Color post: Interview meme
The interview meme:
1. Leave a comment saying you want to be interviewed.
2. I'll reply and give you five questions to answer.
3. You'll update your LJ with the questions answered.
4. You'll include this explanation.
5. You ask other people questions when they want to be interviewed. And it just keeps going, and going, and going....
Teeka an Benben both asked me questions, so here we go:
Questions from Teekachu:
1) How have I changed you? Your life, your personality, the way you do things..
One of the biggest things, that you probably don't see, is that I'm no longer lonely anymore in any real sense. Although I'm a pretty independent person and can go for a long time all on my own, before I met you I used to have bouts of pretty severe lonliness, even when around my friends. You and I just... fit so well together that I don't really have a problem with this anymore. (The down side, I guess, is that I don't feel the need to be social with anybody else all that often-- much to the disappointment of the old Cylanteers and other friends I used to hang out with regularly.)
Other than that, since getting together with you, the other largest change is that I'm learning to not dislike my physical body and appearance quite as much.
2) Where do you want to be living 20 years from now?
I don't rightly know, other than to say, emphatically, "Not in a city." I don't necessarily think I want to live in Moscow, per se... but certainly somewhere rural, where it doesn't get too hot or humid in the summertime.
3) An evil person of magic and doom has stated that unless she is given good reason, she will remove a few of your senses. Tell her why you need each sense, and maybe she will spare you. ;D (Example: I need to be able to hear! Without that, how could I hear the birds sing? Or something cheesy like that) ;D
* I need my sight because nearly everything I do both in my work and in my hobbies requires me to be able to read and interpret things with my eyes. I couldn't effectively work with computers without my sight. I wouldn't be able to do amateur astronomy (astronomy being a science based almost entirely on gathering light and other emmissions from distant objects). I wouldn't be able to see the beautiful sunsets and waving fields of grain around here... I wouldn't be able to see my lovely Teekachu's face or blue(ish, at this point) hair.
* I need my hearing because it would truly be a tragedy if I could never hear Pink Floyd again. And DDR without the music is just... boring. And I need to hear the wind chimes outside our bedroom window as the wind blows at night.
* My sense of taste? Two words: Creme Brulee. Oh, and Dulce de Leche ice cream. And my grandmother's artichoke-parmesan dip. And steamed crab.
* My sense of smell? Have you ever walked through a pine forest on a crisp winter day? WHY WOULD YOU DENY ME THAT PLEASURE, YOU EVIL HARPY! Plus, my Teekachu smells just heavenly. :)
* And my sense of touch? If you removed that from me, how would Teeka ever be able to send me into nearly uncontrollable laughter just by tickling almost any part of my body? Oh... wait, on second thought, I guess you can have that one. ;)
4) What is your heaven like?
That's... a very difficult one to describe in few words. For starters, my heaven is not a place devoid of challenges and problems. I derive a lot of happiness through meeting challenges and overcoming problems, and don't imagine that will change in the next life. It is certainly a place that includes you, my lovely Teekachu. It is not a place without tragedies and disappointments. But at the same time, it is never without hope.
It would be easy to say my heaven very much resembles my life as it is today. And... well, it is, in many respects. But my heaven is also different in that most of the stupidity we must deal with today just doesn't exist in my heaven. Stupidity like wars and poverty (I would gladly give all that I have if I knew it would solve the "working poor" problem that is so evident in our generation). Stupidity like the arbitrary power one group of individuals can assert over another group just because of an obsolete belief system, and phantoms of threat.
Knowledge wouldn't necessarily be absolute, but growth of knowledge and understanding would be unobstructed by physical ailments and events (like death).
And, of course, in my heaven, we'd have complete control over our physical forms and societal roles, even if we choose to refrain from exercising such power. :)
Oh-- and jet packs. Jet packs o' plenty. :D
5) If you could change something about yourself (NOT INCLUDING outside appearance) what would it be?
Good question.
...
Very good question.
...
