(because it seems like the thing to say: quickmatchers, I'm sexymathninja.)

I suck at these profile things. Really, I do. But it's making me type something here. Someone I once slept with called me a "sexy math chick", which is two-thirds right. Someone else I once slept with called me a "control freak", but she was really describing herself.

I'm a mathematician; that's really the only thing that's stable about me these days. (Oddly enough, though, I don't seem to socialize well with other mathematicians. I don't know why.) If you dislike math, at some point I will almost certainly ask you why; I'm still trying to figure out why most people seem to resent mathematics. I don't mind... I just want to know why people don't like me!

The "gender" tag up there is a bit off, since it won't let me tag myself as nongendered; that's the best way to describe my gender as of the moment I'm writing this profile. I was born male, went through a period of a few years where I was female-identified, and I'm starting to settle in somewhere in between. I've been joking that I've identified as all of G, L, B, T and Q at some point.

Editors

• Ahleeeshah

At UPenn for grad school in mathematics; I have a slowly growing pile of paper that will one day be called a thesis. (In an older version of this profile, written during first-semester-of-grad-school hell, this was most clearly not the case.) Since I'm a grad student I have the all-purpose excuse "I don't have time!" for why I'm not doing much else. That's kind of a lie, though -- unlike a lot of people I know I don't live in the office.

I'm starting to claw my way back towards having some sort of social life... but it's kind of awkward meeting new people when you don't know whether to introduce yourself as a boy or a girl, you know? If you appreciate that this can be kind of tricky I will <3 you. Or if you give me chocolate. My school web page says my postal address followed by "P. S. I like chocolate." This semester one of my students tried to bribe me with chocolate. But he got a C. And I ate the chocolate.

My professors seem to think I'm good at math. The people I've slept with seem to think I'm good at getting them off. I'm afraid to combine the two, though, because paper cuts in sensitive areas just aren't fun.

also:

- quoting The Simpsons, except maybe I'm not as good as I think, because people seem to look at me funny when I do;

- being on time for things (this is awkward in situations where people tend to be "fashionably late");

- reliably getting depressed at about four o'clock on Saturday afternoon;

- adding olive oil to food;

- mixing drinks that are either too weak or too strong;

- confusing strangers about my gender;

- crossword puzzles (but I'm only okay at Scrabble);

- drinking coffee. (Is that something you can be good at?)

I'm not bad at striking up conversations with strangers at coffee shops, but I still shock myself whenever I manage to do it, because I never would have done this a few years ago.

Lately it seems to be my hair. Everyone likes to play with it; it's curly and sproingy. Don't do this unless you're trying to flirt with me; I've been known to misread this particular signal and think that people who play with my hair are interested in me when they're really not.

Also, I talk to myself when I'm walking down the street. It's kind of awkward, but I've prohibited the math elves that live in my head from buying a blackboard to work on, because I don't want chalk dust in my head. So the only way they can remember what they're doing is to use my voice to help them remember.

These lists are a bit outdated; they're more like what my favorite books, movies, music, and food were in 2005. I don't really believe that the answers to these questions tell you a lot about a person.

(a) The Metaphysical Touch (Sylvia Brownrigg); Girl, Interrupted (Susanna Kaysen); Wild Mind (Natalie Goldberg); Narcissus and Goldmund (Hermann Hesse); Gender Outlaw (Kate Bornstein); The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (Douglas Adams); Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance (Robert Pirsig); The Catcher in the Rye (J. D. Salinger); The Ethical Slut (Dossie Easton and Catherine Liszt/Janet Hardy); Memory and Dream (Charles de Lint)

(b) Amelie; But I'm a Cheerleader; Hedwig and the Angry Inch (but I like the soundtrack better than the movie); Dogma; Garden State; Girl, Interrupted; Mean Girls; Napoleon Dynamite; Chasing Amy; Shortbus.

(c) Sarah McLachlan; Tori Amos; Grey Eye Glances; Heather Nova; Kate Bush; Kirsty MacColl; Leonard Cohen; Indigo Girls; Billy Joel; Chorallaries of MIT; Belle and Sebastian; Dar Williams

(d) Chocolate. Strawberries. "Carbonated fruit beverages", including Izze, and not just because of the resemblance to my name. Chicken parm. Cheese steak, but not as greasy as most Philadelphians like it. Shrimp, in small quantities. Pasta, when prepared well. Hard provolone cheese.

1. In college, it was a journal and a writing implement; I was depressed in college (who wasn't?) and it sort of served as a cheap substitute for a therapist. Now the journal has been replaced by the notebooks in which I scribble random mathematical things.

