UPDATE:

Well, it *has* been a while. Guess I'll have to make some changes around here...

Hi, I'm brakken. Nice to meet you too. Assuming anyone's actually there, of course. Seeing as this is my first activity on this site in, oh, 3 years, I wouldn't be surprised if there wasn't. But that's all right. Upon the utterly slim chance that someone does manage to stumble upon my writings and then, slimmer chance yet, has some curiosity about the author, here you are.

The Situation:

I'm originally from Southern CA, but for some time have been attending college in a cold, northerly region where hipsters roam freely in faux-lumberjack outfits. Suffice to say that temperatures below 70 are no longer cold for me; for that, we'll need to get below 0 Fahrenheit. So I basically live half the year in a frozen (though often beautiful) wasteland where I study until my brain melts and drips out of my ears. But this is summer, so we shall not dwell on such unpleasant thoughts.

Yes, summer! Summer by the beach, with a full time but fascinating job and a host of coworkers that very well might be secretly all a sitcom. I wonder some times. But the rest of the time I enjoy myself, learn, read, cook, watch a strange array of television, and listen to the radio while cursing the traffic as I commute. When I feel particularly motivated, I run, swim, play tennis, and occasionally go for bike rides. And I regularly garden. So domestic! *shakes head sadly* Can't think of anything particularly exciting to add to that list of activities. Oh well. Hopefully you're not utterly bored already.

The Likes and Loves:
If so, perhaps this will help: fandoms! I'm a longtime fan of Inuyasha, Avatar: the last Airbender, and Ouran High School Host Club. I've had fleeting love affairs with Code Geass, Princess Tutu, Durarara!, Soul Eater, Kaichou wa Maid-sama!, Kaze no Stigma, and am currently utterly obsessed with The Legend of Korra.

In addition to the anime (and anime-wannabes) I've always been a huge reader of fantasy and science fiction, including but not limited to the J. K. Rowling, Tolkien, Tamora Pierce, Phillip Pullman, Garth Nix, Terry Pratchett, Neil Gaiman, Robin McKinley, Eoin Colfer, and Anne McCaffrey. Though I highly doubt any fanfiction will be coming out of me within these fandoms.

I'm a huge history buff, love calculus (but hate arithmetic), and spend most of my work/study time with the sciences, particularly Chemistry and Biology. The rest of my study time (and much of my free time) is devoted to music.

Favorite Authors/Books:

Humor:

Italo Calvino, Junot Diaz, Terry Pratchett, Anne Lamott, Aravind Adiga, Mark Twain, Larry Gonick.

Philosophy/History/Psychology:

Dostoevsky, Malcolm Gladwell, Hamlet, Heart of Darkness, Voltaire.

And just plain skillage:

Margaret Atwood, Joseph Conrad, Ernest Hemmingway, Eduardo Galeano, Gabriel García Marquez.

NOTE: These picks are not exclusive, but rather the 'best of'; i.e., Phillip Pullman could go in the Philosophy category too, just as Atwood and Adiga could, and Voltaire could go with the funnies. I was just trying to specify the largest reason to read these authors. In other words, what I thought was the most notable quality. Very subjective, as it even depends on my mood. But, for whatever reason, all are worth reading!

Favorite Poets:

Alexander Pope, Langston Hughes, T. S. Eliot, Matthew Arnold, William Butler Yeats, William Blake, Sylvia Plath, Rumi, Omar Khayyam.

Quotations:

"'In silence, alone with his conscience, he asks himself perhaps, 'What is honor, and isn't the condemnation of bloodshed a prejudice?''"-the prosecutor Ippolit Kirillovitch in Fyodor Dostoevsky's The Brothers Karamazov

"Let nothing perturb you, nothing frighten you. All things pass. God does not change. Patience achieves everything."-Mother Theresa

"Under certain circumstances profanity provides a relief denied even to prayer."-Mark Twain

"The right word may be effective, but no word was ever as effective as the rightly timed pause."-Mark Twain

" 'Think they'll come?' 'Well, my gut says no, but then again, my gut's made of an advanced multi-polymer, so it doesn't know what the hell it's talking about. Stupid gut.'-Simmons"-RvB

"As I lay there nearly napping, suddenly there came a tapping,/ As of someone gently rapping, rapping on my chamber door."-Edgar Allen Poe, "The Raven"

"There is a candle in your heart, ready to be kindled.

There is a void in your soul, ready to be filled.

You feel it, don't you?"

-Rumi