I had a pretty preposterous bunch of hooey here before as setup for a throwaway joke, but for reasons I don't particularly need to go into I think I'll actually be serious for once.

I'm a grad student in history at SUNY Albany at the moment, which took quite a bit more effort to make happened than I'd ever have considered likely when I decided to take the plunge and apply back in late 2006. It's just the latest in an extraordinarily prolonged flirtation with academia that I suppose is now progressing on towards something more committed. Draw as many relationship-dynamic inferences from that last sentence as you care to. I moved up here from Boston, which I arrived at after a couple of years in DC after moving down there from my home state of Vermont. I tend to move around, it would seem.

Anyway I'm a mostly-unhinged historian in training, with a penchant for pulling off elaborate nonsense to keep myself from going (more) insane from boredom. You'd think I wouldn't have the time but somehow it seems I do.

I am sardonic, adaptable, and out of my damn mind

I spend almost all my time, it seems, in doing research for my dissertation and to be prepared for whatever my undergrads might ask their (presumably) favorite TA about. Oh yeah, and so as not to look like a total jackass in either of those two scenarios.

In those spare hours I've somehow whittled out I also spend a reasonably amount of time at the gym, most days. This comes less from pure vanity (although that certainly plays a role as well) than a desire to both stay slender and fit while still being able to eat any goddamn thing I want whenever I want. That and I get runner's high like mad, I find. I've got one 15k race I've been doing every summer, and am currently working my way up to doing a half-marathon at some point in the near future. Probably.

On the off chance that makes me sound like some sort of jock shithead, I feel I should also mention that whenever possible I indulge my inner nerd (not that it's buried all that deep) with the contrived fiction of video- and role-playing games. No MMORPGs, though, thankfully I avoided that addiction. I am a massive damn geek, though I've long since learned how to go covert among the normal adults when required.

Any and all things historical and/or geek related. Anyone who responds to that by sarcastically asking if that means biting the heads off chickens throughout time is amazing for getting the references.

I can do a whole lot of other stuff pretty well too, I like to think.

Whether or not I'm on fire. Or maybe that I'm fairly tall and have a deep, loud voice. Whichever stands out more, honestly.

-1984 (obviously), The Baroque Cycle, Cryptonomicon, Snow Crash, The Diamond Age (basically anything from Stephanson), A Song of Ice and Fire, H.P. Lovecraft, The Engineer Trilogy and a staggering amount of historical nonfiction (including several Russian door-stopper novels by Dostoevsky and the like because honestly they're social/political criticisms wrapped up a thin layer of fiction to fool the censors). I used to read tons of crappy pulp D&D fantasy but I really can't get into it anymore, despite still playing the games.

-The Matrix Trilogy, The Road Warrior, The Incredibles, Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow, A Touch of Evil, The Third Man, Night/Dawn/Day/Land of the Dead, Pirates of the Caribbean trilogy, Sin City, The Spirit, Sergio Leone's spaghetti westerns, Star Wars (but only the good, original, pre-edited ones). Don't get out to the movies all that much anymore, honestly, which is why there's not much recent on here. I should probably do something about that.

-While I watch TV, there's really no particular shows I watch routinely or regularly; TV's mostly just for filling in spare pieces of time when I'm not doing something else, or when I'm sick and need something to bring me down from the fever-induced hallucinations. I used to watch Supernatural all the time, and sooner or later probably will again.

-Metallica, Iron Savior, Pink Floyd, Soundgarden, Temple of the Dog, Audioslave (sense a theme there?), Led Zeppelin, Pearl Jam, DragonForce, Warren Zevon, Spacehog, Nine Inch Nails, AC/DC, Iron Maiden, Judas Priest, Bella Morte, Front Line Assembly, Type O Negative, White/Rob Zombie, Pantera, Garbage, Stone Temple Pilots, Velvet Revolver, Alice in Chains, more showtunes than I'd care to admit (mostly Gilbert and Sullivan), an embarrassing amount of 80s music of which the majority is hair metal.

-I love to eat, and cook for that matter. My horizons are considerably wider than they were growing up, and I find it's fun to try to make a dish you've never done before (unless it goes spectacularly badly, of course). Not that aren't some things I don't like/don't want to try, of course.

Paranoia strongly urges me not to disclose any of these, but I've managed to overcome it by threatening my brain with a screwdriver: excitement, metal, freedom of action, books, single malt scotch, a functioning air defense network.

Just how daunting a prospect is writing a doctoral dissertation

Still rarely much that's exciting, since I'm now working non-stop on my PhD dissertation. Which is a pity, because as we all know Fun is Mandatory here in the Alpha Complex.

Not really my thing to give up secrets for free, honestly.

...you feel like it? Seriously, this is a required question?

Send me a message if you like; maybe something'll come of it, maybe not. I'll do my best to not be boring, and that ain't nothing.