Interests
Reading - Fantasy, Sci-Fi, Dark Fantasy, Horror, and random books that strike my fancy. Some of my favorite authors - Dean Koontz, Steven King, Neil Gaiman, R.A. Salvatore, Marion Zimmer Bradley, Anne McCaffrey, The Dragonlance Chronicles. Oddly enough, the best book I ever read was President Harry Truman's memiores written while he was in office.
Music - metal, industrial, classical, blues, jazz, techno, rap (only hardcore...I don't take to hip-hop). Favorite bands (no particular order) - Nine Inch Nails, Tool, Perfect Circle, Megadeth, Metallica, Slayer, Bad Religion, Queensryche, Faith No More, Ice-T, Eminem, and others too numerous to list. Composers- Bella Bartok, Beethoven, J.S. Bach, Arvo Part, Jiri Benda (you get bonus points if you know that guy), Alban Berg.
Games - Spades, Bridge, Poker (not just Texas Hold 'Em, but also 7 Stud High and Split, Omaha High and Split...pretty much all of them except the lowball games), Canasta, Magic the Gathering, Cribbage, Backgammon, Chess, Dominoes, AD+D... name it, I've probably played it.
Volleyball - Played high school and college club, including a year of coaching at the college level, always looking to practice and play with others in the area.
Massage - studied as an amateur, taught myself from a few books and have a few dozen hours practice and probably close to a hundred hours on the table.
Germanic Wicca - Wicca with a bent in the Germanic and Scandanavian traditions...read tarot cards, rune stones, mystical practice and the like. Work as a solitary at this time.
Politics - former employee (begged door-to-door for a non-profit affiliate) and member of the Green Party (capital G), libertarian and democrat (small l and d respectively), stood guard with the pro-choice movement at the clinics in Milwaukee during the siege of 1991 by anti-choice activists, have a few good stories from that).
Economics - Nerds like to get rich too! Game Theory, Industrial Organization specialist in Arts/Entertainment Industry (essentially a P.I. for business and academia...digging up the juicy dirt), macro forecasting (let me look into my crystal ball!), micro consulting, labor relations and human resources, international and environmental trade.
Cooking - American, Italian and very little Thai and Mexican. In short, I read a mean cookbook.
Shit did I miss anything? I don't believe so, but you can always ask.
Music
What I like is listed in Interests.
What I write is another matter.
Completed the overture and first act to an original opera entitled "Ragnarok". The remaining music make take years to finish.
Also have several short piano pieces to my credit, include a series of musical inventions and fugues, vocal counterpoint exercises, a ten-minute, four movement work for piano loosely reminiscent of Bartok. Also have a 10 minute theme and variations work for string quarter that will be completed by summer 2007.
As for the rock album I'm writing, it contains older songs that were written for the Scarred and appeared on our Demo CD "Listen Loud". Includes one song co-authored by Doug Parker from the now defunct Realm. "Breathe" reappears after years of hiatus when Rez8 records (Toronto, Canada) went under. Three other songs, two that were not completed made the cut (from nearly 50 songs I co-wrote with that band), and those are my babies - lock and stock. Two covers including Metallica's "Orion" and Skinny Puppy's "Worlock" are scheduled to be released provided I can get approval from their reps. Lastly, three brand new songs will appear on the album including "Authority Figure" and two other works that are as of yet untitled. Included also is "The Empty: A Beginning in the End" a solo piece for synthesizer that performed to a packed house at Antioch during a music festival.
Other than that, I compose, arrange, play bass/keyboards/sing and can get around adequately on guitar and drums. Periodically jazz bands have asked me to play double bass for them...and I have done so because it is vastly amusing to me, not that I have much clue what I am doing with one (but the tuning is the same as a bass guitar, it can't be that hard ;>)
Crap, are you still reading? Don't you have a life outside of Cherry Tap? Meaningful activities, day job, a family to attend to, church on Sunday? If not...you must be a lot of fun to hang out with, we should get to know each other more!
FU DADDY FM...
