defected punk w/ no gender, more bird than human, vegetarian, introvert, sun leo/moon leo/rising sagittarius, homebody, affable stoner, twitter user, perpetual teenager, loves to sit down. very kind, like a big dog

Why I’m on Couchsurfing

from each according to their ability, to each according to their need, etc.

hotels/motels/hostels are expensive and rob lots of us of the ability to travel and stay in one place for more than a day. i see couchsurfing as a give/take kinda deal, some kind of moral newton's third law or whatever. i like to make other people's lives easier (have never been anything but a cleric in D&D, chaotic good) and have hope that we can all work toward a norm of giving to each other and opening up our homes!

Interests

• beer
• coffee
• meditation
• reading
• drawing
• history
• social work
• feminism
• nonfiction
• public radio
• walking around
• fiction
• creative writing
• appalachia
• antiracism
• derivative writing
• music journalism
• record/cd/tape collecting
• trans liberation
• the greater midwest
• the rust belt
• sexual assault and violence prevention

Music, Movies, and Books

i've been listening to music somewhat obsessively since i was thirteen or fourteen, taking after my new wave poppa, and i've cycled through and enjoyed plenty of genres. the ones that've captured greater slices of my attention - especially in recent years - include emo (80s, 90s, 00s, "revival," whatever), melodic hardcore, regular hardcore, skate punk of the no idea/fat wreck/red scare variety, "indie rock" at large, mid-20th century jazz, ambient drone, hip hop from the late 70s thru today (some perennial favs: curren$y, cam'ron, de la soul, the first shabazz palaces record, others i can't recall right now). i listen to a lot of music and it consumes a lot of time in my life. i'd like to write about music for money one day, but journalism is a terrifying arena. i have a screaming females tattoo.

i don't have the attention span for movies most of the time. i liked the coen brothers' stuff a lot in high school, and i still do: "no country" is one of those movies i can watch endlessly. same deal with "fargo." my #1, desert island or whatever, is "slc punk!", which has informed my worldview more than i'd like to admit. i watched "tangerine" the other night w/ my partner and it was without a doubt one of the best movies i've ever seen.

i don't read as much as i should, and i have the literary taste of a naive teenager discovering wikipedia and "the canon" for the first time in the late 2000s. i like salinger, especially his short stories, but i also wish he cared about poor people. i've taken a lot of literary cues from john updike, but i wish he didn't hate women. books that have moved me recently - the kinds that i'd call "instant favorites" - include junot diaz's "the brief wondrous life...", bell hooks' "ain't i a woman," august wilson's "fences," claudia rankine's "citizen," and both of john darnielle's works of fiction, "wolf in white van" and the 33.3 series installment on black sabbath's "master of reality."

One Amazing Thing I’ve Done

won a bicycle at a school assembly in second grade; once listened to all three volumes of "69 love songs" not just consecutively, but twice consecutively

Teach, Learn, Share

reasonably well-read on the fronts of american history, contemporary and aging punk record labels, WWE/WWF history between 1995 and 2006, and the implications of the playstation 2