Riddle me, Riddle me

Herewith are the questions I have been asked so far, and some musing on the answers.

katyhh asks:

1. (as we just touched this on #filkhaven *g*) What is your shoe size?
(and I KNOW that this is a shallow question, but it’s late over here *grin*)

Depending on the make, it’s either a 14 or a 15, and wide.

2. When you were a boy, what did you want to be when you’d grow up? (in Germany, the most popular answer among little boys is possibly “fireman” or “policeman” … is this universal? ;-))

I always wanted to be a rock star. Sometimes, I think I still do. 🙂

3. If some higher force offered you immortality, would you want to take it, and if so why/why not?

This is a tough one. Part of me says “Only if I can turn and grant it to the people I love. Literature is full of stories of the angst and despair of one who gains immortality, only to watch everyone grow old and die around him while he lives on. (See, for instance, Hob Galding in Neil Gaiman’s Sandman or Duncan McCloud in Highlander, for two recent examples)

On the other hand, I’d love to see how this old world turns out. In the press, I’d probably take it, even if the consequences over time are less than ideal. I wouldn’t mind turning out a bit like old Hob in the end, either. 🙂

kitanzi wants to know:

1) What’s the most boring thing in the world?

Reality TV shows where people are supposed to end up married to one another.

2) Where would you really most like to be right this moment? (Being whenever you read this, of course)

Snuggled up with you.

3) Why is Dayna so WEIRD?

Because she’s our cat. Why else?

museinred wants to know…

1.If you won the lottery tomorrow what are the first two things you would do?

Well, is this a multi-million dollar lottery, or a nice tidy sum lottery?

If it’s a multi-million dollar lottery, the first thing I would do (after telling kitanzi, of course, is submit a 30 day notice to my employer. While I wouldn’t mind continuing to work as a consultant, if I get to be idly rich, I want to spend more time working on writing and music and less time on making a living. After that, a nice long trip to see all my friends and sweeties around the world.

If it’s a nice tidy sum (defined as substantial but not enough that I need never work again), then I would probably pay off all our debts, including auto payment (and in fact would probably trade my car in for something newer), and then take whatever was left over to either buy outright or make a substantial down payment on a house.

2. What is your favorite dish to cook? Eat?

To cook? I make several good dishes. I have a barbecue pork roast recipe that’s delicious, but really isn’t all that much to cook, since it’s a dump-everything-in-the-Crockpot sort of affair. kitanzi says I make superb tacos. And I do rather enjoy grilling steaks and sausages and hot dogs on a charcoal grill, but I haven’t done that in ages since I haven’t had one. (I suspect my penchant for grilling is the Y side of my chromosomes trying desperately to assert themselves. Poor things are so oppressed, they can’t figure out why I’m a guy.)

Wow, most like to eat is even harder. I love food. (No one who’s ever taken a good look at my svelte figure is going to be surprised by this.) If I had to pick something right now, a good Japanese restaurant would hit the spot just right about now.

3.What do you like most/least about being from the south?

The south is one of the most beautiful places in the world during the spring. I generally like the unhurried pace of life in small towns in the South, even if I was only too impatient to leave them when I was a kid. The widespread notion of Southern hospitality is very real, if not universal. I’ve seen it on a hundred porches and on a hundred sidewalks in my day.

What do I like least? While it’s easy to insulate myself from it by the nature of where I live (Atlanta is very cosmopolitan), there are still far too many places in the southeast dominated by ignorance and bigotry and fear of change. Sometimes, I wish that the folks round these parts could be dragged kicking and screaming into at *least* the nineteenth century, if not the twentieth or twenty-first.

The lovely and talented jhayman, on whom I once bid on at auction, asks:

1. Are you always that cheerful?

No, but more often than not. I long ago came to the conclusion that you cannot always control what is going on around you, but you can always control how you react to what is going on around you. Positive attitude won’t solve all your problems, but a negative attitude will make all your problems worse. So why not go with the better percentage.

I used to have a co-worker named Garry. Garry was the most upbeat guy I ever met, and probably one of the smartest as well. I learned a lot about my profession from him, but the thing I learned from him that was most valuable was to always approach life with as much enthusiasm for life as you can muster. If you ever asked him how he was, he invariably answered “Superfantastic!” ( a trait I picked up from him). In fact, when I answer “Superfantastic, how are you?” in response to that question, I often get back “Oh, well….I’m not THAT good.” I always ask “Why not? What on earth is stopping you right now from feeling extraordinary?” It really is all about outlook and how you approach life.

