What the hell do you say to these? Hi! I benchpress small continents. I'm smarter than Einstein. I'm so sexy that underwear models hit on me in bars. I'm basically awesome in every conceivable way. Plus I'm unbelievably modest.

No, seriously!

I'm a geek - coder by trade, gamer by choice. I enjoy beauty in any of its myriad forms. I'm trying to start a game studio, combining trade and choice in one beautiful hilariously-doomed symbiosis. I have perhaps picked up a trace of cynicism in my life, but cynicism tempered with sheer unalloyed optimism and joy.

If the phrase "Oh, that's a fantastic idea. That couldn't fail horribly at all. Okay, let's give it a try!" makes sense to you, then you understand me, and you understand what my life is about.

My picture is terrible. I am aware of this. If you're a photographer I will flat-out buy you dinner if you get some good photos of me. This offer stands even if you're not a photographer.

As mentioned previously, I'm starting a game studio. Am I crazy? Oh hell yes. But it's something I've wanted to do for many years, and now I've got a nest egg built up and I'm finally attempting it. It's going to be a very long and very difficult road.

So far it's been a two-year-long road, and I'm starting to kind of figure out what I'm doing. I still haven't sold anything but it's been a hell of a lot of fun. I'm now trying a new challenge where I make one game every month - yeah, that's right, one entire game every single month - and I would be quite thankful if you inspected the fruits of my labor (note: this is a link, not an interest) and told me what you thought.

You know. About my fruits.

Inspect my fruits closely.

More eternally, I'm doing everything involving imagination. Everything. Books games comics movies music roleplaying everything. This is just what my life is tied up in. Beauty is - at the risk of sounding like a moron - beautiful.

My last profile said I was good at geeky things. This is true. I am. But I'm sort of losing interest in a way. Geekery is, for me, a solved problem. You want it coded, I can code it. There is no question in my mind on that. And thus it is uninteresting.

Lately I've been mucking about with trying to decipher Fun. Fun, it turns out, is a curiously slippery* concept. People do not want to have fun, and will avoid it at every possible opportunity. It is like all of human behavior is geared towards spending an enormous amount of energy carefully dodging fun, then complaining that it wasn't fun. So you kind of have to trick people into having fun, and then they thank you for it, and innocently suggest that, next time, perhaps you might want to remove the very thing that they found fun.

I'm getting good at figuring out how to do this. Slow road. But making progress.

* (if you know what I mean, wink wink, nudge nudge)

I tend to talk quickly. I'm invariably trying to get someone to play whatever game I've most recently discovered. (Sometimes tabletop, sometimes computer, sometimes console. Depends on the mood.) Despite my apparent fixation on games and art, I do my best to be knowledgable in many other areas - science and politics, philosophy, cooking. If it is interesting, then I am interested in it, and vice-versa. This tends to become apparent when the conversation is on its fifth nested branch and we've forgotten what branches one through three were.

In summary, I tend to have very complicated deep conversations.

If you're going for a "physical aspect" answer, well, nobody can agree on what color my eyes are, and it comes up more often than I'd expect. So if you want that sort of answer, that's not it, because it's never the first thing. But it's something.

I basically just blew away everything I used to have written here because it did not make sense to who I am today.

I look for stuff that stretches my brain. Sometimes that's because it's glorious and amazing and I love it. Sometimes that's because I don't know if it's good. Sometimes that's because, despite the fact that it's not wonderful, it does something so very very right that I cannot help but worship it.

I have grown to realize that there is more to books than words, and there is more to movies than acting. There is a Thing, outside these media and greater than them, that some people tap into and others do not. Paintings are not pictures. Games are not code. Comics are not what you get when you lock an artist and a writer in a room together.

Art is more than the sum of its parts, and sometimes, despite all of its parts being inferior, the whole is great.

So let's start this off on a hideously cliche note. Transmetropolitan, a fantastic series by Warren Ellis, chronicling the life of mad gonzo journalist Spider Jerusalem, himself heavily inspired by Hunter S. Thompson. The feel is gorgeous, the flavoring impeccable, and even when you cannot help but hate Spider you also cannot help but love him. He is a Character.

Another direction. The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou. I do not claim this is a good movie. Honestly? I couldn't tell you what it is. I could tell you that you should watch it. You may enjoy it. You may not. I am still not sure if I enjoyed it, and yet, I am glad to have seen it. Why?

I'm not sure. And that's why I need to see it again.

Toys. LA Story. Crash. That's enough movies for now, let's go elsewhere. Daisy Kutter. Braid. Hellspark. The Path. Recoil. MS Paint Adventures. There, we've got books, comics, movies, and music. Good enough?

I could probably list awesome media for hours, if I had to, but I shall not. And I could talk about them for hours, and discuss what they did right and what they did wrong. This is what I do. This is what I am trying to learn, and what I am spending my life devoted to - art in all its forms.

I could talk about them more . . .

. . . but if you want that, you'll have to, y'know, send me a message.

(1) The tools to make art, of whatever kind.

(2) Other people's universes to play in.

(3) New minds to meet. (I'm kind of cheating. This is largely equivalent to #2.)

(4) Good food.

(5) A sense of humor. If you can't laugh at yourself . . . well, I'm not entirely sure what to say about that.

(6) New things to learn.

In no particular order.

There is nothing I have written yet that would lead you to think I am addicted to imagination.

Nothing whatsoever.

I won't mention it here either, as I feel like continuing my evil web of deceit and lies.

Doing any number of things, depending on how you define "typical". Eating sushi. Hanging out with friends. Playing games. Working. Fridays used to be the least predictable day in my schedule, but now that I'm self-employed they're just as predictable as any other day, which is to say, not whatsoever.

I've made some pretty big mistakes in my life. I'm willing to admit that. I'd like to think I've learned from them.

But I'm not going to tell you what they are until I know you better.

Nyaaah. Now you're curious, aren't you? Sucks to be you.

Message me if you think I sound interesting. If so, then chances are reasonably good that I'll think you're interesting. I don't require 100% compatibility. Variety is the spice of life, and life without spice is bland and uninteresting.

I am looking, first and foremost, for friends. If I don't get along with someone, there isn't gonna be much of anything else happening. If you're not up for that - if you want a six-year relationship or nothing - then you are probably going to get "nothing". But if you're interested in more of a smoldering incendiary burn, then, y'know, we could maybe make that work out.

But most importantly, I am looking for people who think. If you consider thought to be fun, send me a message. If you consider thought to be mandatory, definitely send me a message.

If you don't think, then don't bother.

That is how things go.