Many and varied. Here's the ever expanding short-list. Academically/Intellectually: Ancient, Classical, and Medieval History; Archaeology, Anthropology, foreign travel. Hedonistically: Music, books, movies, hanging out with friends, sex, my cats Shadow and Laylah, Chester the guinea pig, role-playing games (Dungeons & Dragons, GURPS, Call of Cthulhu, etc.), sea chanties (see The International Ahrrr Society), body piercing, the occasional drink, the occasional toke. Fnordically: the occult, the mystical, astrology, shamanism, alchemy, Aleister Crowley, Thelemic Magick, Chaos Magick, TOPY, and the just plain weird.
The adjectives interesting, intelligent, cool, nice (ideally) come to mind...
In not much of any particular order: Joy Division, Current 93, Bauhaus, Sisters of Mercy, Death in June, Sol Invictus, Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds, Coil, C.O.T.A., Crash Worship, Swans, Angels of Light, Fire and Ice, Peter Murphy, The Unquiet Void, Patti Smith, Laibach, Lustmord, Iggy and the Stooges, In Slaughter Natives, Sleep Chamber, Muslimgauze, Immortal Technique, Schloss Tegal, Diamanda Galas, Black Flag, Bolt Thrower, Nature and Organization, Shirley Collins, Stan Rogers, Meat Beat Manifesto, Psychedelic Furs, Six Comm/Mother Destruction, MZ 412, Sonic Youth, Velvet Underground, Sorrow, Siouxsie and the Banshees, Terror Against Terror, Renegade Soundwave, Psychick TV, Chris and Cosey, Psychick Warriors ov Gaia, Einstuerzende Neubauten, Boyd Rice/NON, Birthday Party, Slint, Pogues (with Shane McGowan only), Dropkick Murphys, Dead Kennedys, X, Jello Biafra, Throbbing Gristle, Lars Frederiksen and the Bastards, Strength Through Joy, Dead Can Dance, Loreena McKennitt, Fear, Janes Addiction, Black Sabbath, Johnny Cash, Kraftwerk, Jimi Hendrix, and More....
Okay, so some of these are/were TV series, but anyway: 300!!! (okay, it's not historically accurate but it's a freakin' amazing movie. Gore, gore, and more gore), V for Vendetta, Haxan, The Wicker Man (the original version, not the shitty new re-make that just came out), Akira, Ghost in the Shell, Serenity, Blade Runner, Alien/Aliens, Pearls Before Swine, Dune (the miniseries), the LOTR trilogy, The Night Porter, Cowboy BeBop, Cast A Deadly Spell, Suspiria, the Monty Python Movies, Brazil, Hard Candy, The Devil's Backbone, 28 Days Later, Curse of the Demon, Bram Stoker's Dracula, Pi, Quills, Neon Genesis Evangelion, Underworld, The Affair of the Necklace, Dangerous Liasons, The Road Warrior, Mad Max, the films of Akira Kurosawa, A Clockwork Orange, Caligula (the X-rated version), The Matrix, Event Horizon, Re-Animator, 12 Monkeys, 1984, The Awakening, Meet the Feebles, An American Werewolf in London, Mel Brooks movies, Heavenly Creatures, The Hunger, Conan the Barbarian, 2001 A Space Odyessy, The Believer, Our Lady of the Assassins, Kandahar, Rabbit Proof Fence, Supersize Me, The Secret of Roan Inish, Farenheit 9/11, Nosferatu, Metropolis, Black Robe, American History X, No Man's Land, Lost in La Mancha, Dagon, Ju-On, and More....
These Days: Battlestar Galactica (the best thing currently on TV - the more I watch the better and better it gets!), Going Tribal (Damn! Bruce Parry is the hardest core guy ever. He drank the cow blood. He let the guy try to shove his penis back up inside him - don't ask), No Reservations with Anthony Bourdain, I Shouldn't Be Alive, Scrubs (only made it through season 2 so far, but I like it, it's damn funny), Rome (It's unbelieveably well done. The script, acting, costumes, research...), Firefly (Totally awesome! Why, oh why did Fox have to be stupidly blind and cancel it?), The Venture Brothers, Futurama, Family Guy, The Daily Show, The Colbert Report, South Park, Iron Chef, Battlefield Britain, National Geographic Channel, History Channel, Crocodile Hunter...
There are sooo many and I'm likely to leave some out, but here's at least a partial list: the works of H.P. Lovecraft, Robert E. Howard, Arthur Machen, Robert W. Chambers, Clark Ashton Smith, Lord Dunsany, and other early 20th cent. pulp sci-fi/horror/fantasy writers; the Hobbit, Lord of the Rings trilogy, and Silmarilion, the 'His Dark Materials' trilogy by Phillip Pullman, Snowcrash, the poetry of Baudelaire, the works of Edgar Allan Poe, Frankenstein, Dracula, the Pharmako/Poeia and Pharmakodynamis, William S. Burroughs, Yukio Mishima, Jean Genet, the Spider Garden series by Michael Manning, Dune, the works of Aleister Crowley, comic books-particularly Cerebus and Usagi Yojimbo, Ann Rice's vampire books, the Thieves World series, the Elric stories by Michael Moorcock, the Re/Search series of books, the books of Robert Anton Wilson, Apocalypse Culture II by Adam Parfrey, Disinformation: the Interviews, and You are Being Lied To by Richard Metzger, the works of William Gibson, 1984, Brave New World, Animal Farm, Herodotus, Thyucidides, Beowulf,, The White Goddess by Robert Graves, The Golden Bough, The Blood Countess by Andrei Codrescu, the works of the Marquis de Sade, Le Chants du Maldoror by Lautreamont, The Name of the Rose, The Golem, A Clockwork Orange, The Handmaid's Tale, Confessions of an English Opium Eater by De Quincy, many many others.....
So many people I need time to think and compile them all, this list will be expanding and evolving constantly. Music: Ian Curtis, David Tibet, John Balance - may he rest in peace, Douglas P., Tony Wakeford. Literature: H.P. Lovecraft - a true genius, Arthur Machen, Robert W. Chambers, Aleister Crowley, J.R.R. Tolkien, Robert E. Howard, John Milton, Robert Anton Wilson. Art: H.R. Giger, Austin Osman Spare, Hieronymous Bosch, Michael Manning, Pieter Bruegel the Elder, Goya, Gustave Dore, Alex Gray. Just cool people whom I dearly love: Mike Shamalla, Noah Levey, Peter Buck, Maria, Mike and Heather, Craig, Michelle, Edd, My parents and sister (it's a cliche I know, but it's still true), Brad and Kate, Mike and Iria, the entire State College crewe, Mary and M.J., Reuben and Suzanne, Great Cthulhu - Ia! Ia! Cthulhu fhtagn!, you all know who you are....