I'm Nich Maragos, second-year student at the University of Mississippi, where I pursue a dual major in English and CS. And though the school doesn't offer this field of study, I've also amassed enough credit-hours in videogame playing to get at least a doctorate.

   My interests are videogames, books, movies, and music. I also enjoy writing, though I don't do as much of it as I'd like to, since my classes always seem to get in the way. I don't like sports much, probably because I'm so unfit for them, and I haven't watched television for a long time. Not that I'm proud or superior because of this; it's just that my TV is invariably occupied with a game instead. Since none of this tells you much, I should explain which books, movies, and music I like.

   I'm a voracious reader, and my list of favorite books seems to change every couple months. Right now I'm really into David Foster Wallace, having just finished the brilliant Infinite Jest and A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again. I'm also enjoying some of Haruki Murakami's books. The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle was so good that I went to the bookstore and bought everything I could find by Murakami, and I'm halfway through Hard Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World. Though I read it some time ago, House of Leaves by Mark Danielewski is also worth mentioning as probably the scariest book I've ever read. In addition to these, you can't really go wrong with anything by Ray Bradbury, Neal Stephenson, or Walker Percy.

   While I don't really think there's room for debate on the issue of comics as literature, I suppose I ought to list my favorite graphic novels separately. Dark Horse's reprints of Katsuhiro Otomo's Akira are almost unbelievably better than the more widely known movie, and their reissues of Lone Wolf and Cub are also very nice. Watchmen is, of course, as astonishing as everyone else has already said it is. For good clean fun, there's the Bone series, and for good not-so-clean fun, I recommend Grant Morrison's Invisibles.

   A list of all my favorite movies could take all day, so I'll settle for my top ... four: Rushmore, the most unconventional school drama you'll ever see; Run Lola Run, eminently watchable, no matter how many times you've already seen it; Pi, an intense horror/science-fiction movie with no real monsters or technology; and Edward Scissorhands, Tim Burton's best film.

   As for music, well, the best way to handle this is rapid-fire style: Sleater-Kinney! The Pixies! R.E.M.! Shonen Knife! Godspeed You Black Emperor! Spiritualized! Portishead! Radiohead! The Propellerheads! They Might Be Giants! MC Paul Barman! Masaharu Iwata! Moby! Bjork! Beck! Phew.