I'm Tam and my life is pretty awesome right now.

I am so totally a big queer activist and I embraced that long ago. It's okay if you don't get that, we can still be friends. But activism is at the core of my identity. So, deal with it.

I'm very blunt. This developed mostly out of necessity as sugar-coating things can take precious time that I do not have. It's easier and honesty is cool. I get easily sucked into debates and people often think I'm arguing, but I'm just discussing. I'm very loyal and protective. My friends mean the world to me, plus they mostly kind of rock.

I'm extremely compassionate, though I may not appear to be. I like to try to figure people out, but I'm not sure if I'm any good at it. I have an overwhelming compulsion to fix people. I'm usually stressed out, but that's okay. I don't sleep very often.

I write a lot. I absolutely love music, movies and the written word. I adore going to concerts, the smaller and more local, the better. I take a lot of photos. I'm not that good at it. I'm generally well intentioned and just fumbling my way through life.

I want to meet people that I can have a remotely intelligent conversation with. I'm interested in politics. I want others to be as well. I get that elections make people feel ineffectual but it's only a self-fulfilling prophecy if you don't, en masse, get out there to vote. I'm intrigued by Direct Action. I wholeheartedly believe in the Jewish philosophy of tikkun olam or ‘repairing the world’. I'm agnostic, but I like learning about other people's spirituality. Oh and deconstructing gender, trying to figure out that whole spectrum. I'm comfortable in my female body but I want to better help the people who are born otherwise.

I'm not nearly as serious as I come off sometimes. I watch way too much tv. I love Sex and the City. I'm trying to learn how to cook. My guilty pleasures are movies like Bring It On or the House Bunny. I like talking about celebrity gossip and I know way too much about it. Bad movies can make me cry way too easily. Commercials, too. I will dance my ass off to stuff like Lady Gaga sometimes. I really enjoy fast food. My life can be a mess of constradictions and I'm more than okay with that.

"I like to think of Jesus like a figure skater, who wears, like, a white outfit, and he does interpretive ice dances of my life's journey." - Talledega Nights

I write for a local paper, work for a politician and just wrapped up a job this school year teaching science to elementary students. I graduated from a Youth Worker training program last year.

The most rewarding thing I've done in a while, aside from teaching, is helping to put on the Pride Centre's annual queer youth camping trip. This year was great! Can you say rainbow merit badges? I also work with queer youth through Camp fYrefly and anti-homophobia education in schools.

I volunteer for a lot of stuff. I get involved in lots of bizarre projects and have to fumble my way through them, but thanks to google and jumping in with both feet, I get it done. I've had to issue too many releases, organize rallies and put on press conferences for one year already. I find the more stuff you do, the more people ask you to do. But that's alright, I like being dragged into experiences. And those are the things that make me feel nice and rewarded the next day, even if we don't win whatever the fight was at the moment.

I worked on a radio show for almost three years but I had to leave it because of time constraints. Now I'm helping friends with promoting/planning/hosting shows and events. I do a lot of interviews and on occasion I record shows. I try to report on underrepresented news stories related to queer issues, there's never a lack of those.

I'm quite happy with the path I'm on and feel like my life is headed somewhere good. I want to surround myself with people who have decent self-esteem and are working towards making themselves happy. I'm just trying my best to make a difference in the world.

"I've learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel." - Maya Angelou

Media trivia. It's basically my main hobby and I can answer most any current pop culture question. I've been known to get long distance phone calls along the lines of "Hey, who was in that movie where...." The answer was Kevin Spacey, by the way.

Public speaking, I'm told.

Creative problem solving.

Cracking jokes, even when not entirely appropriate to the situation.

I'm told that I'm quite good with kids, which is a new thing. I also rather disliked them until recently.

"hey tam. i wanted to let you know that you're probably the only person I know who can pull off a vest without looking like the lead singer of an emo band. i respect that about you." - a random e-mail from my friend Corrin

I talk a lot. Sometimes loudly. Usually quickly. Often after a really long quietness until I feel comfortable or think my input is necessary. Some people actually call me 'shy' or 'introverted'. These people do not know me well.

