User Profile

Avid and voracious reader who loves a well-written mystery, romance, novel, adventure, or history. Admitted book addict who would happily spend my last dime on a book. Nightmare: Stuck without something to read in a waiting room. Scariest fact: I never have fewer than 20 books in my car. Right now I have 1 large box and 2 shopping bags of books in my trunk and at least ten scattered in my backseat. (Wow... that's a little sick)

I see myself a serious scholar and a member of academic community. I wrote my undergraduate thesis (over 200 pages) on propaganda created by the US government during the Second World War to indoctrinate children in patriotism (which varied by gender), how they should be helping the war effort, and how they should see the enemy. Using the records of the Office of War Information and the Writers' War Board (an NGO funded and advised by the OWI), I traced how and what children were indoctrinated with during the war. Thanks to the Library of Congress and the National Archives, I got to touch a handwritten poem by Edna St. Vincent Millay, study original sketches by famous comic strip artists (including an original Blondie cartoon), and read letters from Oscar Hammerstein, Rex Stout, Pearl S. Buck, John Steinbeck, E.B. White, and a virtual Who's Who of American writers. I love research - the tedium of reading reams of documents in the search of the whole picture and the pain of writing and synthesizing an argument is well-worth the sense of accomplishment in finishing something you're proud of. It's something I have kept as a hobby as I love it too much to let it be ruined by the pedestrian requirements of making a living. Instead I work for a medical software company running the custom design unit.

My taste in books is catholic - any well-written and throughly researched book can peak my interest and I spit on the idea of denigrating a book simply because it only aims to entertain. But life is too short to waste reading something pedestrian, unoriginal, or badly written. There's nothing more annoying than noticing a grammatical or spelling mistake every few sentences. I'm just too anal to ignore it.

I also love television - we seem to be in the middle of a renaissance in the quality, maturity, and sheer creativity here in the US. Thanks to Tivo, I watch (in order of priority in the Season Pass Manager) Battlestar Galactica (Apollo & Starbuck should be together!!), House, Grey's Anatomy, Brothers & Sisters, Cold Case, Bones, Numbers, Criminal Minds, Men in Trees, Stargate Atlantis, Stargate SG-1, Law & Order SVU & Criminal Intent, Gilmore Girls (although this season sucks compared to the past), Mystery!, Everyday Food, American Experience, Masterpiece Theatre, Saved, This Old House, The Closer, History Detectives, Frontline, Secrets of the Dead, Keeping Score, Gourmet's Diary of a Foodie, and tons of documentaries. I love well-written scifi like Battlestar Galactica and Star Trek: Next Generation. I like Stargate Sg-1 and Stargate Atlantis, but it's definitely fast food scifi.

Thanks to MorbidEclipse for the very cool icon of Starbuck & Apollo.