I'm a big fan of armchair theology and etymology; doubly-so for the etymology of the profane (EG: What's the origin of that horrible name that taxi-cab driver just called you?). Some of my favorites of that latter group include one that stems from Boadicea, and another that stems from a Yiddish term comparable to "My widdle schnookums".

Alas, the Political View section in the sidebar (that doesn't exist anymore) doesn't have a space for "Zen Socialist". Nor is there a Philosophical View section. That'd be "Romantic", by the way. Not as in carriage rides and roses, but the 18th century close cousin to Transcendentalist (both of which are cousins to Gothic, surprisingly enough); Blake, Byron, Yeats and Keats and all that.

I regularly use the word "regularly", yet I loathe the way I say it. For some reason, I've yet to ween myself onto using "often" or "routinely", depending upon context (and the former lends itself to the Pirates of Penzance "often/orphan" joke, for bonus points).

I'm a little more fond of the Fibonacci sequence and ramifications thereof than anyone should really be.

I use the term "thereof" in regular conversation. Sad, no?

July 2009 Update: I'm a little haunted by folks asking me "Where I'm from", since there's no easy answer. I was born in Oregon (Roseburg), but we moved away about six months later, so I can only take my parents' word for it. We moved to Arizona (Phoenix), but that was just for a year and a half, so that's chalked up in the "allegedly" department like Oregon. After that was Alaska (Fairbanks) until 4th Grade. After that was Colorado (Wheat Ridge) until High School graduation. From there, up to Maine (Bangor) where both my parents were from and all of their parents were from.

So legally, I'm from Oregon. Early formative years, I'm from Alaska. Later formative years, I'm from Colorado. But I can tell stories like I've lived in this town since the 1930s.

According to the old system, I am pedantic, wry, and persnickety.

What am I doing? Apparently going into more detail over on LiveJournal. It makes everyone their own Andy Rooney (for better or for worse)

Other than that, my first cousin (once removed, by two marriages, according to lathandplaster) is doing a lousy job of trying to teach me to juggle.

July 2008 Update: She gave up on the juggling-instruction. C'est la Jongler

Not juggling.

I'm also apparently not half bad at writing softcode for MU*-type (that's MUSH/MUX sort've stuff) online gaming. Don't get too excited, it's not graphic flashy-picture online gaming; it's all text-based, and generally White Wolf-sort've, D&D-sort've stuff. Still, nice when one can code up '@pemit %#=die(3, 9)' instead of trying to invent a nine-sided die (much less find three of them).

Example: [setr(0, parse(lnum(secure(%0)), die(1, 10)))][setq(B, words(strip(matchall(%q0, 1), 0)))][setq(T, max(add(setr(S, ladd(parse(%q0, gte(##, min(secure(%1), 9))))), min(sub(9, secure(%1)), 0)), 0))]|[if(%qS, max(sub(%qT, %qB), 0), sub(%qT, %qB))]

(That's the guts of M:tA Revised's "Threshold" dice. Basic die-results before the pipe, net success/botches after the pipe)

I've also done far too much research and pondering into matters-Zen than anyone who never plans to use it should do (there's a little Zen joke in there; a very very little Zen joke).

You might have to ask those people?

But some folks have stated that I sometimes sport a "something highly amusing is going on here that not everyone might notice" expression.

Although I'd bet my necktie would be pretty high up there as well. January 2012 Update: If I knew my new glasses would prompt so many Harry Potter and Waldo (as in, 'where is') comments, I probably would have gone with something a little less circular.

I recently noticed that it's not uncommon for someone, when first sitting down and talking with me, to give me the similar sort of look that you see in nature programs when the monkey-wrangler has a monkey on their arm while they're talking about said monkey, and then the monkey suddenly climbs up onto their head. The way the monkey-wrangler looks at the monkey while they try to carry on talking to the camera? That's they way they look at me while carrying on talking to me. What it means is a mystery.

Books: One Hundred Years of Solitude, The Joy of Yiddish, Love in the Time of Cholera, Machine of Death, Name of the Rose, Let The Right One In (I've seen the Scandinavian film version, but not the American one. I've been told to see both), Like Water for Chocolate (as clichéd as it sounds, the book is better than the film). Tim Powers, Tad Williams, Neal Stephenson, Richard Brautigan. The Night Watch series by Sergei Lukyanenko was pretty good, if one likes the 'modern supernatural' genre (Jim Butcher's Dresden Files, Kat Richardson's Greywalker series, Kim Harrison's Hollows books, Southern Vampire Mysteries, et cetera, ad nauseum, ad absurdum).

Movies: Brazil, The Iron Giant, Sanjiro, Yojimbo, Citizen Kane, My Favorite Brunette, True Stories, Night of the Creeps, Santa and the Ice Cream Bunny (a classic tale of epic proportions), City of Lost Children, Blue Velvet, Casablanca, Barton Fink, My Favorite Year, Nightmare Before Christmas, Delicatessen, Until the End of the World, Paris Texas, Mystery Train. If Buster Keaton, David Lynch, Tim Burton, or Wim Wenders made it? I probably liked it (or shall like it once I see it).

