Interview Meme!
Here's a dandy little interview meme from edgecondition. Hooray for doing internets instead of work on a Thursday morning!
1. What is your favourite book & why/how?!
Oh, I'm going to have to list three or four.
The Complete Pie Cookbook, bought from my school library in Grade Nine. Published by Doubleday in 1965. For those of you on my Facebook, you'll know I devoted an entire photo album to this book. It is not only full of delicious pies, but is an insane archive of mid-20th-C American cultural ideology. And I derive great satisfaction from the fact that I lost it, paid the library a couple of bucks for it, then found it and got to keep it. This book has a strange epic significance for me, and is the inaugural item in my personal cookbook collection.
For theory, Matthew Calarco's Zoographies. He's just so smart and says such satisfying things about Continental animal theory. It's like having the smartest vegan theory-head friend in the world, in print.
For kid's books, Roald Dahl's The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar and Six More. My original copy fell apart, and Drew got me a first edition once to replace it. But I still have both. As a kid, this just felt like the thinking-kid's Dahl, and that idea appealed to my precocious sensibilities.
For memoirs, Diane di Prima's Recollections of my Life as a Woman. The best insight into modern North American artistic scenes I've read. I feel like I learned a lot about my parents and my own artistic socialisation in this book.
2. What is your earliest memory?
I just thought of this the other day: I think it is the skin on my mom's chest.
3. What was the worst conflict you ever had with students/co-workers, if there ever was one?
Oh, I tend to block out stuff like this, and I really can't remember anything epic, beyond your typical passive-aggressive problems. With students, it's usually about grades and how they think English should be an easy A so they can get into Med School. Sometimes crying is involved.
4. If you won some ridiculous amount of money, what would you do with it?
Pay off all my debts and the debts of my family. Buy a house and a drum set. Then I'd probably start some kind of think tank and try to get a bunch of interesting stuff going on in the public sphere. And start a vegan bakery/cafe.
5. How much of a control-freak are you? (inspired by a conversation with my friend M. who (compared to me at least) always seems to be 'in control' of things, yet makes it her life plan 'to get out of her comfort zone, to create situations that disrupt her illusion of control'; whereas I, on the other hand, really seem to be sliding from one to another event caused by independent agents, dispite my more or less secret life goal to eventually, finally, at least at some point, create a little precious illusion of control. Crazily, we seem to keep these sentiments even about experiences that we share together, which are one and the same for both; so I just wonder about your sentiment towards controls over your life, not the actual course of events.)
I've been thinking about this too: I think I have competing impulses. I picked up and moved across the country to a place I'd never been, and have quite enjoyed the results, for someone who never liked change of any kind as a child. In contemplating my future, I've found lately that in the back of my mind I've hated the idea of moving around for post-grad stuff because then I won't be able to get a handle on my adult life. I've had to recognize that this is my childhood conclusions talking, and that physical/spatial control does not necessarily equate to emotional/mental control. So it's something I struggle with.
I have major control issues in the kitchen. People think they'd like to cook with me; I always assure them they wouldn't.
Here are the rules:
1. Leave me a comment saying, "Interview me."
2. I will respond by asking you 5 questions of a very personal nature.
3. You will update your LJ with the answers to the questions.
4. You will include this and an offer to interview someone else in the post.
5. When others comment asking to be interviewed, you will ask them 5 questions.
1. What is your favourite book & why/how?!
Oh, I'm going to have to list three or four.
The Complete Pie Cookbook, bought from my school library in Grade Nine. Published by Doubleday in 1965. For those of you on my Facebook, you'll know I devoted an entire photo album to this book. It is not only full of delicious pies, but is an insane archive of mid-20th-C American cultural ideology. And I derive great satisfaction from the fact that I lost it, paid the library a couple of bucks for it, then found it and got to keep it. This book has a strange epic significance for me, and is the inaugural item in my personal cookbook collection.
For theory, Matthew Calarco's Zoographies. He's just so smart and says such satisfying things about Continental animal theory. It's like having the smartest vegan theory-head friend in the world, in print.
For kid's books, Roald Dahl's The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar and Six More. My original copy fell apart, and Drew got me a first edition once to replace it. But I still have both. As a kid, this just felt like the thinking-kid's Dahl, and that idea appealed to my precocious sensibilities.
For memoirs, Diane di Prima's Recollections of my Life as a Woman. The best insight into modern North American artistic scenes I've read. I feel like I learned a lot about my parents and my own artistic socialisation in this book.
2. What is your earliest memory?
I just thought of this the other day: I think it is the skin on my mom's chest.
3. What was the worst conflict you ever had with students/co-workers, if there ever was one?
Oh, I tend to block out stuff like this, and I really can't remember anything epic, beyond your typical passive-aggressive problems. With students, it's usually about grades and how they think English should be an easy A so they can get into Med School. Sometimes crying is involved.
4. If you won some ridiculous amount of money, what would you do with it?
Pay off all my debts and the debts of my family. Buy a house and a drum set. Then I'd probably start some kind of think tank and try to get a bunch of interesting stuff going on in the public sphere. And start a vegan bakery/cafe.
5. How much of a control-freak are you? (inspired by a conversation with my friend M. who (compared to me at least) always seems to be 'in control' of things, yet makes it her life plan 'to get out of her comfort zone, to create situations that disrupt her illusion of control'; whereas I, on the other hand, really seem to be sliding from one to another event caused by independent agents, dispite my more or less secret life goal to eventually, finally, at least at some point, create a little precious illusion of control. Crazily, we seem to keep these sentiments even about experiences that we share together, which are one and the same for both; so I just wonder about your sentiment towards controls over your life, not the actual course of events.)
I've been thinking about this too: I think I have competing impulses. I picked up and moved across the country to a place I'd never been, and have quite enjoyed the results, for someone who never liked change of any kind as a child. In contemplating my future, I've found lately that in the back of my mind I've hated the idea of moving around for post-grad stuff because then I won't be able to get a handle on my adult life. I've had to recognize that this is my childhood conclusions talking, and that physical/spatial control does not necessarily equate to emotional/mental control. So it's something I struggle with.
I have major control issues in the kitchen. People think they'd like to cook with me; I always assure them they wouldn't.
Here are the rules:
1. Leave me a comment saying, "Interview me."
2. I will respond by asking you 5 questions of a very personal nature.
3. You will update your LJ with the answers to the questions.
4. You will include this and an offer to interview someone else in the post.
5. When others comment asking to be interviewed, you will ask them 5 questions.