So, there’s this five-question interview meme thingie making the rounds. And by rounds I mean, lots of my friends have done it, and I’ve been interested to see the questions that all of them would ask. And since I like talking about myself only slightly less than I like my friends, it’s just obvious that this meme went from five questions to 10 in the blink of an eye, with questions from Mommie Diarist and from Nabbalicious. I should probably mix them up so it doesn't look like I'm playing favorites, but I'll just answer them in the order in which I read my e-mail.
First, the rules. You all already know the rules. You’ve all already answered five questions. Why am I bothering? I don’t know. But here they are:
1. Leave me a comment saying, “Interview me.”
2. I will respond by emailing you five questions.
3. You will update your blog with the answers to the questions.
4. You will include this explanation and an offer to interview someone else in the same post.
5. When others comment asking to be interviewed, you will ask them five questions.
On with the show.
MD-1.You can change or create one law without any regard to the majority vote. What do you do?
Wow. Knowing me, I freak out and do something really lame like declare a Day of Free Shoes where any and all stores have to just give away footwear. Seriously, this is a hard question. Do I overhaul the income tax? Ditch entitlement programs? Declare war on the planet? I can’t handle this kind of power. I think maybe I would try to go for the smallest change that would have the biggest impact and require that people have to pass some kind of assessment test in order to have kids. I think there are a godawful lot of ignorant people out there and an even bigger number of willfully stupid people out there, and this would cut down on both those groups making irretrievable errors in judgment that would screw up the circumstances of a lot of lives beyond just their own. I know it sounds arrogant, but hey, I’m arrogant. I know it veers dangerously close to eugenics, but I honestly think that the world would be a better place if we injected everyone at birth with something that made them sterile, and then after they passed their “can you handle the consequences of screwing” test they got the baby option back. And I know it seems to fly in the face of my libertarianism, but I would argue that the exercising of one’s individual rights stops when those rights intrude on the rights of another – so a woman’s right to get knocked up and then abort or go on welfare or what have you has a direct impact on the father, not to mention the rights of the fetus/kid. Plus, fewer low-income people breeding would also play into that whole ditching entitlement programs thing, so hey, bonus.
MD-2.What is the most valuable advice you’ve gotten from a movie?
The snark in me says it would be “Go back to Bulgaria.” Answering the question seriously? It will sound flip, but I really do think the best advice for me was in Risky Business: "Sometimes you just gotta say, 'What the fuck'. Make your move." That whole “if you can’t say it, you can’t do it” scene with Miles and Joel is dead on. I used to spend a lot of time trying to suss things out and figure out every angle and play the chess game 6 moves out and being afraid of failure. Now? Not so much. I probably swung too far in the other direction of “Do something, anything! Even if it turns out to be the wrong thing, at least you took a stand.”
MD-3.You must choose one of your own characteristics, and it will be genetically engineered into every other person in the world. What is it, and why?
That's easy, because I think I only have one truly admirable characteristic: my work ethic. A sense of responsibility and obligation to do well and quickly any job I take on, getting it right the first time if at all possible and fixing it the instant I find out something went wrong. Can that be genetically engineered? As for why, well, I just have to think this world would be a better place if there were more people giving a damn about doing a good job, whether the job is making sure my fries are cooked or saving the planet from annihilation.
MD-4.You are given a 12 month, full paid sabbatical. What do you do?
Oooh, I love this question! Does NYAB get the sabbatical too? I'm going to assume he does.
January: Sleep in every day. Be slothy. Watch lots of TV. Read lots of books.Spend every day playing with the kid.
February: Visit family. I intentionally do this in Feburary. It is the shortest month, meaning we can't spend too long with any one relative. This is the best way for us to continue getting along.
March: Baseball spring training tour in Florida.
April-October: Get a big comfy car and take an extended baseball/sightseeing tour of the nation. Go to the World Series. Blog all about it. Get a book deal based on the blog.
Halloween-New Year's: Hokey as it is, I head back home and do up the house and yard and have everyone I know around for the holidays.
MD-5. What size bowling ball do you use?
I don’t bowl. But like Heather No. 1, I am always red in croquet.
N-1: Who is the BEST roommate you have ever had? Was her name Nabbalicious? Just kidding. But who is the worst? (I really hope the time I left the potato to rot in the cabinet doesn't qualify me for that title.)
Not counting NYAB, I would have to say the best roommate actually was Nabbalicious, because we had similar tastes, similar cleanliness tolerance levels, similar "OK, Leave Me Alone Now" levels and similar interests. I sorta wish she was my roommate now because God knows I’d find myself at the gym more often. (And Nabbs, my mom was the one who found the four-month-old potato in that drawer, not me, so you might be her worst roommate, but she can do her own memes.) The worst roommate I ever had was probably a guy I knew in California. Everything that worked between Nabbs and me was diametrically opposed with him. And it wasn’t that he was a horrible person; he was actually a great guy. I met him when we were in college and we had been very close friends for five years pre-boarding. And post-move-out, after a few years we got over the trauma and e-mailed enough times to forgive each other our trespasses. But as roommates it was a disaster. He was a vegetarian who loaded on the curry, and I hated how the house smelled. He was jobless for part of his stay, which meant he was ALWAYS hanging around – an aggravation compounded by the fact he did not feel constrained to pitch in much on domestic upkeep such as yard work or dusting -- which really irritated me even though I was the one who was the neat-freak and the dog owner. Eventually there was some weird drunken sexual tension that also didn't help and made all that other stuff infinitely more annoying. Plus, all those qualities that make an entertaining friend can translate to a very bad roommate: He was, as another friend of ours put it, “always on.” A meaner way to put it was he was a huge attention suck who rarely shut up, who talked over TV dialogue and who needed constant validation in the form of someone laughing at his jokes or debating his policies. All perfectly acceptable and even fun and amazing and endearing in small doses, but as a constant diet he Drove. Me. Crazy.
N-2: What talent do you wish you had?
I want to play the violin. I even HAVE a violin. But I have yet to find time to take lessons. I am determined to learn in my retirement if not sooner.
N-3: If you could have the power to mind read, whose head would you like to get inside of? (I know this was phrased poorly, but you get the gist).
Speaking of arrogant, I was sort of stumped by this question too, mostly because I don’t generally CARE what other people are thinking. But then I realized that I yell “What the hell are you thinking?!?” at pretty much every moron driving a car around Washington Circle. And then I realized I have an answer that's even more bitchy, but it pertains to certain faraway persons in NYAB's circle and since it's not really my baggage, I'm not unpacking it here. Let NYAB get his own blog. So yeah, I’ll stick with Bad Drivers.
N-4: Who is your favorite person in history and why?
My favorite person in history? Ever? Damn. I am assuming this is a celebrity-type question and not an “Errrm, the guy I’m married to/the guy I gave birth to” kind of question, because that would make the answer way too easy. As a purely practical answer, I would say “the guy who figured out fire.” As a purely selfish like-to-read-about-them-and-would-have-them-over-for-dinner answer, I’ll go with Winston Churchill.
N-5: Where haven't you traveled that you would like to go?
Topping the list this week are Hawaii and Alaska, so I can check "see all 50 states" off my list of things to do before I die. This is closely followed by Barbados, partly because it looks beautiful and partly because I just really like saying the word. But really, to turn the question on its head, I would like to go just about everywhere I haven’t traveled. If someone dropped in and said, “Let’s go visit X,” and I’d never been to X before, I’d be packing my bag. Well, unless it was "Let's go visit Abu Ghraib and pretend we're terrorists." I might have issues with that.
