Update: Following a series of byzantine but ultimately encouraging negotiations with an old flame, I am now in a monogamous relationship. However, I am still actively searching for friends.

I was going to make a joke about platonic friends, and how you should message me if you are made up of regular polygons meeting in the same configuration at each vertex, but I actually hate the phrase "platonic friends." My point is, I'd still like to meet smart, interesting people who like sharing ideas, playing, and being excellent to each other.

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I'm a scientist! Saying that makes me happy.

I'm working on research in health psychology and positive psychology, because I believe it's possible to build a world where things work better. I want to live among people who think life should be relaxing; it should be humane; it should be fun. I want less suffering and more awesome badassness.

I am basically thinking that we should hang out.

I like living with people. I like having good friends I can share my life with. If there's one thing studying evolutionary psychology has taught me, it's to not ignore the basic things we're built for: Running around outside, cooperating with others, and sitting around with some good friends.

If you're into googlestalking, I'll save you the trouble: I blog at inhumandecency.livejournal.com

I'm doing research on positive emotions, coping, and immune function at the Osher Center for Integrative Medicine, part of UC San Francisco. The name sounds very woo-woo, but we're all about approaching complementary / alternative / folk medicine with rigorous empiricism, figuring out the underlying principles, and coming up with practical techniques that demonstrably help people. In real life! It's a dream come true.

It also gives me frequent excuses to say "psychoneuroimmunology," which never gets old.

I just moved to California from Ann Arbor, Michigan, and so a lot of what I'm doing is "experimenting." I don't live in a co-op anymore, I'm done being an overworked overstressed grad student, and my social circle is scattered and far away. It's time to come up with an excellent new life!

In my spare time, I write fairy tales about bouncy little creatures called slimes, and work hard at developing the right habits.

I used to run marathons and be a 9-foot Dance Dance Revolution player, but I've been sidelined by an injury that's defied all diagnosis and treatment. For the past couple of years I've been weightlifting, and now I'm learning to swim. I'm thinking about taking up yoga, because hey, California.

Also a bunch of little projects: growing plants, raising worms, decorating an apartment on my own for the first time...

Figuring out how things look from other peoples' perspectives.

Bringing together disparate ideas -- having a conversation that softening the boundaries between our ideas while preserving the intellectual integrity of each.

Making people laugh, making myself laugh, seeing the absurd with genuine appreciation.

Geeking out, and getting you to geek out so I can learn all sorts of interesting things and see how cool you are.

Bouncing

I look kind of like Jesus (White Jesus).

***authors

Kim Stanley Robinson (I appear to be unusual in that I like his harder science fiction and his more "WTF" novels equally well, and don't think they're that different)

The Harvard Negotiation Project (they wrote _Getting to Yes_. Sure, it's a corporate negotiation book, but it's a darn good one).

Ursula LeGuin, Haruki Murakami, Jeff Noon, Roy Baumeister, Alan Moore

***music

Suzanne Vega, the Flaming Lips, Ra Ra Riot, Cloud Cult, Mike Doughty, The Postal Service, Dar Williams, Orbital, Kenny Rogers (I was raised Texan; it's in my bones)

My musical acquisitions are pretty scattershot. Apparently I'm "indie"? I'm always happy to hear new things

***Television

Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Revolutionary Girl Utena, um... more Buffy. I don't watch a lot of TV. I'm not trying to imply that I do something more valuable with my time, I just don't.

I get guilty enjoyment from Law & Order: Criminal Intent despite its unsympathetic portrayal of constitutional protections.

As a fan of Paul Ekman and his research on faces, I wanted to like Lie to Me, but I just don't.

I can enjoy watching most things, because if I don't like something then I can spend my time thinking about why someone else evidently did.

***foods

I'm a vegetarian for environmental and certain ethical reasons (but I get along fine with meat-eaters). I'm actually a pesco-vegetarian and the best thing I ever ate was a pickled herring I got from a street market in Amsterdam. I also love fresh-baked whole wheat breads, and Scharffen Berger bittersweet chocolate.

good friends

meaningful work

the Internet

nature

stories

conditioner

* what other people might be thinking, so I can see how their weird behavior actually makes perfect sense.

* How I would make someone laugh, or what interesting debates we might have

* Neopaganism and spirituality as a neglected side of applied psychology, which in some cases kicks the applied psychologists' asses.

* Currently, a story I want to write about a bouncy little slime who studies Kabbalah with a Hasidic Rabbi

* How everything is beautiful and I should just calm down and watch

With friends, when I can be.

I am secretly proud of how little of my profile I had to change when I went from "seeking dating partners" to "seeking friends." I feel like it confirms that I was being honest.

... you love ideas, words, metaphors, structures, slippage, turnabout, synthesis, and moments of realization

... you can at least tolerate someone who occasionally says things like that. Not constantly, but sometimes.

... you like the octopus, nature's most adorable creature.