Month: December 2001

Blogger Insider is an “arranged interview pairing” group, wherein the hapless chap (Keith Berman) who is organizing it solicits volunteers, and then pairs them up to ask each other 10-15 questions, said questions and answers then being blogged on the folks’ pages.

It sounded interesting, so I volunteered.

My pairing this week is with “SJ D Alexander”. I did a quick perusal of the SJ’s page (to get background for the questions) and discovered that we have so much — er, well, nothing in common, actually. But SJ sent me a bunch of fun questions (and, hopefully, found my questions entertaining and interesting as well), and here they, and the answers, are:

1) Let’s say you’re a scientific-type guy, and you are given a choice of two places to focus your research and spend your time. Outer space or underwater (oceans)?

Okay. “I’m a scientific-type guy …”

Oh. I see. I’d have to say outer space, just because, viscerally, “SeaLab 2020” and “Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea” notwithstanding, outer space is a childhood dream of mine. Or going there is — I’m sure outer space actually exists, regardless of my dreams. Now, granted, researching it and being there are two different things. And there’s a lot of cool stuff in both places. But outer space — that’s “final frontier” territory. Gotta do that.

2)What is your favorite childhood Christmas present or memory?

Ooooh. Good question. Memory-wise, it’s a melange of different years of my brother and eye eagerly sitting in our bedrooms, watching out the front window on Christmas morning, waiting for Nono and Nona (my mom’s folks) to arrive. That signalled (a) Nono and Nona were there (which was a Very Good Thing), but also (b) we had leave to run out to the living room and see what Santa had brought.

3)What’s the superpower you always wished you had (as a kid, or even now)?

Flight. Gotta be flight. Soaring overhead, looking at things a different way. The freedom. The excitement. Being able to skip rush hour.

Unless it’s teleportation. That’s pretty cool, too. More effective in some cases (no transit time), but less effective in others (the ol’ “How do you go where you haven’t been before” thing).

Telepathy or telekinesis would be cool, too.

4)What is the one good quality you hope your friends see in you?

That I am, by and large, a well-meaning guy who wants to make others happy.

5)What’s your personal vision of Hell?

Being confronted with absolute, uncontrovertable evidence of all the times I was a real uncaring, hurtful SOB, and the pain that caused to others.

6)Have you ever faked an accent for fun? If so, did you get busted by a person who was actually from that country?

You mean like, go in some place pretending to be from England or something? No — I’d be way too scared of being busted by someone actually from that country.

Now, simply affecting an accent for fun — yeah, I’ve done that plenty of times.

7)As a boy- Hoodlum, or Goodie Two Shoes? Perhaps I should say narc-er or narc-ee?

Oh, definitely GTS/narc-er. A regular teacher’s pet. Not so much to get others into trouble, but to shine in the eyes of authority figures.

8) You live too close to the power lines, and you wake up one morning with a tail! What does it look like? And is it prehensile or merely expressive?

I’d hope it would be one of those long, prehensile spider monkey-style tails. That would be fun. Kind of awkward, too, but fun.

9)I see that, like me, you have an adorable toddler. So, is Elmo annoying, or a necessary tool to help you sit down and read the paper for a minute?

Heh. We’re not an “Elmo” family. Fortunately Katherine has not yet gotten hooked on anything too horrific — but she does like the TV, and will go over and stand in front of it and make “Pay attention to me and turn this darned thing on!” noises. And there are times when we’ll use it as a very, very short-term “sitter” or distraction — short-term, because that’s about how much attention span she has.

“Rolie Polie Olie” is a fave. So’s “Inside the Box” (or is it “Out of the Box”?). And “Bear in the Big Blue House” is also fun. I refuse to watch “SpongeBob SquarePants,” though. That show is just weird.

Ironically, we recently went through an upper management (Margie and me)discussion in which we decided to cut back on “TV running in the background” time (a/k/a, “If there’s nothing on you actually want to watch, turn the damned thing off”). I say it’s ironic because now we tend to run the TV in the background in the daytime, only turned to Nick or Disney or one of the other kiddie channels.

10)You are so rich you can buy and sell Bill Gates. Do you have a personal driver, a personal ship captain, or a personal pilot? (I don’t know why, but you can only have one.)

Personal pilot. I like to drive, and I don’t mind hiring “ad hoc” for a cruise. Having a personal pilot, though, would be a blast, since it implies
a personal aircraft to zip hither and thither in.

11)If you could start your adult life over again, would you have chosen a different course of education or career path?

I’ve toyed with this idea before. By and large, I’m pretty happy with where I am right now — and with whom I’m with, especially. I wouldn’t want to do anything to endanger that.

12)If you could be any one person for a day (famous, historical, or your Aunt Edna) who would it be and why?

Wow. If I really gave this thought, I could be at it all day. So, off the top of my head, I’d say Dubya’s confidential secretary, because I’d really
like to see what the hell actually goes on in the White House. (I’d say Dubya himself, but I’d be too tempted to try to do stuff, and there’s little I could do that wouldn’t be reversed by the real Dubya the next day.)

13)What is your biggest pet peeve, as far as bad manners go?

People who cut in line. I don’t care if it’s a queue at the market, or a line of cars merging together — we’re all taking turns, being good, civilized, socially-contracted creatures, and you’ve decided that you don’t need to follow the rules we’re all sacrificing for, because your needs, your time-crunch, your *convenience* is more important than all of that.

Rrg. Makes my blood pressure rise just thinking of it.

14)Why did you start blogging?

Because of friends that were doing it. And it looked interesting. And fun. And I love nattering away about stuff (obviously).

15)What is your ONE desert island book?

Ouch. That would be a really tough one, since I chew through books like a shredder through confidential documents. I think being left with only one book would be a horrible hardship. Eep.

That having been said, and assuming I shouldn’t choose something like “The Army Rangers Guide to Survival on a Desert Island” — it would have to be something long. Really long. Something mentally stimulating. Something I could read and re-read and still be entertained, intrigued, still enjoy.

I’d probably have to say a Complete Works of Shakespeare. Not that Shakespeare’s something I usually read, but it would give me something to slog through, something to keep myself busy, some roles to give the voices in my head, and so forth.

And when I finally got off the island, it would certainly make for erudite conversation.

Thanks, SJ!