"Laugh to erase the dirt on your mind." - Metric

Books: Baby Remember My Name, My Point...And I Do Have One, Live From New York, Go Ask Malice, Rose of No Man's Land, Faggots, Valencia, PostSecret series

Magazines: Vue Weekly, Shameless, Macleans, Mother Jones

Film: Hard Candy, Children of Men, Stick It, Juno, Saving Face, Boondock Saints, Across the Universe, Grindhouse, Saved!, Imagine Me and You, V for Vendetta, Rocky Horror, Bound, May, Mean Girls, Cloverfield, D.E.B.S., Pieces of April, DINX, Blow Dry, Laramie Project, Upside of Anger, Princess Bride, Hot Chick, Love Actually, Miss Congeniality, Practical Magic, But I'm a Cheerleader, 28 Days, Mary Poppins, Blade: Trinity, Shortbus, Bend It Like Beckham, The Queen, Freeheld, She's the Man, House Bunny, Forgetting Sarah Marshall, Sex and the City, Incredibly True Adventures of 2 Girls in Love, Deliver Us from Evil

TV: Corner Gas, Project Runway, Law and Order, The Office US, Exes and Oh’s, Star Trek Next Gen, All in the Family, Kitchen Nightmares, Family Guy, Mythbusters, King of the Hill, Top Chef, Dead Like Me, Xena, Buffy, Once & Again, Gilmore Girls, Robot Chicken, Are You Being Served?, Grace Under Fire, Supernatural, Masters of Horror, Red Dwarf, Murder She Wrote, Sex and the City, Rick Mercer Report, Roseanne, Friends, Nitro Circus, RuPaul’s Drag Race

Visual Artists: Bansky, Salvador Dali, Emily Carr, Huang Yong Ping, Keith Haring, M.C. Escher, Henry Fuseli, Claude Monet, Ted Harrison, Charlie White, Robyn Cumming, Ron Mueck

Music: Chris Pureka, Kate Reid, Jeremy Fisher, Regina Spektor, +44, Arcade Fire, Tegan and Sara, Metric, Fefe Dobson, Missy Higgins, Distillers, Tracy Chapman, Stars/Amy Millan, Oysterband, Cranberries, Bif, Melissa Etheridge, Kelly, Blink, New Pornographers/Neko Case, Johnny Cash, Joan Baez, NIN, Garbage, Sarah Harmer, Dixie Chicks, Decemberists, Janis, Dolly, Jay Brannan, Panic at the Disco, Raveonettes, Spreepark, Rihanna, Kinnie Starr, Ferron, Ani, Jakalope, Dar Williams, Melissa Ferrick, Paul Simon, The Knife, MIA, Spinnerette, Sufjan Stevens, Woodpigeon, Billie Holiday, Stones, Sarah Bettens, Rae Spoon, Wet Secrets

Food: sushi first and foremost, Japanese, Korean, Mexican, Mexicali, Western Canadian, Fusion, Italian, cheesecake, smoothies, candy, fettuccini alfredo, shepard's pie, salads, fajitas, cheese, real breakfast, pizza, Furasato, The New Bohemian, Ronin Izakaya Bistro, McDonalds, Marble Slab, Zen Shabu-Shabu, In-N-Out, Olive Garden, Shabusen Yakiniku House, Joey's Med Grill

"Get your facts first, then you can distort them as you please." - Mark Twain

- Music
- My computer
- Pen, paper or some other writing tool
- Friends (the human variety, not the television show...though I like that too)
- The ability to do something meaningful
- My mom (tied with my dogs, which is probably how she would list me)

"Only those who will risk going too far can possibly find out how far one can go." - T. S. Eliot

Everything! I overthink well.

"You're fucking doing my show if I have to hunt you down, skin you alive and have one of the other models fucking wear you." - Sex and the City

Trying to have a nap after work, to prepare myself to go out. Usually it doesn't work and I'm a little grumpy or out of it until my friends distract me. Or I lay in bed, send out an apologetic text and pass out. I'm more for partier on Saturday.

"This doesn’t happen often, I hope you understand. I don’t care what the people will say, you just stay holding onto my hand." - Spreepark

I'm afraid of spiders. I'm even more afraid of giant, person-sized spiders. Which I'm very well aware are not real. Still, petrified. Those fears are getting significantly worse and I really don't know why. I get very scared if I see fake spiders in stores. Large, furry, pretend spiders scare me more than small real ones. Medium spiders scare me about as much as the big fake ones. Fake things with 8 legs that are only kind of spider like freak me out. Sometimes even the word bothers me. Yeah.

"Nothing is so aggravating than calmness." - Oscar Wilde

You're breathing. I like talking to people. Bonus points if you can string proper sentences together!

Super mega points if you can tell me what a frosted lemon coward is.

"How's Styx?"
"He's good."
"It baffles me why you called your dog that. Fucking RIVER IN HADES!"
"Because the other one is Xena."
"I don't get it."
"We were going with a pseudo-Greek thing. And we called him Hercules. And for 24 hours my mom wandered the house going 'Herc! Herc! Herc! Herc!' like the cartoon. and I figured I could kill her. Or I could pick a new name." - a conversation with my friend James