I am a huge fucking geek. I like this about myself, and I seek it out in other people. If you're the kind of person who gets really excited about ideas, and who likes to share them with other people, then we'll probably get along brilliantly.

I have strong opinions, which I enjoy having challenged. I like being proven wrong, but I won't go down without a satisfying debate.

Most people find me cold and aloof at first brush, but I open up quickly. I'm actually a big emo dork inside. It's pretty much all a front.

I'm currently attending Reed College, where I'm majoring in linguistics.

Books:

My three favorite books are "One Hundred Years of Solitude", "The Unbearable Lightness of Being", and "As I Lay Dying". It's been a while since I finished any new fiction - I'm currently working my way through "Immortality" and "Love in the Time of Cholera".

I love long-form comics (and think "graphic novel" is a stupid phrase). Recent favorites - "Blankets" and "Pop gun war", and anything by Adrian Tomine. My adoration for Calvin & Hobbes and Bloom County is practically indescribable. I'm not a huge webcomic fan, but of everyone currently working now, I think Kazu Kibuishi's "Copper" captures that feeling best. And I love "Dykes to Watch Out For"

As for non-fiction, I read a lot of it, but I'm not sure it would tell you anything interesting about me.

Movies:

Tarkovsky's "Andrei Rublev" is the best film I've ever seen. I could talk about it forever. It has one of the only happy endings that I've thought was truly earned.

Generally speaking, I enjoy realistic dramas - the Italian neorealists (I Vitelloni, Umberto D, etc.) are my favorites, and the French New Wave (My Night With Maude, the 400 blows) before it turned to art-film pretension. I find broad comedies to be pretty annoying, but I'm always up for absurdist humor.

As for recent films - "Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind" broke my heart. I hated "Crash" and thought it came off as an incompetant mashup of "Do the Right Thing" and "Magnolia". And 2006 was the best year for movies since I can remember.

Music:

I listen to a lot of stuff. The last CD I fell in love with was Broken Social Scene's eponymous album. Other stuff, which I used to be a fan of but am less into lately:

Rilo Kiley; Belle & Sebastian; Death Cab for Cutie; The Postal Service; Iron & Wine; Cake; Annie Lennox; The Cranberries; Ani Difranco; The Cardigans; Tattle Tale; Lyle Lovett; Johnny Cash; Leonard Cohen; The Beatles; The Who; The Cure; New Order

Most people are kind of horrified that my biggest area of interest is syntax (basically, grammar). I have trouble explaining why I find it so captivating, but here's an attempt:

Meaning isn't just carried in words, but in the relationships those words have to each other. Translating a word by looking it up in a bilingual dictionary is fairly trivial, but if you do that to sentence, you'll just end up with word salad. Syntax is about the meaning that hides between words, that binds individual ideas into statements and questions and speeches and essays, like multicellular life adhering together from a mess of free-swimming protists.

I'm kinky as hell. Most of that revolves around power dynamics. It's not absolutely necessary for you to be cool with that, but I appreciate an open mind.

I spent years thinking I was transgendered. I don't anymore. I also used to be a militant advocate of bisexuality and radical gender politics, which I find kind of embarassing now.

My politics are weird. I'm fairly left of center, but my belief system is fundamentally minarchist - it's just that I have a considerably more expansive view of the minimal function of government than most self-described libertarians. Although my car radio is normally tuned to NPR, I sometimes listen to the talk radio blowhards on Fox News Radio. I disagree with 90% of what they say, but I think it's important to entertain the ideas of one's political oponents, and understand their positions.

...your other browser window is filled with ten different tabs on Wikipedia, all on completely unrelated topics, and you just can't wait to tell me how cool you find Zoroastrian eschatology, the paleo-Siberian languages, the Battle of Salamis, type II supernovae, cladistic relationships among early Eukaryotes, or whatever it is you happen to be currently fascinated with.