I have lived in Puerto Rico, Massachusetts, California, and Illinois. I am trying to figure out what to do with my life. I am an only child. Both my parents were trilingual; I am not. These have been unusually short sentences. Up there is a picture of me making a face of consternation; I'm not much of a photos-of-myself person, but in deference to the nature of the site, I may try and rustle up or arrange a glamour shot.

As alluded to above, I don't know. I'm currently working for a contractor to a large agency in the city government, doing quality control and writing some reports. It's not what I want to be doing in ten years. I think about law school from time to time; much of the rest of the time I'm thinking about writing. I wrote a novel when I was ten years old, and I've been working on the followup ever since. (I'd say the novel wasn't very good, but considering that I was ten I actually think it was pretty awesome.)

I'm really good at writing (in general, on a sentence-to-sentence level). I'd like to think I'm also good at writing, as in something you'd want to read for pleasure, and not just because it's an effective summary of last month's statistical data. I have a variety of musical skills. I'm getting reasonably good at seasoning meat before I cook it, though I use garlic powder as a crutch. I'm really good at feeling awkward. Also people seem to think I'm funny, or else they're just quite good at being polite.

These days, probably that I have a beard.

Hmm.

I think Moby Dick is the best novel I've ever read, although despite my suspicions of reading things in translation I'd have to say Don Quixote and The Brothers Karamazov also blew me away. That said I tend to prefer more recent fiction; White Noise, Wonder Boys, American Gods, Infinite Jest, and Snow Crash seems like a decently representative, randomly ordered sample.

My first favorite movie was The Princess Bride and it's all been downhill since then. I love Fight Club and Lost in Translation. I loved Batman Begins but was lukewarm on the Dark Knight. I'd rather rewatch The 40-Year-Old Virgin than either. In general I like modern TV drama more than I do modern film drama; The Sopranos, Deadwood, The Wire, Buffy, Battlestar Galactica, Veronica Mars, and so forth. Statistically speaking, I probably like Dollhouse more than you do, though I'm ready to be pleasantly surprised.

I listen to a lot of music, but not as much as when I was seventeen. Lately I've been listening to old blues pianists, like Cow Cow Davenport and Jimmy Yancey. My all time favorite rock bands are probably Radiohead, Tool, Smashing Pumpkins, Pixies, and the Afghan Whigs, but the best band of all time is Miles Davis' 1960s quintet. With each passing year, I like more modern classical music.

While I have weaknesses for certain classic American food artifacts - your cheeseburgers with fries, e.g. - and am locked in an endless deathgrip with chocolate, I also love food in the "interesting cuisine in a nice restaurant sense," food as aesthetic experience and experiment. I hate the word "foodie" - what's wrong with "gourmet"? - but if you said I was a little bit of a foodie you wouldn't be wrong.