The Interview

The interview game is cute. I am entertained, and I thank those of you who have submitted to the process and shared the results. I thought about who I wanted to play with, and then I got to thinking about a lot of the questions. What I concluded is that every one of you frightens the hell out of me.

Don't get me wrong. I don't feel physically threatened, except maybe by the One of you who knows where the soft underbelly is located and would strike fatally at it in a nanosecond if I gave cause. But That One is kind of like being captured by the Ant Queen (and I think I just nicknamed someone, didn't I?). As long as you're a source of entertainment and occasional intellectual provocation, and you don't go out of your way to piss One off, your innards should remain fundamentally unmolested.

No, what's frightening is the quality of the questions. Not just in the sense that they are good questions, but their characteristics, too. They do not admit easily of whip-smart answers. They are deep, activity-inducing questions. They are calls to the deep end.

As is the game itself, in that it challenges the player to not only provide satisfactory answers that respect the strength of the questions, but to open oneself to the intellectual and possibly emotional labour (and the additional letter seems, for some reason, appropriate here) of becoming curious about anyone who chooses to comment and request an interview.

So what's really frightening, it seems, is the effort. The blog and comment format opens the game to the possibility of having to formulate an interest in someone about whom I could not care less. This is not a trifling problem--for me, at least; it's obvious that many of you reading this have gotten past that issue without banging your heads on the guilt wall.

And all of us get past it every day, at some level, merely by posting on that extremely public place where we do. That experience opens us to having to engage with thousands of morons. We pick and choose the engagements, certainly, and we all do that; if there are 22,050 people in that place, I don't care about approximately 22,000 of them and really don't like about 21,600 of them. Randomness and entropy will, over time, reduce that number to 21,540, and increase the number I care about at all to maybe 75 or so; the magnitude remains unaffected.

I should note, hands open, palms spread up, that everyone in this circle of chum is someone I care about; in fact, there is no one in the circle I don't love, including and especially the Ant Queen. I'm talking about strangers and, even worse, the wannabes.

An implicit assumption about that extremely public place that has always bothered me is that we'll welcome anybody, and that everybody is friends. This is a necessary policy; it cannot be any other way. After all, if that open welcome did not exist, we would not know The Mom (or, as Wheezus has dubbed her, The Dad), or Germbabe, or to take it outside of the circle of chum, The Bob. And of course, the assumption that everyone is friends could not be more faulty. I recently had lunch with an established and beloved member of that community whom I had not previously met, and she noted how blind she was to the complexity and layering of relationships there.

Another member of that community, a relatively recent and surprisingly annoying addition, posted an apology for some pretty boorish behavior, and concluded his apology with the question "Friends?"

Well, no. Not ever, actually. And yet there is no one in the circle of chum, and probably a good chunk of the circle beyond that, who I would hesitate to label a friend.

Oh yeah. I'm also tired and cranky and very, very lazy, and the prospect of opening myself up to something like work makes me even more tired and cranky (there is nothing that could make me more lazy, because of some strictures in mathematics).

So I'm going to make up my own questions, because I can't decide which of the chum I want to submit to. It ain't the Ant Queen; she'll rough me up for sport, and I can't say I'd blame her. It can't really be the Rodent Goddess of the West, because she'll internalize it and, after this little rant, worry too much about the questions, because she's conscientious. It cannot be the Weasel, or any of the other superfriends, because you're all way too much smarter than I am, and I will not be exposed. Exposure is death; if anyone twigs to that, for real, it's a long slide down to the bottom of the pit for them what Fail at Establishing the Cult of Personality.

1. Who did you leave out of the speedboat?

Charlize Theron. Total oversight. If I were editing, I'd replace Julie Berry with her.

2. Where do you want to go right now, other than home to finish your stoopid summary and play "Rise of Nations"?

I gotta say that the beaches of Mozambique are looking pretty swell. Really, really unmatchable, in fact. Gosh, these questions are hard.

3. If you were a...

Shut the fuck up. Try again.

3a. Why Ilse?

Because I've always wanted a girlfriend named after the Shewolf of the SS. The Ant Queen would tell you that that's somehow related to Oedipal desire, but honest, Ilse has very little in common with my mother, the SheNurse of the SS, and the things they do have in common are pretty superficial stuff.

3b. That's not what I meant.

Over the course of several divorces and failed major relationships (three that I consider significant, to be precise, including two marriages and one long-term deal), I have gathered a great deal of information on what's important, by methods evidence-based, intuition-based, and elimination-based. Sex, it appears, it pretty effing important. Being left the hell alone, except for a reasonable interaction based on commonality of interests (in which I include both dinner and the movie) and the fairness and details of housekeeping and other relationship stuff, seems pretty effing important. Not being inclined to argue about every effing detail proves crucial. All this may seem unfair, but I don't view it as such. I cook, and I clean, and I share fairly in the money-gathering as well as the housekeeping. I do the stuff that I do, some of it with my partner. But I'm damned good at keeping myself entertained, and I expect some measure of that in return. This is, I think, where two of the three relationships just totally blew up. The third (which was the first) blew up just because I was, way back then, a fuckpig.

3c. And?

Oh. So Ilse scores very highly in all of the crucial categories, and doesn't expect me to dance for her when she's bored. She's also, apparently, easily impressed. And gorgeous and smart and stuff, but I'm still a fuckpig and pretty much take those two for granted.

4. Are you actually capable of discussing anything other than yourself?

Rarely. This does not mean I am ungracious. I am in awe of the qualities of others; Goth's literary sophistication, Wheezy's and Jolene's markedly different types of depth, Dweezil's composure, Buggy's practicality, Kim's everything, Sasha's completeness (among other things). Among other things. Many other things--that list just scratched the surface for everyone. But this is my blog, and until Sasha and Dweezil and Goth tell me to STFU and talk about something that doesn't involve self-indulgence, I'll probably do too much of it. And if Buggy tells me to STFU and talk about something else, I'll just dah.

5. How are you?

I'm super, thanks for asking.