Get ready for lots of 'I' statements. . .

I think 'sarcastic nerd' sums it up pretty well.

I generally tuck shirts in, rather than leave them untucked. I have an expansive shoe and sock collection. I am an antimaterialist dandy.

I enjoy riding the L, but don't ride my bike enough.

I have come to enjoy living in a small apartment; it's like a boxy womb.

I like to sauté, but prefer to grill.

I am a hopeless romantic. . . sort of.

I work retail to subsidize my writing habit. I think by now that's probably a cliché.

Reading people, writing, eating, talking, cooking deliciously unhealthy things

When I have any facial hair, which is pretty much all the time, I kind of look like a stereotypical personification of a terrorist

Books: Gravity's Rainbow, The Crying of Lot 49, The Stranger, Sphere, Ender's Game, They Cage the Animals At Night, Choke, Survivor, Haunted, I Am Charlotte Simmons, The Great Gatsby, The Things They Carried, Black Hawk Down, The Age of Innocence, Lunar Park, Childhood's End, 2001: A Space Odyssey, Anthem, 1 X 1, Henry V, Twelfth Night, MacBeth, The Merchant of Venice, Tao Teh Ching. . . anything else with a focus on entropy, paranoia, nihilism, and/or the downfall of civilization. . .

Movies: Blade Runner, Dr. Strangelove (Or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb), Office Space, The Salton Sea, The Adventures of Buckaroo Bonzai Across the Eighth Dimension, Super Troopers, The Usual Suspects, 12 Monkeys, The Big Lebowski, Fight Club, Escape from New York, Layer Cake, Intermission, Bullitt, The Tao of Steve, Donnie Darko, Being There, Get Carter, Tadpole, Sexy Beast, High Fidelity, Panic, Léon, SuperBad, Glengarry Glen Ross, Redbelt, Shaun of the Dead. . .

Music: Jethro Tull, Frank Zappa et al., Steely Dan, Air, Death In Vegas, Depeche Mode, New Order, Pink Floyd, Led Zeppelin, CSN(Y), Moby, Kinky Friedman, Loudon Wainwright III, Joe Walsh, Beck, Gary Jules, Muse, I Monster, Massive Attack, The Stranglers, Nine Inch Nails, Stevie Wonder, Duran Duran, CAKE. . .

Food: Right now I have an obsession with anything double-starch - pierogies, samosas, gnocchi, egg rolls filled with noodles, etc.

I'd like to think that oxygen, water, food, shelter and friends/family are givens. That said, my six are the following:

1. Swiss Army Knife
2. Sturdy Pair of Shoes
3. A Computer/The Internets
4. Coffee
5. Music
6. Dark Sense of Humor

Existence, or the lack thereof

Working, chilling at home, seeing a movie, or all of the above

Once at breakfast I drank three small cups of maple syrup for six dollars. I then drank a half bottle of Tabasco for eleven dollars.

You've read this far and it still sounds like a good idea