Play any instrument or speak any language, which do you choose?
Question submitted by cruftbox.vox.com.
If I could speak every language in the world fluently, I would basically be unstoppable. Any government or multinational would pay top dollar for that skillset, but I could probably come up with my own way to put the talent to use. I'd be a great deal of help to the effort towards real-time machine translation, if I so chose. I might travel the world. I may end up sainted for my efforts to bring about world peace. Or maybe I'd just have a few thousand more words to cuss people out with in traffic.
What was your favorite candy when you were a kid? How does that compare to now?
Oh man did I love me some caramel creams when I was a kid. I remember being able to eat a two-pound bag by myself. Same thing with Rolo's. They come in these little tubes, and I would always have to buy two if I expected to have any left by the time we had driven home.
Now, of course, I don't eat refined sugar of any sort. I weigh 24% less than I did when I was 16, I've probably added fifteen years to my expected lifespan, and I'm a much happier person. Right?
Damn I could go for some Rolo's right now.
Soda? Cola? Pop? What do you say? Any other regional words that set you apart?
Question submitted by Gladys.
Coke. It doesn't matter what brand it is, it's all coke to me. The only other term for it that I use with any regularity is "soft drink," but I think that's pretty universal. I don't drink it, anyway, so a moot point. I also say y'all, but only for effect. About the only southernism I practice is using curse words as punctuation when speaking aloud, but then only among those who expect it. The regional accent is going the way of the corner Mom & Pop store.
I hate funerals
Me, too.
That's why I want to be cremated in a cardboard box
and the savings spent on a big party for everyone I knew
That's basically what I want, too I'd like to leave something to the side for charity
maybe a foundation to weed the stupid out of the gene pool or something
That would be worthwhile
Vital, important work
Increasingly so. they seem to be breeding at astounding rates. We could just encourage smart people to have more kids, but ugh. Who wants more kids running around?
What's your favorite drink or cocktail? What's in it?
Question submitted by charm.vox.com
Never one to trifle, particularly when it comes to the sweet pleasures of alcohol-induced illusions of social competence, my drink of choice is a Black Russian. This sweet nectar is comprised of:
- 1 (or more) shot of Kahlúa (or some other coffee liqueur, but preferably Kahlúa)
- 1 (or more) shot of the top shelf vodka of your choice (Stolichnaya for me).
That is the entire list of ingredients. Combine in a cocktail shaker and serve neat. It has the twin virtues of being delicious and getting you fairly well fucked up pretty quickly. Bon Appétit!
What's one thing that you hope to do or accomplish before the end of this year?
Make something. Anything. Well, nearly anything. I don't think I would be satisfied with a summer-camp ashtray or something like that.
I have this generalized urge to create, always have, and yet I'm not really creative. I'm not crafty. And I don't write very well anymore due, I'm guessing, to nearly four years of being almost completely out of practice. My programming skills seem to be limited to hacking up something already existing into a novel shape (take a look at my Frankensteinian amalgam of Wordpress template hacks and plugins sometime). And design—gods, I'm so hopeless with design, art, photographic composition…
Generally, I suck, and have no talents or skills. So I guess my goal for this year is to prove myself wrong about that. Either that, or go to the gym; if I'm going to be dull, I might as well be pretty.
I'm cross-pollinating from myspace now. This is possibly the saddest, most disturbing thing since the hamster dance/goatse mashup*.
- My ex is... non-existent. You fuck with me, you stuck with me.
- I am listening to... my ceiling fan.
- Maybe I should... go to sleep.
- I love... beauty. I see beauty all of the time, in the natural world and in the works of man, and I can't imagine any higher purpose than to try to add to it, or even to just be there and witness it. Yes, I'm a big hippy. Shut up.
- My best friend... is me.
- I don't understand... nearly everything, and that's exciting.
- I lose... things all the time, and then find them when I go back to the first place I looked.
- People say... what they think other people want to hear, way too often.
- The meaning of my screen name is... it's my name.
- Love is... beauty. pain. the ultimate. the worst. a result of evolution and brain chemistry. sublime.
- Somewhere, someone is... filling out this same survey.
- I will always... wonder.
- Seems like... the human ability to ignore that which is inconvenient is infinite.
- I never want... to stagnate.
- My mobile phone is.... computationally more powerful than a football stadium full of vacuum tubes.
- When I wake up in the morning... I invariably hit snooze.
- Before I go to bed at night... I think of all the other things I could be doing besides sleep.
- Parties are... usually uncomfortable unless I'm drunk.
- My Dog(s) is... dead, and it's my fault.
- Kisses are the worst when... your agendas are totally different.
- Today I... managed to function, though barely, on a total of about six hours of sleep in the last two days. Why do I keep doing this? I am old, tired, and I need to act like it.
- Tonight I will... probably lie in bed for at least an hour before I go to sleep, despite the above.
- Tomorrow I will... sleep in, read some blogs, do some research, code something, try to get laid.
- I really want... to just start over from age 14 knowing what I know now, sometimes.
* I totally made that up. If it is in fact real, please do not tell me. I don't want to know.
[indicates weighty tome]
"What are you reading, Ulysses?""I absolutely am not. Joyce was a hack."
"..."
"..."
"Marry me."
"I would, except, you know."
"..."
"I'm a big homo."
[sighs] "Yeah."
• • •
Update: following up on my issues with the compose mode, you can compose using HTML and email it to your 'mobile' posting address, and it will more or less work. That's how I got this post to work, with an offsite image and my own amazon referral instead of 6A's. This is a workaround, though, and a clunky one. The posting form needs to be fixed. I suppose this may be a feature, though, it all depends on who the audience is. To me, it's the single most irritating thing about the site.
I think we all know the deal at this point. [link]
• • •
Apparently, there's no "I'm not an idiot, give me HTML" mode for the compose screen. I can't overstate how much it irritates me to have to use my mouse for anything other than clicking "publish". Not all of us compose in-browser, and some of us—namely me—avoid doing so whenever possible. I can't see myself writing more than a paragraph this way (this entry, of course, is technically two paragraphs...).
