Pirates. There's a romance in pirates -- a filthy, dishonest, unfaithful brotherhood of dark and nasty men in stolen clothes spending stolen money, with fear and twisted pirate-honor and death on the sea. And you tell me ninjas are better than pirates.
...Also cooking, roleplaying games of all sorts, board games, drawing und painting, typography, horror movies, gore movies, music that takes me somewhere, warm smells, grammar, sex, dresses, long socks, candles, the banjo, old books, comic books, bandanas, fighting, tattoos, bones, beards, masks, jewelry from other cultures, and several other things that I may or may not add to this list at a later date. Also tangrams.
Most people. I really love people, until they're jerks. I'd really like to avoid jerks.
Modest Mouse, the Decemberists, Beck, Counting Crows, the Arcade Fire, Flogging Molly, the Killers, Yeah Yeah Yeahs, Clap Your Hands Say Yeah, the White Stripes, Explosions in the Sky, Wolf Parade, Sunny Day Real Estate, Elliott Smith, Townes van Zandt, Radiohead, Sleater-Kinney, The New Pornographers, Gogol Bordello, Spoon, Asmegin, Blind Guardian, Demons & Wizards, Transplants, Cake, Sufjan Stevens, TV on the Radio, Tilly and the Wall, Artie Shaw & the Gramercy Five, Gorillaz, Dethklok, Foxy Shazam!, Elbow, Mastodon, Tori Amos, VNV Nation, Godspeed You Black Emperor!, Leonard Cohen, Dinosaur Jr., Mayhem, Hot Hot Heat, Neutral Milk Hotel, Devendra Banhart, Devotchka, Ugly Casanova, Tiger Army, The Protomen, Saul Williams, Kaki King, Le Loup, Old Crow Medicine Show, Old & In The Way, The Beatles, Beirut, Blind Lemon Jefferson, Charlie Patton, Born Ruffians, Broken Social Scene, Cursive, Dispatch, DJ Shadow, Interpol, Handsome Furs, Jumbling Towers, LCD Soundsystem, M.I.A, Robert Johnson, Secret Chiefs 3, System of a Down, Vampire Weekend, You Say Party! We Say Die!, Csókolom, most anything with a violin or a cello or even an accordion. I am the world's biggest sucker for acoustic guitar.
Garden State, Ichi the Killer, Leon the Professional, Hedwig and the Angry Inch, Brazil, V for Vendetta, Rushmore, 300, Secretary, Session 9... most horror but not so much on the gore. It's not that it bothers me, it's just not scary.
Metalocalypse, the Venture Brothers, the news, the Colbert Report, Scrubs, Masters of Horror, Dexter. I like generally everything on the National Geographic channel.
The Abhorsen series, the Kushiel series, The Perks of Being a Wallflower, What Ever, A Canticle for Leibowitz, The Fuck-Up, Nine Short Stories, anything Lovecraft, Dinotopia, The Hitchiker's Guide et al, Harry Potter, the Khaavren romances, Cosmic Banditos, A Song of Ice and Fire, the Dark Tower series, House of Leaves, the Wheel of Time (yes I know)
Beowulf, Mat Cauthon, Catherine the Great, Hannibal Lecter, Rasputin, V, Eddie Dean, old Texan men, people who wear yellow, Karen O