Been meaning to do this meme for awhile:

LJ Interests meme results

buena vista social club:
The Buena Vista Social Club is a band made up of virtuousos, whose style consists of a peculiarly Cuban blend of Afro-Caribbean rhythm, Latin melodies, and heartbreaking lyrics. Having seen several of them live (solo), I'm also amazed that these artists carried so much joie de vivre so late into their lives.
cormac mccarthy:
I love McCarthy's fine, poetic descriptions of the U.S. Southwest and Mexico, his powerful sense of history, the focus on the kinds of discoveries and confrontations that can take place on cultural and national frontiers. Also, I love the way his storytelling works in just a touch of Spanish, carrying the reader to those cultural "borderlands," too. Of course, the stories McCarthy has to tell often have to do with violence, but this is an integral part of the histories he's portraying.
fiction:
Fiction, imaginative or virtual worlds, counterfactuals, at their best transcend simple imaginative escape or entertainment, provoking us to think about meaning and possibility. Not that I'm knocking escapist entertainment--I mean, just look at some of my icons ...! :)
history:
As the cliche goes, we don't really know who we are if we don't know how we got here. Also, I think that a lack of knowledge about the past--about how different a place the world has been at times--can cramp one's view of reality in much the same way that a lack of knowledge about other contemporary cultures can.
linguistics:
I love languages, learning them, stretching their possibilities, and retracing the processes of linguistic change: for example, I was just fascinated by the discovery that my surname comes from "Son of Diego" and that the Spanish expression "Ojala!" comes from an Arabic invocation of "Allah."
mycenae:
Mycenae, what little we know of it from Homer and archaeology, is one of those lost worlds that have always fascinated me.
politics:
Politics is the technology of history, the whole array of social levers that enable humans to influence the larger conditions impinging on our lives--not to mention the conditions with which our descendants will have to contend. (Of course, access to those levers always differs across a society--often widely, which itself comprises one of the most crucial political questions.)
satyricon:
Petronius' ancient novel, and the Fellini film of the same name, suggest an ancient world (Nero's Rome) which is both one of the roots of Western culture, and a profoundly alien society, to the modern eye. I've always been fascinated by that simultaneous familiarity and strangeness ...
thai food:
Before I discovered Thai food, my favorite cuisines were Indian and Chinese, and Thai is a nice compromise between those flavors ...
warren zevon:
Because of lyrics like:

"All the salty margharitas in Los Angeles
I'm gonna drink 'em in ...
And if California slides into the ocean
Like the mystics and statistics say it will
I predict this hotel will be standing
Until I pay my bill ..."

Undeniably, a poet for our times!