I am Introspective, Empathetic, and Passionate.
My Self-Summary
I sometimes have entire conversations with certain friends
consisting entirely of Meows.
I was always the
Weird Kid, the
Quiet Kid, and the
Smart Kid. Surprisingly, growing up and
trudging through public school didn't grind those traits out of
me.
I'm a theology geek.
You don't have to have this in common with me for us to get along,
though.
I had a long ramble here about religions and spirituality, but
realized it was better suited for a blog post so the
short-attention-spanned can read (or not) at their leisure.
I'm
Sapiosexual.
I'm also
Polyamorous, but in an interesting
situation of attempting a Monogamous relationship.
I have a great many hobbies that fall under the general category of
Geekery, but I choose not to identify myself by those hobbies. Or I
suppose you could say, I'm a Geek but I'm not *JUST* a Geek.
I kill some free time playing World of Warcraft.
I've been known to play tabletop RPGs, D&D, White Wolf's World
of Darkness (both incarnations), etc.
I'm an active paid member of the Camarilla.
I enjoy a small handful of Anime series and movies.
I've attended Cons.
I participate in the SCA.
I have sizable collections of action figures, comic books and Magic
cards.
I am highly unlikely to bring up the subject on any of these unless
actually participating in them at the time, so I'm rather a
geek-in-disguise in my daily life.
I'm currently in a massive phase of reassessment and revision of
myself down to the core.
Thus, this profile also needs a serious revision.
However I've been lacking the patience and time to go over it
all.
I'm doing a section at a time now. This profile is definitely a
work in progress. As are we all, ultimately.
"...everything you learn is already part of you, even to the
Godhead Itself. Study nothing except in the knowledge that you
already knew it. Worship nothing except in adoration of your true
self. And fear nothing except in the certainty that you are your
enemy's begetter and its only hope of healing. For everything that
does evil is in pain."
-Clive Barker, through one of his characters, in 'Imajica'
What I’m doing with my life
Remodeling my psyche, working my drudgery job on the late shift,
and deciding what exactly to go back to school for. (There's so
many shiny choices.)
My long term goals include learning everything I possibly can, and
conquering every challenge that vexes me.
I’m really good at
Reading, spelling and grammar. They're second nature to me.
Recognizing faces.
Listening.
Understanding others' perspectives.
Giving backrubs.
Crosswords, Sudoku and logic puzzles.
I've also been told I give really good hugs.
The first things people usually notice about me
Often the first thing people notice about me is that they've just
trod upon me. I have an amazing way of being unnoticed without
trying.
They used to notice my hair. But it's far shorter now and thus no
longer so noteworthy.
My favorite books, movies, music, and food
==Books==
Fantasy:
* The Iron Dragon's Daughter by Michael Swanwick. Gritty steampunk
fantasy. child slavery, sex magick, love, death, drugs, violence
and college. And so much more, but I can't give away the
ending.
* Most anything by Neil Gaiman. He's had horrible luck with film/TV
adaptations though.
* The Black Jewels Trilogy by Anne Bishop. Very atypical fantasy
setting. Strong female characters drive both the 'good guys' and
the 'bad guys', no knights in shining anything, one dragon and it
doesn't fight anyone or have a hoard of gold. Plus three unique,
intense and fascinating mentally scarred male anti-hero types that
would put a Wolverine or Punisher to shame.
* Philip Pullman's "His Dark Materials" trilogy. 'Young adult'
steampunk with philosophy, theology and quantum physics =
<3
* Only Begotten Daughter by James Morrow. The Second Coming is a
female, and Christians kill Her. Then things get interesting.
Sci-Fi:
* Douglas Adams. From the Hitchhiker's series to Dirk Gently.
Wonderful sense of humor, 'random nonsense' that turns up at the
other end of the book, or in another book entirely, to actually
make perfect sense and explain EVERYTHING. Holistic Detective
Agency. Impossible Couch. 'Nuff said.
