The deal:
1. Leave comment signifying your desire to be interviewed.
2. Wait for email from myself with five interview questions of my choice.
3. Update your blog with the answers to these questions, and link back to my original post.
4. Include this explanation, as well as an offer to interview someone else, in the same post.
My lovely questions, from the lovely Ken (and I’m embarrassed to admit that these were kindly sent to me approximately one year ago, ay yi yi):
1) Disqualifying dog, cats, or lovers; what is your most valued possession? How did you come to acquire it?
Voila! My Joe’s Place pint glass. Joe’s was one of my favorite undergrad drinking hole – pre-age of legality bar adventures, friends who were also bartenders, wood booths carved with missives and obscenities from the ages. And the “Home of the Hawks”, as the scant lettering that remains on the pint glass will also tell you. Procurement of this glass was somehow attached to a particular special involving cheap beer, which is about as specific as my collegiate memories get. This would have been sometime between 1998 and 2000. It has since survived moves from Iowa City to Portland, to Tallahassee, to Los Angeles, to Austin. And a lot of glasses have died shattered deaths while in my care, A LOT. But amazingly, not this one. I love it for its sheer will to exist.
2) Of all my four friends, you are the only one to go to school to be a Librarian. Apart from the obvious coolness/sexiness/financial lucre involved in librarianism, what drew you to this field?
I wish I could honestly claim an evangelical calling to librarianship, like some of my more noble colleagues, but not so much. After getting a rather impractical bachelor’s degree (I dare someone to put forth legit career options for a BA in Art History), I knew that more academia was in my future. Librarianship seemed the perfect blend of practicality and flexibility, and the library environment is one in which I’ve always been comfortable. My mom used to take me to my small-town library every week – I would check out as many books as I could carry, and finish some of them off even before making it back home from the library (it was a twenty minute drive). And there’s the whole freedom of information and access for the masses and anti-censorship business – that sort of stuff make me proud to be a librarian. For as surly as I can be, I actually really like helping people (maybe just strangers), and it’s also nice to have an instantly recognizable profession. Our new upstairs neighbor exclaimed “I like librarians!” when J was making introductions. Although that sort of made me feel like a breed of dog.
3) You’ve traveled a long way from where you were born. Under what circumstances would you live in your home town again? (Hint: You’re not allowed to answer Under No Circumstances.)
Should global climate change eventually eliminate harsh winter weather in the Midwest, I could do it. I would happily be a vegetable/herb/alpaca/goat/llama farmer in Iowa, if dealing with horrific winters was not a factor. Yep, that’s it. I wouldn’t expect to leave the house much though – each time I go back to visit, it seems more and more like a distant planet.
4) You’re a vegetarian who doesn’t watch television. Would you rather:
Watch an entire series of “Mama’s Boys” (a reality show about bachelor’s choosing future wives with their mothers) in one weekend (complete with broadcast commercials)
Eat nothing but roasted beef stew chunks for an entire weekend.
Spend one day eating nothing but roasted beef stew chunks and watching Mama’s Boys.
Explain the rationale belying your choice.
Oh man. This is a cruel question. It takes quite a lot for me to grow tired of watching and harshly judging pathetic people, so I’d have to go with the Mama’s Boys viewing option. As much as it might make my stomach churn, the thought of ingesting dead mammal flesh makes me want to retch. Really, just the thought. And I can theoretically knit while watching this trainwreck, yeah? Because I couldn’t even get through a full minute of that clip.
5) A wizard provides you with male genitalia. The catch: you only have it for 90 minutes. Overcome as you are with the randiness of genitalia nouveau, would you spend the ninety minutes alone, or would you attempt to find a partner? How much does the amount of time you have this genitalia affect your decision? (You are not allowed to bugger your boyfriend, says the Wizard.)
Well, infidelity is infidelity, temporary man parts or not, so alone it would be. The timeframe isn’t really so much a factor, although that might depend upon how much I did or did not enjoy the condition. Penises are hilarious. And don’t even get me started on balls. HA.
