Sh(android)

I always dread doing “about me” pages. I particularly dread writing them. So, let’s just get this over with, shall we?

I’m a girl

I’m Shannon (formerly known online as Aredhel), a twenty-seven year-old living in Michigan. I’m an armchair satirist, caregiver to five cats (Roman, Blue, Daenerys, Jett, and Daisy Mae), a Pagan, a fierce supporter of gay and human rights, a marginal third-wave feminist (but don’t hold it against me), and a (filthy, dirty) liberal. I like gadgets and other geekery, video/computer games, shiny things, mythology (especially Egyptian, Irish/Gaelic, and Greek), the 1920s, (very) loud music, tea, and all things Alice in Wonderland, steampunk, and/or vintage.

I’m a junkie

No, I’m not that kind of junkie. What I am is an unabashed horror, music, and science junkie – or “geek,” if you’d rather.

I’ve been a horror fan for as long as I can remember. Make no mistake, I enjoy science-fiction as much as the next geek, but as much as I do love all things science, sci-fi has always taken a back seat to the ghosts, ghouls, and goblins of horror. As a young kid in the late 80s and early 90s, I’d watch “Tales From the Darkside,” “Monsters,” and “Tales from the Crypt” religiously – even “Are You Afraid of the Dark?,” though even as a kid, I found that series a bit too bland for my liking. Twenty-odd years later, I still love all things horror, though I do tend to gravitate toward and prefer horror of the supernatural/paranormal variety. To illustrate more simply: less “Resident Evil,” more “Silent Hill.” (Or, if that still doesn’t help, less “Psycho,” more “The Shining.”) As a good little horror junkie, I attend conventions, worship at the altar of Clive Barker, collect horror-related things (particularly Lament Configuration boxes and Living Dead Dolls), and generally start planning for the next year’s Hallowe’en on November 1st of the previous year. Most of the books I read are horror- or scifi-related, as are most of the movies I see in the theater.

As much as I love horror, I think I love music more. It’s cliched to say that I’d surely perish without music, but in my case, I’m fairly sure it’s true – and even if it isn’t, I’d never want to test the theory. I’m that annoying girl who seems to always have headphones on; who seems to have a playlist for every possible event; who has to carry an iPod Classic in addition to her iPhone because the iPhone can’t hold all her music and it’d be a tragedy to be somewhere without access to the entire library. I tend to listen to a bit of everything, from Lady Gaga to Johnny Cash, but my heart does lie with rock, hard rock, and metal. In my opinion, there are few things as beautiful as a guitar (especially a Gibson, and especially a Gibson Les Paul), and even fewer things as beautiful as the sound of same. I often say that I was born too late, that thanks to being born in the mid-80s, I missed some of my favourite bands and artists – Aerosmith, David Bowie, Guns N’ Roses, Queen, Soundgarden, Led Zeppelin, Mötley Crüe, Motörhead – in their prime. (And let’s not even get into how late I was to the Rolling Stones, Robert Johnson, and The Doors parties. Thanks, parents.) But my musical tastes don’t lie simply with “classic” or “old” rock (I hate those terms); I love me some “contemporary” or “modern” rock as well. Black Label Society, Godsmack, The Black Keys, Wolfmother, Velvet Revolver, solo Slash – if it’s loud and guitar-driven (lyrics are an afterthought to me), I’m probably a fan. (The likes of Nickelback and solo Vince Neil excluded, of course: I’m not a fan of “artists” who make douche-baggery a career.)

Science junkie, you say? Indeed. Specifically, I have various interests in medicine and several of the natural sciences, namely biology, chemistry, physics, and astronomy. Nothing against literature students and political science enthusiasts, but give me science (and math) any day and I’m a happy girl.

I’m a geek

I’ve dabbled in developing websites since 1999. I was a teenager at the time, so it shouldn’t be surprising that my first sites were the typical Geocities and Angelfire fare: tiled rumpled satin background, bright neon Book Antiqua font, and a copious smattering of animated faery gifs, all to accessorize my rudimentary, pre-Livejournal “eDiary.” Suffice to say, my first attempts at a web presence were dreadful things indeed. Eventually, however, I became frustrated and dissatisfied with WYSIWYG editors and started buying HTML books and poking through source code. Soon after, I started digging into XHTML, CSS, and PHP. Since then, I’ve continued to develop sites – everything from hosting sites to portfolios to fanlistings to a fanfiction archive – write various small PHP/MySQL scripts, and do some freelance coding, design, and development work. Despite my continued interest in coding and development, it’s remained a hobby, something I do now and again when bored or otherwise inclined, but has never crossed over into “something I might enjoy doing as a career or pursuing a formal education in” territory.

Apparently, I am…

Shannon is not here
• Shannon is now a big movie star in the east (I guess that makes me Big in Japan? [I HAD TO])
• Shannon is one of them
• Shannon is God
• Shannon is crazy
• Shannon is the raw gourmet
• Shannon is going to show us her whisker biscuits (?!)
• Shannon is not a muderer
• Shannon is dead
• Shannon is the bomb
• Shannon is gone
• Shannon is easily one of the most underrated guitarists in the industry
• Shannon is 5
• Shannon is a ‘superstar’
• Shannon is three feet six inches tall and pale with rosy red cheeks
• Shannon is a retarted [sic] cow
• Shannon is considered as the founding father of electronic communications age
• Shannon is living (I thought I was dead?)
• Shannon is a funkmeister at heart
• Shannon is cool
• Shannon is pulled further into this seductive world of surf and sex when she falls for ty
• Shannon is a dork
• Shannon is exonerated (Good thing, since I’m “not a murderer”)
• Shannon is on a perilous journey
• Shannon is a precious 26″ artist porcelain ballerina doll