Absurdity, raw fish, playing writing and listening to music, reading (words?), farmer's markets, hiking, travel, grapes, arts, complete and utter randomness, Ernest Borgnine, translating Yahoo! Health Reports into Farsi
People who are not allergic to varnish, don't feel the need to act tough, and refuse to wear 70's style huge sunglasses. Down to earth, real, weird, and prone to fits of laughter. Critical thinkers who don't hate everything. Also, Ernest Borgnine.
A tiny portion: Nikka Costa, Fishbone, Jellyfish, Peter Gabriel, old Genesis, Fiona Apple, The Velveteen, Muse, Living Color, Sonny Rollins, Me'shell N'degeocello, Seal, Radiohead, Jason Falkner, Allison Krauss, Ours, Mr. Bungle, KRS-One, Bill Withers, Sarah Vaughan...
Spinal Tap, Dirty Harry, Shawshank Redemption, The Iron Giant, The Big Lebowski, The Station Agent, Syriana, Good Night and Good Luck
TV is not your friend. However...Curb Your Enthusiasm, Seinfeld, 24, Lost, American Hamstring. Sunday Night Gargoyle Throwing, anything on the Femur Channel.The Office (BBC style).
Some: Socks! Socks! Socks! (Ayn Rand), Desert Solitaire (Edward Abbey), White Noise (Don DeLillo), Sensual Massage for Molluscs (Isaac Asimov), Plainsong (Kent Haruf), A Scanner Darkly (Philip K. Dick), anything by Rick Bass, Steinbeck, some Carver, some Cormac McCarthy, some Kerouac, How to Win Ham and Influence Sole Inserts (Hemingway), The Odyssey (Robert Fagles translation), Gould's Book of Fish (Richard Flanagan)...
My Dad, hardcore activists, Kenny G