I guess, for starters, I guess I would very much like not to be such a nincompoop when it comes to physical intimacy. I really don't know how you put up with me sometimes.
Question from Boise_ben:
1. What's the greatest work of literature you've ever read that you thought was just awful-horrible, couldn't even imagine others liked it, and why?
Probably "Great Expectations" by Charles Dickens... or most anything else we were required to read in my high school Accelerated English class. I understand that ol' Chuck was the Stephen King or JK Rowling of his day, both with respect to his ability to make gobs of cash by successfully marketing his work (re-releasing stories in many formats, time and time again), and by his ability to put out popular tripe which catches the public's actually-not-all-that-fickle eye.
That particular book I found to be boring, completely irrelevant, and mostly mastubatory. And yet I remember having assignments which had me praising parts of it. Because to do otherwise would have been sacrilege in the eyes of the shall-be-left-unnamed English teacher, who couldn't write to save her life, yet for the world carried on as if she could. The bitch.
I also hated those "Junior Great Books" short stories we read in late junior-high and high school. You know, those were the ones in which the main character (an orphan) finally locates her biological parents only to discover that her mother died in a horrible, grisly circus accident days before the encounter, and her father is an alcoholic pedophile; but when she decides to start a relationship with him anyway, the blimp they're riding crashes into a skyscraper and kills everyone-- except her of course; then after two years of painful reconstructive surgery and therapy, having lost most of her skin due to massive burns and a limb due to the ensuing gangrene (which didn't need to happen, really-- she'd just been sent to the paupers' hospital because she had no money for the expensive treatments that wouldn't have left her an impossibly scarred, hideous amputee), she returns home to find her house had been neglected and vandalized by the mean neighborhood boys who had gone so far as to eviscertate her dog-- who had obviously died slowly and painfully, from the brown blood-stains around his nearly unrecognizable ant- and maggot-eaten corpse.
Is there some requirement that says if the story doesn't induce the immediate need to either vomit or commit suicide out of a loss of hope or boredom, it isn't great youth literature?
But for some reason, the English teachers I grew up with liked to claim that contemporary authors like Niel Stephenson or Terry Pratchett aren't worth their time, and certainly aren't good writing role-models for students to aspire to be like.
And then one wonders why we hear so many complaints that there are so few writers out there that can produce a good "Matrix," "Fight Club," or "Memento" script.
*sigh*
2. Are you happy with your education, do you want to go back to school, and if so what would you study?
For the most part, yes, I'm happy with my education. I do believe that the last couple years of it were rather a waste of my time-- I learned very little in those years that I would ever actually apply in any real-world job. Then again, at one point I did drop out of school, and returned back to get a General Studies degree, just so that I'd have something to show for the years I spent jumping through pointless hoops and otherwise filling a mostly arbitrary academic agenda. (I mean-- is it just me, or is it a remarkable cooincidence to anyone else that nearly every field of study out there requires, from a planning perspective, exactly four years to obtain sufficient knowledge of the field to earn the first concrete badge of "expertness"? In my opinion, a lot of the academic world is so much one large crock of shit.)
So... if it isn't obvious, I don't think I do want to go back to school. There are occasionally classes and subject matter in which I'm interested, and I have no aversion to taking these classes independently of any degree program. In fact, I think a lot of the more "non-essential" classes in the college curriculum are among those in which you can really learn the most interesting stuff. (Not necessarily useful-- but since when has the American academic environment been about doing anything useful?)
One of the major Stupid Factors in our modern society is the idea that everyone seems to have swallowed-- both the employers and the potentially employed-- is the idea that one must have a college degree as a minimum requirement for most worth-while jobs, and the idea that earning a college degree is almost universally worth the investment of time, energy, and money. This, in light of so many college-educated people I know who work jobs either having nothing to do with their field of study, or for which they were qualified right out of high school. This also in light of the fact that so many brilliant American minds and entrepreneurs made their names and fortunes without the aid of some academic institution's stamp of approval.
