'Akira', Bergman, 'A Christmas Story', '80s flicks, 'Goyangileul butaghae', Hitchcock, Kubrick, Kurosawa, Lee, 'The Lost Boys', Lynch, 'Martin', 'Planet of the Apes' (1968), 'Rashômon', 'Requiem for a Dream', Romero, 12 Monkeys, Welles
Television
24, [adult swim], COPS, C-Span, Forensic Files, Heroes, Intervention, ISKA kickboxing, MSNBC, Naked Science, NBA, NFL, nip/tuck, Pride FC, The Real World, The Shield, The Simpsons, Survivor, TNA, The Twilight Zone, UFC, The Ultimate Fighter, The Wire, WWE
Books
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, The Catcher in the Rye, Frantz Fanon, Langston Hughes, Memoirs of a Geisha, Stephen King, Grant Morrison, Neuromancer, Robert Silverberg, Dan Simmons, HG Wells
I am John (a.k.a. Joda), aspiring artiste, writer, and student of psychology from the Greater Washington, DC area (now residing in Gainseville, VA). Also premed, though my student status is pendingno longer pending hiatus.
Over the last year, I've become quite the gym rat/male cardio bunny, spending 2-4 hours per day/4-6 days a week at the gym. I hope to complete a tri-/marathon within the next year or so. Training and possibly competing in Muay Thai and Brazilian Jiu-jitsu someday is yet another far-off dream of mine.
I've got a wicked tongue and devilish charm, albeit somewhat masked by the fact that I'm more introverted and usually prefer being alone. I have trouble staying awake during the day and wind up spending nights talking to the bedbugs. Loud noises startle me, but I hardly flinch if the BANG! is in rhythm.
I once prided myself on being easy-going and low maintenance, but I've come to realize I have emotional baggage (just a small carry-on) AND have accepted that I'm not the lesser for it. We're meant to be multifaceted, not one-dimensional. Acknowledging our vulnerabilities as well as our strengths isn't a sign of weakness, but rather the desire to persevere and grow.
I'm always paying close attention to people and my surroundings, even if I appear lost in my own little world. I hear every word said, despite my look of indifference. I'm not just a good listener but also a good conversationalist. If I yawn while someone's talking, it usually doesn't signify boredom. I simply have bad sleeping habits. When I'm bored, I'm very discreet about it.
Who I'd like to meet: Atwood, W. H. Auden, Yehuda Amichai, Anna Akhmatova, Ai, John Ashbery, A. R. Ammons, Jane Austen, Guillaume Apollinaire, Dante Alighieri, Louisa May Alcott, Richard Aldington, Lascelles Abercrombie, Sarah Flower Adams, Delmira Agustini, William Allingham, Deborah Ager, Conrad Aiken, Catherine Anderson, Maggie Anderson, Ralph Angel, Kingsley Amis, Jean Hans Arp, Kelli Russell Agodon, W. Jude Aher, Alfred Austin, Tiel Aisha Ansari, Siddharth Anand, Elizabeth Bishop, Bukowski, Gwendolyn Brooks, William Blake, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Robert Burns, Robert Browning, Charles Baudelaire, Jorge Luis Borges, John Berryman, Lord Byron, Hilaire Belloc, Matsuo Basho, Richard Brautigan, Andre Breton, Eavan Boland, Stephen Vincent Benet, Louise Bogan, Ambrose Bierce, Anne Bradstreet, Wendell Berry, Yosa Buson, Rupert Brooke, William Cullen Bryant, David Berman, Bertolt Brecht, Emily Bronte, Charlotte Bronte, Imamu Amiri Baraka, Thomas Edward Brown, Gelett Burgess, Joseph Brodsky, Aleksandr Blok, Robert Seymour Bridges, Anne Bronte, Marvin Bell, William Barnes, Laurence Binyon, Erin Belieu, April Bernard, D. C. Berry, Frank Bidart, Arna