Right now I'm wishing that I were a midget with a cowardly disposition and a problem with self esteem so that my three word description could be "little, yellow, diffident".

I'm not sure there's much else I could say in here that would paint any clearer a picture of me than that does, so instead I'm going to tell you my favorite joke. If you don't laugh at it then you're missing whatever part of you it is that makes you human. I think it's the gall bladder.

Did you hear about the new corduroy pillows?
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They're making headlines!

Something that you probably ought to know about me is that I'm fascinated by absurdity. I love paradoxes, and catch-22s (fantastic book, by the way) and unbelievable stories told with a completely straight face.

Also, you can get me on AIM or Yahoo at screenname nipplefloss. I'll explain the name if you ask nicely, but suffice it to say that I use it because it's never ever been taken and people certainly remember it. Admirable qualities.

So I've recently (as in the past year) relocated to Portland for a new job and some adventure, however I know absolutely no one here, and had never even visited before moving here. Hence, I have no friends, family, aquaintances or any sort of life here. Please feel free to offer to show me around, take me out, and otherwise help me not be bored all the time.

On the subject of my job I'm a little amazed that a large and successful corportation would hire me to do anything more than the most basic and janitorial of tasks, but I suppose that I've known me my whole life and they have not, so they probably aren't aware that my AIM name is "nipplefloss" or that I giggle uncontrollaby at the word "dongle" or that sometimes, when I'm alone in my office, I like to make sure I can still do the worm.

So I have a job, and I enjoy it, but I'm not really passionate about it in the way that someone might be passionate about painting, or writing, or elephant taming. I'm still not sure if that's a problem or not. I'd really to be something that allows me to spend more time outside. Like a tree. Or a mailbox.

Really though, I want one of those careers that only maybe six people in the world have, like professional high altitude balloonist, or jello wrestling instructor or president.

Avoiding answering questions.

I've done a reasonable number of things in my life but I'm not sure I'm REALLY good at any of them.

I'm a fair writer, but I just don't put the time into it to become really good.

I'm a decent boxer/kickboxer, and I used to be an okay tumbler and baseball player.

I'm an out of practice juggler, but I can still handle balls pretty well when I have to.

I'm pretty good at saying things that sound sexual but aren't (see above).

I'm funnier than average, smarter than average, and less average than your average person.

The gill slits.

Haha, no, but seriously, it's probably that I'm not wearing pants.

Haha, no, but seriously, it's that nothing I ever say after "but seriously" is serious.

I like puns. A LOT.

I've started asking people this question when I meet them and now the first thing they notice about me is that I'm incredibly vain, because this is the first question I ask them.

I love books. I was IN love with books, but, well, I just wasn't ready to settle down. Wanted something novel, you know?

I've gone through a lot of reading phases. When I was younger it was classics, slanted heavily towards deep, involved philosophical books. Romantic in the literary, not the popular sense. Dostoevsky, Tolstoy, Goethe, Hesse...books about people feeling things DEEPLY, ALL THE TIME. This is because I was a teenager and didn't know how to feel things any other way.

I graduated up to modern and eventually post-modern and now I'm switching back and forth between magical realism, absurdism, plain old realism and, more recently, detective fiction.

Some current favorite authors are: Pynchon (Gravity's Rainbow slots in as my favorite novel), Chabon, Lethem, Dostoevsky (less Karamazov, more Demons), Wallace (David Foster and Daniel), Chandler, Ellroy, Heller, Murakami and so on.

I also read a fair amount of science books slanted mostly towards physics and math (my major in college), with a dash of biology and a pinch of astronomy.

My taste in movies is all over the place, so I'm not sure anything useful would come out of a list. I will note that I can find enjoyment in most anything as long as it's not completely insipid. For my definition of completely insipid I can do no better than to list any movie involving "Larry the Cable Guy". Anything else is probably fair game.

My musical tastes skew indie rock but I certainly pick and choose from other genres at will. I love motown. I enjoy intelligent hip hop, and some incredibly unintelligent hip hop. If anyone deserved to live forever it was James Brown. I enjoy some electronic music but I'm way too unhip to know how to categorize what I like. Broadly, if it's got a good baseline I'll probably like it, at least up to a point.

Some bands that currently rent space in my Ipod: Plain White T's, Muse, Snow Patrol, Raconteurs, Decemberists, Finger Eleven, The Smiths, Fallout Boy, Ludacris, The Shins, KMFDM, Chemical Brothers, Justin Timberlake, James Brown, Prince

This sounds like a biology essay.

I'm not sure the answers to this question really tell you anything important about the person. I'd rather see "Six things you could absolutely live without". I think, in general, what a person dislikes tells you a lot more about them than what they like. With that in mind, here are some things I would love to live without:

1. Hands free headsets. These drive me crazy to the point that I will generally refuse to talk to someone who is wearing one because I'm never sure which part of their response is for me and which is for their potential stealth caller. The universal symbol for a phone call is holding your hand, thumb and pinkie outstreched, up to your ear. If you aren't doing approximately that motion then you are talking on the phone incorrectly. If this trend continues the universal trend for talking on the phone will be someone giving me the "hold on a second, I need to take this" index finger raise, then looking slightly up and holding a conversation with no one, then me punching them squarely in the neck.

2. Numbers substituting for letters in words. I get why people do it, I get that it's a generational thing, I get that this makes me sound like a curmudgeon, but god damnit if it don't h8 it. See? Do you see how ridiculous that looks. It's impossible to express any sort of real sentiment or emotion when you do that. It's crippling to sincere discourse. Now excuse me, I have to go wave a broom menacingly at the neighborhood kids and scream at them not to trample my grass.

3. Certs with calcium. Certs are a great breath freshener. I love certs. I have never once thought: "You know what certs could use? What would really push it over the top? More calcium". And yet, we have Certs, with calcium. It's not that there's anything particularly wrong with it, it's just meaningless. I'm not going to use certs as a primary source of calcium so surely that extra smidge of calcium isn't doing me any good. And it doesn't even make sense given the mission of certs. What do calcium and fresh breath have in common? It's a clear case of throwing something utterly useless into a perfectly good product just to distinguish it from its competitors. While I could do without this trend I'm eager to see where it leads in other products - Dr Scholls, now with Beaver repellant; Mace, now with 17 grams of flouride; Trojans, the only condoms that include a free tire pressure gauge

Today, I've spent a lot of time thinking about the answers people give to the above question. I worry that there are people out there who really cannot live without the latest Harry Potter novel or lip gloss. These answers raise two questions. First, and most obvious is: Really?

The second question is this: Haven't they ever read the monkey's paw? I worry that some day a powerful but devious genie will ask these people what six things they want for the rest of their lives, and they will answer lip gloss, but forgot to say that they also want their lips, and, well, you can see where this is going.

Also, saying that you can't live without cigarettes is a lot like saying you can't live without cancer which seems like the exact opposite of what the question implies. If you're a smoker and you take offense at that you should probably lighten up...or light up.

Something else I think about: I think the single largest market for fanny packs is nudists, because they don't have pockets to carry stuff in. A fanny pack is basically pockets without the pants.

Still me. Turns out my identity isn't time dependent.

I'll admit most anything to most anyone, but for the sake of getting in the spirit:

My parents caught me humping our couch once. That wasn't even the most embarrassing thing that happened that year.

You have the other half of this magical amulet.

(Or, apparently, if you're Maria Bamford)

Editors

• janevalenz