Sarcasm, booze, sleeping, concentrating very hard on not smoking, things that look and/or sound good, making things that look and/or sound good, coffee, eating whole packets of Jaffa s in one go, long words, using long words to sound clever, being a bit pretentious, talking crap, creative lying for fun and profit, creative swearing for similar, seeing new places, live music, coming up with world-changing plans, never following through on world changing plans, more sarcasm, generally trying to be nice to people. Except the crap ones. . Growing facial hair. Avoiding haircuts.
People with legs. And faces. And arms and things.
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and native cunning
Quick vaguely representative cross-section: Squarepusher, Elbow, Mogwai, Orbital, DJ Format, DJ Shadow, Ed Harcourt, Billie Holliday, Massive Attack, Polar Bear, Pink Floyd, Sigur Ros, Tiger Lou, The Secret Machines, Spiritualized, The Cinematic Orchestra, Godspeed You! Black Emperor, Boards of Canada, Aphex Twin, Pearl Jam, Rage Against the Machine, Nine Inch Nails, Radiohead, Miles Davis, Herbie Hancock, Incubus, Jeff Buckley. Basically, anything on Warp Records, Ninja Tune, anything big, epic and shimmery, jazz, grunge, a sprinkling of indie, judicious chunk of angst, dance, bleepy noises and beats or clever singer/songwriters ;). Worryingly, also starting to develop a taste for classical music. I'm not sure if this means I have to start wearing slippers or not.
Recent discovery: Steve Reich is a friggin' genius.
More in my last.fm profile .
A few off the top of my head: Withnail & I, Spirited Away, Aliens, The Big Combo, The Big Sleep and pretty much any other film noir, Sin City, Amelie, Pi, The Nightmare Before Christmas, Doctor Strangelove, Cube, Alice in Wonderland, Die Hard, Donnie Darko, The Ipcress File, Soylent Green, THX 1138, Airplane, Hot Shots, Flight of the Navigator, Back to the Future, Labyrinth, 2001, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, Clerks, Leaving Las Vegas, Ocean's Eleven (the new one), The Naked Gun, Fight Club, Die Hard, Wayne's World, Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure, Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory (not the new one), 12 Monkeys, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, Lost in Translation
Having a degree in media, whilst being almost completely pointless, makes it nearly impossible to watch TV without getting angry and/or way too analytical. That said:
Black Books, Father Ted, Lost, The Thick of It, The Day Today, Family Guy, Spaced, Peep Show. Blackadder, The Young Ones, Red Dwarf, Not The Nine O'Clock News, Drop the Dead Donkey. The Fall and Rise of Reginald Perrin. Curb Your Enthusiasm. Firefly. QI, which has the pleasing dual properties of making you feel clever and Steven Fry. Spooks, Hustle & Lost.
So many - I usually have my head stuck in some book or other. Memorable ones & favourites:
Iain (M) Banks rocks, Use of Weapons, The Bridge and The Crow Road being my favourite. The Dice Man, while not a great book, had a dramatic effect on me. Anything by Raymond Chandler. Hunter Thompson. Kurt Vonnegut. Mona Lisa Overdrive, Snow Crash & Dune head up my favourite sci-fi- William Gibson & Neal Stephenson rule. Douglas Adams, of course. Robert Rankin. Phillip Pullman. Neil Gaiman. Jeff Noon (love what he does with language). Michael Marshall Smith. River of Gods by Ian McDonald was fun. White Noise by Don DeLilo was pretty cool. Re-read 1984 every few years. Fahrenheit 451. Brave New World. Read No Logo with a bit of a cynical face on, and adopted a similar face whilst reading things by that Malcom Reynolds chap that everyone's talking about. Recently ploughed through Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, which is mind-blowing, if a little hard-going: took me about 4 or 5 months 'cos I had to keep stopping and reading fluffy, inconsequential things to give myself a bit of a break.
Currently rereading Cryptonomicon, with The Cloud Atlas, Moon Dust and A Million Little Pieces stacked up next. The Comedians got shifted into an indefinite holding pattern ;)