I am a bit odd. Not in a way which would make you go, "Dear God, what in Satan's black name are you doing?" but more in the interesting quirky way. Although there might be a few people who would start telling the power of Christ to compel me, and honestly, I guess I really couldn't blame them.

I have a very odd sense of humor too. I have done improv radio comedy for years, not the kind of stuff where you get the audience to give you a breakfast cereal and then you make penis jokes, but rather the kind where you get several funny people into a small space with a microphone, record and CD players, plenty of odd or bad or both music, and a faint idea of what characters will be happening when. Lateness of hour usually helps, but drinking usually doesn't. Yes, I make dead baby jokes, but that barely scratches the surface. I make jokes which might be construed as evil, disrespectful, sacriligious, or even just plain non-sensical, but I don't do these things for shock value. And I laugh at bad movies, and usually don't need MST3k to do the commentary for me.

It might seem from some of the questions I've been asked on this site that I'm extremely political to the point of anarchy, that I'm a tree-hugging crunchy-granola hippy, or that I'm a Democrat. While I can be political when it's called for, I prefer to laugh at politics. While I love the environment, I'm not giving up my red meat and gasoline just yet. And while I do tend to be radically liberal, and I often vote Democrat, it's really only because most Republicans are schmoes, not because I'm die-hard Democratic. I'm a very hard person to put into a box.

Also, while I enjoy various nasty jokes, I don't like them to really be nasty, unless the target really deserves it. I really dislike dogs, but I don't want to hurt them or see them hurt. In fact, that goes for all animals, but at the same time, I eat 'em, don't I? I'm a good conversationalist but I'm also a good listener, and while I sometimes get carried away with my discussion/argument, I rarely take it personally, and I try to keep myself in check and let others get a word in more than edgeways.

I guess the last thing you can say about me, or I can anyway, is that I try my damndest to see things other peoples' way as well as my own, and the suffering of others hurts me too. I mean that; I'm like a suffering sponge. People seem to unload on me and then be fine, and meanwhile I'm in misery. So I guess I shouldn't become a therapist.

Currently I'm trying to find the job of my dreams while working a job that's okay. The pay is lousy but what isn't. I'm also reading many different books on many different things, because while I don't like school, I love to learn. And then of course I'm coming up with story ideas for movies, an animated series I've just started work on, and I'm thinking of writing a textbook. Oh, and the oratorio. And I'm learning Chinese (says Werner von Braun) and probably will try other languages as well. I try to keep busy, even if none of it gets done any time soon.

Teaching, writing, learning, cooking (others' opinions, not just mine), conversing, listening, riffing comedicly speaking, grammar (but not spelling, sorry), directing (in the dramatic sense), arguing (see disclaimer above), editing (in both film and text senses), carpentry, and music, although I'm too much of a dabbler to make that excellent.

I'm fairly good with computers, but I hate them as much as I love and need them, so it's a difficult thing sometimes.

I'm not good at controlling myself sometimes, apologizing when I'm wrong (sorry for that too), drawing or any realistic 2D artform (abstract paintings are about my limit), playing video games (I fell off the train at the beginning of Half-Life, if that means anything to you), chess (but I do try), understanding cars (so I can fix your patio and maybe your PC, but not your Pontiac), and the social scene.

Well, I'm six foot seven inches with a shock of red hair and sometimes if I'm lazy I sport a rather rakish beard, so that's probably the first thing people notice. I won't be going undercover with the CIA any time soon. I hope the first real thing people notice about me is my smile or my laugh, because I don't just give them out to anyone, but if you notice them, you know they're genuine. And I guess I hope anyone reading this noticed that I'm being fairly candid and yet at the same time slightly quirky and that I've correctly used various contractions and clauses.

Favorite books is a difficult thing to answer, and I wish I had a pat one handy. I like a lot of different books, some classy, some not-so. I would say that I tend to stay away from general fiction, at least within the past 100 years or so, although there are exceptions. I love Dostoyevski and Solzhenitsyn (I think I may have been stolen at birth from a Russian peasant family) but I also like fantasy, and to a certain extent, science fiction (although Tolkien is not God in any way, shape, or form). I love Dave Barry and anything humorous in a quirky sort of way, even children's books that have affected my writing style. And I read books on math and complexity theory (not to be confused with the "chaos" theory of the layman) and artificial intelligence, but also dramatic theory, education, and history (primarily WWII, but I can be coaxed). There is very little that I won't give a look at, although Ayn Rand definitely numbers among that little.

My favorite movie is a lot easier. I've given it a lot of thought, and though there are many movies that I like, my favorite both for quality and for opinion is 12 Monkeys. But I also like humor, notably Monty Python et al. And the Matrix is ridiculously overrated. So is Casablanca. And many of the movies I didn't pick because they were too sophomoric or too bad. Oh, and Van Helsing is the funniest movie ever, although it has some stiff competition from End of Days.

My favorite music is an easy yet hard question. The easy answer is Nirvana, and I've gotten old enough to not really care whether that makes me uncool or not. I don't think I've ever really been cool anyway. The hard answer is that it fluctuates, and I listen to all kinds of crazy eclectic stuff, everything from Nirvana to a Georgian (the country, not the state) vocal trio called Kavkasia (who are really mindblowing and deserve a listen) and everything in-between. I used to have styles of music that I just didn't listen to, but I pretty much straddle the genres at this point. My first love is still grunge alternative rock of the early to mid nineties, but then I am a child of that era, so why the hell not?

