I'm finding myself difficult to summarize. I feel like my social circle has stagnated a little and I'd like to mix it up a bit. Not really looking for lovey dovey squishy crap, just got out of that. Mostly just interesting people to hang out with, go get a beer, dance, whatever. I'm obviously sort of odd, can be a little Data-like in my social skills, work like a demon (I'm a lifer line cook, so I don't really do weekends unless it's late, I can flip bacon with my bare hands, I always smell vaguely "kitcheny," and I can talk smack in several flavors of Spanish) and am deathly allergic to eggplants, idiots and screechy dramatic types. I'm kind of obsessed with the Uncanny Valley, so my home decor strikes some people as profoundly disturbing. There are a lot of puppets, robots, clowns, mannequins, heads. I tend to just tack tons of extra shit on here whenever I'm bored (or in the case of the negative shit at the bottom, irritated), so I'm probably a lot less self-absorbed than I seem from this wall of words.

However menial it may seem, I really REALLY love what I do. I've gotten mad flack for being "too smart to be a cook," but I get to go to work almost every day (usually work 6 days a week) and do something I absolutely love and am REALLY FUCKING GOOD AT. Look up the psychological concept of "flow state." It's better than any drug, ever. It's not every night -- sometimes it's just plain old hard goddamned work, but every once in a while, I'm cranking out 400 covers and I feel like fucking Shiva. Multi-armed goddess of creation and destruction, knives and fire and sustenance, spinning and dancing and kicking all the ass. No thinking, just doing, doing it fast, doing it beautiful, doing it perfectly. And that is absolutely worth the crap money, no insurance, my wrecked knees and gnarly-ass hands, burns and cuts and 10 hour shifts with no breaks. I've been doing it for 18 years and I'm not sick of it yet. There are always the people who say "OMG! You should open your own place!" Been there, done that, got a positive (if wee) write-up in the NYTimes and....hated it. I am not fond of being in charge (wink, wink, nudge, nudge, euphemistic parenthetical aside). I'm happy with what I do, and plan to keep doing it until I completely fall apart.

...cranking out a few hundred covers a night without losing it, dancing like some kind of Godzilla robot flygirl, building ridiculous and/or creepy stuff out of garbage, speed-reading, making decent meals appear out of empty cupboards and thin air, collecting weird-ass hobbies, bonobo jujitsu.

Generally, the insect tattoos. Entomophobes need not apply, because I am literally covered in them. I have been told numerous times that I "clean up nice, but don't know how to dress." I suppose I'm still pretty much stuck in "scruffy homeless punk kid, circa 1991" mode, but I occasionally wear nicer pants, now. I have ginormous eyeballs. I'm really fidgety. My hair is usually trying to take over the world, but I lucked out and short, mussy hair is fashionable now, so I suppose that's handy. People consistently think I'm 10 years younger than I am, but I'm not sure why other than I might be somewhat immature and working nights for 20 years means I haven't gotten much sun. My hands will never be pretty -- they're generally covered with cuts and moderately horrendous burns and are constantly dry and freakishly calloused. So I'll never be a hand model, but I can totally flip logs in the fireplace bare-handed.

I read voraciously, and usually have about 4 books going at once. Lots of hard science fiction and forensics-type mysteries, but tons of non-fiction, too. I have a penchant for obsolete science textbooks. China Mieville, Alan Dean Foster, David Drake, Jeffrey Deaver, Neal Stephenson, Neil Gaiman, Mark Leyner, on and on and on.

I prefer my movies weird, violent and not overly emotional (foreshadowing?). Bladerunner, Mad Max (x3), Evil Dead, City of Lost Children, Triplets of Belleville, The Forbidden Zone, Metropolis, yadda yadda. I have trouble sitting still unless things are blowing up a lot. The Last Circus and Boxing Helena make me feel funny in the pants (despite my strong aversion to psychological obsession). If that does not immediately creep you out, we should probably talk.

Don't watch much TV, and what little I do watch is on the computer (my house does not actually contain a television, but there's a monitor and a media server in the living room). If I feel like mindless crap, it tends to be stuff like NCIS or CSI. Love Archer, Venture Bros, Castle, Sherlock. But TV is not generally part of my routine, and I'd rather dig my liver out with a rusty spork than sit through a sitcom.

Music: SO MUCH. I have a terabyte drive just for music. My tastes are all over the place, but lean heavily on industrial/experimental/noise, true metal, thrash, cheesy 80's metal (I can't help it, I was a 12 year old girl in 1988, it was inevitable), post-punk, early goth stuff and uncategorizeable stuff like the Residents. But I will sing along with the Carpenters or Simon and Garfunkel without shame (and fairly well), or bust out my collection of waltz 78s, or blast Wagner while I'm cleaning the house. I can't stand Morrissey, angry white boy rap-metal, autotune, new country or new R&B, whiny chicks with acoustic guitars or emo crap. Apparently it is the "done thing" to barf out a giant list of bands at this point, so I'm going to cheat and just list what's on my mp3 player right now (which is just a fraction of what I like/have, and mostly what I listen to at work or on the bus): X-RX, Xotox, Garmarna, Devotchka, the Cure, Edith Piaf, Yma Sumac, Triplets of Belleville soundtrack, David Bowie, Bow Wow Wow, Berlin, Terrorfakt, The Cramps, Slayer, Skinny Puppy, Klaus Nomi, Eisenfunk, SAM, Concrete Blonde, Tom Waits, Phosgore, Peter Schilling, Nick Cave, Nachtmahr, Modulate, Komor Kommando, Metallica, Memmaker, Foetus, Grendel, Firewater, Calexico, Fantomas, CTRL-er, Cop Shoot Cop, Bong-Ra, Balkan Beat Box, Pixies, Steinkind, Fleetwood Mac, The Damned, Joan Jett, a really kick-ass post-punk comp that has everything from Throbbing Gristle to Billy Bragg, the Slits, Devo and The Tubeway Army on it.

