OkCupid es un sitio gratuito de encuentros en línea.

ATTENTION, BOYS/MEN! I am not looking for anything beyond friendship. Seriously. This is just for silly fun or friendship, not finding dates. Having said that, I'm not a wench, but I also won't waste my time responding to emails from people who obviously don't grasp that concept. If you'd like to write and tell me how much you wish I were interested in dating you, but that you accept the fact that it's just not going to happen, I won't object and may even respond with a smiling fun email to congratulate you on your brilliance (and good taste). If you can deal with the fact that I'm not available to you as a girlfriend/wife/whatever, then for Edna's sake, let's be friends! Now you may proceed. : ]

I am Mandie, sometimesinmyimagination known as Really Rad Chick. I'm a writer, and I sing.

Generic stuff: I'm a strange combination of a 17-yr-old and a 34-yr-old, living in a body that's been around for 29 yrs. But very little of me is actually twenty-nine.

I'm one of the most conflicted people I know, as almost everything about me contradicts something else about me. This is perhaps cliché, but it's also entirely true.

Examples:

A) I grew up too quickly. B) I haven't grown up at all.

A) I'm such a nerd. B) I'm so incredibly cool.

A) I'm convinced that you'll like me. B) I'm ridiculously insecure.

A) I'm intelligent. B) I'm kind of a ditz.

You get the point.

I'm probably a little too complicated, too emotional, and too frenetic for a lot of people's tastes, and I'm also perfectly okay with that. I'm addicted to spray whipped cream (the actual whipped cream, not the propellant : P), which I'm mentioning here instead of the favorite foods section because it really is that important. I love the smell of new magazines, particularly the kind with perfume ads -- the mingled scent of ink, glossy paper, and various perfumes is a heady combination for me.

In sum: I can't guarantee that knowing me will make your life better... but it will DEFINITELY make it more interesting.

Before we move on to this section, let's just take a moment to talk about the 'personality awards' you probably see above [edit: now it's toward the bottom. When did that happen?]. They're not necessarily the most accurate. OKC just doesn't understand how I work all that well. For instance, desiring love more than most -- and/or having moral or ethical objections to inserting any and every hooha pointed my way just because it might be fun and create pleasant physical sensations -- does not mean I want sex any less than you do. It just means I won't act on that desire under the same circumstances as some people. (I require a LOT more money. Yes, that was a joke.) Not that it really matters to you, since you won't be sexing me, but I just thought I'd set OKCupid straight.

There. Now doesn't that feel better? So... back to what I'm doing with my life. Basically entertaining myself and -- completely by accident, mind you -- others, while I'm at it.

Okay, fine. I'll tell you more. I spend a lot of time with my family (by choice), particularly my nieces and nephews. I love children. They just make me happy. I appreciate my family and friends MUCH, much more since having cancer awhile back. After having learned a lot from my crazy life experiences, I'm now working on getting a formal education, mostly for practical reasons. I think learning is awesome, but tend to get intimidated by too much structure... even though I think it's what I probably need most in my life right now.

This is a secret part of my profile that only you can see: I'm attempting to do the whole growing up thing without actually letting others onto the fact that I've been faking it all this time. Don't tell anyone.

Pretty much everything I do. Being modest is a good example... But if you want more particulars, I'm especially good at writing, singing, making you like me, being hilarious, and often, making unintentional (and so, so very awesome!) double entendres. I have the best dreams in the entire world, and I have to give credit to my incredible brain for that. I laugh really well, as I have had years of experience and practice frequently. I am an A+ speller, and have stellar proofreading skills. Woo! Something to be proud of.

I'm pretty good at putting people at ease in situations in which they might not ordinarily be all that comfortable, like the time the police were doing a body cavity search on my neighbor. He told me later that because I was there to help him relax (Lamaze breathing is good for a lot more than just giving birth, btw), he'd barely even noticed that he was being violated in such a way!

I do at least one crossword puzzle every three days (but usually at least one per day); However, I can't stand to do them in pencil, which sort of forced me to develop my crossword puzzle skills so I wouldn't litter the page with scribbles. Over time, I became so good at them that two years ago, I was offered a position as a professional crossword puzzle-doer in the Crossword Puzzle Department of the prestigious International Academy of Word Puzzles. I felt that it wouldn't be fair to all the other sorts of word puzzles, as I'm equally fond of most of them (with the exception of word searches/"seek 'n' find", which don't even qualify as word puzzles, imho), so I respectfully declined. Sometimes I regret it -- I mean, I could be totally rich and famous by now. So yeah, I have to say, in all humility, that I rock the crossword-puzzle casbah. (The IAWP is located in a casbah.)

Also, I've recently discovered the not-very-marketable but extremely useful skill of using brackets.

That I laugh a lot. I'm happy, so that catches their attention. It's apparently weird to be happy these days. Also, the long hair that grows out of the huge mole on my neck. They don't seem to notice the mole... just the hair. Huh.

Sometimes people are able to pick out the fact that I'm LDS/Mormon/a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints simply by looking at or talking to me. I'm not sure exactly why this is, but I doubt it has anything to do with the large sign I wear around my neck that proclaims, "I AM A MEMBER OF THE CHURCH OF JESUS CHRIST OF LATTER-DAY SAINTS". It's probably the Mormon accent or something.

If they're getting to know me online, it's likely the fact that I use a lot of parentheses. (Probably to excess, actually.)

No. Nonono. This will have to wait! Because if I were to answer this one right now, it would look like this:

Books - A lot of them! Oh so, so many of them! So many, in fact, that it would make a good list if I were to actually list them. But I'm not gonna... Not right now, anyway. Lemme sleep on it. Not the list or the books, I meant sleep on the... never mind. But I love books.

