I came across a list of "30 Random, Weird Questions To Get To Know Somebody Better".
Random. Weird. No kidding. But it's been a while since i have done one of these, or indeed anything light and bubbly, and so without further a-do-do, let's go!
1. What’s the most obscure fact you know that would make you win on Jeopardy?
"This was the first music ever to be pressed to a compact disc."
What is "Ein Alpensinfonie", by Richard Strauss?
This is it, right here. To this day, my Favourite tone poem.
2. What is your favorite version of the potato?
It USED to be French fries, specifically Ken's fries in Stratford. This is a boring answer that proves I'm not a kid anymore: mashed. Or better yet, creamed. Add a bit of cheddar and I'll cream.
But it's a hard question, because I Love potatoes unless they're baked. (Not a huge fan of their skins, but get those buggers naked and GIT IN MY BELLY. Hell, vodka comes from potatoes and it's my favourite alcohol. ALL HAIL POTATO.
3. If I gave you the money to set up a theme restaurant or bar, what would be the theme? What would you call the establishment? What would be the signature cocktail?
There are actually two such establishments I'd love the chance to be the proprietor of. The first I would call simply The Place, after the third and final iteration of Callahan's Place in KeyWest, Florida. Theme is "Let's Get Drunk And Save The World". The signature drink -- Callahan's was God's Blessing, an Irish coffee -- would probably be a vodka and berry infusion and I'd call it Shared Joy.
4. If you could only eat one type of cheese for the rest of your life, which type of cheese would it be?
Gruyère. No, wait. GACK this is hard for a cheese slut like me. If I don't say mozzarella, I never get another pizza! If I don't go with marble or old, my burgers become practically worthless! If I forego Havarti, my club sandwiches will suffer greatly..... eeny meeny minie moe, holy fuck this hurts me so --
Mozzarella. I answer this under protest. One cheese is not enough.
5. What’s the coolest place you’ve taken that pair of shoes?
Britt, Ontario, -48C with a -72 windchill, and they were boots, and let me tell you that's almost as cool as it gets. I had to come inside three times in the middle of scraping Happy Harold The Homo.
You're confused and a little alarmed. Please trust me, we christened him with the utmost affection. Harold was our 2003 Toyota Echo, and he started right up that morning after only a few grumbles (we hadn't even plugged him in). How did we know our car was gay? Oh, honey. For one thing, he had a horn JUST like what the Roadrunner would sound like if Wile E. Coyote crept up behind him and suddenly sodomized him. For another, Toyota Echos are built with their butts in the air, presenting. And the final convincing factor: his trunk. Reader, you would never guess a car that small out the outside could have such a TARDIS of a trunk. It was larger than the trunk of our current Chrysler 200. Somebody reamed him out but good before we got him.
GodsDAMNIT was that cold.
6. When’s the last time you saw a monkey?
I...have no clue. The last time I went to the zoo. When was that? Eva and I have been there, but barely. At least 20 years ago. Monkeys -- simians, really -- are Eva's thing, her favourite animals and she loves most animals. She could spend a day watching them. Me, not so much. Pretty sure every married couple has things like this: have fun, sweetie.
7. If you were a guest on a late-night talk show, what story would you tell?
Probably the story of how I damned near drowned in a septic tank. I share this one at intervals so everyone can laugh at me. I don't usually enjoy it when people laugh at me, but I'll take mockery over the terror that incident actually provoked any day and twice on Tuesday. I can spin the story out in several directions, too. That trauma gifted me with a spiritual foundation I can only call "believing in god" in the loosest of possible terms (despite the title of that blog entry)....but with nevertheless powerful intent.
8. Who’s the artist you’ve listened to the most in the past month?
Oh, an easy one. Jukebox The Ghost (Spotify link). Probably upwards of twenty hours this month. I'm not super keen on some of their early output but three of their last four albums are EXCEPTIONAL for what they are. I mean that as no slight: they're not Serious, they are in fact light and bubbly (though some of their lyrics are deceptive)... and you want pop hooks? These guys play hooky every day. Right up there with Josh Ramsay and Roxette for effortless.
9. Please rank: Pizza Hut, Dominos, Papa John’s, Little Caesars.
1, not applicable, not applicable, not applicable. Sorry, folks. I've had Dominos and Little Ceasars at some point, ages and ages ago, and found both entirely forgettable, as evidenced by the fact I've forgotten both of them. Papa John's you promised no politics you promised no politics you promised no politics. And Pizza Hut is probably my favourite chain pizza. Greasy crust, mmmmmm. Stuffed with cheese, hmmmmmm. Mmmmmhmmmm.
