In my life, I've found gainful employment as a manufacturer of cufflinks, a writer, a smuggler, a home-care worker, a webdesigner, a pitboss, a professor, and a cowboy. For the past three years, I've been working to develop a digital publishing company into a viable business; I've just given notice at my day job so that I can do it full-time. It's terrifying and exhilarating at the same time.

If you'd have caught me after getting off the phone with my grandparents, you might have realized that I'm not from around here. It may take a while, but I'm starting to see how this place could feel like home. I adopt grandfathers like they're going out of style. On the other hand, I'm hard on shoes and cars; I suppose you could say I'm always in motion. In fact, I spend so much time traveling that I enjoy little more than a night at home, cooking for myself and close friends. I compensate for my shyness with a practiced gregariousness; the truly kind forgive the act while enjoying the antics.

Writing alternate endings.

In short: looking for a new dance partner.

Listening to what people are saying, even if they don't hear it themselves. Telling stories. Breaking down arguments and positions into their constitutive bits. Getting into trouble. Proving a catalyst.

I'm 6'5". That's taller than you'd think.

And the beard... it comes and goes.

(a) 1984, Antigone, Blood Meridian, Diary of a Wombat, Discipline and Punish, the Hamlet, the Illuminations, Jude the Obscure, Kim, Leviathan, the Little Prince, Lolita, the Odyssey, Remembrance of Things Past.

(b) 12 Monkeys, the 39 Steps, After Life, American History X, Big, the Devil's Backbone, High Art, Hudson Hawk, Mystery Men, Permanent Midnight, Requiem for a Dream, the Pillow Book, the Silence, Swimming with Sharks, Tokyo Story, Waking the Dead, Zoolander

(c) Atmosphere, Leroy Carr, the Black Keys, the Dead Weather, FischerSpooner, Metric, the Notwist, Washington Phillips, the Postal Service, Thievery Corporation, Underworld, the Yeah Yeah Yeahs.

(d) Avocado, cheese (particularly the stinky ones), Chubby Hubby, collard greens, Ethiopian, tacos al pastor, tequila, udon.

(e) Community, Justified, Night Court, Six Feet Under, the Wire.

Friends, family, literature, sex, food, and...iPhone?

How to find more people to write for my publishing company. When am I finally going to make it to Argentina. The erosion of civil liberties in this country.

Avoiding the slush pile.

By accident, I once spent the night in a brothel in Tangiers. I didn't understand why one girl kept talking to me and asking to come up to my room. Not until the next morning--when I noticed all the same girls from the night before still standing around the entrance--did I realize what was going on.

...you are moved to do so.