Some info about ME:

I am white, cisgendered, six one, straight, glasses-wearing, on the nerdy side. Single, no kids, never married. My favorite "sport" is throwing a frisbee back and forth.

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I worry about leading an honorable life. I try, fail, agonize; above all, question whether it is even possible in the world in which we live.

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I like reading and writing and work as a substitute teacher. (My setup is rather "bohemian," I guess, though not in an ostentatious or dissipated way. I'm austere to a fault. . . .) I'd eventually like to publish a book or something, maybe a book of poems, but am so far unpublished.

I'm a Californian by birth and upbringing. Grew up in SoCal, but I've been in San Francisco for over a decade now.

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Mostly I came up with the phrase "Dogland heretic" because I thought it would make for an interestingly mysterious title. . . . But I AM a "Dogland heretic" in the sense that dogs seem like they're very popular in my area and I'm not much of a dog person. (I don't hate them; I just don't LOVE them.)

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I grew up with a lot of pets and, like any reasonably sane person, I'm endlessly fascinated by animals in general; but I prefer to observe them in the so-called wild (which here in the city if often quite close up). I always find something poignant in the pet-ownership of adults: it's almost a veiled confession that human relationships are too onerous in their complexity. I guess that for a kid, having and caring for a pet may provide a form of moral education. . .but if you're an adult, to me it reads like an oblique expression of misanthropy (the "People who love animals once loved people" idea): it's escapist, and what you are escaping is the grinding complexity of human relationships. (To which, by the way, I'm NOT UNSYMPATHETIC: Boy howdy, being human is difficult. . .and being human around other humans can be a chore! :p)

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I kind of hate living here. I have family here, so that's why I'm here (i.e., I didn't choose it). I tend to see the city (but what do I know?) as a node of intersection between soul-deadening, rapacious global capitalism, on the one hand, and immiseration and urban squalor, on the other. Here's where they shake hands. . . . But on a less theoretical note, it's just loud and crowded (and windy!) and I'm an introvert for goodness' sake. The one upside is that I can get (some) places by walking. (I'm a walker.) I dream about someday moving to Vermont and living closer to nature and getting to experience pronounced seasonal shifts, but I have no contacts there; it's just a dream.

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I'm from a dysfunctional, nuclear family. (Not much in the way of extended family to relieve the claustrophobia.) Not in a super lurid or melodramatic way, more in an insidiously subtle way. My parents had me when they were around forty. Now they are old and, as a family, it seems like we're more dysfunctional now than ever: all those unresolved issues and character flaws that never got ironed out are impossible to hide now. They bubble forth with renewed force and reveal themselves more starkly.

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Some of my interests, beyond writing, include: animals and nature (as previously touched upon: e.g., birds and trees), movies, political theory, and philosophy / theology. I don't necessarily know very much about these things, but they attract my attention from time to time, and I may like to talk about them.

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Some info about YOU:

You are a dreamy ghoul who gets so lost in their thoughts at times that you forget to eat. Granted, for you, food is easy to come by; you just hop on over to the graveyard and dig up some fresh(ly rotten) flesh; still, sometimes you go weeks without, wandering around in a haze; then you remember you're a ghoul after all and you need to eat, and you go rob some graves. . . . (By the way, cremation is such an unholy act, by golly. It's such a waste of a good meal!)

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Contact me with some sort of thoughtful introduction, please, if you contact me at all. (Maybe you shouldn't. You definitely don't have to, just because you read this.) Chats are okay, but I'm very likely to disregard very casual replies with minimal information (i.e., one-liners), however clever :)

A writing prompt if you want one:

How would you characterize your childhood?

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Thanks, and be well!