Shows: There's now a shows section?! Twitch City, Doctor Who*, Mister Ed, Stargate (be it SG-1, SG:A, or SG:U), Mary Shelley's Frankenhole, Adventure Time, Dark Shadows, Samurai Jack, Dead Like Me, Twin Peaks, Fringe, The Venture Bros., The Prisoner, Look Around You.

Or just check my Hulu profile.

(* Ok, so a few years ago, there were some 'exchange soldiers' from the RAF stationed at some local Air Force base, out drinking. They saw me walk by dressed the way I normally do in colder weather and one of them shouted with glee, "It's Doctor Who!" I basically nodded and smiled and continued on, thinking the accent was fake, until a pal of the person said something like, "Shut up, mate, you're drunk. He probably doesn't even know who Doctor Who is..." This, I could not abide; I whirled on my heel and approached them, rattling off the geekiest Doctor Who trivia fact-list you've ever heard. We hung out for a few hours and had a grand old time.)

Music: They Might Be Giants, Kate Bush, Robyn Hitchcock, Magnetic Fields, Joe Jackson, David Byrne, Tom Waits, Bauhaus, Spike Jones and The City Slickers, Peter Gabriel, Elvis Costello, The The, Steely Dan, Soul Coughing, Laurie Anderson, The Residents, Lou Reed, Michael Penn (and who knew his now wife, Aimee Mann was cranking out perfectly good albums after Til Tuesday? Not I, until recently), Pailhead, Cole Porter, Chickasaw Mud Puppies, Gilbert and Sullivan, Jim Thirwell, Nelson Riddle, Ed's Redeeming Qualities, Jesca Hoop, Decemberists (saw them in concert! Amazing, given that I live in semi-central Maine and didn't have to go to Boston to see them. And surprisingly, Suzanne Vega also played in the same place a year later), Fiery Furnaces, and about half of the Dresden Dolls' works. As of January 2011, I've been listening to too much Pomplamoose. Oh, and if you like satirical 'goth' music that doesn't quite take itself seriously? Try Gothic Archies (it's the Magnetic Fields under another name for the most part).

December 2009 Update: One can actually see my music for themselves, through the good graces of Last.FM!

Food: Can't go wrong with eggs and cream; eggnog, custard, anything that's mostly eggs and cream is already miles ahead of everything else (as long as that everything else isn't roast beef, in which case it's now a toughie).

August 2010 Update: I've been making a lot of kombucha lately. "What's kombucha?", you might be asking; it's a sort of yeasty, vinegary tea. Most folks, who go "Ew!" at the idea of a yeasty vinegar tea? Probably ought not try it. The minority who has more of a, "Really now?" reaction? It's worth trying (although the fact that it's made by tossing a biomass that looks like a road-kill jellyfish into some sweet tea, then letting it sit around for a couple of weeks, might turn one off of the idea). In that way, it's a bit like Moxie (which is basically an Angostura bitters cola). Some folks make claims of kombucha curing cancer, assisting liver functions, regrowing hair, et cetera. All I know is that I like yeasty vinegar tea. C'est la thé.

1) Some sort've glasses/contacts.

2) A mechanical pencil (and lead for said pencil).

3) Clocks.

4) Books.

5) Fire in some form (a stove, say?)

6) I'm quite sure I'd regret a loss of shoes.

The Etymology of the Profane: Namely, pick your favorite swear word/phrase. Now think about it... that must've come from somewhere, and it must've been perfectly obvious for why that'd be applied in that situation (and not in others). Working out the "why?" behind that is just dandy. I'd list examples, but I believe there's a profanity filter.

Categories I'd rather see in this essay.

Things that Frighten Me the Most:

1) The thought/threat of falling.

2) Unexpected contact with very small animals.

3) The thought of my skin being broken/cut/pierced.

4) Being forgotten about when I'm not immediately around.

OKCupid! Questions I Dislike the Most:

See Journal (it's rather long)

Apparently filling this out. Ha!
Actually, I'm at work for most of Friday (and Saturday) nights, save for a narrow window of time between midnight and when everything closes down, when I can vicariously hang around with itcertainlyis's & eriuerin's associates.

October 2009 Addition: And now that a local café (vis: Giacomo's) has decided to be open for a late-late shift on Fridays and Saturdays, Midnight to 3 AM, I now have things to do! Things involving coffee and pastries and people!

March 2013 Addition: Giacomo's stopped doing that, so I've had to go back to looking a pint of Guinness and wishing it were a pint of espresso.

I have a Britney Spears song on my mp3 player. I lay -all- the blame on that episode of Doctor Who.

I have no clue where or when I picked up the habit of using "sort've" for "sort of" (and other things of the "*'ve" for "* of" family), but it's proving to be an insanely difficult habit to break myself of (or should I say, "...myself've"? Ha! See what I did there? Ok, maybe it wasn't that funny).

As of June 9th, 2008, I no longer have a gallbladder. I've worked out plans for a prosthetic gallbladder, but there's very little demand for those. So if you have any recreational plans in mind that depend on one having a gallbladder*, I'll have to regretfully decline.

* If I were saying this in person, this would be where one would give me that 'monkey that just climbed up on their head' look I mentioned earlier.

..if you have something to say and no other medium in which to send said something?

Not so sure about the instant messenger thing here, but the internal mail sounds dandy?

If you need help in finding me, try my Twitter or hit Paddy Murphy's on Monday nights.