I'm a wide-eyed idealist, minus the wide eyes.

Once, a friend told me I have a bad habit of embellishing my stories. Then ninjas killed him.

NOTE: I'm passing through Chicago for the month of May, as a stopover on my way to Los Angeles thereafter. That said, I'm always up to meet cool people, which, SUB-NOTE: means you, unless you're not cool.

Drifting across the continent from Brooklyn to LA, by way of Chicago. I am a leaf on the wind.

I write all the time. My subject matter tends to skew nerdy, but that's okay because nerdy things rule.

I also do stand-up. I tell people it's to bring joy to others, but I really just want an excuse to be a bastard in public.
This is what me being funny looks like.

My friends have cited ample evidence that I'm the best at being in my twenties.

"It's seven in the morning. Why the hell are you so cheerful?...Are you whistling?" - my roommates

"Hey, you look just like [Asian person I look nothing like]." - everyone else

Books: Neil Gaiman. Comics. Fantastical, pulpy, crime-y, thrill-y, scifi, adventure-type stuff. The two most depressing words in the English language are "literary fiction."

Movies: Quentin Tarantino. Indie romances, explody action flicks, musicals, superheroes, quirky things, and Ten Things I Hate About You.

TV: Joss Whedon. If it's offbeat, geek-friendly, on FX/HBO, canceled before its time, and/or British, I like it. Current obsession: Adventure Time.

Music: My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy, Kanye West. The Question, Slackers. Costello Music, Fratellis. Sex, Love, and Rock N' Roll, Social Distortion. Fantasies, Metric. Pleased to Meet Me, The Replacements. Illinois, Sufjan Stevens. Weezer, Weezer. Between the Bridges, Sloan. Release Me, The Like.

Food: I've spent a decade perfecting my chili recipe. Otherwise: steak. Pineapple. Tea. Beer. Waffles. Whiskey. Things inside tortillas or bread. Bacon. Sriracha on everything.

Something to write on
Something to write with
Something to write about
Something to write for
And something to write.

Also, beer.

The fact that we're just blips on each other's radar. You walk past someone, and they're just someone you walked past. But that person goes on to have an entire day where they interact with a whole network of people you'll never know and visit places that mean something completely different to them than they do to you. And you, who have all those things in your own life, are just someone they walked past.

Apparently, there's a word for that thought: "sonder." Who knew?

Food. Sex. Gender politics. Cities. Geeky things.

Undoing a whole week's worth of workouts. And probably singing.

I turn into a different person when the Blackhawks are playing.

Douchey people in my fiction tend to get named Brad. I don't know why.

-You leave comfort zones demolished in your wake.

-You're disappointed this profile lacks overt Star Wars references.

-Kim Pine is a standard to which you aspire.

-You want to read one of my novels and tell me how brilliant I am.

-You want to know the secret to doing a perfect Bane impression.