Acupuncture, Barcelona, beaches, beer, books, chakras, China, dessert, ecofeminism, flirting, French, grammar, herbs, Hinduism, India, libraries, literature, making out, modern dance, North Carolina, philosophy, Reiki, Sanskrit, seahorses, sleeping, spelling, traveling, vegetables, wine, yoga
Compassionate evildoers. Bad bodhisattvas. Good spellers. Katherine Moennig.
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Ani DiFranco, Beth Orton, Aimee Mann, Radiohead, Belle and Sebastian, Massive Attack, Sunny Day Real Estate, Cat Power, dntel, Bob Marley, PJ Harvey, Le Tigre, American Analog Set, Fiona Apple, Lucinda Williams, Sebadoh, Liz Phair, Ben Harper, Prince, Camera Obscura, The Donnas, Sleater-Kinney, M.I.A., Northern State, Feist, Kate Bush.
Best in Show, Waiting for Guffman, A Mighty Wind, The House of Yes, Amelie, Dirty Dancing, Ghost Dog: The Way of the Samurai, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, Swimming Pool, Spirited Away, Princess Mononoke, L'Auberge Espagnole, Broken Flowers, Garden State, I Heart Huckabees, The Life Aquatic, Coffee and Cigarettes, Storytelling, Palindromes, Marie Antoinette, Moulin Rouge, Castle in the Sky, Lost in Translation, Little Miss Sunshine, Volver, The Royal Tenenbaums, Mozart and the Whale, The Darjeeling Limited, The Diving Bell and the Butterfly, The Last Supper. Anything starring Forest Whitaker, Edward Norton, or Bill Murray.
Arrested Development, The Office (NBC, not BBC), Desperate Housewives (a guilty pleasure), 30 Rock, Pushing Daisies (I'm so happy to see Lee Pace again. After Wonderfalls, I thought he dropped off the face of the earth.), Carnivale (unfortunately canceled by HBO), Project Runway, Six Feet Under, Wonderfalls, Dexter, The Wire, The L Word, Aqua Teen Hunger Force (in small doses), The Colbert Report, Ninja Warrior.
The Bhagavad Gita, The Tao te Ching, The Ashtavakra Gita. Veronika Decides to Die and The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho; Housekeeping by Marilynne Robinson; Coraline by Neil Gaiman; Sula by Toni Morrison; Blindness by Jose Saramago, Eat Pray Love by Elizabeth Gilbert. Nearly anything by Margaret Atwood, Joyce Carol Oates, Kate Chopin, Jorge Luis Borges, or Julio Cortazar. The poetry of Dylan Thomas, Sylvia Plath, Anne Sexton, and Elizabeth Bishop, among many others.
Women with big mouths who are not afraid to use them: Ani DiFranco, Parker Posey, Dorothy Parker, Rachel Carson, Eve Ensler, Katha Pollitt, Margaret Sanger, Natalie Maines, and my amazing Mom.