Benjamin Cacchione

Nottingham Hs, Attended 1994 - 1998, Class of 1998

Reed College, Attended 1998 - 2002, Class of 2002, Bachelor's Degree, Philosophy

at the moment, construction. soon, fish-packing!

Studying grammar of completely foreign and useless languages, which is to say, stuff that's aggressively boring to most people in their right mind. i also like to write stories (by which i mean take notes and revise them endlessly, nitpicking over the cultural details of the people i'm writing about and the languages they speak), and then refuse to allow any kind of genre label to be applied to them. If they say fantasy, I say but this takes place in our world, and the "laws of physics" apply equally well in both realms, blah blah blah; if they say "historical fiction", i say maybe, but there's no historical evidence of this culture having existed, though the language evidence from neighboring (historically attested) languages DOES fit surprisingly well with the context! If they say fiction, I say the whole point is to blur the line between fact and fiction! more often, I just drink, play pool, dance my ass off and make out with people with whom it seems inappropriate.

baudolino, watership down, the stars my destination, tristan and isolt (have to say loomis is my favorite translator), lord of the rings, harold & the purple crayon, all those roald dahl books, ancient mythology, lots of medieval romances & epic poetry, and a whole mess of other crap

i don't frickin know... let's say vanilla sky, the rules of attraction, adaptation, eternal sunshine of the spotless mind (in fact ANYTHING by charlie kaufman. the man's a genius). crouching tiger? most things with (a) swords, (b) castles, (c) alien girls riding flying vespas and using an electric guitar to beat up robots that pop out of kids' heads, or (d) a rich sense of mythology. oh, and mean girls. and you got served.

all kinds of stuff, especially hip hop (the dancin kind), funk (for dancin), disco (i like to dance), 80s music (especially the stuff with a good dance beat), super-mellow trip hop (for when i'm tired (from dancing)), and the classics of classical (for the 14-hour wake-up preparing-for-dancing phase of the day)

um, smallville. yes. LOVE IT. you know you want to. hmm.... also firefly, the family guy, sealab (which is slightly better than aqua teen hunger force), inu yasha (but only if you watch it in japanese! - it's sometimes corny but always wonderful)

Capricorn

i don't agree with anything wholesale, but there's at least some aspect of everything that i love. i see both sides of the argument as valid, which is at times maddening. i like to think i'm fun, despite the fact that many of the things i like are extremely boring to most people with any kind of social skills. i don't often talk to my friends about my beliefs or political views, because most of the intellectual world (which includes at least most of my friends) completely disagrees with my positions on things, and generally has no interest in hearing the 4-hour explanation of my philosophical belief system to put everything in perspective. But trust me, it all makes sense.

your mom!