Literature, film, and music (these three things go without saying-- it's trite really), cryptography, information theory; finite mathematics and formal languages, optical data formats and other machine-readable symbols (i.e. barcodes), light infantry weapons, equipment, and tactics; story telling, particularly involving the subject of fathers and sons, big families, human weakness, irrational courage, and the fact the each of us has the capacity to do incredible good, or unfathomable evil regardless of background
people who inspire others, people who create, artists, thinkers, lovers, people with passion
The Arcade Fire, The Postal Service, Muse, Death Cab, bis, The Mars Volta, At The Drive-In, Bright Eyes, Modest Mouse, My Bloody Valentine, New Order, Placebo, Sigur Ros, The Faint, This Mortal Coil, Shudder to Think, The Go! Team, Tilly and the Wall, The New Pornographers, Victory at Sea, Pinback, Rogue Wave, Wolf Parade, The New Pornographers, Jeff Buckley, Jeff Buckley, Jeff Buckley
For some reason I never get tired of watching The Rules of Attraction. I can watch it over and over, preferably while drinking. If I'm laughingly drunk and gaffawing during the scenes with Rupert, or suicidally blasted and choked up during the bathtub scene, or obnoxiously drunk and reciting the "My name is DICK!" scene, I'm happy. What is it about this film that I love so much?
Freaks 'n Geeks, The Shield, The Daily Show, The Colbert Report, The Learning Channel, History Channel, Discovery Channel, Food Network
J.D. Salinger (everything he's written), W. Somerset Maughm (THE RAZOR'S EDGE, OF HUMAN BONDAGE), Robert Cormier (FADE, I AM THE CHEESE, THE CHOCOLATE WAR), Joseph Heller (CATCH-22), John Irving (THE HOTEL NEW HAMPSHIRE), Bret Easton Ellis (AMERICAN PSYCHO), Henry Miller (SEXUS), Milan Kundera (THE UNBEARABLE LIGHTNESS OF BEING), Dave Eggers (A HEARTBREAKING WORK OF STAGGERING GENIUS), Douglas Coupland (MICROSERFS), George Orwell (1984), Dr. Seuss (THE CAT IN THE HAT, THE CAT IN THE HAT COMES BACK), Hunter S. Thompson (FEAR AND LOATHING IN LAS VEGAS), Bruce Schneier (APPLIED CRYPTOGRAPHY, SECRETS AND LIES, BEYOND FEAR [technical books on crypto and security]), THE MAN WHO LOVED ONLY NUMBERS (a biography about the mathematician Paul Erdos by Paul Hoffman)
Lieutenant Commander Kenneth LeRoy Frye, my grandfather; Bret Easton Ellis and Connor Oberst for their talent and success at such young ages; writers who write what they feel needs to be written regardless of the consequences, i.e. Plato, Dostoevsky