Favorite foods means I can list many, so I will. I'll eat pretty much anything once. I love Cajun food (I sometimes suspect I was taken from my Russian peasant parents by Cajuns, who were then robbed of me by someone else), Mexican food (maybe Mexicans), Indian food (who then moved to India), Chinese, sushi, and lots of other cultural foods too numerous to name. Then there's barbeque, which as a Southerner (in attitude if nothing else) I love, and breakfast done right (it must include scrapple and waffles, and possibly very good grits). I could go on, but I'm salivating. And the best part is, I can cook most of these things myself, and quite well I've been told, and I sniff out new things to try every day.

1) Basic cooking essentials. I can make do with less than I own, but some bare necessities I must have.

2) Books. Preferably of two kinds: new and interesting, and old, well-read, and funny. These categories subject to change without notice.

3) Plumbing. I've come to the point in my life, or rather I've been there a while, where I realize that I'd rather not eat than not bathe. I'm not OCD about it or anything, but I just don't like being dirty and smelly, and I imagine others around me appreciate that (yet more evidence that I'm not a smelly hippy).

4)A few select DVDs or digital movie files. I try not to watch much TV at all, and when I do, it's nearly always a cooking show or something documentary-wise, but I need my stash of Futurama and Monty Python DVDs and my somewhat shady collection of various other television shows that I've obtained via the internet black market. It's not about watching the TV; these things are different.

5)My hearing. I love listening to things too much. Even if I didn't have music I could still hear things, and I could still sing, or play music on a hollow log, or something. Recorded music would be hard to do without, but I'd rather lose them and still have my ears.

6)My sense of humor. This seems clich�d, and it is a little, but without my sense of humor life would have knocked me flat long ago. My ability to find humor in the worst things (although this doesn't necessarily mean that I find the good in those things, or something similarly sickeningly optimistic) has brought me through bad times, and it's really kind of what makes me who I am.

Education, and how much I wish it were better for children and adults. Advanced topics and how I'd like to simplify them in a way not to dumb down but to make accessible. Chaos and my relationship with it. Ideas for written or performed pieces, text, music, performing or visual art. Music I've heard. "I like my women like I like my" jokes.

Watching a movie, reading a book, or typing. I'm kind of a boring person on Fridays. Unless of course I have a rehearsal or it's tech week. In the latter case, I'm usually tearing my hair out and swearing a blue streak. In the former I'm probably trying to remember where to put the book in scene 3.

Well, I'm attracted to women on the whole, but the two things that really make or break the deal are the face and the abdomen. The face is just something intangible. The abs are a little bit shallow, but it's not just a six-pack thing. I just think that the proper proportions are really sexy.

Okay, so that wasn't particularly private. My shoe size is 12 (usually), I'm not circumsized (which I try not to think about one way or the other), I've never owned a llama but I'd like to, I love Star Wars (the real ones, not the prequels) and like Star Trek, I know how to program in far too many computer languages for a non-geek, I hate actors but am one frequently when the mood strikes, I've had some pretty weird sexual fantasies (but then who hasn't?), my legs and arms are very attractive but my torso could use work, I am something of an emotional doormat when it comes to relationships (not just romantic ones; in romantic ones I become practically subservient), I graduated with a film degree because it was the only way I could get out of the school in four years (and I've never taken an actual film class in my life, although I've co-written and/or directed two full-length movies), I own three guitars and can't really play any of them all that well, I actually like that song by Sister Hazel, I've been to a Kris Kross concert, although admittedly when I was much younger, I don't like 80s nostalgia and I don't really understand why anyone else does, and my favorite "I like my women like I like my" joke is the one about milk.

How's that? I think maybe I went a little far. Okay, I was lying about all of that. I'm really a yam from Seattle named Mick, and I'm here all weekend folks. Don't forget to tip your servers.

Well, undoubtedly this list will grow, but if you have something interesting or though-provoking to say and you can say it without using leet-speak or improper capitalization and grammar, I'm open for that kind of thing. If you want to swap jokes, I'm not very good at remembering them and I kind of feel you have to be there to tell them, but hell, I'm game. If you'd like to worship me as God incarnate because my words have touched your soul, I think you might want to find a new Lord and Master of the Universe, since I'd make a really lousy one (all I want to do is be Pope), but hey, I'm game. If you are lonely/depressed/suicidal/angry/bitter/something, I'm a shoulder to cry on and an ear to scream into, as long as we can get to know each other a little before-hand, and you leave open the option that you might one day reciprocate a little shoulder/ear action. Goddamn that last sentence really sounded dirty; I meant it seriously, but if you thought I had a really weird fetish and you're into it... well, okay, I guess I'm game. If you want to know what qualities one looks for in a woman who's like milk, I can tell you that and many others of the same ilk, some of which may be completely off the cuff because, as I said, I don't remember jokes well. If you'd like to complain about something, that's the next door. If you aren't really sure, why not give me a holler; try to make it really strange and I might just holler back something stranger, stranger.

Lastly, if you think you know me and want to guess, I'm a yam in Seattle named Mick, and that's my story.