What else is there to say about myself other than the word "cactus"? Probably lots of other words, now that I think about it. But I am too lazy to list those other words, so "cactus" will have to do.

Being a huge nerd, I love to talk about intellectual shit like philosophy, literature, political issues, science, and feces, or some combination of these elements. (E.g., the philosophy of feces. What does it mean to be feces? Is feces composed of mind, matter, or defined functionally? How many feces can dance on the head of a pin?) Ironically, I have no formal training in any of these subjects, except feces (I have a Bachelor's degree in bullshit). And although I'm not a big drinker (three beers and I'm officially wasted), I've recently discovered that having inebriated discussions with intelligent people about these subjects can be immensely entertaining. Trying to explain cosmology or epistemological fallibilism is much more sporting when your cognition has been degraded a bit!

I am also one of those new-fangled “angry atheists” you always hear about in the papers, but so rarely see in reality. I can frequently be found biting the heads off of toddlers and molesting baby seals as a result of my atheism and my lax morals. And yes, I really am angry that I live in a world where people attempt to legislate discriminatory and divisive religious nonsense in the guise of "values" at the expense of rights for homosexuals, women, and others while simultaneously impeding scientific research on fronts such as alternative energy and stem cells that could seriously benefit humanity in the long run. I have every right to be angry about this insane nonsense. (I'm an equal opportunity hater, though, as lefty nonsense pisses me off just as much, be it support for CAM, postmodernism, political correctness, the silly assumption that whatever is "natural" is good, and so on.)

Politically I'm a liberal, and I don't mean that in any pussy-foot sort of way. I value personal liberties to such a degree that I think prostitution and drugs should be legalized/decriminalized, even though I have no desire to indulge in these activities.

I am what many people call a silly goose. No, seriously---I'm a goose. I found that out the hard way. And if you don't know what would be the hardest way to find out whether you are a goose or not, then be grateful for your ignorance.

According to the Myers-Briggs personality test I'm an INTP. Essentially this means I'm one of those introverted, absent-minded professor types, always thinking and less driven by emotions than others. I'm the type of guy that can jabber incessantly and eloquently about philosophical matters, but ask me to do something practical like check the oil, cook, wrap a present, use a hammer, or change a light bulb and I'll find a way to screw it up.

In short, I am quite the unconventional, scientifically-minded, semi-retarded, semi-drooling individual you have probably been searching for. (I am assuming, of course, that you are one of the guards from the mental institution, not a potential suitor.)

I am not doing much with my life, aside from wallowing in existential despair and occasionally consoling myself with philosophy, science, and women--which sadly are not often found together (unless you're Susan Haack). I have a degree in English which has garnered me nothing except an arcane understanding of various grammatical minutia, a dismaying understanding of postmodern literary theory clap-trap, and a low-paying job. I make up for the lack of money by meticulously saving, rarely using electricity, dating incredibly rich women, and hunting pigeons for sustenance.

In all seriousness, though, I hope to one day become a writer (I would love to write pop-science books or write about science in general), but for the time being I am left being poor and frugal. I have considered, however, going back to school to try to conquer the science of aging and potentially find a cure for the degenerative processes that cause it. I will not accept inevitable biological degeneration lying down! I'd prefer to be sitting! Or I could go back to school for any number of other interests. I simply feel restless with my life at this point, but I have no idea where to go from here.

I have a plan to retire when I’m 35 on a meager savings of $100,000 wisely invested to live off the interest. (This can be done if you live in squalor in a third-world country.) This will not work out if I get a girlfriend, as that entails I will spend money on said girlfriend, which will ruin everything. And yet I still seek a female companion of some sort. What a fool I am!

I am very good at bullshitting. I also like to debate and argue about things. I can bullshit all sorts of things. Except bullshit. I take the shit of bulls VERY seriously.

For example, Madonna's song "Like A Prayer" is actually about blowjobs. The act performed is not actually prayer, but LIKE a prayer...because it consists of getting on your knees, whispering softly to you, calling out your name, and doing this all in the midnight hour. Come on now. If that doesn't scream BLOWJOB to you, then nothing will. Except me. I frequently stand on street corners and yell "BLOWJOB" at people, you see.

I also excel at arguing with creationists, wasting time constructing lengthy online profiles, writing, and being awkward.

The first thing people usually notice about me are my highly-inappropriate and inopportune erections, which can spring forth doing things as bland as playing with puppies to burying corpses. I do not, of course, find puppies or corpses arousing. Unless they are wearing clown make-up.

People often tend to notice that I seem aloof in social situations. The silence is not an indication of disinterestedness, though. It only means I am undressing you with my eyes. (They are very adept at undoing bras.)

Also, when people sneeze, they notice that I don't say "Bless you". Should I choose to notice one's sneeze, I will sometimes reply with "Obligatory acknowledgement of your sneeze." This causes them to look at me. Why must people look at me? Am I just a piece of meat? No! I am a whole meat!