My career IS food. I love all good food, omnivorous, veg, vegan, whatever. Love to cook it, love to eat it, love to share it. Ironically enough, there is a huge list of stuff I can't eat, but I manage to work around it without being too much of a pain in the ass.

Coffee, cigarettes, allergy medicine (I take two every day because I'm apparently allergic to the entire world), dancing, garlic and butter.

I'm not really an overly contemplative person. At least not in a navel-gazing, philosophical way. I love to learn and stimulate my brain, but I don't spend a lot of time pontificating the unknowable or whatever. That said, it's busy in there, but it's mostly annoying ear-worm songs, food ideas, should I attempt to build my own couch, how I'd make a giant carousel out of disembodied puppet heads that played calliope music while it turns, how I should probably take a formal meat-cutting class one of these days, I really need to paint the kitchen, Benedict Cumberbatch naked, how is the internet bill more than all the other bills combined....that's maybe 5 minutes' worth, you get the picture.

Busting my ass in a kitchen. Seriously, weekends aren't really an option unless you like hanging out with exhausted people that smell like 40 quarts of chicken stock at 2am. On my day off, though, I vary from staying home and making ridiculous amounts of soup to going out to gaybars, having a couple of gin and tonics and dancing my ass off. And I'm developing a fondness for actually going out on "dates," which I was never that into, before.

I'm notorious for TMI and blurting out disturbing things. I really don't have an "acceptable conversation" filter. I'm rational and pragmatic to a fault, even though I'm really weird. Sometimes at work, I make hand-puppets out of meat and harass my co-workers in funny voices. I unconsciously make comic-book sound effects a lot. I have little to no respect for people that suffer from "sex panic," ie: "OMG, I just had sex with someone and now I'm freaking out that....I just had sex with someone. Do they respect me? Do I respect them? Are they going to get weird?! Am I?!?! I can't possibly just express my concerns like a fucking adult, I should probably just shut down and pretend I'm some sort of player instead of an adult human being that enjoys having sex." Play your "raised Catholic," or "societal programming" or "virgin/whore complex" cards or whatever. It's boring.

(If your first email/IM is "Hey, want to be FWB," just...don't even bother. Seriously. That would imply we are friends, and we are not friends (yet). You are just some clueless schmuck on the interwebs, desperate for someone to touch your sad little monkey. I am not that person.)

You're not a boring, whiny tool. Also, for pete's sake, say something vaguely interesting (and hopefully literate) if you do. I'm new to this crap, but "Durrrr....hi.....i tihk UR innaresting" is just going to make me wonder what happened to the rest of your brain. I probably won't even wonder that much. I'm no nun, but I'm not interested in the kind of skeezy douchenozzles I have nothing in common with who are just carpet bombing everything with a vagina in the vain hope that someone will touch their monkey. It ain't me, babe. Especially not if your username is some lame alphanumeric like "SexyDude69" or whatever. This is getting overly negative, but you really would not believe the sheer volume of this kind of crap I have to wade through.

TL;DR: Yes - weird, interesting, intelligent humans/aliens, extra points if you're able to introduce me to new books or music. No - suburban "Libertarian" walking hard-ons who watch shitloads of stoner TV and pour ranch dressing on all their food while jacking it to pictures of orange bitches. No - Weepy emo types who go on and on about what a sensitive feminist you are and how much you'd like a nice lady to cuddle with you and your cats, but still do tons of slut-shaming. I'm allergic to cats and crying and ennui and hypocrites. I have a thing for really tall weirdos, hyper-intellectual cro-mags, and the comfortably bizarre. Huge, smart and twisted. Silly and sick. Must be more physically intimidating than myself. Must not be trying too goddamned hard. If you are desperately searching for "the one," I will break out in hives. Even if you pretend you aren't. I'll know. I'm creepy like that.

Also, if you don't have a picture, I'm just going to assume you're hideously ugly, (monogamously) married, a serial killer, the FBI, or all of the above. If it's just a picture of oiled-up abs, I'm going to assume there's no brain attached to them, which is pretty much an instant boner-killer.

Things that make me cringe:
- phrases similar to "looking for an honest woman to make my life complete,"
- sappy poetry,
- people looking for some magical unicorn who is a freak in the sack but has only ever been with like 3 other people,
- people whose entire self-concept revolves around something tedious and boring like pot, politics, sports, religion, or some kind of "lifestyle."
- The fact that I got bored and filled a bunch of stuff out, couldn't sleep and rated something like a million people, and now I get a million hits from every mouth-breathing douchebag on the planet, every day.
- People who don't read all the words.