation, The Great Big Book of Horrible Things: The Definitive Chronicle of History's 100 Worst Atrocities, and Go Rin no Sho.
Other - Forbes, American Scientist, Newsweek, Time, Harvard Business Review, and anything by either the ACM or IEEE.
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Movies:
AN: Not that all of the films listed below I consider to be terrible, but quite a few of them are.
Pariah, The Ditch, Moonrise Kingdom, Safety Not Guaranteed, The Room, The Goonies, Edward Scissorhands, From Dusk Till Dawn, The Invention of Lying, The Sandlot, Plan 9 From Outer Space, Killer Klowns From Outer Space, Attack of the Killer Tomatoes, Return of the Killer Tomatoes, Solaris, Hellraiser, Jack the Bear, The Hebrew Hammer, Destricted, Fast Food Nation, Donnie Darko, Black Dynamite, Zombieland, Airplane!, The Green Mile, Good Will Hunting, Galaxy Quest, Bubba Ho-Tep, Army of Darkness, Real Genius, Kentucky Fried Movie, Shrek, Up!, Wall-E, Harold and Kumar Go to White Castle, and Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind.
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Music:
AN: I realize that my taste in music is at odds with my corporate life. I also realize that my musical tastes haven't really changed since the age of 17. (AN: Das ist mir scheißegal.) Anyway, here's a small sample:
Public Enemy, Broken Social Scene, Fugazi, Dead Kennedys, Negative Approach, Warsaw/Joy Division, New Order, Bauhaus, Minor Threat, Bad Religion, Gogol Bordello, Misfits (1977-1983), Lacuna Coil, Tchaikovsky, Beethoven, Gustav Mahler,Sergei Prokofiev, Zombina and the Skeletones, Bauhaus, Mojo Nixon, The Distillers, and Johnny Cash.
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Shows:
Colbert Report, The Daily Show, Futurama, Being Human, Childrens Hospital, Top Gear USA, The Mighty Boosh, My Drunk Kitchen, The Boondocks, True Blood, and Mythbusters.

TED Talks are amazing. Everyone should watch them. Here's a TED-Ed talk on OKCupid's matching algorithm.
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Food:
Chocolate has a special place in my heart (and in my stomach), as does guacamole.

See Maslow's hierarchy of needs.
Oh, and the location of my towel. That's always important.

1.) Intersectionality, especially when I'm on this site.
2.) This quote by Bill Nye: "Science is the key to our future, and if you don't believe in science, then you're holding everybody back. And it's fine if you as an adult want to run around pretending or claiming that you don't believe in evolution, but if we educate a generation of people who don't believe in science, that's a recipe for disaster. We talk about the Internet. That comes from science. Weather forecasting. That comes from science. The main idea in all of biology is evolution. To not teach it to our young people is wrong."
3.) Why so many women on this site consider themselves to be "laid back" and/or "chill." Where's the filth and the fury? Where's the guts and the glory? It's human nature to be adversarial and free, so raise your voice! Opinionated, gutsy, courageous, strong-willed women are the best! After all, submissive women don't make history.
4.) Is "all people are inherently good, but they are more comfortable doing bad things" a more realistic comment on human nature than "all people are inherently good" or "all people are inherently bad?"
5.) Irony (but not "hipster irony"). For example, why are there so many homeless people roaming in a city that claims a median household income of $84,523? Why are the Republicans so hellbent on creating a government small enough to fit into everyone's bedroom?
6.) My future feline acting company. Yes, I want to get a bunch of cats and train them to reenact scenes from famous films.

screaming the lyrics to "Friday" by Rebecca Black. How else am I going to learn the days of the week?

Afterward, I go out to steal people's mail with Jello Biafra. So far, we've collected license plates, wedding gifts, tax returns, checks to politicians from real estate firms, money, bills, and cancelled checks...

I dislike many Disney films, but I've seen The Lion King more than once. Willingly. Don't judge me.

AN: I am not condemning anyone for his or her political beliefs. I'm not upset at life or a disgruntled person, but sometimes I feel a burning need to express myself. If I come across as a berating asshole, so be it, but this is one of those times. However, for the sake of the heading of this section, message me if you have guts.

What I find so upsetting about OkCupid and many dating sites is that these places expose the really dark parts of the human psyche that are present in every individual, regardless of age, gender, race, educational achievements, job, family background, political affiliation, or even life experiences. This sad fact is especially prominent around the DC area, which is supposed to be filled with idealistic, progressive, liberal people looking to change the world for the better.

How can one be progressive if that person talks about embracing other cultures, yet he or she believes that miscegenation/interracial dating is morally wrong? How can a person believe in tolerance, but look down upon LGBT folk as people in need of rehabilitation? How can a person desire true love, yet dive into a relationship that is based purely on physical appearances? How can a person consider himself or herself compassionate, yet condemn other people to Hell simply because those people are of a different faith?

Where is the idealism in any of this hypocritical behavior?

No matter how many fair trade-certified coffees one buys; or how many yoga classes one attends; or how many animals one saves; or how many Green Party rallies one promotes; or how much one cries about the effects of climate change on the planet; or how many stamps are in one's passport; or how many Republicans one shouts down; or how many times one gets maced while protesting with the members of the Occupy movement; or how many alternatives to Christianity one studies, none of it will mean anything because genuine, lasting change starts in one's own mind and heart. Until then, the world will continue to suck.

I mean, it's pointless to clean a dirty window with a dirty washcloth... right?

Maybe I'm doing the written equivalent of trying to physically scream in a perfect vacuum because the people who should be reading the above lines probably just looked at my picture, then my ethnicity, and then left.