AND NOW, A MUPPET NEWS FLASH: I'm in a monogamous relationship — and now that I'm not looking for dates anymore, I don't log on here very often.

BUT! I still like meeting new people, and if you want to hang out you should totally send me a message. That goes double if you're a contra dancer looking for other dancers, or a folk singer looking for other singers.

WE NOW RETURN YOU TO YOUR REGULARLY SCHEDULED PROFILE:

I'm a big goddamn nerd on a big adventure. I love travel and languages, dancing and eating and poetry, old books, unfamiliar neighborhoods and strange dreams.

I'm getting my Ph.D. in linguistics at UT. I study how conversations work, and how people use language to get things done, and every once in a while I remind myself how cool it is that I'm getting paid for this shit.

Slowly but surely, I'm learning how to cook and take photos and play the mandolin. Not all at once, though. I don't have enough arms.

Getting lost and then getting there anyway. No, literally. Okay, metaphorically too -- but if you care about the shortest distance between two points, you probably shouldn't let me drive.

Also waltzing, driving a stick shift, writing documentation and making mix CDs.

Red hair, woolly beard, dramatic voice, big-ass grin.

I love folk music, especially the traditional stuff. More than that, I love the attitude that comes with it -- the DIY ethic, the sense that it's better to join in than sit and listen. My idea of a perfect concert wouldn't be a concert at all, but a bunch of people at home getting a little too drunk and singing a little too loud all together.

Then again, I also love the Stones and the Pixies and the Talking Heads and, oh, all kinds of music that never would have happened without the record industry. Go figure.

Speaking of stuff you can join in, they don't even ask about dancing, do they? Contra dancing is one of the best things in the world. I know just enough about swing dancing to be dangerous. I'll try just about anything else once.

Most of the reading I do these days is for school. (Need a big wad of dynamic semantics? How bout some discourse structure? I can totally hook you up.) I've been on a bit of a LeGuinn kick -- The Dispossessed rearranged my brain in a good way. Old favorites: John Irving, Madeline L'Engle, Jonathan Carroll, Vonnegut, Kipling. Yeats, Auden, Sharon Olds, Kim Addonizio. The Child Ballads, the Sacred Harp, the Wobblies' little red book. The King James Bible.

Movies? Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, Some Like it Hot, Victor/Victoria, Benny and Joon, The Royal Tennenbaums, The Princess Bride, Foxfire... If it's got dancing, swordfights, cross-dressing, wordplay, hitch-hiking, slapstick or geeks in love, I'll probably like it just fine.

I was convinced I didn't need a section for TV shows until I finally got around to watching The Wire. Now I like The Wire.

Oh, and food. I like food. I sure do eat a lot of vegetables for someone who isn't a vegetarian. I was never any good at brewing beer, but I do pretty well making my own pickles.

There's three kinds of people in the world: the annoyingly literal bores ("I need nutrients and oxygen, dumbass!"), the hyperbolic bullshitters ("I'd just die without my ipod!"), and the over-analytic weirdos who like to question the premises behind everything.

Me, I'm firmly in that third category.

Did I mention I'm a big nerd? That doesn't mean I watch too much anime or play too many video games. It means I think a lot. Sometimes I think about space invaders or sexy bunny rabbit cartoon schoolgirls, but not often.

More common topics: real langauges and imaginary ones; imaginary places and real ones I've never been; what makes people tick; why some stories are better than others; what I'll tell my kids someday.

I spend a lot of time thinking about religion, too, especially for an atheist. I may not go in for the beliefs, but religious experience and religious community fascinate me. Just because there's nothing out there but matter and space doesn't mean that you can't get that little thrill in the back of your brain when you think about it.

Well, it depends. If I've been a naughty grad student, I'm frantically writing or debugging something. If I've been a good little grad student, I'm out relaxing with a few friends.

If you google my legal name, you get a picture of me in a pink sequined prom dress. Until recently, it was the first image result.