All that said, I'll take Twin City Pizza, my local joint, over any of these, and Woodstock Pizza and Pasta over Twin City and most other food on the planet.
10. If you could reshoot any film, shot for shot with the cast of the Looney Tunes, which film should you pick?
Pulp Fiction.
11. Do you have an internal monologue? Like, do you think in words, images, some other way?
See, I think about how I think more than I should. I think. Do you know the poem, "The Centipede's Dilemma"? The author is anonymous, but the poem has stuck with me for decades.
A centipede was happy – quite!
Until a toad in fun
Said, "Pray, which leg moves after which?"
This raised her doubts to such a pitch,
She fell exhausted in the ditch
Not knowing how to run.
Unless I am seated at a piano -- which I was for a while earlier -- to express or even fully comprehend thoughts, I have to use words. But do I think the words? No, I don't believe I do. My usual state is nonthought, more of just an emotion, an energy. Thoughts intrude on this without sound or visual effect but nonetheless with a kind of pop hi i am a thought think me! Then to think the thought I have to resort to words.
12. When you put your socks and shoes on, do you do: sock, shoe, sock, shoe or sock, sock, shoe shoe?
The latter! The former seems irrationally odd to me. Actually, come to think of it, socks go on before shoes with me, and shoes don't go on in the same room the socks do...so yeah, if any of you do things the other way, chime in because you're WEIRD! I wanna know your weirdness so I can honour it!
13. Would you rather drink Pepsi or Coca-Cola?
Here's how weird I am. Depends on the day. I love both, though I shouldn't drink either. Some days I want the acid kick of Coke, sometimes I want the sweet smoothness of Pepsi.
14. What’s your opinion on cows?
Uh...I better not say anything bad about them or my friend Sue will appear and beat me. Cows are cool. I'm given to understand they have best friends. Anything with a best friend is a friend in my book.
15. Who is your favourite villain?
Do you have any idea how hard I have thought about this? And my thoughts keep butting up against I don't admire villains. Sorry, you've hit one of those strange pockets of literality that dot my mental landscape like quicksand. In my teens I identified strongly with the Phantom of the Opera, feeling as hideous and misunderstood as Gaston Leroux's creation, but favourite? I got nuttin'.
16. If you had to be half lobster, would you want your top half or bottom half to be lobster?
Good lord. Bottom, on the grounds I could contrive some way to hide it.
17. Compare yourself to a lead character from a movie.
And again we have run hard up against I'M ME. I'M NOT ANYONE ELSE. This is one of those exercises that's easy for humans and well-nigh impossible for me. I can't act. I mean, of course I can simulate emotions on cue, but I can only do that as me, not as some completely different character.
I wish I knew where this came from, because it has stunted me something fierce.
18. What is your favorite video game?
Yet another opportunity to laugh at the Ken: Royal Match, on Android and iOS. I'm sure few of my friends would even consider it a game, it's so basic (and I mean that in the old-fashioned sense). Probably could be played on a Vic-20. I don't do games with five hundred pages of lore, forty seven different joystick combos, and reams of information to digest on every screen. That's my work, why would I work to play?
But if you're like me and like your games simple, this is the best match-3 I have found, far surpassing the Candy Crush franchise. I'm almost sixteen hundred levels into this thing and while of course some of them are very difficult, the game takes pity on you every now and again and drops you more powerups than you can shake a stick at, so you never get hung on a level for days and days and days. BEST OF ALL: ZERO ADS, and perfectly playable without investing a cent.
19. Do you believe in aliens? Why or why not?
Yeah, I do, and while I won't say a word if you don't, I'm quite convinced you're wrong. Jodie Foster said it best in Contact: "I'll tell you one thing about the universe, though. The universe is a pretty big place. It's bigger than anything anyone has ever dreamed of before. So if it's just us... seems like an awful waste of space. Right?
You don't even have to leave this planet to encounter intelligences that may as well be alien. Octopods: some scientists think they possess at least human level smarts, just largely on scales we can't measure well. Their physiologies are so wildly different from ours, yet they have a lot in common with us. Ants. A colony of ants is scary smart: they farm, they build cities with 'superhighways'; they have race wars (reds versus blacks); they have funeral rituals; they navigate using more cues than are available to us, and they do it while remembering their most recent experiences. But they do all this without building a cognitive map of their world. Instead, they use highly tuned 'modules' almost like plug and play apps. Utterly alien and fascinating, at least to me, but we step on these things without notice. What's out there if we just open our eyes?