Bontemps, William Bronk, Ellis Parker Butler, Ingeborg Bachmann, John Betjeman, Thomas Blackburn, Yves Bonnefoy, Edgar Bowers, George Bradley, Edwin Brock, John Burnside, Alex Boyd, John Bodenham, Carlos Barbarito, Joel Barlow, William Rose Benet, Hugh Henry Brackenridge, Ros Barber, Jonathan Bohrn, Laure-Anne Bosselaar, Luis Benitez, Cecilia Borromeo, Alain Bosquet, Robert Bly, Michael Burch, Bhaskar Roy Barman, E. E. Cummings, Billy Collins, Lucille Clifton, John Clare, Lewis Carroll, Countee Cullen, Stephen Crane, Samuel Coleridge, Robert Creeley, Leonard Cohen, Geoffrey Chaucer, Aleister Crowley, Mary Elizabeth Coleridge, Gregory Corso, Hart Crane, William Cowper, Raymond Carver, Thomas Campbell, Amy Clampitt, Richard Crashaw, Arthur Hugh Clough, Thomas Chatterton, Li Ching Chao, G. K. Chesterton, Jean Cocteau, Lady Mary Chudleigh, Jim Carroll, Hayden Carruth, Martha Collins, Geraldine Connolly, Thomas Carew, Constantine P. Cavafy, Paul Celan, Andree Chedid, Austin Clarke, Abraham Cowley, Andrew Crumey, Eliza Cook, Peter Conners, Bliss Carman, Willa Cather, Craig Erick Chaffin, Ivan Donn Carswell, Emily Dickinson, Roald Dahl, John Donne, Paul Laurence Dunbar, Hilda Doolittle, Rita Dove, Henry Van Dyke, John Dryden, Mark Doty, Stephen Dunn, Mahmoud Darwish, Keith Douglas, Michael Drayton, Alan Dugan, John Davidson, Robert Desnos, Mark van Doren, Annie Dillard, Stephen Dobyns, Norman Dubie, Denise Duhamel, Regina Derieva, Michael Donaghy, Ernest Dowson, William Drummond, Carol Ann Duffy, Helen Dunmore, William Dunbar, James Dickey, Edward Dorn, Robert Duncan, T. S. Eliot, Emerson, Paul Eluard, Marriott Edgar, Russell Edson, Cornelius Eady, James A. Emanuel, Maggie Estep, Joseph Freiherr Von Eichendorff, George Eliot, Gerald England, Ian Emberson, Rebecca Elson, Frost, Tu Fu, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Robert Francis, Edward Field, Nick Flynn, Edward Fitzgerald, Anne Kingsmill Finch, Jean de La Fontaine, Carolyn Forche, Philip Freneau, Daisy Fried, Thomas Flatman, John Fletcher, Eugene Field, John Gould Fletcher, Raymond A. Foss, Jessie Redmon Fauset, Annie Finch, Gary R. Ferris, Ginsberg, Kahlil Gibran, Nikki Giovanni, Louise Gluck, Robert Graves, Edgar Albert Guest, Jack Gilbert, Thomas Gray, Thom Gunn, Judy Grahn, Eamon Grennan, Oliver Goldsmith, Dame Mary Gilmore, Patricia Goedicke, Jorie Graham, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Rafael Guillen, Adam Lindsay Gordon, Maria Mazziotti Gillan, Sidney Godolphin, Thomas Godfrey, Adrian Green, R.George, Bernadette Geyer, Godfrey Mutiso Gorry, Rg Gregory, Langston Hughes, Ted Hughes, Thomas Hardy, Robert Hayden, Seamus Heaney, Robert Herrick, Donald Hall, Alec Derwent Hope, Gerard Manley Hopkins, Nazim Hikmet, Oliver Wendell Holmes, Tony Harrison, A. E. Housman, George Herbert, Tony Hoagland, James Henry Leigh Hunt, Edward Hirsch, Hermann Hesse, William Henry Davies, William Ernest Henley, Anthony Hecht, Andrew Hudgins, Marilyn Hacker, Victor Hugo, Kimiko Hahn, Forrest Hamer, Mac Hammond, Brooks Haxton, Mark Hillringhouse, Peter Huchel, Jupiter Hammon, Bret Harte, Julia Ward Howe, William Dean Howells, Dale Harcombe, Billy Jno Hope, Joy Harjo, Sophie Hannah, Suheir Hammad, Eileen Carney Hulme, Kobayashi Issa, David Ignatow, Mark Irwin, Henrik Ibsen, Randall Jarrell, Elizabeth Jennings, James Joyce, Erica Jong, Robinson Jeffers, Donald Justice, Jenny Joseph, Samuel Johnson, Richard Jones, Helen Hunt Jackson, Laura Riding Jackson, Ben