This coming from someone who has spent most of his employed life employed by institutions of higher learning. :)
So... yeah, I'm a little bitter about that subject. :) Still, if I were to change my career choice or field of study (which I think is more to the point of your question)... well, I'm not really sure what I'd do. If I had a bazillion dollars and didn't have to work, I'd probably travel a lot and write. There's a lot to be learned about the human spieces and about our world in general that can't be learned in (as it were) a vacuum.
3. Do you get frustrated explaining to people that you're colour blind? What is your experience with colour blindness.
Not usually, no. Most people do have the wrong idea-- that color blind people either have monochromatic vision, or that the world I see is in some way less vibrant, colorful, or alive than what they see. Not many people stop to consider that I never have seen the world through their eyes, and in not knowing what I'm missing, I don't miss it. At the same time, I'm not convinced seeing the full spectrum at its proper intensity (I can see all colors-- but I understand that some are less bright than others in comparison to "normal" color vision.) is all it's cracked up to be. For the most part my colorblindness does not affect me at all except in those rare occasions where I have to pick out a color for something. I would not make a good er... colorer for this reason. :) The most annoying thing about dealing with colorblindness is the fact that as a pilot, if I saw just a little less color than I currently do (I can just barely pass the FAA medical), then I would have an arbitrary restriction placed on my license that would prevent me from being able to legally fly at night. This, when the few actual scientific studies that have been done on the matter indicate that colorblind pilots are just as safe in the air as someone without a color vision deficiency.
And flying at night is one heckuva fun experience. :)
4. How did leaving the church affect your relationship with your family?
Wow. Geeze, where to begin with this one? Um... for starters, I think most of my siblings and parents assumed that I was just a somewhat socially-retarded good old Mormon boy until that day I had to tell my mom that I would in fact not be joining the rest of my family with my sister for her wedding in the Boise temple. Up until that point, I'm pretty sure my older sister Jeni was considered the only "Black Sheep," as it were, in the family. Mostly... my family first reacted by treating it as taboo. And they still mostly do. I tried explaining my reasoning a bit to my parents through the stories I wrote; but I think that more confused them than anything else. I think my mom and dad thought I was trying to tell them I'm gay-- that was what was popular in the Mormon church at the time, and they were prepared to deal with it: Gay mormon boys coming out of the closet. There was a lot of church literature, and the general authorities had spent many an hour talking about how to "deal" with just such a situation. I think I totally threw them a loop when I tried to tell them I wasn't Mormon anymore because... well... in a nutshell, because I was furry, and my chosen spiritual beliefs just didn't jive with the Mormon church anymore.
Today? Well, I have reason to believe that my parents are very disappointed in me because of my decision to leave the church. But I very much expected this. I hope that through continuing to live a good life I'll eventually work my way back into their... better graces. (Leaving the Mormon church is a hard thing to do-- it being a "one true religion," there is no room in that philosophy to allow for any dissenting ideas or ways of life.)
The rest of my siblings? I know the rumor factory is running strong in my family, but don't really know what all they think of me or my decisions. And the occasion to sit down and talk about it with any of them just hasn't really happened. I'm rarely in Boise for very long, so when I am it's not like we ever get casual "hang out" time. Most my my time with my siblings there is spent chasing down one or more of my (yes literally) dozens of nieces and nephews. Still, I'm not as close with any of my siblings as I am with my parents, I suppose. The way things stand-- I'm OK with the situation. I suppose I was always a little wierd to the rest of my family. And this kind of adds to that mystique.
It's kind of fun being "That Uncle."
5. What movie will you watch if you catch it on TV even though you've already seen it a hundred times?
Oh... wow, there's quite a few. The first one that comes to mind is the one Teeka and I just watched last night: Real Genius.
Love that movie. And love also picking out some of the goofs in their "geek speak."
...
"Is that liquid nitrogen?"
(Hmmm... lemme see... can *you* cut a liquid with a cheese slicer?)