I've been told that I'm an extremely optimistic person hidden inside an extremely cynical person. I'm not sure how much I agree with that. The person who told me that was a horrible wanker but I truly believe they've got the potential to get better.

I'm a pragmatically progressive humanist who likes following conversational tangents to their furthest weirdest reaches.

I like writing. Well, sometimes I hate doing it but I love the brief moments when a sentence comes together perfectly in your head. Harry Crews described writing as the closest thing a man can get to childbirth. That sounds kind of hyperbolic to me, but who am I to argue with that guy? He could kill me with a look, and then he'd write beautifully about doing it.

I like reading things. I like listening to things. I like thinking about the things I read and dancing to the things I listen to. Buying books that I can't really afford is my one true vice. One day the sometime lofty towers of novels and poetry and plays will be down-razed and tumble upon me in my sleep and I will die drowning in metaphors and plot twists. What a way to go. They'll say "It's what he would've wanted." Fuck that. I want to go out aged 90-something in a knife fight with a sailor in a Moonbase speakeasy.

At the moment I'm learning to drive, working a shit job until I have money to go back to university or travel a bit, in general I'm just sorting myself out as much as I want to sort myself out.

Procrastination and useless trivia. Bad puns and worse hangovers. Punk rock lyrics and random quotes. Reconciling the apparently inherently regressive nature of said punk with the aspirations and ideas of a lifetime of soaking up romance and recklessness and intellectual shite from every source I stumble upon. Bullshitting, oh, the bullshitting.

I have the physique of a Greek god, if it was the Greek god of mediocre physiques. And I make really shit jokes.

Books: Blood Meridian, The Phineas Poe Trilogy, Catch-22, Discworld, Double Duce, The Border Trilogy, Suttree, One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, Charles Bukowski, Kurt Vonnegut, Snow Crash, Italo Calvino, The Stars My Destination, The Bas-Lag Trilogy, The Outsider, Shakespeare, Michael Chabon, Pussy King of the Pirates, The Things They Carried, Downriver

Music: Screeching Weasel, The Hold Steady, Bob Dylan, Tom Waits, The Mountain Goats, Jason Webley, Bomb the Music Industry!, The Clash, Off With Their Heads, Against Me!, The Measure (SA), The Vindictives, The Copyrights, Bent Outta Shape, Bruce Springsteen, Ted Leo and the Pharmacists, Johnny Cash, Dear Landlord, The World/Inferno Friendship Society, Fancy Pants and the Cellphones

Movies: South Park, Fight Club, The Dirty Dozen, Cinema Paradiso, The Outlaw Josey wales, In Bruges, Terminator 2, Wristcutters: A Love Story, Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure, Charley Varrick, The Proposition, Brick, Wonder Boys, Hot Fuzz, Subway, LA Confidential, Gladiator, The Big Lebowski, There Will Be Blood, Cross of Iron

Comics: Watchmen, Transmetropolitan, Hitman, Top Ten, Nextwave: Agents of H.A.T.E., Sandman, Desolation Jones, Wormwood: Gentleman Corpse, The Winter Men, Scalped, Howard the Duck, Teenagers from Mars, Criminal, Young Liars

TV: The Wire, The West Wing, Rome, Charlie Brooker, Harry Hill, The Daily Show, Clone High, Firefly, Cowboy Bebop, It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia

Food: Fried onions, Lidl Potato Salad

Punk rock
Books
The internet
Self-deprecation
Punk rock books
Duct tape

Life, the universe and everything. I think too much about everything, from the trivial and personal to the grand and sweeping.

where I am needed. Like a fireman. Or a superhero. Or a pizza-delivery boy.

Trite as it sounds, I really feel punk rock did actually save my life.

You want someone to talk to about anything, especially books or music or ideas. I'm good at those.