Implementing massive cultural paradigm shifts as a means to maintain a sense of dignity and self-worth, further validating the theory that dogmatic religious fanaticism is very much akin to mental illness, and benzodiazapines.
Intifada songs, Ethiopian Jazz, quintessential "stoner staples", Bill Laswell, Rachmoninoff and occasionally a little Immortal Technique or Public Enemy...
You know how if you put frogs in a pot of water and gradually bring it to a boil, they'll let themselves get cooked, but if you throw them into water that has already been brought to a boil, they'll leap out? I feel like the frog that's been abruptly thrown into the boiling water every time I am exposed to TV, since I haven't owned a functioning television in over five years.
How 'bout I just give you some authors? I was on a Kerouac/Burroughs kick for a while, Aldous Huxely, Oscar Wilde, Tom Wolfe, Herman Hesse, Mary Pipher, George Orwell, Ken Kesey, J.D. Salinger, F. Scott Fitzgerald (I know, I'm a terminal nerd), D.H. Lawrence, Dostoevsky, Cornel West, Noam Chomsky, Leo Tolstoy, Nietzsche, Henry David Thoreau, Ovid, Sylvia Plath, James Joyce... Countee Coullen (Is that how you spell it?), e.e. cummings, Allen Ginsberg, Walt Whitman, William Blake, Robert Zimmerman, Simone De Beauvior, Germaine Greer, Umberto EccoAuthors I can't stand (with reasons I hate them provided): Zora Neale Hurston (contrived, overdone vernacular), Anne Rice (literary cheese-wiz), Hemmingway (grunting, machismo bullshit), Charles Dickens(pretentiously verbose "as all get out") Anne Coulter (goes without saying) Sean Hannity (again, goes without saying) Jennifer Weiner (shudder) and too many others to continue on...
My mommy and daddy no doubt. Daddy's one radical dude and mommy's one fiery broad. In lieu of any flattering images of them this cool Frank Zappa poster my dad designed will have to suffice.