2. What do you do to support your filk and con habit? (This is actually idle curiousity at work).

I am the Senior Systems Administrator for an Internet Service Provider in Atlanta. I’ve been working for this company for nearly 8 years now, since back when it was a tiny little startup.

3. What is the most outrageous thing you’ve ever done?

Wow, I dunno. I’m really a fairly boring person, so far as that goes. I mean, I do the zany extrovert thing a lot, and I have a lot of iconoclastic attitudes towards life and society, but I don’t tend to think of the things I do as “outrageous”. I will have to ponder this awhile.

danea wants to know:

1) Mind if I ask you questions without following up in my journal? You’re welcome to go ahead and ask me questions in response to this comment if you like, but I’ve already got a thesis to write handful of interview questions from gdmusumeci to answer, and I really should do those before I invite any more beyond your three (should you choose to ask).

WHAT!?!?!? You DARE to impugn the sanctity of the meme! Heretic! Outcast unclean! Blasphem…….uh, sure, that’s fine.

2) How did you first get hooked on filk?

Depends on how you define “get hooked on filking.”

I first became aware of filking as an activity at a RoVaCon, sometime around 1984 or 1985. The con more or less shut down at 6pm, so I was bored and wandering around the hotel looking for something to do. I passed a hotel room with the door propped open and three people inside playing music. I stopped, they invited me in, and listened to them play for a while. Later, I discovered there were filk tapes available and would pick up a couple of random ones here and there.

There was very little filk activity at the cons I was going to, though I would stop through a filkroom if I found one at a con. Then, when I moved to Georgia in 1990, the person I was with was actively *avoiding* filk at cons because she wanted to avoid a particular person she had bad experiences with in the SCA. From 1991-1995, we were pretty much gafiated because of money, although I *was* lurking on alt.music.filk even then.

In 1996, we went to Magic Carpet Con, which had several Filk Guests, and I had a great time hanging out in the filk track room, listening to Leslie and Dr. Jane and Timelines and Filthy Pierre and the Creasys who had come all the way over to sell tapes and CDs. Since the person that K. was avoiding didn’t seem to be active in local fandom anymore, we started making a point of attending the filk events at cons we went to. It was sometime around this time that we heard that someone had moved to the Atlanta area and was starting up housefilks. A few months later we met him at Dragon*Con 1998 and got directions to the next housefilk. I’ve been very active in the filk community ever since.

3) What filkers do you recommend I check out? (or listen to, for that matter. ;))

ME, of course! Seriously, there’s a lot of good filk going on here in the Atlanta area. I’m scared to start listing them, for fear of leaving out someone important, but I will at least note that Three Weird Sisters has a new album coming out shortly.

To be honest, without knowing what your taste in music is, it’s hard to form real recommendations. What sorts of songs do you like? Who are some artists (filk or non-filk) that you are fond of. From that, i can form recommendations.

The lovely nrivkis queries:

1) What do you do to pick yourself up when you’re causelessly down?

My usual problem when I’m down is that it usually comes with a severe lethargy, so quite often I just mope. If I can work up the energy, I’ll try and get out and do something, if only to take my mind off of things.

Oh, and sex. Sex is always nice.

2) What would you most want to do as a job, assuming you could painlessly obtain the skills and credentials needed and get hired for it?

I’d love to have the skills to actually work as a musician. Of course, as Sherwood Anderson remarked about being an author, “You can make a killing, but you can’t make a living.”

3) How do you feel about being so tall? Have you ever minded it? Been proud of it?

Oh, I actually mind it more often than not. It’s hard to buy clothes, and I frequently feel awkward and out of place. But I can reach things down from the top shelf, and that’s something.

And finally, the sweet and adorable tigerbright weighs in with a single question:

If you had the option of having one thing happen magically, that would directly affect only *you*, what would it be?

I’d like to be able to be able to play musical instruments as well as I do in my fantasies. 🙂

And there you have it! Nineteen questions for a spring morning! If you haven’t asked me questions yet, feel free to leave them here, and I’ll do another round. 🙂