Little Toy Robot

This is Little Toy Robot’s Web site. Oh, who am I kidding? It’s a blog, OK? There, I said it.

The blog (I’m at peace with the word now) has been live since early 2004, although there were a few iterations before that. I’ve gone through blogging “phases,” but I imagine that’s true for a great number of people.

Also like most blogs: it is not actually about anything. I like to read and listen to music, so that comes up a lot. I also like to tinker with stuff on the Web and make pithy comments that even I don’t understand when I read them later. Again: par for the course.

You might be surprised to learn that I am in fact a human, and “Little Toy Robot” is a pseudonym. I don’t go around calling myself “Little Toy Robot” or “LTR” in real life (I usually answer to “Yo!” or “Shitface!” or “You the guy who parked in my spot?”). I am a man of a certain number of years who lives in Chicago, following a brief but action-packed residence in Atlanta. Prior to Atlanta I lived in New York City, which is also where I was born, but between birth and my 20s I found time to grow up in the swampy wonderland called South Florida. After graduating from a High School which was (and still is) sinking into the Everglades, I escaped back North, but I haven’t quite settled down yet.

I like to read wildly imaginative books which cross genres. Usually they are crossing the science-fiction, fantasy, horror, and “literary” genres. Some of my favorite authors: Michael Chabon, Avram Davidson, Arthur Conan Doyle, Jonathan Lethem, Jeffrey Ford, Steven Millhauser, and the Holy Trinity of Borges, Nabokov, and Calvino.

My favorite nonfiction writers are Lawrence Weschler and Paul Collins. My favorite comic book author is Alan Moore.

I like melodic but challenging rock music with interesting and intelligent lyrics. Some artists I like: XTC, The Flaming Lips, Neutral Milk Hotel, Jellyfish, Yo La Tengo, The Decemberists, Morrissey/The Smiths, Quasi, Velvet Underground (and both Lou Reed’s and John Cale’s solo work).

My favorite movies seem to be either dark, or animated, or both: Dark City, Darren Aronofsky’s Pi and Requiem for a Dream, and anything by Tim Burton. I have been known to enjoy some anime, mainly (of course) for the robots.

I’m also a huge baseball fan.