When I play the guitar it feels like I'm exercising my soul, so my guitar is like my life. I also enjoy playing the drums, living in Africa you get a lot of opportunities to hear and even play native instruments such as the djembe or my personal favorite the ashiko. I love the outdoors, I even prefer sleeping outside. It makes me feel one with the earth and I wish more people would have such experiences with our planet. I'm also always up for a joint and/or a protest.
I wish I could meet all the people of the earth, except for the bigots. I would especially like to meet everyone who voted for Bush so I can ask why and maybe spit on them? I would also like to meet meat eaters so I can convince them to change their unhealthy and inhumane lifestyles (please visit www.veganoutreach.org and help end animal cruelty). I'm always looking to link up with people who are fighting the system through non-violent, grassroots movements.
Phish!!! Ben Harper, Jerry Garcia, John Lennon, Bob Marley, Ziggy Marley, Peter Tosh ("Legalize it" man!!), I love the native songs of the Bakiga and pretty much anything out of post-Apartheid South Africa. Basically I love all music, except for Metal, I find it too angry.
I prefer independent films but I liked The Constant Gardener, Hotel Rwanda, Sometimes in April, Shooting Dogs, Half Baked, Roger and Me, Bowling for Columbine, Farenheit 9/11, Bush's Brain, Supersize Me.
I don't watch television, it's a waste of electricity and a disgusting display of commercialism. I do occasionally watch the Simpsons and Lost.
Ginsberg's classic "Howl" and "The Fall of America: Poems of These States". "Globalisation Unmasked: Imperialism in the 21st Century" by James Petras and Henry Veltmeyer was a real eye opener. Hoffman's "Fuck the System" is so right on. I've heard "Das Kapital" is good. Anything by Noam Chomskie is worth reading. I think Michael Moore's books are great, but they are so sad because they are so true. "The Gadfly" is a must read.
Leonard Suransky changed the way I look at the world. He came to Webster in 2004 after winning the much deserved Des Lee Visiting Lectureship in Global Awareness. His lectures on Globalization really opened my eyes to the flaws of the current global capitalist system. If you want to learn more about this great man and visionary please visit http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leonard_Suransky. I'm also quite fond of Nelson Mandela, Mahatma Gandhi, Tenzin Gyatso, Scott Parkin, Kofi Annan, John Runnings, Ami Ayalon, Marc Emery, Aung San Suu Kyi, Martin Luther King Jr., and Leo Tolstoy who once said, "In all history there is no war which was not hatched by the governments, the governments alone, independent of the interests of the people, to whom war is always pernicious even when successful." (Right on Leo!!!)