Five questions from helen4morrissey
Thank you very much, m'dear. Great questions.
1. What do you prefer about the USA to the UK? (The Girl doesn't count ;)).
Hmm... Well, excluding The Girl (TM) isn't very fair! Being me, I prefer the salads. We just don't have enough salad bars back home, but it's easy to get salad made up in front of you with stuff of your choice here. Also, though I've only just discovered these, their thrift stores (equivalent of our charity shops, but not always dedicated to a charity) are HUGE! I just bought an armchair for $5.
2. Describe your dream life in ten years' time (I mean... do it now, but imagine it ten years from now... and it's perfect).
In ten years' time I will be sipping whiskey on my back porch as the child-high (possibly child-containing) dust balls roll by, rocking on my chair and muttering about how things ain't what they used to be. Ideally. Next to the ideal, I'll have taken over the lives of my friends to the extent of dragging everyone I like over to live with me wherever I might be living, so that I actually get to see them whenever I want. And then they'll all be sitting with me on my increasingly large back porch, rocking and sipping whiskey and muttering about how things ain't what they used to be.
3. Rousseau. Discuss. In French.
Madame Bird, je ne peux pas discuter le maître de mon vie academique avec vous en Francais, parce que je n'ai ni les mots, ni la grammaire, pour lui servir avec la justice. A statement which I may have proved in the foregoing sentence, as I can't be bothered to check it right now. But he's ace.
4. If you could re-read one book on your deathbed, which would you choose and why?
Tough one. Now, different reasons: If I wanted to choose the book I'd most enjoy, then I just don't know, but the first one that pops into my head is The Master and Margarita, as I've always intended to re-read that, and I loved it when I first did. If it was about preparing me for death in the right mind set, then I might like to re-read something philosophical about death, Seneca or something, or maybe some poetry - something defiant like Invictus by W.E. Henley. And if I wanted to choose the book I'd want people to find me reading after I was dead, then it probably wouldn't be re-reading. It would have to be Jackie Collins or something similarly awful, so people would be really disappointed... Or maybe something ridiculously dense, and I'd underline lots of random oblique passages, so people could puzzle over them once I was gone and try to work out what I meant, not knowing I was doing it just to make them do that...
5. You've somehow turned into Alex of Clockwork Orange fame. Your eyes are pinned open, and you have to watch one film over and over for weeks. Which is it?
Is the intent to destroy my soul or to entertain me enough for the whole time? Metropolis might work on both counts. I saw the renovated version in the first year at the Phoenix, I think, and found it amazing and confusing, so there'd probably be enough to entertain me for quite a while, and drive me mad eventually. Maybe a Tom and Jerry cartoon, though... :-)
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Okay - would anyone like five questions of my choosing? Answers in comments.