Daniel Mulholland Laenker, like so many identities, started as a cheesy amalgamated cipher. In the eighth grade, I wrote bad Robotech fanfiction ('Daniel M. Laenker' was an anagram about Lancer whose actual meaning I've since forgotten) and refused to put my given name on it. The pen name kept longer than the fanfics; I've used it on abortive attempts at science fiction, mostly cyberpunk, ever since. I suppose it's my craft name now.

I was born in Virginia Beach, a bulkhead of a city that exists in anticpation of being packed up and shipped elsewhere, and the breeding ground of Missy Elliott, Pharell Williams, Pat Robertson, Edgar Cayce and so forth. As a child I lived in Newport, Rhode Island; Charleston, South Carolina; Sasebo, Japan; Rota, Spain; and especially Norfolk, Virginia. At the time I was almost non-eventful, and I almost hope to keep it that way.

At some point I'd like to be a town planner and/or a socially responsible urban land real estate developer when I grow up. Or, in other words, a thug.

(This is, of course, assuming that I ever manage to grow up. God willing. It would be nice to be a gold medal aesthete, but we can't do that in real life, now, can we?)

Lately I've been going through some changes in my understanding and sense of myself, and while it's hard to describe these changes until I suss them out fully, it's a metaphysical survey of my self-image and my being. I'm trying to marry these essentialist changes with an existentialist perspective on, well, that which exists.

I could pretend to have a barometer on the pulse of my real interests here, but I won't. That's why the vast majority of my blogging is public: not only does it keep this journal going, but it shows who I am much better than any attempt to catalog who I think I might be. I hate it when others describe themselves through exposition and God knows I don't want to inflict it on you.