Jonson, James Lee Jobe, Keats, Ted Kooser, Rudyard Kipling, Jack Kerouac, Kenneth Koch, Stanley Kunitz, Jane Kenyon, Patrick Kavanagh, Yusef Komunyakaa, Joyce Kilmer, Galway Kinnell, Etheridge Knight, Omar Khayyam, Charles Kingsley, Weldon Kees, Steve Kowit, Edward Keenaghan, Anne Killigrew, Francis Scott Key, Maxine Kumin, Dimitris P. Kraniotis, Jackie Kay, Bob Kaufman, Carolyn Kizer, Faye Diane Kilday, Longfellow, Robert Lowell, Philip Larkin, Denise Levertov, C. S. Lewis, Edward Lear, Amy Lowell, Li-Young Lee, David Herbert Lawrence, Philip Levine, Vachel Lindsay, Emma Lazarus, Richard Lovelace, Sidney Lanier, Thomas Lux, Giacomo Leopardi, Audre Lorde, Primo Levi, Larry Levis, Laurie Lee, Amy Levy, Michael Lally, David Lehman, Major Henry Livingston, Jr., William Lisle Bowles, Jiri Mordecai Langer, Roddy Lumsden, Dimitris Lyacos, Sharon Esther Lampert, Claude McKay, Roger McGough, Spike Milligan, Walter de la Mare, Marianne Moore, Antonio Machado, John Milton, Edna St. Vincent Millay, A. A. Milne, W. S. Merwin, Czeslaw Milosz, John Masefield, Edgar Lee Masters, Louis MacNeice, William Matthews, Thomas Moore, Edwin Muir, Christopher Marlowe, Gabriela Mistral, Archibald MacLeish, Katherine Mansfield, Lisel Mueller, William Morris, Andrew Marvell, John McCrae, Les Murray, Paul Muldoon, William Topaz McGonagall, Edwin Morgan, Herman Melville, George Meredith, Lucy Maud Montgomery, Dorothea Mackeller, Frances Mayes, Heather McHugh, John Montague, Christopher Morley, Stephane Mallarme, Osip Mandelstam, Erin Moure, Chris Mansell, James Merrill, William Vaughn Moody, John Matthew, Dorothea MacKellar, Edwin Markham, Joaquin Miller, Jonas Mekas, Vladimir Mayakovsky, Pablo Neruda, Maya Angelou, Ogden Nash, Alfred Noyes, Sarojini Naidu, Oodgeroo Noonuccal, Howard Nemerov, Alden Nowlan, Anais Nin, John Frederick Nims, Sir Henry Newbolt, Edith Nesbit, Claire Nixon, Mary Oliver, Sharon Olds, Wilfred Owen, Michael Ondaatje, Peter Orlovsky, Poe, Sylvia Plath, Jack Prelutsky, Dorothy Parker, Octavio Paz, Ezra Pound, Andrew Barton Paterson, Li Po, Marge Piercy, Alexander Pope, Linda Pastan, Robert Pinsky, Alexander Pushkin, Boris Pasternak, Kenneth Patchen, Vasko Popa, Katherine Philips, Ron Padgett, Grace Paley, Matthew Prior, Wanda Phipps, Anna Piutti, Ruth Padel, Coventry Patmore, Diane di Prima, Vanessa Perkins, Nizar Qabbani, Salvatore Quasimodo, Christina Rossetti, Rainer Maria Rilke, Adrienne Rich, Theodore Roethke, Edwin Arlington Robinson, Isaac Rosenberg, Sir Walter Raleigh, Mewlana Jalaluddin Rumi, Kathleen Raine, Mary Darby Robinson, Lizette Woodworth Reese, Craig Raine, Pierre Reverdy, Lola Ridge, Tadeusz Rozewicz, George William Russell, Arthur Rimbaud, Susan Rich, John Crowe Ransom, Jennifer Reeser, Carl Rakosi, Jerome Rothenberg, John Ruskin, Muriel Rukeyser, Shel Silverstein, William Shakespeare, Carl Sandburg, Gary Soto, Percy Bysshe Shelley, May Swenson, Wallace Stevens, Robert Louis Stevenson, William Stafford, Siegfried Sassoon, Karl Shapiro, Edmund Spenser, Kenneth Slessor, Robert William Service, Mark Strand, Charles Simic, Robert Southey, and maybe you
Celebrities and historical figures aside, anyone is welcome to contact me. I appreciate the art of conversation and don't expect anything more than congeniality and a little sincerity. I have few pretensions and take pride in my humility. I fancy myself a good judge of character, though, and won't hesitate to distance myself from anybody I find unapologetically malignant.
