CURRENT MISSION

To inspire others to think for themselves, even if they end up disagreeing with my own views

ABOUT ME

I'm a gay Jewish geek who's very liberal, an occultist, and a registered Socialist. I've been described both as "an old soul" and as "a big kid", both of which I consider compliments. I have way too many books in my house, and way too many movies and TV shows on my computer. While I have a talent for fixing computers (and explaining how they work to non-technical folks), I'm much more of a literature nerd than a math nerd; I learn operating systems mostly the same way I learn languages, which is to say intuitively. I know enough about math (and programming languages) to be able to converse intelligently about them with a layperson, but if you're a mathematician or a programmer you'll exhaust my knowledge rather quickly.

I'm also very artistic - I love to write, sing, act... and debate, if that counts as an art. Sometimes I can be a little bit too compassionate, feeling responsible for other people's upset or hurt when it really has nothing to do with me. On the Meyers-Briggs Type Indicator, last I checked I was an ENFP... but the first time I took it, I was an INTP; I'm a natural introvert who's learned to love being with other people over time, but who sometimes still needs a little alone time to unwind.

PHILOSOPHY

Knowing is always better than not knowing. Even if that knowledge brings you pain, that pain comes from truth; happiness based on a lie is comfortable, but worthless. I believe in speaking the truth even though it may sometimes get me into trouble, though I will censor myself in situations where I might hurt someone else's feelings without also helping them in some way. I think free, open and rational debate is one of the best things in the universe, since it allows us to learn things we might not otherwise be exposed to. Conversely, I have no tolerance for those who turn rational discussion into personal attacks.

Why I’m on Couchsurfing

HOW I PARTICIPATE IN COUCHSURFING

I'm pretty new to Couchsurfing, so I'm not really sure how to answer this question yet. I'm open to suggestions, and to hosting as well as traveling.

COUCHSURFING EXPERIENCE

None yet... hopefully soon!

Interests

My interests are fairly typical geek, with some hippie thrown in. They include comic books, role-playing games (tabletop and LARP), video games (especially retro consoles like SNES), tinkering with computers and Linux, good science fiction and fantasy of all types, movies (particularly mind-fuck cinema like David Lynch or Richard Kelly), camping, regional burn festivals (think Burning Man but smaller), Pennsic War, skiing, cats (I have two, and am watching a third for a friend), and religion / mythology / the occult. Psychology also interests me quite a bit... I'm thinking of going into some kind of mental health profession eventually. For now, though, I'm a freelance computer support guy. My company is called "The Computer Wizard". I'm also working on three book project currently - a romantic science fiction novel (coauthored with my best friend, Maggie), a book on practical Jewish folk magic (coauthored with my other friend Sara), and a book about how to use role-playing games for personal transformation and goal-setting. I tend to keep busy, but I've never felt more creatively fulfilled in my life than I do now, so I guess it must be working out pretty well.

Regional burn events (Playa del Fuego, Wicker Man, sometimes Frostburn if I'm feeling crazy enough for winter camping) are among the highlights of my year. So is Pennsic War. Really any excuse for dressing up in interesting costumes is cool with me, but these events have so much more than just that to offer. I highly recommend checking them out.

• pets
• cats
• arts
• writing
• books
• literature
• singing
• theater
• festivals
• working out
• flying
• technology
• movies
• video games
• tv
• traveling
• magic
• camping
• skiing
• freelancing
• languages
• mathematics
• psychology
• religion
• science
• software

Music, Movies, and Books

SO many.

Books: Anything by Neil Gaiman, particularly Sandman, American Gods and Stardust; Anything by Alan Moore except League of Extraordinary Gentlemen (which I just couldn't get into, not for lack of trying); Ender's Game & Speaker For the Dead, by Orson Scott Card; Dragonlance, Rose of the Prophet, and Death Gate Cycle by Weis and Hickman; House of Leaves; sacred texts of any tradition, as long as they're well translated (e.g., Bible, Mahabharata, Tao Te Ching); The Templar Revelation; The Hiram Key; anything by Peter Carroll; the Principia Discordia; Watchmen and V for Vendetta, by Alan Moore; Wrestling with God and Men: Homosexuality in the Jewish Tradition, by Rabbi Steven Greenberg; Magic of the Ordinary: Reclaiming the Shamanic in Judaism and Way of the Boundary Crosser: An Introduction to Jewish Flexidoxy, both by Gershon Winkler; The Kite Runner, by Khaled Hosseini; His Dark Materials, by Philip Pullman; anything by Christopher Moore, especially the "Bloodsucking Fiends" series; Even Cowgirls Get the Blues, by Tom Robbins; The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time, by Mark Haddon; Life of Pi, by Yann Martel; The Perks of Being a Wallflower, by Stephen Chbosky; The Hunger Games series by Suzanne Colllins; The Emperor of All Maladies, by Siddhartha Mukherjeej; The World Made by Hand series by James Kunstler; The Death of Bunny Munro, by Nick Cave; The Dune series by Frank Herbert; anything by Malcolm Gladwell; Wild Seed, by Octavia Butler; Lisey's Story and Duma Key, by Stephen King.

