My respect for Nudie Cohen is boundless. I'm synaesthetic... I like to call myself a synaesthete but that's an affectation, not the technical term. I'm always surprised by what I get excited by. I like the finer things in life - like fur stoles and Godiva chocolates and really really expensive tattoos - but I can and will wrestle flatpacks AND WIN.

I like being made to laugh, and making people laugh. That's pretty top-notch. And drawing tiny pictures, and being at the top of very high trees, and kissing in places where I'm not strictly meant to be.

I seem to be going through some very extravagant high-femme phase, which I LOVE, although it's a bit baffling. My ideas about gender - hmmm. In relation to myself, I'm quite happy to use "femme" as an adjective, but never a noun. That's not me. As a label I find it a) limiting and b) far too much to live up to. As long as you don't turn up with any preconceived notions about my tree-climbing abilities/creepy-crawly fear threshhold/sexual role, we'll be cool.

I'm pretty pleased with my life really - although v surprised to find myself in the 3rd year of my degree. If you know where all the time has gone, please pat it on the head and send it back to me, yes? I adore my course. It makes me very, very happy. My wankfodder right now is a great big stack of postgrad prospectuses. Prospecti.

On the side, I set up a magazine with my best friend. It folded (ah ha ha ha, industry joke, lovey), but it was fun. Now I run a kunst-und-wunderkammer in my home. Oh, and I run a Very Good gay night at Shoosh on wednesday nights - if you're ever in norwich, you should come! I'm learning to DJ...

being mindblowingly thick (despite really being quite intelligent). Witness my first encounter with a camera phone: "Wha-? It's me! but how did...? Is it a mirror? I don't understand!"

Buying books. Oh, it's nice to be given them, but to my mind there is no greater pleasure than wandering through Waterstones with a fistful of book tokens and deciding on what I'm going to learn today.

(I'd rather go to some used bookshop, but they don't do vouchers do they? More's the pity.)

I'm not people. You'll probably have to find that one out for yourself.

Books

The following is not meant to be some sort of definitive rundown of my Best Evers; I read way too much for that. I'll just tell you what I'm reading at the moment, k?

11 Kinds of Loneliness - Richard Yates
Alias Grace - Margaret Atwood
Persepolis - Marjane Satrapi
... but I'm mostly swamped by dissertation research - which is fortunate, because I really enjoy it. I like Danger and Purity (Douglas); Female Masculinity by Halberstam; The Social Life of Things by Appadurai; Gell's Art and Agency. Yes yes yes yes yes. I rather enjoy that my academic stuff necessitates my reading loads of Califia and erotica, and pawing through the Drag King book.

Movies

My housemate is a film buff, but I make my own little forays into that side of things. I liked that Black Cat, White Cat thing - and Casablanca, Moulin Rouge, Withnail & I, If..., Secretary, Edward Scissorhands. And there are moments when all I want is Clueless.

Music

I used to be a music buff, but I'm not any more. I never thought I'd say this - but I just no longer feel that an in-depth knowledge of every B-side and demo tape some musician made with their other band is necessary to appreciate a random pop track. After years of teenage fanaticism, I'm pretty cool with just enjoying a song for what it is. Here are some tracks I like. Read into them what you will.

Asobi Seksu - Thursday
Bat For Lashes - I'm on Fire. It's sex on legs, and I do like anything that gives a nod to Springsteen. Some of his early stuff moves me so so deeply, and I think this cover is extraordinary.
Os Mutantes - A Minha Menina - reminds me of this summer, skiving work en mass to drive around Williamsburg.
The Postal Service - Such Great Heights - an end-of-the-evening track from my first glorious year at uni. When the party's gone home and you're all in a heap with your stoned, sleepy, cosy best friends, and you've forgotten that tomorrow morning there'll be a world out there again.
Joe's Head - Kings of Leon. The whole of Youth and Young Manhood was a truly perfect album. I thought so at 16 and I still think it now. Santogold's album is the same. Just top-notch, flawless, delicious, perfection.
I like almost everything on Robyn's most recent album too.

I like Prince, David Bowie, Laura Marling, T.Rex, Kitty Daisy and Lewis... obviously much of Bob Dylan's work is knitted into my soul (everyone has to have that phase sometime, right? And it never leaves you.), Transformer-era Lou Reed feels like a really good friend of mine. I love the Mystery Jet's version of Young Love. Love. It.

This is some, not all. It's probably not even that representative. If you don't spot your favourite band on here, don't give up hope.

Food
Oh, anything I cook myself. Or have cooked for me. But I'm big on the cooking - it's something I think is important. Not in any particular highbrow way, but knowing how to cook really lovely stuff with really decent ingredients is a bit of a good skill to have.

At this moment in time, I'm going to say my favourite food is minestrone. I just made a vat of it for me and my poor sore, hungover housemates, to apologise to our bodies for all the abuse we've subjected them to... it's heaving with red onion, red pepper, leek, cabbage, kidney beans, mushrooms, and squirly pasta. Made with vegetable stock, with pesto and cheese and crispy bacon served separately, so it can be vegan if people feel that way. It tastes like GOD.

My blood sugar levels are absolutely shitey, so I'm also experimenting with how best to manage that... so far, the answer seems to be baked beans. Although I do like my chocolate.

Anything and everything. Boredom is the enemy. I am a hoarder, not only of physical things (oh yes, Boyzone annuals 1996-2001) but of information as well. The most important thing right now is to collect as much knowledge as possible - I'll decide what to do with it later.

To this end, I spend a lot of time thinking about bog people, maritime art, the Gaelic presence in 19th-century Quebec, great Regency actresses, Grinling Gibbons, the Greek myths, knitting, tattoos, Oscar Wilde, how to get money, and new Snood strategies.

In times of stress, I've been known to write emotional letters to dead celebrities.

you don't find that weird.