Movies - A whole bunch. I can't make a list right now, because I'm afraid to leave some of the best ones out. I'll get back to you on that.

Music - Almost ALLLLL of it! I'm a music kinda girl. No, I'm serious. Music is what keeps me alive. Specifics are on their way.

[Okay, this is temporary, but just to give you an idea, here are some of my favorite songs: Father Figure - George Michael, Father - Cat Stevens, Who's Your Daddy - Toby Keith, Oh Father - Madonna, Last Dance With My Father - Luther Vandross, Single Father - Kid Rock, Seein' My Father In Me - Paul Overstreet... and the list goes on.]

Food (This one I'm not too concerned about getting juuuust right, so I can do it right now.) - I love food! Lotsa different kinds, even! Americanized Chinese from the Chinese Kitchen by my house, some pizza (I'm picky), almost all fruit, chocolate milk, milk chocolate, milk chocolate with bonus toffee! yummmm, most melty-cheesy foods, like lasagna, which brings me to... all sorts of pasta and Italian food in general, some hamburgers, regular pancakes, German pancakes, puffy French toast (not so much the regular French toast, though -- it's a totally different recipe), bread pudding if it doesn't have too many raisins in it, certain vegetables (raw bell pepper slices are good), and then my second-biggest weakness in the world (beat out only by my first weakness, which is a secret, and not a food at all): ICE CREAM!!! I'm a dairy freak all around, come to think of it. And now I'm hungry.

Things? Okay, we're gonna go with things that are both concrete and abstract. And I'm not going to include the obvious "friends and family", "love", "food/water", "llamas", etc. In random order:

1) laughter

2) my faith in God and Jesus Christ

3) paper and pens (preferably blue ink ball-points)

4) sunshine

5) MUSIC!

6) albino midgets... Er, I mean- ice cream

What's a girl like me doing in a place like this? (For future reference, I adore bad pickup lines, as long as they're being used with the complete knowledge that they're bad pickup lines, and not by some guy who seriously thinks he's being suave. If it's someone using it because they, like me, think pickup lines are hilarious, and they manage to pull it off just right, it's quite possible I'll swoon in response.)

Also, I think a lot about albino midgets. And you. Especially if you are an albino midget. Then I think about you double-extra-plus a lot!

In all seriousness, I spend a lot of time thinking about

• My future.
• How many people could name what movie this quote is from: "Get up, Bambi! You must get up!"
• Why that number is sooooo much smaller than it should be.
• The presents you're going to give me.
• how Melissa Joan Hart ever became famous.
• Why it is that 99% of the people who believe that they're "random" (and there are a lot of them) are really, really not random at all.
• Lots of other stuff that's probably too deep for you to understand.
• My past.

I don't want to make you feel stupid, so I'll just leave it at that. You're welcome. : )

...doing something ultra-fun! This can vary from geeky things like writing songs with a guitar-wielding boy I've just met at a crowded party, as I did on a recent Friday, to dorky Mormony things that would likely delight and/or frighten you.

On occasion, I'm hanging out all by my lonesome; for instance, writing introspective poetry or man-hating lyrics (depending on how things are going in my love life), having a love affair with some new music, or sculpting a brilliant somethingorother with Play-Doh that I stole from my nieces and nephews. I'll let you guess whether or not I was serious about that one.

Also, I spend a lot of time with my dad. : |

...that I'm standing outside your window, watching you right now. That's pretty private, isn't it? For you, anyway.

What? That's not good enough? Fine, how about... the fact that I own a cassette tape of polka music called Polka Jubilee. And actually listen to it on (VERY RARE) occasion. I bought it on a whim, because it was less than a dollar, and I thought it would make an excellent gag gift somewhere down the line. But I had to sample the goods, and horrifically enough, discovered that it was kind of addictive. How's THAT for private?

I'm a ridiculously open (or "sharing", as one friend put it) person. It's a problem, really. I'm feeling reckless, so message me to ask me to tell you something private. I want you to. (Secretly I'm extremely private, but only about like... five specific things. And those are top-secret -- not even the government knows, and they've been trying to find these things out for twenty-eight years.) I like it when others share back. : ]

...you feel the overwhelming desire to shower me with gifts and compliments, or you think you have something else to offer, like you're brilliantly witty, or you're selling Girl Scout Cookies for cheap. I may decide otherwise, but it never hurts to try, right? Unless you're the sort that can't handle rejection. Then it might hurt.

Please please please DON'T message me if you a) abuse the English language (i.e. use anything like u instead of you, 2 instead of too/to/hello, or wut instead of what), b) are going to send me a message that just says, "Hey, what's up?" or "Hi". I need CONTENT, people. Doesn't have to be long at all... just worth reading. c) call women mami/ma -- I AM NOT YOUR MOTHER! d) use the phrase "What's good" as a greeting, or for anything else, actually, or e) are going to ask me my bra size, what I'm wearing, if I would like to see pictures of your naked body, etc. or proposition me for sex at all. I realize that I likely just eliminated my chances of getting very many messages, but hey, that's a risk that I'll just have to take.

On the other hand, PLEEEEAAAASE DO message me if you a) actually picked up on the fact that the mole thing & the list of father songs were jokes and/or understood the semi-logic behind the "presents you're going to give me" comment, b) didn't understand, and would like to ask me about it, c) weren't annoyed by how many words, parentheses, and brackets I used, d) found yourself thinking how much you'd like to kiss me*, or e) happen to know Dave Barry in person. I'd like to ask him something.

*unless you found yourself thinking how much you'd like to kiss me, and have a vagina, or ever did at any point in your life. Or wish you did, for that matter.