List of music I should listen to. I’ll keep updating this as I listen to them and add more as I think of them. If you have any suggestions, please leave them as comments.

Orbital
Do Make Say Think
Nightmares on Wax
The Chemical Brothers
Morcheeba
Tricky
Pixies
Moloko
Thievery Corporation
The Avalanches
Kruder & Dorfmeister
Spiritualized
Badly Drawn Boy
Aphex Twin
Death Cab for Cutie
Labradford
Boards of Canada
Múm
Wilco
Manitoba
Caribou
Explosions in the Sky
Sigur Rós
Super Furry Animals
VNV Nation
Assemblage 23
Mogwai
Doves
Grandaddy
The Flaming Lips
Dimitri From Paris

List of books I should read. I’ll keep updating this as I read them and add more as I think of them. If you have any suggestions, please leave them as comments.

Bill Bryson
I’m a Stranger Here Myself
A Short History of Nearly Everything
A Walk in the Woods

Miguel de Cervantes
Don Quixote

Neil Gaiman
Anansi Boys
Coraline
Sandman comics
Stardust

William Gibson
Pattern Recognition

William Goldman
The Princess Bride

Dean Koontz
Frankenstein Book One: Prodigal Son
Frankenstein Book Two: City of Night
Life Expectancy
The Taking

Yann Martel
Life of Pi

Haruki Murakami
Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World
Kafka on the Shore
Norwegian Wood
South of the Border, West of the Sun
Sputnik Sweetheart
A Wild Sheep Chase
The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle

J.K. Rowling
Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone
Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets
Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban
Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire
Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix
Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince

Robert J. Sawyer
Illegal Alien
Iterations
Factoring Humanity
Flashforward
Frameshift
Mindscan
Starplex
The Terminal Experiment

Mary Shelley
Frankenstein

List of movies I should watch. I’ll keep updating this as I watch them and add more as I think of them. If you have any suggestions, please leave them as comments.

The Birds
The Goonies
MST3K
Snatch
The Thing
Vertigo
Wild at Heart
Wings of Desire

List of television shows I should watch. I’ll keep updating this as I watch them and add more as I think of them. If you have any suggestions, please leave them as comments.

UK
Blackadder
Look Around You
My Hero
Only Fools and Horses
The Vicar of Dibley

US
24
The 4400
Arrested Development
Dead Like Me (s2)
Drew Carey’s Green Screen Show
Frasier
Harvey Birdman
Lost
Millennium
Monk
Roswell
Quantum Leap

Anime
Full Metal Alchemist

Job interview went really well. The people I talked to were friendly and seemed impressed with me. They’re having me come back later in the week to meet more of the team.

“The confusion over the aluminum/aluminium spelling arose because of some uncharacteristic indecisiveness on Davy’s part. When he first isolated the element in 1808, he called it alumium. For some reason he thought better of that and changed it to aluminum four years later. Americans dutifully adopted the new term, but many British users disliked aluminum, pointing out that it disrupted the -ium pattern established by sodium, calcium, and strontium, so they added a vowel and syllable.” –Bill Bryson, A Short History of Nearly Everything

I read that passage while sitting in the park this evening and thought I’d share it since it’s a topic of much amusement and discussion from time to time.

Help, I have done it again
I have been here many times before
Hurt myself again today
And, the worst part is there’s no-one else to blame

Be my friend
Hold me, wrap me up
Unfold me
I am small
I’m needy
Warm me up
And breathe me

After Ross mentioned he’d just watched the last episode of Six Feet Under, I decided I’d go back and watch the last ten minutes of it. Overall, this has to be the single best series finale in existence. Not only is it intensely emotional, but I can so easily relate to it…the second viewing was no less emotional than the first. At the risk of providing spoilers, I’ll say only this: Claire drives across the country to begin a new life in New York, which was so familiar to me as I had just done the same on my trek to Seattle, and I watched this only two weeks after having done that…and all the while she’s driving, the song “Breathe Me” by Sia (an Australian singer in the group Zero7) is playing over a montage of all the main characters’ death scenes. (All set years into the future.) I think it’s necessary to have seen the whole series to appreciate just how heart-wrenching this conclusion is…you grow to love and care for each of these characters as if you know them personally…they are so real and so tangible, and you can relate to their struggles. Huuuu. I think I’ll finish my wine and listen to “Breathe Me” about 5 more times before bed.

I applied for about 25 jobs this afternoon and within an hour of applying, one of them called me back for an interview. *jitter* So I’m going in on Wednesday. Wish me luck!