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What's the deal with your nickname? How did you get it? If your nickname is self-explanatory, then tell everyone when you first started using the internet, and what was the first thing that made you say "wow, this isn't just a place for freaks after all?" Was it a website? Was it an email from a long-lost friend? Go on, spill it.

I'm doing graduate work in ancient Indian philosophy. As a related interest I took a course on Ramakrishna, a 19th-century Indian mystic who was highly influential in the creation of the modern religious traditions we call "Hinduism." A recent and fascinating scholarly study of Ramakrishna showed his mysticism as driven by passionate inner sexual conflicts that he did not fully understand. Several orthodox Hindus have responded with fury to the book, calling it "intellectual pornography" and attacking the author's scholarly credentials. I agree with the author's responses to these critics, but more importantly, I see a lot of myself in the conflicted Ramakrishna that he describes.

Other information about me: Canadian living in Texas, late twenties, proud owner of a ruby iMac, married to galachef55, major chowhound (though I rarely visit the site anymore because they never clear the message boards -- takes forever even on broadband).