User Profile

thanks for all the ghoti.

on usenet i am piranha. much earlier elsenet, as in PLATO, you might have known me as gtg. i never did game (just like nowadays i never play GTA, THPS, and others). previously i was pleonastic here. i contain multitudes. :)

i mostly write here to allow people who know me from elsewhere to keep up with my life. as such, my entries are much more banal than my usenet posts and are written more off-the-cuff; i talk about my current obsessions, gardening, my daily pursuits, the cats, but not so much about philosophy and politics. i do talk some about my thoughts and i still think about everything under the sun, but it's rather less polished, more raw, and i find it harder to put that out here. sometimes i go monomaniacal about something; currently that set is anime/manga/homoerotica/japanese; i'm sure that bores a lot of people, but y'all know how to scroll. i am generally ambivalent about LJ as a communication medium -- i appreciate the more personal aspects, but intellectual discussion is so difficult to carry on in this format that i don't usually bother.

there are many pictures here: LJ scrapbook pics. one of these days i'll have a local gallery set up again instead. don't bother to look for pictures of me; i don't publish any.

technorati profile -- there's nothing there; this is just a marker for technorati to pick up my LJ.

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"friends" policy:

i dislike that LJ calls it "friends". i'd prefer if it were more neutral, if it said "reading list" or "subscriptions", for example. none of this has anything to do with actual friendship for me, it's just LJ logistics.

in general, don't sweat it.

i'll add you if i am interested in reading your journal for a while. usually that happens if i know you from a newsgroup in which we both participate, or if we've been friendly years ago elsewhere. if, however, you don't have any idea who i am and can't figure it out from this page, it's because i found your journal via comments in another LJ i read or the friendsfriends page and was intrigued. you don't have to add me back; in fact i'd prefer if you only add me if you actually do want to read my LJ. i don't have much ego tied up in this; i am not insulted if you don't find my LJ interesting enough, or if you don't have the time for it; i just like to know who actually reads.

if i remove you from my "friends" list, it's not about trust. i don't make friends-only posts (except for an occasional one meant just for my partners), so adding or removing you is not a matter of trusting or not trusting you. i want to keep this a true reading list, a collection of journals i actually do read pretty much every day i use LJ. and that list is constrained by two main factors: my available time and my energy. in short, it's less about you than it's about me; my ability to interact in some useful way with what you write. if i remove you it doesn't mean i don't like you anymore; we're not in junior high school. if i had my druthers, i'd read many, many more people; so many of you write fascinating little bits. never enough time...

feel free to add me if you like. you don't need to ask. if i didn't want my journal to be public, it wouldn't be. i usually appreciate a short intro if you decide to comment (just a bit about how you found me and why you read). unfriend me anytime for whatever reason; no justification needed; no drama.

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guidelines:

go to town. if you become annoying to other visitors on my journal, i'll bop you one, but generally, have at it. i like vigorous discussions. anonymous comments are screened, however, and if you spam or write some idiotic drive-by insult, i'll just delete it, so don't bother. if you don't want your comments to be screened make a journal for yourself already, it costs nothing.

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Friends (235):

Mutual Friends (178):

Also Friend of (39):