Name :
William John Stapley
Birthplace:
Bart's Hospital, London
Favourite
Mean Business song(s): Speaking My Name, Heaven Can Wait, She
Said, Okinai To Ikenai Daro, Still
Favourite
Mean Business album: Sale
Favourite bands/musicians:
Cowboy Junkies, Mamoru Tanabe, David Bowie (old stuff), Radiohead,
Blue Aeroplanes and many more ...
Favourite album(s):
All Bowie albums 1969-1980, Love Comedy [Ra-bu-co-me] (Mamoru
Tanabe), Nirvana MTV Unplugged, Temple of Low Men (Crowded House),
Document (REM) and a load more to be added later ...
Favourite films:
Almost too many to mention but here's a few: Time Bandits, Water,
Ran ("adaptation" of King Lear by Akira Kurosawa), Samurai
Fiction (a kind of Japanese Tarantino samurai movie), 12 Monkeys, The
Manufacture of Consent (a documentary about the media, government,
business, and the public - based on the work of Noam Chomsky and
Edward Herman), Short Cuts, Wag the Dog, Bob Roberts, Malcolm X, Ring
(so simple, soooo scary) ...
Favourite books:
Rain in the Wind (Saiichi Maruya), Orientalism (Edward Said),
Foucault's Pendulum (Umberto Eco), London Fields (Martin Amis),
Taming of the Samurai (Eiko Ikegami), The War of Don Emanuel's Nether
Parts (Louis De Berniers), Chaos (James Gleick), Fantastic Mr. Fox
(Roald Dahl), Where the Wild Thing's Are (?can't remember!), The
Wind-Up Bird Chronicle (Haruki Murakami), Zen and the Art of
Motorcycle Maintenance (Robert Pirsig), Use of Weapons (Iain M
Banks), The Rise and Fall of the House of Nire (Morio Kita), Picture
This (Joseph Heller) and many, many more ...
Favourite foods:
Sushi, pasta, chocolate, curry and anything really spicy, tendon,
Sainsbury's Oat Crunch cereal, and almost anything that's not got
meat or honey in it!!
Favourite drinks:
Tea, beer, French wine, atsukan (hot Japanese sake).
Who is your hero:
I don't really have any heroes but there are many people I respect.
For example: good teachers, anyone brave enough to peacefully oppose
injustice and torture, people who sacrifice their own happiness or
lives for others. Then there're people like Noam Chomsky
(anti-BigBrotherAmericanGovernment intellectual), Morihei Ueshiba
(founder of Aikido - the pacifist martial art!), Germain Greer
(feminist who's book "The Female Eunuch", everyone should
read [and which taught me it's okay to have sex when she's having her period!!]).
Which
song(s) do you wish you had written: Playboy Song (Mamoru
Tanabe), One (U2), Wish You Were Here (Pink Floyd), Sun Comes Up,
It's Tuesday Morning (Cowboy Junkies), Hurricane (Bob Dylan), GT 400
(Thee Michelle Gun Elephant), I'm Beginning to See the Light (Velvet
Underground), You Can't Always Get What You Want & Gimme Shelter
(Rolling Stones), It's Too Late (Carole King) and many more ...
Describe
yourself in one sentence: Cautious nihilistic escapist romantic
lazy adventurer.
What makes
you happy: The smell of my wife when I hold her.
What makes
you sad: The news
A message
to the world: I'm gonna sound like a hippy now but can we please
stop hating and hurting and killing each other?