I'm a long story and a flash fiction all at once.

The Cliff's Notes version is this: In the song Piano Man, I'm the old man at the bar who's making love to his tonic and gin.

More specifically:

At the core, I'm an inquisitive mathematician. Even if I remove math from the equation (see what I did there?), I'm a thinker through and through. Give me a good piece of classic literature and a fresh glass of single malt scotch and I'll be sufficed indefinitely. To me, it really is the small things.

To that end, I'm not into stuff. Truthfully, too, I tend not to be into people who are into stuff, though every rule has a handful of exceptions. Cool people are cool people, though generally speaking, if you don't own books and/or if you can't hold a conversation about something meaningful, I'll likely reserve the adjective cool pending further review.

Along the same lines, I really do think that greed is responsible for most of the problems in the world today. I'm the guy who gives $5 to every sign-holder standing outside of Walmart, the guy who tips 40% on every meal, and the guy who wanted to donate his kidney to a person he'd never met face-to-face before. No, I don't care if the sign-holder uses it to buy drugs, if the service was subpar or if the guy who needed a kidney turns out to be an asshole: You give because you have more than you need, not because your gift explicitly benefits you.

</soapbox>

I have pictures uploaded to benefit visitors of the page, though I'd encourage thoughtful visitors to withhold suppositions until they've been better introduced. I'm a walking example of Don't judge a book by its cover, though if you ask me, it's a pretty sexy cover. (PS: I only feign arrogance. It's a hobby.) The one thing the pictures do capture is the fact that body modification is a big part of my life: I encourage everyone to be open-minded enough not to judge based on that, as I'm open-minded enough not to judge based on a potential lack thereof.

I'm also open-minded enough to disregard stereotypical ideas of beauty, as well. I feel that people - especially women - are told from an early age how they need to look to be attractive, and truthfully, I feel like most of it's bullshit. I don't discriminate based on age, size, race, hair color, eye color, skin color, etc., and I honestly do believe that every woman is beautiful. The fact that women feel the need to be skinny, tanned, shaved smooth and shaped like various inanimate objects is sad and...well, it's just sad.

I'm in an open marriage with heatherstover, which makes us both married and looking. If I'm honest, I'm only on this site for kicks and as a way to waste time when I'm bored. Unfortunately, christianmingle.com wasn't cutting it, though I can't imagine why. </sarcasm>

Essentially, I'm here for whatever: I come with no pretense, and I'm looking to meet cool people. If it turns into something fun, that's great; if it stays an online conversational interaction, that's great too.

Note: I tend to be open to any answers on most of the subjective personality questions OkCupid has to offer, but I forewarn you: If you answer one of the objective questions incorrectly and if you're so confident in your "abilities" that you "refuse to accept" the correct answers, rest assured that I probably think you're a douchebag and I probably won't talk to you. Ever. If you get it wrong and you don't have a "preferred answer," that's fine - some people just don't know stuff - but being wrong and being condescending simultaneously makes you appear totally ignorant.

Academia. Forever academia.

At the moment, my wife and I are also preparing for the birth of our first child. He's a viking warlord. <3

I excel at self-deprecation, accepting criticism, and deflecting compliments.

The first things people usually mention about me are my stretched ears, my tattoos or my beard.

Books:
I'm a mathematician, so my entire life hinges on reading a never-ending barrage of mathematics texts. Otherwise, I enjoy reading technical writing on subjects such as Chess, science and computing, as well as various other technical and nonfiction works.

In terms of literature, I tend to prefer classic fiction. My favorite classic authors are Dostoevsky and Tolstoy, though I also enjoy Joyce, Hemingway, and Hugo, among others. Generally speaking, there's very little in the way of modern fiction that interests me, though I've been known to read Stephen King and Clive Barker a time or two. I also enjoy a variety of philosophy texts, most notably works by Nietzsche and Sartre, as well as modernist poetry by T.S. Eliot, et al.

Movies:
My all-time favorite book is also my all-time favorite movie, namely "Fight Club" by Chuck Palahniuk. On some people's bedside tables, they keep religious texts...I keep "Fight Club." That book is (and always has been) a life-altering, pseudo-religious experience for me. If you've never experienced such a sensation from that book, you're doing it wrong.

Others that come to mind are: The Fountain, Pi, Nemesis Game, Good Will Hunting, Being John Malkovich, A Clockwork Orange, The Shining, The Bridges of Madison County, Requiem for a Dream, and Stranger Than Fiction.

Television:
I'm not much for television. I generally watch sitcoms such as "The Big Bang Theory" and "How I Met Your Mother," or TV dramas such as "Law and Order: SVU". Also on the list is "The Office," "Parks and Recreation," and some adult cartoons such as "Family Guy," "American Dad," and "King of the Hill." Lately, we've also gotten into "Dexter" and "Grey's Anatomy" (It's okay: I judge me too).

Music:
Musically, I'm as diverse as one can imagine. I have a library of over 250,000 songs covering genres ranging from rock and metal to rap and hip hop, country and blue grass to classical. If you name it, I listen to it. Before I was a music fanatic, I was a 13 year old angsty adolescent metalhead, though, and so metal will always occupy a soft spot in my heart. *tear*

Food:
Despite my limited experiences, I consider myself a gourmand (read: fat guy who likes to eat a lot). Chinese food is my favorite, but I also love Indian, Italian and Mexican.

"A man told me once: you want to make moves? Don't keep anything in your life you're not willing to walk out on in 30 seconds flat if you feel the heat around the corner." - Robert DeNiro, Heat.

In any case....

Note that I don't consider "things" to include "people," so I'll leave off the obvious (my wife, my friends, my family, etc.). I'll also leave off trite, banal answers like "oxygen" and "nanocelluar biochemical reactions" because they're trite and banal. In no particular order, then....

1. Mathematics
2. Music
3. Pepsi Max
4. Body Modification
5. Intelligence
6. Freedom

Mathematics. General curiosities and abstractions. Politics, both present and historical. Societal inter-workings and methodologies. Philosophy and meta-philosophy. Morality and mortality. Linguistics and the spoken word. Greed, the human condition, and how the two are related (read: equivalent).

At home, and ideally enjoying some down time with a glass of scotch. During the busy season, I may be working or procrastinating to avoid work, the latter of which is most likely.

I'm willing to admit anything. Just ask. :)

In all honesty, you probably shouldn't.

I mean, if we play the odds, nothing you've read here interests you in the slightest...either that, or something you read here did interest you and you find yourself too afraid of my sacrilegious nihilism and immoral carnality to send a message. If either of those conditions apply to you, skip it and go watch Grey's Anatomy instead (that's still a show, right?).

But, if we keep playing the game that way, maybe I can tell you when not to message me:

Don't message me if you don't own books. Don't message me if you think the movie was ever better than the book. Don't message me if you think the world is 5,000 years old, that the earth is flat, or that the sun revolves around the earth. Don't message me if you think dinosaurs didn't exist or if you don't believe in Global Warming that's caused by man. If you think evolution isn't real because it's just a theory or if you think educational facilities should teach about invisible space monkeys living in the sky in the same course they introduce the idea of genus and phylum, you might also want to save your breath.

I probably won't like you if you drove your iWagon to the nearest iStore to sit in your iChair for four days waiting to buy the next generation iShit version 4xsG2kQrz-delta-niner, and if you haven't eaten since last Thursday because Cosmo mentioned the latest air nutrient diet that's sweeping the runways, I probably will ignore you completely. Unless you think that every person deserves the same civil rights, that every person deserves a warm meal and a roof over their heads, and that healthcare is a right and not a privilege, our compatibility is likely minuscule.