Hello! 👋🏻 This is the intro text to the landing page for the website of

Garen J. Torikian

My name is spelled Կարէն. It's pronounced /ɡɑɾɛŋ/.

The J stands for Justdon'tworryaboutit.

I write fiction. I program computers. I create art that responds to the unique strengths and frustrations of tech. I am all the good ists: humanist, leftist, abolitionist, existentialist, surrealist—you get the idea.

I've been blogging since 2001, which probably isn't as impressive as I think it sounds. A fraction of my older entries are archived on this site, and the others—deemed "too emo"—are unlikely to be read by the public ever again.

I speak English fluently, Western Armenian proudly, Spanish passingly, Japanese embarrassingly, a handful of other languages poorly, and I care about the Oxford comma.

I'm very active on the sewer system known as Twitter. I show off my cat on Instagram. I share my open source work at GitHub.