The Rapture, "House of Jealous Lovers"
The Promise Ring, "Happiness is All the Rage"
Pretty Girls Make Graves, "Speakers Push Air"
Q and Not U, "Ten Thousand Animal Calls"
New End Original, "14-41"
Moby, "In My Heart"
Lush, "For Love"
June Carter Cash, "Gatsby's Restaurant"
Jets to Brazil, "William Tell Overdrive"
Travis Morrison, "Song of the Orca"
The Stills, "Yesterday, Never Tomorrow"
Heavenly, "Ben Sherman"
Franz Ferdinand, "The Dark of the Matinee"
The Cure, "Just Like Heaven"

A young man is born in the mountains of Western Maryland. Some people who live amongst bigger mountains call them "hills." But to him, they're mountains.

He has a rather uneventful childhood not too terribly distinguished from the childhoods of other boys in his generation. Star Wars, GIJoe,Transformers, MASK, comic books, J.R.R. Tolkien, Captians Kirk and Picard, The Years Best Science Fiction edited by Gardner Dozois, The Sandkings by George R.R. Martin, Terry Brooks, Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay -- all of this was interrupted by occasional harassment from bigger, less imaginative boys. Boys who liked something called "sports."

Then a revelation in high school. Punk rock. Minor Threat, Fugazi, Suicidal Tendencies, Nirvana most of all. A complete liberation of ideas.

And then a plan is hatched. Control over a yearbook is seized and a great practical joke is played out on everyone who deserves it.

Then college. New revelations. Indie rock. Tsunami, Velocity Girl, June of '44, Rodan, Slint, Lois Maffeo, later Braid, the Promise Ring, Bis, Belle and Sebastian. "You are not what you own." A kernal of confidence that was always there grows into something called "ego". A relationship with an editor that would become a marriage.

That relationship would give birth to a 'zine, Restaurant Fuel. Well regarded during its short life by those who claimed to read it. A record label, Hub City, devoted to the insane task of handmaking every single cover from scratch as if each record was a work of art in and of it self. Each copy.

But then adulthood. The zine and label fade away. 3 years in public radio severed by a hasty retreat from a bad boss, and then a new job working for an independent program dedicated to training journalists for foreign service.

Also graduate school, Information Systems. An obsession with building computers. The story continues ...