Interactive response

The answers to questions previously posed, a day late, yes.

Enigma at April 26, 2004 09:35 PM

1- If/when you move back to the U.K., what will you miss most about Philadelphia or the USA in general?

The air quality. You don’t realise how dirty the air in London is until you go back there and realise that the inside of your nose has gone black and you’re coughing even before you’ve had a fag. (I imagine you’d end up like that living in central Philly though.)

Freedom of information and freedom of speech, even though those are regularly assaulted; the rights just don’t exist in the UK. Wilderness, we don’t have that any more either. Easily obtainable quality sushi.

And woodchucks. Woodchucks are great. I saw another one yesterday

2- Have you traveled to other cities/states since you’ve lived here and if so where?

Yeah, I’ve been to Seattle for a conference, various parts of Arizona, stayed in Baltimore for a while, DC and NYC a couple of times. I’m going to Boston this weekend too. That’s not that many places for a year and a half, really… I’m not a big traveller. But, you know, no matter where you roam, nothing beats the King Of Prussia Mall.

3- The next time I see you on the street, should I speak or will you flee in terror?

I think that depends on what I’ve been doing recently, whether I’m hungover, how much coffee I’ve had, the phase of the moon etc etc. You should do though – you might have to hit me with something to distract my attention from the penguins in my head, of course.

(weren’t there miss america contestants on last week?)

Oh yeah, there were… I think I saw some of that one. They made them eat sea cucumbers of varying sizes. I wasn’t paying attention so I don’t know if the cucumbers were alive or dead. There was definitely an earlier one where they had women eating live slugs that had some sort of irritant slime coating them though. That’s what I mean about Model Fear Factor being creepy; I think if you have a thing about watching women in bikinis vomit, you should have to go on the internet with the rest of the perves.

Pat at April 27, 2004 03:22 AM

Why ?

I believe it was Nietzsche who once said “It’s like a finger pointing away to the moon. Don’t concentrate on the finger, or you will miss all the heavenly glory.” Either Nietzsche or Popeye. In any case, it is no less true today than it was all those centuries ago in Spain.

gwplf at April 27, 2004 03:22 AM

1. the single life – classic or dud?

It’s pretty crap actually, but I’m used to it. Still, you don’t have to deal with any people if you don’t want to, which is an advantage.

It’s a bit hard to say, since I’m not sure I’m actually living “the single life”, which seems to mean tanned young folk with immaculate teeth/apartments regularly meeting similar of the preferred gender in achingly trendy bars to have commitment-free monkey sex, then getting up the next morning to go paragliding, as opposed to sad blokes in their late 20s sitting around in their pants on the net and collecting red plastic cups in the bathroom.

2. How you see yourself in 10 years time? The best case/worst case scenario?

Worst case: having moved back and done a series of jobs that I hate, stuck somewhere because of some debt or obligation, miserable, bitter and alone (or possibly in some extremely dysfunctional relationship), having enjoyed nothing for the past ten years and it all being my fault.

Best case: Um. I don’t know. Just… happy somewhere, I suppose. Probably still moving around and not knowing what I want to do, I don’t think that’s going to change, but having fun while doing it, moving around between really good places and situations, meeting new people every time, learning something new every time. I’d like to be doing something a little more creative on a regular basis. I think it would also be a good idea if, by that time, I had some sort of clue about pension or other future income source.

That’s a hard one. It’s like “what do you want to be when you grow up?”.

3. What do you do for fun, that you don’t write about here?

That’s just asking for a disgusting answer. Which I’m not going to give. That would be just too easy. This is not the blog of easy answers, oh no. This is the blog of hard painful manly answers for people who can handle the truth.

I pick my nose. I’m really, really good at it. The trouble is that picking your nose just encourages it to produce more snot. Wait, did I say “trouble”? That’s not trouble, that just gives you more to do. It’s the hobby that never stops!

The old pixie at April 27, 2004 04:07 AM

Is the virtual world bettr than the real one?

That’s like saying “is parmesan better than cheese?” One is a subset of the other.

Why?

Because if the virtual world wasn’t part of the real world, there wouldn’t be any power sockets. Hold on, didn’t someone else ask this?

And so ….?

…mine’s a pint of Stella, and could you get us some salt and vinegar crisps as well? Cheers, ta.

jml at April 27, 2004 04:28 PM

which literary character do you most indentify with and why?

At various times I have identified with

• Titus Groan
• pretty much all the useless protagonists of Douglas Coupland novels
• ditto Chuck Palahniuk novels, but with a less exciting life
• Arthur Dent
• Halo Jones

all of which are self-deprecating, pretentious and/or inaccurate.

The great thing about blogging though is that you get to invent your own character to identify with. So it’s a bit hard to say which one right now. I’m reading White Light by Rudy Rucker at the moment and I’m sort of identifying with the wandering maths-graduate hero, though I’ve not gone on any trips to different types of infinity yet, and I can’t even remember how to do calculus these days.

OldBadger at April 27, 2004 06:12 PM

Can things be otherwise ?

No. It was definitely Popeye that said that. “Things is what they is”. As for whether things could have been otherwise, I don’t know his viewpoint on that, though Popeye was never a great supporter of counterfactuals; spinach does that to you, it’s an iron thing.

Actually, to be fair, it may have been Sartre who said “things is what they is”, or perhaps “les choses est ce qui est elles” – I frequently get Sartre and Popeye mixed up. It wasn’t Hume though. Hume was more of a curly kale man.