Hi, I'm Ryan, and I'm all over the place. I primarily mean in terms of interests and hobbies, but geographically, too.

I'm into computers and geek stuff, gaming of all kinds (board games, video games, tabletop RPGs). I am, however, not socially awkward, and I don't live in the basement or crap in socks or anything. I'm not sure where those rumors started.

I love reading, primarily sci-fi and historical stuff, and writing everything from poetry to short stories to songs. I'm half-working on a novel. I'm currently in between bands. Wanna start a band?

I love travel. It's kind of my main interest above and beyond cooking, playing music, brewing beer, making cheese, hacking away at computers, reading, writing, playing games, and petting cats.

By the way, I'm legally married but have been separated for three years. We are functionally divorced. This may be a deal-breaker for some people, but I just want to get it out there up front.

I work in IT so I can afford to finance playing music, traveling, cooking, brewing beer, and whatever other new hobbies I come up with. The two most recent additions to the seemingly never ending list are bodybuilding and competitive shooting. Competitive shooting!? Yeah, shocked the hell out of me, too.

I'm kind of a city / urban design nerd. I love visiting cities. Something about the vibrancy and intensity of good, solid urbanity makes me happy; conversely, something about the dry, plastic fakery of suburban strip malls makes me sad.

I really enjoy outdoorsy stuff, camping in the mountains, rock climbing (which I am not particularly good at, mind) and all sorts of other things.

In case it isn't obvious, I tend to get really deep into a new interest on a regular basis. Sometimes they stick, sometimes they don't, but I will invariably find something new every so often and completely nerd out on it for a while, obsessively learn everything I can about it. I like it. Keeps life interesting.

Whatever I decide to be good at. No, really. Except drawing! I really, really can't draw. Can you? Will you teach me? I swear, that is the one and only thing I have often wished I could do that I have consistently not been able to figure out.

That I can be a little bit weird, often speaking in affectatious voices or accents. One female friend of mine (who I happened to have met on here, actually) compared me to Michael Keaton in Beetlejuice, although I personally imagine it more like early Robin Williams minus the sheer manic insanity caused by cocaine.

Or maybe my collection of funky t-shirts.

Recently been into The Walking Dead and Mad Men on TV. Dig Asimov, PKD, Douglas Adams, Bukowski, and lots of other stuff.

Music? I'm kind of a music nerd. I love music, although I find I often prefer things recorded long ago over more recent stuff. I'll take Bessie Smith over Lady Gaga 87 times out of 100. The biggest soft spots in my heart are for punk rock and Chicago blues, with funk and motown style R&B / soul right up there.

I love food. I'm kind of a food nerd. At one point I very nearly went to culinary school, and who knows, I still might someday. Ended up going into IT instead, which was probably smart for my checkbook if perhaps not so much for fulfilling my creative drive with my job. But yeah, I love to cook! Anything! I would love to make you dinner. And by you, I literally mean anyone.

I probably could do without these things, but I wouldn't want to for any extended period of time:

pho
music
badass architecture
a smartphone
games
a guitar

All kinds of crazy shit. Does anyone really sit around thinking about the same thing all the time? That sounds like it would be terribly boring.

Sitting around on a computer. That's why I'm here.

I would rather be at the movies with someone, or at a rock show with someone, or on a plane to Chicago or Seattle or Shanghai with someone. I would rather be sitting on the couch next to someone watching something stupid on TV, or playing a rock show, or dancing, or doing naked cartwheels in a park, or getting drunk and climbing the KCTV tower, going to jail and having to pay a ridiculous fine, but later thinking how it was totally worth it.

I used to have a man crush on Christian Slater. Then Brad Pitt. Currently looking for the next. I admire Richard Dawkins to some degree, but he's decidedly not hot. Never got into Johnny Depp, strangely.

* You want to discuss Eastern philosophy, Randian objectivism, or Arrested Development.
* You want to meet up and do something awesome.
* You think you can beat me at Tetris or Scrabble.
* You think you might want to travel somewhere neat with a fun guy.
* You are capable of having a serious, perhaps even heated, discussion about whether or not the deaths of certain characters in The Walking Dead are in fact statements about the success and failure of certain lines of moral thought in a post-zombie-apocalypse world.
* You can sing or play an instrument and want to rock ass.
* You're an anarchist, neo-dadaist, Marxist, humanist, socialist, nihilist, artist, poet, romanticist, weirdo, fuckup, or dropout.