Acc'd to my DL: DOB 11/05/72, WGT: 127 (now more like 135), EYE: grn, HAIR: brn, HT: 67, SEX: m, CLASS: M1 D

Herbivourism (vegetarianism); composting; atomic behaviour; ant behaviour; nutrition; whole-food alternatives to synthetic drugs; retroviruses; DNA sequencing; methylenedioxymethamphetamine (theory in the synthesis of); SIDA; dopamine receptor antaganonism; Kind; Smith, Wesson and Colt; reloading; diagraming sentences; sucking face with my boyfriend; 12-day 4WD camping expeditions; outdoor raves; Canada.

When it comes to the universal language, it's difficult to name favorites. Most of the time, my favorite music is any tune i've never heard before. A new tune is a new experience; and new experiences are the chocolate of life. Incidentally, wind chimes are fascinating.

In elementary school, Kenny and Dolly were the shit. My parents have never much liked Country. They were born in California. Other faves are/were Billy Joel, Boy George, Cindy Lauper, Hall and Oats, and the J. Guiles Band (was it "Freeze-Frame" or "My Angel in the Centerfold"?).

Junior high ("middle school") brought Robert Smith, Morrissey, Martin L. Gore (DM), and The Smiths. Enough said. Most people will never even comprehend the concept we called "alternative."

Horizons began to broaden in high school, when i would listen to anything but Whitney Houston, Madonna, Barry Manilow, Brooks and Dunn, Prince, or either of the Jackson girls. The collection of, the identification of, the obsession with, and the ethereal quality of the most "with it" music became much less important after that. It's when i wisened up and cancelled my Columbia House® membership since my paychecks and my allowance ("child support") were redirected towards rent payments, utility bills, food and automobile maintenance.

Nevertheless, since high school, noteworthy artists include:

Trent Reznor

Camouflage

Aaron Copeland

Indigo Girls

Cowboy Junkies

Megadeth

Janis Joplin (but not necessarily Joan Baez)

Melissa Etheridge

CCR

Paul McCartney, John Lennon, et al

Paul Simon (and Art, too)

Bob Dylan

Ani Difranco

Vivaldi

Sarah McLachlan

Chopin

Stan Getz

Hank Williams, Sr. (but not necessarily Bo Seifus)

Ray Lynch

Mannheim Steamroller

The Beach Boys and

Johnny Cash

Lately, though, i've had a hankerin' to find out what the ranchers in Costa Rica listen to and to find out just what kinds of songs the indiginous people of Madagascar play.

Raised a Unitarian Athiest (as opposed to a Christian Athiest or a Hindu Athiest) and later exposed primarily to Western Religions, my spiritual growth is still very immature. What i believe is that there is a power or force so vast and so great that humankind will never fully understand it. For lack of a better word, i call it God. People have lots of other names for it, too. Some people, polytheists, identify it by its various components.

Further, i believe that, at some brief interval during eternity, God caused a great disturbance of matter and energy which involved carbon, nitrogen, oxygen, sulphur, phosphorus and everything else. It started life. Adam was the first prokaryote. He was lonely, so God took one of his ribs of ribonucleic acid and created Eve. You know the rest.

Incidentally, Santa Claus is just a Nick name for Jesus Christ who was kind of a nerd, but a truly kewl chap with a very keen sense of right and wrong and with lots of courage. Jesus, if you're on the Internet, here's a poem i typed up for you:

Jesus

So in a metaphorical sense, Santa Claus "is" real because Jesus was real...
a very real man...
who was born to a lady named Mary
who was, by then, a very, very distant descendant, Homo somethingorother of Adam and Eve. Jesus was born by the wish of God. Who am i to postulate a reason for His wish? Perhaps Christ's birth presented a corrective factor to the mathmatically-flawed terrestrial gene pool. You can bet your Life Savers® that our ancestors were otherwise destined for stasis. (Maybe they still are). He was born by immaculate conception, biologically similar in fashion to binary fission...
only...
with a spiritual component involved.

It's obvious, i guess, that my spiritual identity reflects a very Christian perspective. A lot of that is simply a result of enculturation. It is mostly through Christian spectacles that i have looked for the Creator. That's fairly typical, i think, for the experiences North Americans with European ancestry.

Truthfully, though, my spiritual self is most comfortable in the mountains -- as far away from other Homo sapiens as possible. To worship amongst the evergreens in the company of invertebrates and amphibians and arthropods -- to pray and to rejoice in the warmth of the morning sun and the gentle chill of the snowmelt stream -- these means of spiritual connection elicit a far greater faith than could ever be found in a temple of bricks and stained glass.

Drugs are a big fascination. How can something inanimate like a little piece of blotter paper affect reality constructs so profoundly? What is it about certain plant foods that change peoples' moods? Sure, i like new and different experiences, too, just like most healthy people. It is through subjective experience that we develop as individuals. That's true of psychoactive matter just as it's true of all facets of life. For me, however, the experience is just an introduction. My higher concern is to understand exactly what provokes the experience and to learn detail by detail what makes people trip. The empirical knowledge gained involves isomers and and enzymes, but the truer knowledge is an understanding of animals and plants (and three other kingdoms) functioning together in the presence of non-living elements on the surface of a really big sphere.