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Am I a pessimistic idealist, or an idealistic pessimist? The order is important, I imagine.

I have a creative compulsion, of sorts. I feel driven to make things: songs, stories, etc. al. Eventually I'll muster up the determination to try my hand at drawing again. Until then, I have the great fortune of possessing a bevy of visual/graphic artist friends whose work I can live vicariously through to appease any illustrative desire. I'm very critical of my creative output, but I like to think its part of a quest for perfection. Gotta have something to strive for, right?

I have a mental list of places to visit so long I'm not sure I'll ever complete them in my lifetime, especially since I do want to return to both Japan and Ireland (Where I've spent time). Other prime candidates on that list include: Most of Scandinavia (Sweden, Finland, etc. al), Egypt, New Zealand, Israel and Germany. I'm a fan of the outdoors and sweeping vistas. The first set of rechargable batteries for my digital camera presently lay sunk beneath the waves at Hag's Head: It was a particularly windy day when I visited the Cliffs of Moher, and as I was temporarily swapping them out for a set of Duracells, the wind took them and tossed them past the barrier and over the edge.

I'm a student. I like learning things. Unfortunately, its very hard to get paid for learning things, so in the meantime, I do what I can. Its been interesting lately to be on the other side of that equation, with teaching.

I like languages, even though I'm really only good with 2.5 or so. (I can still read Spanish after learning in high school, though pretty sure I couldn't communicate much more interesting than something involving the school teacher going to the library for a book on fishing. My Chinese needs quite a bit of work too.) I've been working at my Japanese pretty steadily, but its hard to match 2-3 hours of day of speaking nothing but the language in college.

I once accepted two large chocolate brownies as payment for an acoustic gig.

Living it?

I'm a substitute teacher working through a master's program. I wish I could say something cool about how the first is like being a soldier of fortune, a hired gun, a flinty-eyed gunslinger who gets the job done, but really its more like getting kicked awake at 6 AM and being sent off to a random location a few times a week. I find it strangely enjoyable, however. The change of scenery keeps things interesting.

Writing, musicking, using words like lugubrious in a context appropriate fashion, spells of whimsy, pointed comments, and so on.

I like to think I'm good at giving advice, as I seem to be the one amongst my friends who's often dispensing it. Following your own advice, however, isn't quite so simple.

Books: I tend to read quite a lot, and draw most of my choices from fantasy and science fiction. George R.R. Martin's Song of Ice and Fire, China Mieville (Perdido Street Station and The Scar), Neil Gaiman (American Gods and Stardust most of all), Orson Scott Card (Speaker for the Dead), Frank Herbert (Dune), Neal Stephenson (Snow Crash), Glen Cook (The Black Company series) Ray Bradbury, Robert E. Howard, Clark Ashton Smith and H.P.Lovecraft. Top choices outside of those genres include: Natsume Soseki's Kokoro, Morgan Llewelyn, Bei Dao and Gu Cheng. I'm also a fan of Yeats. Lately I've been working through Stephen Erikson's Malazan Book of the Fallen series. I'm trying to acquire a copy of Kiyoshi Shigematsu's Meteor Station Wagon. I also am a fan of a fair number of what can only be categorized as 'Dead British Poets'.

Movies: Blade Runner, Brotherhood of the Wolf, Serenity, The Princess Bride, Tombstone, The Seven Samurai, Howl's Moving Castle, The Quick and the Dead, Equilibrium, The Outlaw Josey Wales, Pitch Black, Willow, all things Akira Kurosawa and a fair amount of Zhang Yimou to name a few. I enjoy good cinematography, though I'm no film student.

Television: Firefly, Heroes, Jericho, Robin Hood (The currently running BBC series), Criminal Minds, Scrubs, HBO's Rome. Most good shows all seem to get cancelled before their time. Its almost depressing.

Music: Far, far too much to list. Music, even moreso than books, is something I talk and think entirely too much about. Everything from the Gin Blossoms, Jeff Buckley, L'arc~en~ciel, The Cure and U2 to bands like Iron Maiden, Savatage, Pain of Salvation, Evergrey, Therion, Orphaned Land, Iced Earth, Into Eternity, Blind Guardian and Dan Swano's Nightingale. A fair bit of instrumental stuff as well. I also strangely prefer film scores and soundtracks to 'typical' classical music. (Ie. Hans Zimmer, Joel Goldsmith, Basil Poledouris, Jeremy Soule, Yasunori Mitsuda, Motoi Sakuraba and Nobuo Uematsu). Basically, anything with a good melody and/or lyrics and I'm sold, regardless of the genre. I think Opeth is arguably one of the most significant musical acts of the last 20+ years.

Food: Lately its Thai. I'm also big on Italian food, as I was practically raised on it.

I have a strong feeling this will end up sounding cliche in several places, but what can you do?

1) Music 2) Guitars. Plural. 3) Reading material. 4) Pen & Paper. (Or possibly pencil. Erasers are useful, after all.) 5) A sense of wonder. 6) Conversation.

Yup, sure sounds cliche to me.

Events past and future.

The origin of things. (Songs, words, events). Sounds silly, but there's something intriguing about the story of what came from where.

Ideas. Stories. Melodies.

Why the UK covers of novels are always so much cooler than the American ones.

Why the Japanese bonus tracks on albums are often better than many of the album tracks.

During college, I got used to Friday being a sort of day of rest. Most everything of interest happened Thursday or Saturday.

Lately I'm either at home writing, or off somewhere for the weekend. As I said earlier, a big fan of traveling, even if its only a state or so away.

I boycotted driving for quite awhile out of (pretty irrational) fear of death, probably tied to a friend's accident.

If you feel like it/are bored/etc. (The standard).