2. Coffee. "A mathematician is a machine for turning coffee into theorems". Also, it keeps me awake.

3. Chocolate. (note: chocolate can be combined with coffee to make mocha, which is a most excellent drink.) I like my chocolate dark, but I will eat milk chocolate. But not Hershey's milk chocolate, which tastes like chocolate-flavored candle wax. Unless I'm drunk.

4. Books. My apartment is just a place to keep books. They have words in them! When I've read all the words in my apartment I go find new ones. I am inordinately happy that a most excellent remainder bookstore is within spitting distance of my apartment. (At least, I think so; I've never actually tried to spit that far.)

5. Comfortable couches, for sitting on. One of the things I have yet to find in my neighborhood is a coffee shop with one of these.

6. Comfortable shoes, for walking in. I walk basically everywhere, because SEPTA sucks, because it's good exercise, and because it's sort of a meditative thing for me. It's kind of hard to do that if your shoes hurt.

7. Google. (I know, it asked for six things. Combine "comfortable couches" and "comfortable shoes" into "comfortable things", if you insist.) Friends of mine have remarked on my habit of Googling everything. That's not true, but it's not a bad approximation. Sometimes I just go straight to Wikipedia, because it'll be in the first page of hits anyway.

Sex used to be one of my answers here, but I've discovered I can do without it. I wouldn't want to, though.

In a fit of pomposity, I asked myself, "how deep are the grooves of fate"? This has two meanings. First, my work is in probability, and the question has meaning there; second, I wonder how much our lives are determined by what we're born into and random shit that happens to us and how much is actually of our own creation. How much of my life can be explained by a few random thoughts I had in 2000 or 2001. How the new millennium is nearly eight years old and we *still* don't have telepathy or flying cars.

Also, cheese. And pumpkin bread. And why the Amish seem to be good at making them (I buy them at the farmer's market down the street from my house).

and why OKCupid keeps matching me up with people who are a hell of a lot more creative than I am. Also, if it would be possible (or well-advised) to use OKCupid match data to determine where I should move when I leave Philadelphia. (Not by looking for particular people, but by saying "hmm, it says there's a lot of people in Cambridge that I'd like, maybe I should move there!" Cambridge wasn't chosen randomly here, by the way -- I used to live there.) And whether where I move after I leave Philadelphia will end up being someplace that really sucks because that's the only place I can get an academic job.

and why I seem to attract and be attracted to people who are a bit crazy, and whether the person I currently have a crush on is good crazy or bad crazy.

bored.

Honestly, I'm not sure what I do on a typical Friday night. I don't remember what I did on a typical Friday night in the past, and in any case you wouldn't care since that's going to change.

I tend to dislike the idea that certain things should only be done on certain days of the week and times of the day, so this question seems to me pretty much equivalent to "on a typical Tuesday morning I am:"... except that on Tuesday mornings I am usually imparting wisdom to half-asleep freshmen while being one-fourth asleep myself.

(by the way, it's not a coincidence that I picked Tuesday morning here. An exercise for the reader: explain this choice. Another exercise for the reader: explain why I like the phrase "an exercise for the reader".)

If I laugh during sex, that's a good thing. I'm laughing because I'm happy.

Also, when I was younger I suspected that I might not be human, that I was some sort of super-secret alien imposter. So secret that I didn't even know.

you think you want to talk to me. Isn't that the point? I don't bite, unless you want me to.

I'm not going to go on the whole "I trust OKCupid's matching algorithm" tirade here, although I do believe that algorithms are good for something. If the match percentage is ridiculously low I might get suspicious.

I'm mostly looking for local people; I've learned the hard way that I don't handle long-distance relationships well. I suppose for the most part I'm looking for friends that could potentially turn into something more.

Relationship-wise, I'm: - polyamorous, but mostly in a theoretical sense; usually this turns out to mean that I have one partner, who in turn has other partners; - sort of kinky, more of a bottom than a top; - not explicitly looking for someone to fuck tonight but not necessarily averse to that. and not explicitly looking for a long-term relationship but not necessarily averse to that either. I'll take what life brings me.

Ideally, you should identify as a zombie or a ninja. Robots are acceptable. I'm not a big fan of pirates; really, there are just too many of them. (Incidentally, are zombie, ninja, robot, and pirate the astrological signs of our times? And is there a "right" way to match them up with Gryffindor, Slytherin, Hufflepuff, and Ravenclaw? I haven't thought about it.)

I'm probably much more likely to answer you if you are not male, and if you understand why "not male" and "female" are not equivalent.

want to know more? madcaptenor.livejournal.com. It's mostly friends-only these days, but if you seem interesting (and have a livejournal) I'll friend you.