Movies: Mulholland Drive, Desperate Remedies, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, eXistenZ, American Beauty, pi, Requiem for a Dream, Better than Chocolate, Melvin Goes to Dinner, Rocky Horror Picture Show, Shock Treatment, Phantom of the Paradise, Donnie Darko, Dark City (Director's Cut), Boondock Saints, Equilibrium, The Animatrix, Spirited Away, Cowboy Bebop: Knocking on Heaven's Door, Darkside Blues, Enemy Mine, Southland Tales, Cloud Atlas

Star Trek (mostly TNG, DS9 and Voyager, and occasionally TOS), Xena: Warrior Princess, X-Files, The Oblongs, Robot Chicken, Aqua Teen Hunger Force, Sealab 2021, Home Movies, Invader Zim, Carnivale, Neverwhere, South Park, The 4400, Red Dwarf, Monty Python's Flying Circus, Twin Peaks, Six Feet Under, Babylon 5, Battlestar Galactica, Doctor Who, Fringe, Dexter, Nurse Jackie

Music:
Bands - Nick Cave and Bad Seeds, They Might Be Giants, Moxy Fruvous, Dar Williams, Kula Shaker, The Beatles, Pink Floyd, Prodigy, Morphine, Tom Petty, George Michael, New Order, Siouxsie and the Banshees, Queen, Poe, Erasure, Annie Lennox/Eurythmics, Mediaeval Baebes, Fool's Garden, Madonna, Lady Gaga, Weird Al Yankovic, Roxette, New Order, Erasure, Modern Talking, The Killers

Soundtracks - Dark City, American Beauty, Rent, Chicago, Phantom of the Opera, Once on this Island, Better than Chocolate, The Life, The Fantasticks, Les Miserables, Miss Saigon, Sweeney Todd, Jekyll and Hyde (all versions), Into the Woods, Assassins, Anyone Can Whistle, Myst, Riven, The Longest Journey, Avenue Q, Shock Treatment, Glee

One Amazing Thing I’ve Done

The first experience that comes to mind is one that happened in Australia when I was visiting with my cousin, aunt and uncle. I was 13 and my cousin was 14. We stumbled across a nesting or breeding ground for thousands of Blue Tiger butterflies - picture a Monarch butterfly, but light blue rather than bright orange. At first it looked like the trees were just covered in leaves, but when we got closer they all went into a frenzy, flapping and flying all around the area. We were surrounded by a whirlwind of tiny blue wings. The description doesn't do it justice, and the photos don't either.

In Israel, my tour group got up very early and hiked up to Masada to watch the sunrise, singing Jewish songs with harmony as we did so. Not quite as breathtaking as the butterflies, but very close.

My final recollection is also from Australia, and was just as unplanned as the incident with the Blue Tigers. We had rented an RV for a week to drive up the east coast of the country, with our final stop being Kakadu National Park in the northeast, where there are famous aboriginal rock paintings. A day or two before we reached Kakadu, we stopped at what seemed like a normal campground... but it turned out that there were wallabies living in the woods near there, and they were apparently so used to humans that they had very little fear of us. They came out at night and sat around people's fires, and my cousin and I got one to eat chicken-flavored potato chips out of our hands. He even let us pet him a little, though he didn't seem to like it much. I wrote a whole story centered around this incident in a writing class years ago, and it still sticks with me even now.

Teach, Learn, Share

I know a lot about computers and technology; creative writing; religion, mythology, magic and the occult (particularly Jewish, but not only); movies, TV, and musical theater.

Countries I’ve Visited

Australia, Canada, Israel, Mexico, Sweden

Countries I’ve Lived In

United States