Fill Out In Triplicate

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If I had a nickel for the copies of these I haven't responded to, I could afford to eat at Wendy's all week long. But then I got a copy from a newish friend who I like who didn't know all my stories already.

So, thinking it would be a good exercise to spawn further conversations, I choked down my anti-forwarded mail pride, and filled it out. To my immense surprise, I actually had a very fun time filling it out and thought I'd share the results, barely edited, with y'all.

Unhappily, I didn't get all clever with it, sorry. If you want to copy/paste it back to me and get clever with answers or inserted questions, I'll award points on a zero to a thousand scale. Just think what you could do with a thousand points!!!

---- Original Message ----
WHAT IS YOUR JOB?
Discovering a meaning of life that I can live with.

IF YOU COULD BE SOMEONE ELSE FOR A DAY WHO WOULD IT BE?
Oh, this is so tragic. I am so sorry I don't have a better answer. I would be a pregnant woman for a day. What must it be like to be a woman and have all the good parts (yes, every guy answers this, I know), and then to have a little baby kicking around inside you? I would be one of those very smug women who always brag that they were never morning-sick, not even once. A smug woman with a very kicky baby seems to combine all the best bits of being pregnant.

GOLD OR SILVER?
Who would possibly answer silver to this one? If you don't get the gold, you keep trying. Society doesn't really send the message that second-best is good. You go for the gold, always.

WHAT WAS THE LAST FILM YOU SAW AT THE CINEMA?
Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon. For the second time. Also wanted to see Chocolat, but felt better about supporting subtitled films in a mainstream theatre.

FAVORITE CARTOON CHARACTER
Other than me? Uh oh. I'm going to have to go with the Phantom. Yacko is a close second. Captain Planet was in the running, but he's a little one-dimensional.

WHAT DO YOU HAVE FOR BREAKFAST?
Ice cream, given my druthers. Else nothing most days.

CAN YOU TOUCH YOUR NOSE WITH YOUR TONGUE?
No.

WHO/WHAT WOULD YOU HATE TO BE LEFT IN A ROOM WITH?
The Hindenburg. An absolute vacuum. Tom Robbins. The bagpiper who plays outside our building. Five pounds of Almond M&Ms (oh, please, Briar Rabbit, not the five pounds of almond M&Ms!!! The bagpiper, Tom Robbins, anything but the M&Ms!)

WHO INSPIRES YOU?
Everyone who is sustainingly interesting. Which sounds sweeping, but you wouldn't believe how hard it is to find people who continue to be interesting over time, who are engaged and observant and changing and open. Everyone's interesting and I love them all, don't get me wrong. I just usually don't want to hang out with them all.

WHAT IS YOUR MIDDLE NAME?
Allen. Now you can fill in a credit app for me...:) Thank goodness. Those suckers were a major drain on my time! xxx-xx-xxxx [SSN removed, sorry!] 12/08/71

BEACH OR CITY?
I am the only person I know who will honestly answer that they would rather be a nail than a hammer. I've never been clear on that. Even my father, who I absorbed most of my Ghandi-esque turn-the-other-cheekism morality from would rather be a hammer than a nail. Isn't being a nail the epitome of choosing to be hurt rather than be willing to hurt anything else? Why am I alone on this? That's okay though, I never expect people to share my world.

SUMMER OR WINTER?
I'm a winter. That's why I look -so- sharp in those all-black clothes I constantly wear. I'm sure that my last gf told me I was a winter. Though, even after years of Cosmo, I'm still unclear on the whole people-as-seasons thing.

HOW OLD WERE YOU WHEN YOU HAD YOUR FIRST KISS?
18. One of the most beautiful in the suite of stories I own. Ask me for them sometime after a glass of wine, in the privacy of the semi-dark.

BUTTERED, PLAIN OR SALTED POPCORN?
I would be buttered. I figure that represents your best chance of making a break for freedom. Greasing yourself to escape the fingers carrying you to the maw of death. Don't trust anyone who would be plain popcorn. Their will-to-death is just a little too unrepressed. I can see the argument of the salted people that the grains of salt could act as little ball-bearings to help them slip from the deadly grasp, but I just don't think you can count on having enough grains of salt at the moment your number is up. I understand that Scientific American is currently sponsoring a study on this, but the results aren't due till July, so we'll just have to wait. And in the meantime, I will continue to argue that buttered is the abundantly obvious choice.

WORST MEMORY?
Before age 6. I vaguely remember a tire blowout while driving down the freeway (my dad, not me driving), but that's really all I retain. 6-26 is pretty sketchy, but really, my memory before age 6 was the worst.

