Kate
Bush's music
is the closest thing we will get to transcendence in this world. Many
years ago I founded the rec.music.gaffa newsgroup and the Love-Hounds
mailing list, both of which are dedicated to her. GaffaWeb is an incredible Web site
created by some other dediKated fans. (If you look hard on this site,
you can even find an interview I did with Kate in 1985.) Of all her
albums, The Dreaming
(1982) and Hounds of Love
(1985), both seminal works, are particularly recommended. Recently I
have created a wiki for Kate Bush fans called GaffaWiki. Check it
out. (Alas, the wiki is temporarily down.)
I also love the
Butthole Surfers, Laurie Anderson, Danielle Dax, Pop Will Eat Itself,
Tackhead, Peter Gabriel, Suzanne Vega, Portishead, Sheela Chandra,
Ministry, Massive Attack, Cranes, PJ Harvey, Dead Can Dance, Birdsongs
of the Mesozoic, Combustible Edison, Beastie Boys, Legendary Pink
Dots, Liz Phair, Hawkwind, NiN, The B52's, Devo, Orb, Primus, Babes in
Toyland, Test Dept., the Beatles, Pink Floyd (60's & 70's), Skinny
Puppy, Nirvanna, and, well, all sorts of cool stuff. I particularly
like music that is beautiful and melancholy while also being noisy or
dissonant.
Film
I'm something of a film buff. I love any movie by Greenaway, Cronenberg, Kieslowski, Tim Burton, or the Cohen brothers. My favorite movies are Brazil, Time Bandits, Red, The Double Life of Veronique, Videodrome, Crash, Naked Lunch, Memento The Pillow Book, A Zed and Two Naughts, Eraserhead, The Piano, Monty Python and the Holy Grail, Pulp Fiction, Being John Malkovich, Barton Fink, Fargo, Bound, My Dinner with Andre, Henry Fool, Welcome to the Dollhouse, Proof, Heavenly Creatures, Bad Taste, Edward Scissorhands... Well, I could go on and on.
I was a big fan of the TV shows Aeon Flux, My So Called Life, and Twin Peaks. The Simpsons, South Park, and Futurama still please, as does The Practice.
My favorite artists are Salvador Dali and Edward Gorey. I
like most any surreal art, a lot of Modern and post-Modern art, and I
also love Pre-Raphealite painting. My favorite writers are John Varley,
Sharon Olds, Rudy Rucker, Vonda MacIntyre, Neal Stephenson, Gene Wolfe,
and David Brin. My favorite comix is Alan Moore's Watchmen.
Here are some documents I have written for work.
Programming
Python is an excellent
scripting / RAD / "lightweight" language: Elegant, clean, and
object-oriented from the ground up. It's everything Perl should have
been, and just as powerful. Even Larry Wall says "Python rocks"!
Philosophy
Here is a philosophy paper on consciousness I wrote a while back while
sitting in on an undergraduate philosophy of mind class: html,
pdf.
It is apparently good enough to get me into philosophy grad school.
After writing the previous paper, for some reason I felt compelled to write another paper on consciousness in my copious spare time. No one has read this one for me, so I have no idea if it is any good.
After writing the previous paper, for some reason I felt compelled to officially take a graduate-level class on philosophy of mind. Talk about jumping into the deep end of the pool! Here's my term paper for that class: html, pdf.
I got an A, so it must be half decent, but
it is also quite obscure. There's little chance you'll actually want to
read it.
What I Do for a Living
Here is my
resume.
Aeon Flux
Aeon Flux is the greatest cartoon femme fatale that has ever
existed, bar none! She may appear at first to be little different from
any other scantily clad comic book dominatrix, but actually the three
seasons of Aeon Flux that were aired on MTV were some of the most
creative, unusual, and philosophical moments ever seen on television.
Here is a site devoted to the show: aeonflux.org.
Yours truly,
|>ouglas
P.S. Click here just in case you want to see a photo of me.
P.P.S. Drop me a line if you feel like it.