20. Are you a Goldfish or Cheez-It kind of person?
I'm a...Canadian person? Do we even have Cheez-Its up here? Well, sigh, I was "K-k-k-Ken" for a while thanks to this movie: I guess I'm a goldfish person.
21. What’s your oldest memory?
The oldest memory I can date with precision: arguing with my mother, at the top of our backsplit's stairs, bargaining for the right to suck my thumb. My mother relented, "but only until you're four", which at the time was three weeks away. Related memory: the hot mustard she daubed on my thumb to hold me to the bargain three weeks later. Gross.
22. Tell me a memory you have about fruit.
I remember being called a fruit often enough... what comes to mind here is Christmas. Christmas stockings, most particularly, and the nuclear giant mondo apples and oranges that only seem to inhabit Christmas stockings. Here's an orange most of the size of a volleyball...Merry Christmas!
23. What is something you can talk/rant about for 10 uninterrupted minutes and still have more to say?
Polyamory. And I never do anymore, and I feel a hell of a lot more tolerated since I stopped. There are lessons in this, I'm sure, but you promised no politics you promised no politics you promised no politics. I'll write on this somewhere else, soon: it's a big lesson that's been staring me in the face for a year and a half now, and it was only just this instant I realized its much wider application.
In all seriousness: I don't hide who I am or who I love. There is a distinction it took me far, far too long to learn, between private and secret. I refuse to be a secret. I refuse to have person-sized secrets. But privacy is something altogether different. It merely looks the same on the surface.
24. What are two facts about yourself that are true, but also seem contradictory?
I either care too much or don't care at all. I believe that sometimes the latter is the inevitable product of the former. If I don't care, the depths of my uncaring are bottomless, to the point I likely won't even see the thing I don't care about. Ads are like that. Sure, my eyes register them in the sense I have to click something to make them go away, but I don't SEE them. If I do care...those depths can be pretty bottomless, too.
25. What do you dream about?
I don't dream at night often anymore: the cookies I eat each night enhance sleep but repress dreams. The few dreams that do sneak through are not fit for family consumption (although I personally consume them eagerly).
In the daytime? Travel. Doesn't matter where. Could be Maui, could be Manitoulin, could be Morocco. I love the me I am out in the world, and I love seeing the world.
26. What’s the best thing that happened to you today?
Morning answer: day just started, but I did see another 100% evaluation when I logged in to the work machine. Night answer: I'm gonna stick with that because I had a workday to forget, it's the weekend, and I intend to forget it.
27. Have you read any good books recently?
I don't read bad books: they get set aside and donated to somewhere somebody might appreciate them. I've been stressed of late and when I'm stressed I revisit old favourites. To that end, I recently read a collection of short horror called PRIME EVIL, edited by Douglas E. Winter. There are stories by King and Straub and Campbell and Barker and Strieber...but the highlight is a deliciously creepy story called "Orange Is For Anguish, Blue Is For Insanity" by David Morrell. Morell, born in Kitchener in 1943, is better known for FIRST BLOOD, which created a certain John Rambo. Guess what? The guy writes great horror, too.
28. What’s in the trunk of your car right now?
Can't check, it's at Eva's mom's right now with the rest of the car and its driver. But last I looked, it had an astonishing number of canvas grocery store bags. Are we the only ones who forget them at home...or if we put them in the trunk, forget them there? Seriously. We have too many cooks. I mean...too many bags.
29. What is your ‘everyday superpower’
The speed with which I can zone out of everyday existence if I'm not actively concentrating on paying attention. I've thought about this, and I'm not sure I've ever met someone even remotely like me in this regard.
30. What’s your favorite breakfast food?
Kathy makes a breakfast, or rather, a brunch, to die for, and part of it usually involves peameal bacon, which I have only had elsewhere once or maybe twice in my life, and mmm mmm MMMM.'
I have a strange relationship with breakfast. I don't often have it. One of the reasons I'm going for an earlier morning shift in the next bid is so I can more easily eat properly. Off at 7:45 pm (or even worse, 11:00pm) means that to optimize my metabolism, I have to eat supper for breakfast. Which is...not optimal for me. When I DO have breakfast, I love it, even simple buttered toast. But I do have some preferences. I like my eggs scrambled...and runnier than most people would appreciate. Favourite juices are apple and orange (no pulp, please); hash browns are always good, and...I'm not supposed to eat sausage because it hurts my gut, but it hurts my heart not to have it. I could gleefully eat an entire plate of nothing but breakfast sausage. And six hours later, you'd find me on the bathroom floor writhing in agonizing cramps. It's almost worth it. Almost.
So ends my first "just 'cause" blog in a long time. I think I need to do more of these. Thanks for reading.
