The Striking Viking

Location: Seattle

Bio/Manifesto

I'm a big scandinavian looking fellow, hence the nickname. I've lived in Seattle most of my life, aside from extensive travels, and i am tired of people complaining about it. Sure it's not perfect, but neither is any other city...and i quite enjoy living here, thankyouverymuch. I love food! Both cooking and eating...it is my favorite form of art, as it can stimulate all 5 senses... In general, the things that make me happiest in life are the simple things...comfort food, good drink, good company, sleeping in, weekends, and living in a place equally far from mountains, rain forests, and the ocean! I'm a structural engineer at a naval architecture/marine engineering company down on Harbor Island, though i often harbor urges to run off and start a bed and breakfast or a food truck somewhere. For the most part i'm quite happy with my life. The things that would make me happier are as follows: -Better vacation time at work (other countries have a MINIMUM of like 6 weeks vacation a year, and yet their work force isn't any less productive...) because i could earn all the money in the world and still be unhappy if i had no time to relax or travel. -A more relaxed work place (i hate business casual, i don't operate well in the mornings, and i don't want to be chewed out for checking my email for a few minutes in the middle of the day when coworkers go out for 6 smoke breaks a day.) -Better public transportation and bicycle infrastructure. -A better tax system and more social services to rival just about every other country in the first world. -Fewer blatant lies, fear mongering, and blow-hard-ness in politics and news. All around a little more reasonableness and critical thinking from the general population. -The so called "energy companies" to focus more on the future of renewable energy than the exploitation of natural resources for their own profit. Let's just expand that to all companies and industries...to be more concerned about their employees, society as a whole, and the world around them than with their own profit margin. -A much more even distribution of wealth...no one, and i mean no one, deserves to be paid millions of dollars a year to play sports, or to sit behind a desk and attend meetings, when there are so many people who work their ass off all day in the sun, wind, rain, and snow performing manual labor and getting paid like $20K a year or less. More to follow.

More Than You Need to Know

This or That

• Punch Buggy or Slug Bug
• Bring It On or Stomp the Yard
• Cowgirls, Inc. or Pony
• Dan Savage or Charles Mudede
• No legs and a million dollars or A million legs and no dollars
• Frank Gehry or Rem Koolhaas
• Vampire or Zombie
• Dicks or Vaginas
• Too many teeth or No teeth at all
• Jesus or Santa (sexually)?
• Honey Bucket or Wizards of Ooze
• Elliott Bay or Amazon
• Barsuk or Fantagraphics
• Pot or Coke
• Presse or Pichet
• SF or LA
• Will in Seattle or Fnarf
• OTB or ACT
• Ivar Haglund or Jean Enerson
• Tushy or Tuchus
• Tom Skerritt or Dave Matthews

Questions

• What song do you want played at your funeral?: Rock Lobster (just kidding...probably The Parting Glass)
• What song do you never want to hear again?: Any christmasized version of any song ever.
• What do you like to read when you poop?: Slog.
• What keeps you up at night?: That's private.
• What helps you sleep?: It used to be homework, now it's some whiskey and being like 2 AM.
• What song or movie makes you cry?: The Room.
• Where's your hairiest square inch?: That's private.
• If you could bring one dead person back to life, who would it be?: Only one? That's a tough one.
• What book have you read the most?: Lord of the Rings...
• What movie can you recite verbatim?: Waking Ned Devine
• What piece of art would you steal?: one of the seven wonders of the world, because that would give awesome bragging rights, and sounds like something only a bond villain would be ballsy enough to pull.
• What's your biggest grammatical pet peeve?: "your" vs. "you're"
• What is your sweetest taboo?: Bodily functions...we're only human!

Fill in the Blank

• God is: ambiguous.