If you wanted disclosure, ... no, I still have to disappoint. I don't have any single memory that I call worst. They all get repositioned over time into things with lessons, things I got over, and all the badness gets stripped out. Losing A~ was pretty terrible (losing every girl I've loved was pretty terrible). Failing my resolution and telling T~ I loved her when I didn't felt like a huge betrayal of me. As did every morning I would wake up with T2~. Getting laid off from my first job in college sucked. J~ dying was cosmically unfair. Childhood betrayals and mistakes still sting. Lots of memories of bad things in every part of life, but they're not bad memories, if the distinction is at all meaningful. No worst memories. Sorry, I know that defeats the purpose.

BEST MEMORY?
See 1st kiss.

Lots of best memories otherwise. Playing bridge with my father. Walks with J2~ at night. Falling and being in love and that first night of realization. Working with Mr. Fish. Saving a stranded friend who called at 2am.

FAVORITE SANDWICH FILLING?
Gold nuggets and T-bills.

HAVE ANY PETS?
Mr. Fish. I also have affection for the spiders that live in my house. My philosophy is that I have really way too much space. If you can make a home for yourself in my place without interfering in any way with my living space, you're welcome to do so. But if you scurry across my path, you're going right outside. And if you're a mosquito and decide to go buzzing around my bed at night, well, you're just dead. But otherwise, share and enjoy.

WHAT CHARACTERISTICS DO YOU DESPISE?
K~, who sent it to me, had answered: "Cockiness, two-faced people, intolerant people, lazy people"

To which I responded: Uh-oh. I'm a lot of that. I've very cocky, I suppose, and lazy doesn't even hardly begin to describe me. I had to ask a coworker to come over to my desk and work my fingers to type this missive. That's no good.

What do I despise? Dogmatic people I have no use for. People who instruct without having themselves acquired mastery I have no use for. People who use the letter of the law to avoid the work of complying with the intent. It gets long. People who don't think, generally speaking, aren't really of interest.

FAVORITE FLOWER
Carnations.

IF YOU HAD A BIG WIN ON THE LOTTERY HOW LONG WOULD YOU LEAVE IT BEFORE YOU TOLD PEOPLE.
At this point in my life, I'd split it three ways among my family. I'd wait till the next birthday if we were before May 31 and give it as a present then. I just imagine that would be the most mind-blowing birthday present ever. You wouldn't even mind that everyone else in the family was getting the same thing. Otherwise, I'd wait till the next family dinner sort of thing and try to engineer it into a high-stakes yatzee game or something.

FIZZY OR STILL WATER?
I've never heard it called that, but still water all the way. But none of your cheap hooch for me. I generally drink Scotch. Gin tastes like trees, vodka is just bad, rum is good with cokes but not so much by itself, bourbon, though it has a great name, has yet to engage me. What are you going to do?

WHAT COLOR IS YOUR BATHROOM.
Is this another euphemism like still water? That's just gross.

HOW MANY KEYS ON YOUR KEY RING?
9. I still carry keys to my parent's house. I suppose I could leave those in the car, but you just never know when you might not be in Kent and needing some free food or sleep. It just feels better knowing that I've got a base in the south end if I need it.

WHERE WOULD YOU RETIRE TO?
If not Seattle, then the Dingle peninsula in Ireland. If not the Dingle, then definitely Switzerland. The most beautiful places on Earth. Ireland and Switzerland, that is. Seattle's nice, but y'know, not the same caliber.

CAN YOU JUGGLE?
Balls and pins and multiple tasks! Absolutely!

WHAT'S YOUR FAVORITE FORM OF EXERCISE?
Fencing. Biking. Billiards. Tragically again, the sterile uselessness of working out in the gym really appeals to me for some reason. It's such a zero-sum game, and you come out of it so utterly exhausted.

RED OR WHITE WINE?
Red. No 'whine/wine' jokes seemed worth making here. Y're welcome.

WHAT DID YOU DO FOR YOUR LAST BIRTHDAY?
Family dinner at my house. Everyone brought food and made exactly what I wanted.

WHERE DO YOU SHOP FOR FOOD?
Saltmine, LLC. QFC when I have a date or something and need food at home.

DO YOU CARRY A DONOR CARD?
Yeah, but I don't think it would matter if I didn't. KUOW and KCTS would still be hitting me up for money every other week.

You see what I mean? The only thing I don't like about the quiz is how judgmental it makes me out to be. But still and all, it was significantly more fun than I thought it would be when I threw the last half-dozen away. Thank you, K~! And look at all the dozens of stories you can put in queue if you find yourself interested in hearing stories.