First, a bit about me:

I'll update this as more uninteresting crap about myself comes to mind.

I guess the first and most noticeable thing about me would be that I'm a mutt. Aside from Latino and Mid-Eastern roots lacking from my genetic background, I have almost everything else. Most identifiable would be Asian mixed with an unhealthy dose of Eurotrash, and some African descent features. Yes, I'm a bit fugly as a result (I blame the drunken Irish for that one). One grandmother is Japanese/French, and the other is Norwegian/??*. My grandfathers are both a mix of Irish/German/A fuckton of others. I don't burn from the sun, the freckles on my ass just connect.

So I guess I prove that many racial "borders" go out the window if you drink hard enough. :D

It's probably because of this I find a lot of racial humor to be silly, stereotypes to be overblown and laughed at, and race shouldn't be taken too seriously. I grew up on Pryor's humor and listened to Parliament Funkadelic, Moody Blues, Motorhead, and a really strange mix of others. We're all human, and I've learned to hate much of the human race as a whole, but appreciate culture and decent people. I identify most with Alaskan homestead upbringing, since the population in most areas of the state tends to be a bit mixed, and most folks don't take race into account much anymore. People from all kinds of backgrounds live together, bring their own thing to the mix, and as long as you don't go out of your way to really harass someone they all just live together minding their own business. As a result, I believe you should never take life too seriously, you'll never get out alive.

By the age of 15, I wasn't just a polyglot**, but what could be called a chameleoglot as well. There's probably some kind of official word for it in English, but it means I pick up local accents and customs rather quickly when face to face with a person. It has helped considering I've been around the world a few times by the age of 20***.

I am a bit grumpy at times, so much of what I say can't be taken too seriously. Much of this came from when I was diagnosed with Crohn's and permanently lost about 70lbs of muscle (what can I say...early in my life I was an Ahhhnold fan and believed that whole "A good pump is better than coming" thing), and the continued trials of dealing with an incompetent Veterans Administration leave me a tad bit more disgruntled than your average large caliber wielding postal worker/high school student. I'm still around 210-220lbs at 6'5", though I don't fit doorways as much as I used to.

I am glad I learned how to cook, and consider myself an amateur chef, trained by a few chefs around the world. Tempura is one of the best things I can cook, along with teriyakis and many other Asian cuisines. The neighbors even beg for the Gorgonzola mushrooms I make, since the smell of stinky cheese just goes through the neighborhood when I bake them. Denis Leary is spot on when it comes to Irish cuisine, I will admit that.

Some of my favorite movies include: The City of Lost Children, Brazil, Clash of the Titans, the Conans (before Hollywood started thinking that shopping at a S&M warehouse would pass for leather armor), Blazing Saddles, UHF, Ladyhawke, many wuxia stories (though they tend to repeat and rip off each other after a while...I turn instantly emo at the sight of yet another serious rip-off from The Seven Samurai and start looking for the razor blades), Labyrinth, most Don Bluth animation (I hate it when folks assume animation and children can't appreciate a darker side to life), a big fan of Mark Hamill voicing The Joker, and many of the Bond movies. I'm also a fan of many voice actors including Charlie Adler, Ron Perlman, and Frank Welker, to name just a few.

Currently, I work in the video game industry (not saying where for the time being), counting Leonard Boyarsky, Tim Cain, and a number of other RPG authors as friends. I've been in and around the industry for about thirty years, starting as a Sir-Tech and Origin fan, but more recently I've become a fan of the indie games that offer more creative vision now that the mainstream is as generally recycling and unimaginative as most of the mainstream movie industry. If there ever is a Spill version for video games, I'd be all over it like my ancestors on anything that moved.

^ - I have to explain the ?? a bit. One grandfather didn't like talking about his in-laws, and the rest of the family wasn't too keen on talking about that topic either since he fit right in with Florida racist trash. I did a bit of research once a bit of revelation came about when eating at a Louisiana cajun place owned by a friend's father. "You sittin' by my boy, it kinda obvious. Somewhere in your past there was a darkie in the woodpile." Not until I saw Flight of the Intruder did I wholly get that joke, but eh, the interesting things one learns about family: "I got that name because somewhere in my past there was a wop in the woodpile."

** - English, French, Japanese, Arabic, Norwegian, Dutch, Irish Gaelic, Cantonese, Ahtna Athabascan, Tanainan Athabascan, a couple of dialects of Yup'ik, Thai, and a bit of Vietnamese. As a result of living in the USA for the last 12 years, I've unfortunately forgotten most of them except for Bad English, Worse French, and Shitty Japanese.

*** - Every state in the US, Canada, Mexico, Ecuador, Peru, Panama, Chile, Brazil, Argentina, Australia, New Guinea, Malaysia, Cambodia, Laos, Vietnam, Thailand, the Philippines, Japan, China, S. Korea, Russia, Germany, France, Spain, Portugal, Egypt, S. Africa, Kuwait, Iraq, Turkey, Jordan, Israel, Saudi Arabia, India, Bangladesh, Norway, Italy, Ireland, Scotland, Sweden, Finland, Poland, Romania, Ukraine, Iceland, and a few more I can't recall off the top of my head.