* VALIS by Philip K. Dick. How much of this is directly
autobiographical and how much was embellished to make for better
Fiction reading, I don't know. But if even a small chunk of it is
accurate, it's an intense experience. And the book will twist your
brain in to funny shapes.
* Dune by Frank Herbert.
* Heinlein's Stranger in a Strange Land.
* Childhood's End by Arthur C. Clarke.
Other-ish fiction:
The Magus by John Fowles. The literary equivalent of Schroedinger's
cat or a Rorschach test. I'm still not sure precisely what the meat
of the plot is about, and I think I prefer it that way. Don't read
it if you don't want to think.
* Daniel Quinn's Ishmael. Using fiction to deliver a real-world
message.
* 'Lamb: The Gospel According to Biff, Christ's Childhood Pal' by
Christopher Moore
* I don't read much realistic fiction, so this one won't reach
5.
Non-fiction:
* Prometheus Rising by Robert Anton Wilson. His works tend to
repeat each other often, but this one says the most in the best way
in my opinion.
* Freedom is a Two-Edged Sword by John W. 'Jack' Parsons. Not only
was he a brilliant mind in the field of rocketry, but this provides
a great glimpse in to the thoughts of such a dynamic personality
beyond that field as well.
* Holographic Universe by Michael Talbot.
* Quantum Self by Danah Zohar. (This has a particular sort of
synergy when read immediately after or before the previous
book.)
* The Chalice and the Blade: Our History, Our Future by Riane
Eisler
* Immanuel Velikovsky.
* Godel, Escher, Bach by Douglas R. Hofstadter
* The Passover Plot by Dr. Hugh J. Schonfield
* Undoing Yourself with Energized Meditation and Other Devices by
Christopher S. Hyatt, Ph.D.
* From the Ashes of Angels by Andrew Collins.
Other:
* Principia Discordia & Apocrypha Discordia
* The Prophet by Kahlil Gibran. Not so much a story as a series of
inspirational quotes strung together loosely by a narrative.
Beautiful ideas though.
Thus Spoke Zarathustra by Friedrich Nietzsche. I don't understand
why people see his ideas as so gloomy and negative and destructive.
I didn't get that at all from it.
Various & sundry religious or spiritual scriptures and
treatises. The rarer or more unusual the better.
Movies: Too many to name thoroughly, so I'll pick one for each
letter of the alphabet.
American Beauty. Now that I've finally seen it, it replaced Amélie
as my A.
Boondock Saints
City of Lost Children
Dark City
Equilibrium
F - Crap, a tie. Fifth Element or Fight Club.
Godzilla movies (a type, not a title, but still.)
Hellboy
Idle Hands
Jay & Silent Bob Strike Back
Knockaround Guys
Labyrinth, though Ladyhawke came in right on its tail.
Mel Brooks movies.
National Treasure
Office Space
Payback. Ooh, or Paycheck.
Quills
Romeo + Juliet
Serenity. Closely followed by Secret of NIMH and Secret of Roan
Inish.
Tank Girl
UHF
V for Vendetta
What Dreams May Come
X-Men
Young Frankenstein. And if that doesn't count 'cuz Mel Brooks is
already covered, Young Einstein.
Zoom
...My problem with movies is I have a talent for being more
tolerant than most people of bad movies. Some I like BECAUSE
they're bad.
Music:
This is a difficult one to cover thoroughly enough. I like at least
a little bit from every genre. Seriously. Name any genre, and if
I've ever heard it I can name at least something I like in it. If I
HAVEN'T heard it, I'll thank you for expanding my horizons.
I like atypical time scales, as well as complex & intricate
melodies. Especially intricate bass melodies.
particularly great music gives me an immediate physical
sensation.
Also,
Jonathan Coulton rocks my
socks.
The six things I could never do without
I have to assume for the sake of a more interesting question that
the basic needs vis-a-vis Maslow are provided for, and this is more
a question of what you would completely break down without rather
than what you would literally expire directly from the lack
of.