Fiction: A Burnt-Out Case by Graham Greene,
Catch-22 by Joseph Heller,
The Stranger and The Plague by Albert Camus,
The Fountainhead by Ayn Rand (And no, I'm not a part of her crazed Objectivist cult),
Nausea by Jean Paul Sartre,
The Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoevysky (Or anything else by him, for that matter),
Don Quixote by Cervantes,
I, Claudius by Robert Graves,
The Good Soldier by Ford Madox Ford,
1984 by George Orwell,
The Complete Short Stories and The Trial by Franz Kafka,
Paradise Lost by John Milton,
"The Yellow Wallpaper" by Charlotte Perkins Gilman,
"A Very Old Man with Enormous Wings" by Gabriel Garcia-Marquez,
"Sunday Morning" and "The Emperor of Ice Cream" by Wallace Stevens,
and The Black Riders and Other Lines by Stephen Crane.

Nonfiction: The Origin of Species by Charles Darwin
Bonk by Mary Roach,
Phantoms in the Brain by VS Ramachandran,
The Ancestor's Tale by Richard Dawkins,
Truth: A Guide by Simon Blackburn,
One, Two, Three...Infinity by George Gamow,
Godel, Escher, Bach by Douglas Hofstadter,
The Blank Slate by Steven Pinker,
The Demon-Haunted World by Carl Sagan,
Thus Spoke Zarathrusta by Friedrich Nietzsche,
and Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion by David Hume.

In the desert / I saw a creature, naked, bestial, / Who, squatting upon the ground, / Held his heart in his hands, / And ate of it. / I said, "Is it good, friend?" / "It is bitter--bitter," he answered; / "But I like it / Because it is bitter, / And because it is my heart.

-Stephen Crane

My favorite movies are:

Instead of telling you my favorite movies, I'm going to tell you my idea for a movie. It will be a horror dramedy musical science fiction biopic of my life. Only it will be about my life...IN THE FUTURE, where people must rhyme if they are to speak, and where Dustin, the main character, finds himself in a dire need to stop rhyming, and to speak normally, and to finally overcome the powers that be. But standing in his way is a field of mummies and vampires, reawakened by the state to be part of their undead army. And they have lasers. There will also be a romantic subplot, in which I fall in love with a robot and try desperately to find a place in said robot into which I can insert my penis, only to realize that real love is found in the heart, not the penis, so I have sex with the robot's heart instead.

In all seriousness, though, I tend to like really fucked up movies that make no sense, so that I may pretend to understand them and impress all my friends. Here's looking at you with a randomly detached eyeball inexplicably floating in pudding, David Lynch. I also like quirky comedies, along the lines of Lost Skeleton of Cadavra, Monty Python and the Holy Grail, Arrested Development, etc.

My favorite music is:

I'd like to assure everyone that I am not a music elitist. In fact, I don't understand why people are usually so obsessed with music. I think people should be obsessed with my crotch, instead. If you really must know, though, I like everything, from trip hop to classical. Some of my favorites include: Portishead, Rasputina, Nine Inch Nails, Saul Williams, Mr. Lif, Dead Prez, The Postal Service, Tears for Fears, The Hives, Stravinski and other classical pieces that make me feel like smashing things (The Rites of Spring caused a fucking riot on opening night. And you thought classical was for pussies!), Led Zeppelin, a few select country songs, pop, and crazy instrumentals a la Amon Tobin. At the moment I've been on an electropop kick. I can like pop music because of my aforementioned bullshitting abilities that allow me to interpret them as allegories or symbols for something deep and profound.

If you can't tell, I'm a bit of an art snob. I'm the guy hanging around in the abstract art section of the art museum, looking at a piece of string someone dropped on the ground and commenting about how profound it is. I like it, you see, because abstract art is frequently "meta-art", art commenting on itself.

My Favorite Foods:

It is my goal in life to eat one of every species. (I've already had obscure things like balut and roasted crickets.) Also, for some reason, I always vomit profusely whenever I eat a cinnamon roll while I'm sick. I always tell myself, don't eat a cinnamon roll or you'll vomit profusely, but the sweet-smelling deliciousness gets me every time!

First and foremost, I value learning. Reading classic philosophy, science, and various other non-fiction books and blogs satiates my desire to learn about the universe and our place in it. I value people with interests and goals in life that are similar to my own. I value art and expression. Put simply, I value all that pretensious shit that makes me seem like a pseudo-intellectual douche bag. And I am both pseudo-intellectual and a douche bag, so I suppose it works out.

JOIN THE IBFRC! I am the president and one of the few lonely members of the Interest Brackets Fucking Rule Coalition, otherwise known as the IBFRC. We are a militant organization that brackets almost everything, including interests that may seem irrelevant or which aren't even real words. We simply do not care. That's just how cool we are.

Membership Information! all you have to do is list "IBFRC" as an interest on your profile (like so: IBFRC), and you will instantly become a member.

-----Please do not confuse us with the IBAFBC (the Interest Brackets Are For Bitches Coalition), which is a sad, pathetic organization run by misguided trained monkeys who feel the need to constantly fling poo on everything, including the glory of interest brackets, because their petty monkey minds are incapable of the abstract reasoning required to truly appreciate something as sophisticated as a [ ] .------

I think about the people who have had the most influence on my life. Among the most inspirational is my dog, who has inspired me to live a life of corpulence and laziness, filled with a general sense of ease and a total lack of responsibility.