I relish becoming acquainted and interacting with people whose lives are dissimilar (at least on a surface level) to my own. I feel that I take away more from knowing a variety of people, as opposed to only associating with those who have undergone well-nigh identical life experiences as me and share my views on everything. I don't kiss hiney. I just feel being human entitles everyone to a certain amount of courtesy and respect.
I appreciate those who take the time to send me messages and read my blog. My responses aren't always expeditious, though, so apologies in advance if I don't get back to you quickly; haven't used MySpace in over a year now, so please bear with me while I reacclimate to this craptastic interface....
Go Trick or Treating with your Favorite Fantasy/Paranormal Authors!
~*~
Sam Cheever is sponsoring her third annual Trick or Treating Bash on a street near you! The street is inexplicably filled with some of your favorite Romantic Fantasy/Paranormal/Horror Authors and they will be waiting by the door with tricks and treats for you. All you need to do to play is visit Sam’s site anytime between October 26th and October 31st and select an item from the goodie bag posted there. Then you will send a note off to Sam with your selection and move on to the next “house” on the list, where another Author will be waiting with a goodie bag for you to choose from. The lucky Contestant who is selected at the end of the contest will win a Halloween Bag with a Kindle e-reader in it, assorted candy, and other wonderful prizes from the Authors who live on Sam’s street.
Only one trip down the street per contestant and you must be at least 18 to play!
Come and join the fun and play for a chance to win a Kindle and a bag of goodies. You might be surprised to learn who lives on Sam’s street!
THE RETURN OF THE BAT
Specimen will bring their special brand of glam mayhem, The Batcave to London again.
After last year’s wildly-successful 25th anniversary Batcave event, The Batcave returns to its original spawning ground of London’s West End on Sunday July 19 for another night of blasphemy, lechery and blood.
Specimen (Fresh from a fantastic show at Leipzig’s Waves Gotik festival), the original Batcave instigators will headline the lurid frolics at the Embassy Club, (29 Old Burlington St, London W1S3AP) Also on the bill are original Batcavers Sexbeat, with DJs Hamish and Cavey Nick, cavorting from decks to decadence with the usual brutal, trouser-dropping surprises & suitably confronting & barbaric entertainment.
The 2009 Batcave will feature installations from exciting new artists of the ‘Dark London Underground’ and visuals from the upcoming ‘Welcome To The Batcave’ book, along with this year’s bitcrushed message from the creature in t
Hey, just wanted to let you know that we have a new song on our myspace “This Rounds On Me” . The song comes from our new E.P coming out in Nov but you can pre order now with a limited edition T-Shirt and get the CD more than a month in advance.
My band the Staxx Brothers finally released our first single Easy Rider off our debut The 12th Street Blues, and we are currently taking public radio by storm. Move over NPR, there's a new sheriff in town (lol). Check us out on KBCS 91.3 Bellevue, KSER 90.7 Everett, 89.3 KAOS Olympia, 92.3 KYRS Spokane, 89.3 KUGS Bellingham, and 90.7 KZUU Pullman.
That's right, I'm talkin' FM (though we are looking to revive AM Radio to it's mid 70's glory)
But why settle for dubbing our hit song Easy Rider to your cassette tape as you wait for the DJ to drop the needle. You're gonna' miss the intro! Download Easy Rider at myspace. com/thestaxxbrothers and check us out LIVE in 3-D at the Crunkest club Mill Creek has to offer. Sabado, Sabado, Sabado!!! Staxx @ The JET.