1. Giving and receiving physical touch with a human being I trust
and am comfortable around. No, I don't mean sex. Despite the
reputation of Scorpios, I am not a sex addict. (Far from prudish,
and can be 'in the mood' at the drop of a hat, but I digress.) I am
a very touch-oriented person, and can go fairly crazy if I go
without it for long. My personal boundaries when it comes to touch
are unusual. It's all or nothing, depending on which side of that
crucial comfort-level boundary you fall. I've upset people by
attempting to give them hugs, and those people confuse me.
2. Music. Whether a magical perpetual generator, a stereo and a
stack of unscratchable CDs, or simply the materials tools and
knowledge to craft my own more 'primitive' instruments.
3. Someone of at least slightly above average intellect to converse
with.
4. A private place. Being an introvert, I need peaceful alone-time
once in a while to recharge or I go a little crazy.
5. The ability to bathe.
6. Clothing. Even if not necessary for protection from
temperature/elements/whatever. While I believe in questioning
societal norms, I do not believe in throwing them out just because
they ARE the norms. And upon questioning, I determined I rather
*like* the ability to be clothed.
Given just those six things, no more and no less, I could be
stranded on the proverbial deserted island until a ripe old age and
remain fairly content considering the circumstances.
I spend a lot of time thinking about
The interplay between the psychological models of
Freud,
Jung,
Reich and
Leary.
How much of human behavior is autopilot or conditioned
thinking.
Religions.
History.
Advanced physics theories.
Who and what I am.
How to put half the things spinning through my brain in to
words.
How in addition to being a rollicking-good Comic Book Film, if you
tilt your synapses sideways and squint it also makes an interesting
dissertation on what happens when an individual embarks on a
mission to *violently* destroy a community's tunnel realities and
conditioned behavior.
Recursion, paradoxes, and fractals.
Whether there may be some as yet undiscovered scientific principle
behind Acupuncture.
On a typical Friday night I am
...probably at work, unfortunately.
When I'm not, I'm usually reading something or researching
something online or, rarely, hanging out with co-workers or friends
doing a whole lot of nothing in particular.
The most private thing I’m willing to admit here
I harbor a secret love for all the most horribly offensive (but
non-scatological) jokes known to man (IE racist, sexist,
anything-else-ist, morbid humor, dead baby jokes, etc.) despite
being about as far from the sentiments involved as possible.
You should message me if
"the only people for me are the mad ones, the ones who are mad to
live, mad to talk, mad to be saved, desirous of everything at the
same time, the ones who never yawn or say a commonplace thing, but
burn, burn, burn, like fabulous yellow roman candles exploding like
spiders across the stars and in the middle you see the blue center
light pop and everybody goes 'aww'."
-Jack Kerouac
...you're in the Portland area and want someone to share activities
ranging from intense intellectual conversations to laughing like
maniacs at a good Comedy to just hanging out and relaxing
somewhere.
OR
...there's something about my personality or interests you
harmonize with, and you don't mind an internet pen pal who can be
slow to respond sometimes because he's mulling over his reply for
an eternity.
OR
...You want to ask me a question. ANY question. The deeper, the
better. The worst you'll get is a polite "I'd rather not answer
that." You'll most likely get an answer though, and particularly
good questions may be added to my profile or become blog
posts.
Edited to add:
THIS IS NOT, I REPEAT, NOT a test of the amazingness of your
deep-and-unique-question-asking skills. Any old question that comes
to your mind will do. I'm constantly brimming with curiosity, so I
see it as my reciprocal duty to the universe to indulge other
peoples' curiosity as much as possible.
It has been brought to my attention that people are sometimes
intimidated by thinking they need to come up with something of
significant intellectual merit to start a conversation with. No...
Seriously, some of my favorite conversations start with the most
random silly little shit and spin off in to the cosmos. So really
anything more than "Hi!", "How are you?", something that shows you
actually read my profile some, is fine.
But... please, spell out your words (not 'ur wrds'), and as proper
capitalization and punctuation as you can manage is a big plus too.
I'm not going to get down on you for mistakes, but at least
*trying* shows you put more than two seconds thought in to banging
out a message to me.