I constantly ponder all of the "deep" questions, and in a suitably inane and simplistic fashion so as to fit right in with all the other pseudo-intellectuals of the world who are just smart enough to mock creationists and fundies, but not quite smart enough to actually contribute anything of any intellectual worth to history. I am, however, content with my explorings of the shallow-end of the pool, even though I secretly resent the philosophical water-wings that prevent me from breaking through the surface tension.

I consider myself a scientific skeptic. This is not to be confused with nonscientific skeptics, or denialists, like those who deny global warming, evolution, and that HIV causes AIDS, or else construct elaborate and nonsensical conspiracy theories to explain assassinations and other major world events. I am the type of skeptic that doubts things on the basis of the evidence or the lack thereof. I am most critical of Intelligent Design (which is merely creationism dressed up in a cheap labcoat, masquerading as science) and the alternative medicine movement, as these tend to be the most harmful pseudosciences. It's all a crock of hooey! Have you ever had a crock of hooey? Believe me, it is not very tasty.

Watching one of my many Netflix movies (I watch movies constantly). Reading. Attempting to go on dates and failing miserably in doing so. (I am the master of going in for a kiss when I think a girl is interested, figuring out that she's not interested only after I have haphazardly missed kissing her lips and end up slobbering her eyebrows as she recoils, and then crawling into a hole to die of shame.) Ideally, I'd like to be having wonderful, stimulating conversation, but I'd settle for feigning interest in the new Harry Potter as you tell me all about how great it is.

Sleeping...WITH HOT WOMENZ I MET ON OKCUPID! Okay, maybe not. But a girl can dream, can't she?

AND NOW, I PRESENT TO YOU: Philosopher Break-Up Lines

Hegel: The thesis is we're breaking down. The antithesis is to fix it up. The synthesis is...we're breaking up. /// Solipsist: You think the world revolves around you! /// Dualist: My body says yes, but my mind says no! /// Plato: I'd rather have a stricly platonic relationship. /// Utilitarian: It'd be better for both of us if I just left. /// Popper: Inductively, I thought I loved you and only you. Deductively, screwing your sister falsified that hypothesis. /// Zeno: We are too distant. /// Theist: I can't explain why I want to break up with you. Therefore, God did it. /// Medieval Scholastic: (1. Our love is defined as that which nothing greater can be thought.) [2. It is greater to love than to be in love, because feeling love is better than being bound to love by a mere preposition.] (3. Therefore, I love you, but I am not IN love with you.) /// Occam: So you prefer bearded men, eh? /// Derrida: We're too "differant". /// Intelligent Design Theorist: Some things about evolution confuse me. Therefore we're breaking up. /// Materialist: Love doesn't matter to you. /// Determinist: It just wasn't meant to be! /// Marxist: This relationship is just an ideological construct designed to repress my class conciousness! Monogamy is an invention of capitalist swine! /// Kant: My proposed maxim was to love you. But I could not will to universalize this maxim and have everyone love you, otherwise you'd be cheating on me. Therefore, it is my duty not to love you! /// Logical Positivist: Our love never meant anything--the word "love" has no meaningful content, after all!

I am tremendously biased. For instance, I can be getting to know someone, enjoying everything they're saying, thinking we could be ordained by fate to be together forever, and then they'll say something about how much they love Jesus, or they'll say something approving about ghosts or psychics or alternative medicine, and then I'll immediately vomit in disgust and throw my vomit at them and scream at them with enraged vomit projected from my mouth at incredible speeds. Why do such things bother me so much? Why should I let these things get in the way if we could be compatible in other ways? And why am I always so quick to puke at the slightest thing, be it religion or cinnamon rolls? What's interesting, though, is that I don't want someone who agrees with me about everything. I want to have some sort of give and take in a conversation. But still, this bias persists.

...you are a relatively attractive female with a good sense of humor, academic interests, and the ability to put up with a self-deprecating, quirky, and strange man.

...you are a female or male who is looking for new friends.

If you message me with a stimulating topic of conversation, that would be greatly appreciated. (See my interests above for ideas.) If you message me proselytizing about creationism or Jesus, I will probably completely pwn you with scathing wit until I grow tired of you or reduce your arguments to steaming piles of dog crap, whichever happens first.

I get a lot of mail from people about my tests. If you like my test and want to tell me, that's great! I appreciate the fan letters. But don't get offended if I don't respond back. Typically I only respond to people from St. Louis, people who compliment my blog, and people who lustfully throw themselves at me with reckless sexual abandon.

AIM: stgasoline *** Google Talk: dustinmartinez82 @ gmail.com *** Email: Saint_gasoline @ yahoo.com

And check out my blog! Most of the posts are skeptical, angry rants. Shameless plugs are neat!

Also, if you agree that this profile should be MUCH shorter. :P

Editors

• ThatOneNerd