places I've lived so far: trailer home on a Mennonite farm in Pennsylvania; tent in a state park in South Carolina; apartment complex with an empty swimming pool; tiny suburban house with a huge yard; log cabin in the middle of New Jersey's fanciest soccer facility; 4,000 square foot house in a former Christian fundamentalist commune; apartment built into the side of a hill overlooking the Tappan Zee Bridge; orphanage on the outskirts of New Delhi; soul-crushing dorm on 15th street; miniscule room I had to climb over the roof to get into on 118th; east harlem apartment #2 (where I came the closest I've ever been to death); my ex-CIA grandma's house in Chapel Hill.

people are sometimes convinced by my meanderings about "menacing vibes in here" and "fucking fascists" and "dude" that I'm tie-dyed in the wool hippie. call that list an effort to complicate my image.

ehh. worrying. kvetching. trying to get things back on track.

challenging authority figures in a friendly manner, making friends with animals, contradicting myself

I find that worrying about that sort of thing too much is an impediment to my sanity.

books: postmodern literature (grace paley, donald barthelme, george saunders, haruki murakami), sciencey things (neil shubin, jonathan weiner, sean b. carroll, steven jay gould), humorous british things (terry pratchett, p.g. wodehouse, douglas adams, stephen fry). also importantly magical realism, sarah vowell, julian barnes, david sedaris, brett easton ellis, alain de botton, classics like steinbeck and proust and t.h. white... I also have a soft spot for children's fantasy books, particularly anything diana wynne jones or susan cooper writes. And of course j.k. rowling! hunter s. thompson is lovely and I can't help but adore transmetropolitan. other comics I dig- sandman, preacher, y: the last man, the walking dead. adore dune and isaac asimov.

movies: pierrot le fou, divine intervention, russian ark, the diving bell and the butterfly, natural born killers, notre musique, noi albinoi, once upon a time in the west. wes anderson, quentin tarantino, and the coen brothers won't get me any street cred, but I lubs them. the movie I have the most semi-religious attachment to is definitely ghost dog: the way of the samurai. cave of forgotten dreams and encounters at the end of the world have both been the subjects of a lot of thought lately.

music: fucked up, wu-tang clan, leftover crack, agalloch, ulver, spiritualized, 16 horsepower (and anything david eugene edwards touches), woods of ypres, envy, ufomammut, bathory, nick cave and the bad seeds and major lazer are representative of a few of my favorite genres. I was raised on janis joplin and I'm still a big fan. huge burzum fan as long as I don't listen to Varg's ridiculous racist meanderings. (NSBM is stupid and makes me mad.)

food: cuchifritos, vietnamese, anything from anywhere interesting, papaya dog

spending time in third world countries teaches you that you can do without pretty much anything.

buuut I love black coffee, really hoppy IPAs, and vinegar-based barbeque... and I never, ever go anywhere without a book.

Here at the edge of this world
Here I gaze at a pantheon of oak, a citadel of stone
If this grand panorama before me is what you call God. . .
Then God is not dead

in a new place, so there's no template yet

substance abuse issues like nobody's biznizz.

I'm an extremely sentimental drunk.

you've got skills that would be useful in the event of a zombie apocalypse but also a sense of humor and some spark of intelligence

you can tell that under my prickly exterior lies a heart of... something?

but eh, it ain't a big thing. if you want to, go for it. start a conversation though. "hey thar" does not suffice.