I ceased some years ago to be a capital-G "Geek"; while I do somewhat miss having such a tidy, descriptive box to fit into, I'm also kind of happy I no longer fit into that one. Plenty of my geeky interests and affectations persist to this day, but I'm generally doing a lot more that falls outside of that description. This year has seen me getting into roller derby, the local theatre scene, and exploring Uptown, and I’d love to find someone to share that with, or who maybe has something new to show me.

Looking for the next step in my career. People in my position used to be called "strippers"; for better or for worse, I got into printing after we stopped developing (“stripping”) film. Now I can only lay claim to the title of “proofer”, which is still basically a desk jockey putting in my forty working with QuarkXpress and InDesign, Photoshop and Illustrator, Prinergy and Metrix.

For five years now I’ve practiced a Japanese sword art called battôjutsu, which I like describing to people as being akin to Clint Eastwood-style quick-draw gunslinging, but with swords. For the record, I hated Kill Bill (peace be unto David Carradine).

I’m flirting with domestication. Pending the introduction of Bachelor Chow in 20-lb. bags at my local supermarket, I’m trying more things out in the kitchen, most recently pulling off a couple of damn decent Indian dishes. I was recently gifted a wok, which means now I need to find a couple of recipes to put that through its paces.

And I’m doing a little volunteer work, teaching basic computer skills to people coming back from substance abuse problems. It’s useful to real people in a way my day job will never be, and I really enjoy doing it.

If I answer "being humble" to this question, have I just negated that quality in myself? What if I said I was "just okay" at it? I think I have begun to excel at abusing em dashes and semicolons.

I will go so far as to say, however, that I'm beginning to cut a damn good rokudan giri.

I've replaced the jika-tabi I bought in Nara with a more sneaker-y looking version of same; I think those tend to stick out. In general, I imagine my black Japanese hair probably tops the list, but I guess I need to ask other people for their input on this one.

Books: American Gods, Good Omens, Lamb: The Gospel According to Biff, Christ's Childhood Pal. I love religion as a storytelling framework, and these stories all have fun with their source material without being mean-spirited, but are also willing to call shenanigans from time to time.

Movies: Hoo, boy... Memento, The Dark Knight, The Hunt for Red October. Thai martial arts flick Chocolate is a new favorite, along with action romps Shoot ‘Em Up and Crank. I'd love to say that if you didn't love WALL•E, it's just not going to work out, but that would be kind of pretentious; I'll have to settle for saying I really, really, really liked it.

Music: I’m not really a huge music person; I tend to find stuff I love in random places. Being more of a movie buff, I find film scores sticking in my head from time to time, and lately I’m listening to a lot more Rise Against and some Flogging Molly.

Food: Japanese and Indian go to the head of the line, but there's a lot that I like.

•"Friends and family" is trite, but it's overused because it's true. Wouldn't we all be a little effed without them, particularly in a Marty McFly sort of way?

•My twin cats Kimba and Karma. Even if they do occasionally puke on my carpet, they’re good cats. I confess I have begun talking to the little bastards, but hasten to add they have not, as yet, begun talking back.

•Spelling, grammar and punctuation. Honestly, I’m really not a dick about this one, but I do get a little concerned when grown men and women in front of full QWERTY keyboards start typing like LOLcats.

•Great design: be it the Starship Enterprise or the Fender Stratocaster or Apple’s latest iWidget, there are just certain shapes which do not occur in nature and are deeply striking to me on some level besides simple utility.

•Speaking of iWidgets, I love 'em. I love Apple's design ethic, I love their ease-of-use, and I love their not needing to be reformatted every year to restore lost performance. You may consider this to be an unfair indictment of Microsoft and their product offerings. That's tough.

•Stories. To drop a quote, "I'm just an interpreter, and not much good at telling stories." But good storytelling (and sometimes, really, really bad storytelling) gets me in the same place as good design, and I think the stories we share with others help to tell them a little bit about who we are.

The threads that bind everything together—this person to that, at a certain time, in a certain place, for a certain purpose. How far back do you have to step from the people, the time, and the place in order to see the purpose?

More recently: How do horror movie teens find time to do junior detective work between all their friends' funerals? Seriously: "We have to be at Sharon's funeral at two. That gives us two hours to investigate the old hospital before Kelly's visitation downtown. If we duck out early, we can research ancient Sumerian death rites at the library, but we can't be out too late because in the morning we have to..." I want to know how that would work out in the real world.

What, you mean like "I dress to the left"?

Actually, I’ve been digging my Uptown neighborhood since I got here a year ago, but I still don’t feel cool enough to break into the local crowds. To that end, I'm sure I could find it in me to end a human life if doing so somehow meant I could talk like an Aaron Sorkin character for the rest of my natural span, but so far nobody’s made me an offer, not even the Robot Devil.

If you’re up for meeting over coffee or beer or wine. I love this site for introducing me to cool new people I’d never meet in my day-to-day, but my theory is that the longer you spend talking with someone by email, the more the mind starts to fill in the blanks and create an entirely separate person from the one you ultimately might meet.