Art, design, music, theater, movies. Any way at all to tell a story or convey a mood.
my muse
Anything at all by Jean Pierre Jeunet or Darren Aronofsky. I dig foreign films, Japanese cartoons, Indie flicks, mainstream garbage. Science Fiction, romance (great dialogue in some of those), old Hollywood classics (brought up on those-probably accounts for my skewed view of romance). Escapism.
Mythbusters, Love Monkey, Scrubs, The West Wing, Star Trek (I know...I know), Firefly, Millenium, The X Files, Sports Night, The Adventures of Brisco County Jr., Young Indiana Jones, Iron Chef, HGTV, Adult Swim, Family Guy.
Haruki Murakami, Steven Millhauser, Bruce Sterling, Jeff Noon, Franz Kafka, Raymond Chandler, Dashiel Hammett, Richard Calder, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Dan Brown (damn him and his cliffhanger chapter endings), William Gibson, Maurice Sendak, Chris Van Allsburg (please PLEASE pick up a copy of "The Mysteries of Harris Burdick"), Stephen R. Donaldson, Neil Gaiman