Issuing supreme power to you...one moment.

My self-summary Propose an edit

I'm a wild hedonist who follows his basest desires full-throttle.

However, nobody ever notices this because my basest desires largely amount to a combination of relaxation and intellectual pursuits.

The simplest summary comes down to that I'm arrogant, brilliant, and have no -need- of other people. And I'm most interested in arrogant, brilliant people who have no -need- of me.

And while I am libertarian on the drug war - all drugs should be legal - this doesn't mean I'm going to date you if you do them. I am a passionate rationalist, and have no desire to relate to people who deliberately impair their perception of reality. (And yes, I'm serious about this, and no, I don't care if you're offended.)

Also, I'm the sort of person who is tempted very strongly to buy the plastic product instead, and throw it away when the recycling bin is sitting right there, just to thumb my nose at environmentalists, who by and large piss me off. The only reason I don't is that it would be wasteful and inefficient, and efficiency is highly important to me.

What I'm doing with my life Propose an edit

Well I just bought a ridiculously cheap house in Michigan. Something must have gone wrong in my life.

Actually, my job is a mixture of telecommuting and travel, so it doesn't actually matter where I live - and my sister is moving to Lansing for law school. I don't know how she picked Cooley out as one of her two schools of choice, but that's the way things went.

I'm really good at Propose an edit

Pretty much everything except welding, and possibly that too, as I now suspect the habit of my materials to burn and/or melt might have had something to do with the fact that they were pot metal which had been left outside in the rain.

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

Used to be long blonde hair and a long reddish-brown beard. Now it's probably... oh, I couldn't even say. I don't care to find out, really, either.

However, if you want an accurate picture of me, see what all the guys over there in the right are "more than" and "less than" than me. Well, it's not terribly accurate anymore, since I purged my questions twice now, and haven't brought it back up to the 2k mark, but certainly all those "Less selfish" markers should say something about my personality. (Less kinky, though? I'm kinky? I don't believe that. I think a nun must have written the kinkiness criteria.)

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

Books? Top two are Atlas Shrugged, by Ayn Rand, and Deerskin, by Robin McKinley. Anthem and Sunshine, by the same two authors respectively, are also damn good. Beyond that - oh, that list would take a while, but basically everything else by Robin McKinley makes the list. The Blue Sword was my first favorite book - I don't remember when I read it, but it was before I started the Conan series, which was before Robert Jordan more generally, so probably seven or eight. Cosmos, by Carl Sagan, I read when I was six or seven, and it was considerably more impressive to me then than now. (I have a mild distaste for Sagan now, partly due to an extensive examination of the TAPPS (TAPSS?) model for a computer ethics course.)

Moves? The Lion King takes the number one spot, followed by Memento and Vanilla Sky. And really, those three movies probably do a lot to characterize my personality. I've been described as both callous and innocent.

Music? Splashdown/Universal Hall Pass, Queen, Queens of the Stone Age, Gorillaz (love-hate, there), Divinity Destroyed, Silent Stream of Godless Elegy, and many others. For a sampling of these - try "Karma Slave" or, hell, just about anything (Except "So Ha") by Splashdown, or you can check out any of the samples put up on the Universal Hall Pass site - they're all good; Queen's "Bohemian Rhapsody" is of course a classic; Divinity Destroyed's "Forsaken" is absolutely bloody brilliant; and "Winter Queen" by Silent Stream of Godless Elegy is beautiful in a way metal rarely manages.

Food... changes quite often. It's typically whatever masterpiece I've most lately developed. Right now it's balsamic-vinegar salmon - not just for the taste, which I love, but also for the ease of preparation:

Buy steamer bags (They'll be around the aluminum foil, wax paper, and plastic zip bags). Buy salmon. Buy raw green beans - for ease of preparation, buy a steamer bag of them, as they'll already be cleaned and cut. Buy carrots - for easy of preparation, "petite" baby carrots are best. Buy balsamic vinegar. Put a bed of green beans down in steamer bag, cut to whatever length you like. Put carrots on top in equal portion. Put an equal portion of salmon on top. Pour balsamic vinegar liberally over concoction, until there is an eighth to a quarter of an inch on the bottom of the bag (to taste - I like salty, acidic food). Microwave for 4-8 minutes on high. The salmon is done when the top and sides are stained a beautiful brown from the balsamic vinegar, although if you aren't sure, cut it open and make sure it isn't goopy. Drain vinegar, put green beans and broccoli on plate, and salmon beside them. Not only delicious and easy to prepare, but it looks bloody beautiful.

If you don't like salty or acidic foods, try a 4oz portion of salmon steamed in with a sliced pear and apple. (You can steam carrots in with - this is best over a bed of rice, to be prepared separately.)

The six things I could never do without Propose an edit

Rationality. Everything else is derived therefrom.

I spend a lot of time thinking about Propose an edit

Quantum physics, variably, but also how to do some particular XSLT transformation for the latest client without causing a stack overflow. (I like recursive solutions.)

People, and what I think of them.

I'm constantly judging people. Not every minute of every day - I've yet to meet anyone interesting enough for that degree of scrutiny - but certainly if my attention is on them, my opinion is riding, to some extent, on what they say. (Actually, I've usually arrived at a conclusion after about five minutes, and, for dating purposes, it can almost always be summed up as "This person is okay to talk to, but prolonged involvement or sex is completely out of the question.")

I am highly judgmental. And more, I regard this as a moral imperative - people -should- get judged by their peers. This doesn't oblige them to act on that judgment - I judge you, but odds are, I care less what you think of me - except insofar as they desire to affect that person's decisions, to be a part of that person's life. I'm not going to spend time on somebody I judge as being unworthy of it - and I want to know that somebody I spend time with is spending time with me because -I-, personally, am worth it. And not because the human race is worth it, because that's the total abdication of value judgments, an intellectual cowardice on par with racism.

I have no use for other people's opinions of me - but I have no use for people who don't hold, and act, on them.

On a typical Friday night I am Propose an edit

I haven't had a typical Friday in about three months now. Lately, it's been driving to Dallas to visit my grandparents for the few weeks I'm still in Texas.

This Friday (11-28-08) I'll be packing.
Next Friday I'll be in Connecticut.
And the following Friday - Michigan, doing work to get a house livable.

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

I don't like this question, so I'm inventing my own: Semi-random fact about myself:

I've been up a climbing wall once. I took an inordinate amount of time because I tested my weight on every step - it only occurred to me after the fact that I was expecting them to come loose. This says something about my personality, really - I test everything before I trust it. Including people, and often without realizing it.

You should message me if Propose an edit

You're a rational egoist who knows your own value and isn't looking for somebody to confirm it for you.

And if you aren't the sort of person who has been to more than two foreign first-world nations on vacation and has never been to New Mexico, Texas, or Colorado (Or the Southwest generally - California and Nevada don't count, however). Seem a strange requirement? I can explain, but chances are, if I have to, you probably shouldn't message me anyways.

If you think you can scrute me. Some have thought they could scrute me, but they were wrong. All who have tried have failed. I am inscrutable.

(Okay, not really - I'm mildly predictable - but that was too much fun not to write.)

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