Questions For Other People

Alright, I've got my questions for Suzi and Dave, who both requested for me to interview them. 

I hope you like them!  If you fancy firing questions back at me, I'd be happy to give them answers.

Questions for Suzi

1. What is the most recent thing you've put off longer than is really necessary or appropriate, and why?

2. It's 2019, you're 31 years old, where would you hope to be by then?  How determined are you to make this reality?

3. Aside from the odd chance meeting, I've not seen you for over 2 years.  How different, if at all, do you think you are since we last properly hung out?  

4. What's the nicest compliment you've received recently about you (as opposed to a compliment about something you've done). 

5. By your reckoning, am I, Gordon Strachan, going to hell, and why/ why not?

Questions for Dave

1. Why a career following art, and not science?

2. I can't help noticing that people can't help noticing that your hair is ginger - how do you feel about being subject to one of Britain's most accepted discriminations?

3. You can't do anything about it, what's done is done... But using my time machine, I can let you revisit three moments in your life (as an unseen, inconsequential observer, of course).  Five minutes ago, or five minutes old, it's up to you; what scene demands an audience with you-right-now?

4. Who would play you in a film?  This may well have two answers, so: who'd have the easiest time looking the part, and who'd have the easiest time playing the part?

5. What man-made structure, inside or out, could hold its own when compared to the sight of a good sunrise?  Would it win?

Question 5

And so for Question 5. I shall reiterate the rules, as I would love to do some interviewing myself. Those that have already requested - I'll send you your questions very soon.

•Leave me a comment requesting an interview.

•I will e-mail you five questions. I get to pick the questions.

•You then answer the questions on your blog.

•You should also post these rules along with an offer to interview anyone else who e-mails you wanting to be interviewed.

•Anyone who asks to be interviewed should be sent 5 questions to answer on their blog.

•It would be nice if the questions were individualized for each blogger.

5. If you were to 'take up' a religion, which one would appeal to you most of all?

Those American gospel choir folk seem to enjoy themselves, but at what cost? AT WHAT COST, EH?!

Bhuddism apparantly isn't all that bad, but I've never been interested enough to look into it; from an outsider view, it seems so very boring. The old Greek gods have always fascinated me, and while belief in them would probably feel like a constant cry for mercy, their self-interested affairs and exploits always looked far more interesting, and certainly more believable than anything my casual protestant Christian upbringing ever showed me. Alas, that religion is dead and gone. Decisions, decisions.

If I were to decide now that I needed religion - that is to say, if for some incomprehensible reason, perhaps following a tragic accident in which my frontal lobe is toasted, destroying all logic functions, but thankfully leaving my capacity for creative thought unharmed - I would hope I'd still have the good sense to avoid Christianity, which says I'm fucked if I can't lead an entirely good life. Say I live a charitable life, I'm good to my neighbours, etcetera etcetera but as much as I've been fighting it, and God knows I should be able to, since it's a choice an' all, I realise I'm gay and start bumming said neighbour... Shit. Hell it is. Really? All or nothing? You mean I can't pick and choose what the Bible (in all its Word Of God circular reasoning bullshit) is saying? The Pope says no, and if you disagree, then what, the Bible, in part at least, is wrong? Uh.

No, I'd go for Hinduism, definitely. I like their style, I could do the whole complete holy life thing, or I could just live my life as I please (in which case, I'm not going to do anything immoral anyway) and my reward after life will be calculated accordingly. Seems fair enough. Atheism, to an extent, is joyfully compatible too, seeing as God can be interpreted as being in all things (but not in that omnipotent, working through all things way), which to all practical purposes makes God fairly irrelevant, and more of a metaphor for the whole 'circle of life' conservation of energy sort of thing.

The notion of karma doesn't really bother me at all, being far less intrusive than any shitty superstitions I've heard of, and in any case seems remarkably close to 'wishful thinking' (which is just as useful and unuseful in varying measures), which I'm already guilty of anyhow.

The cow thing - seeing as they respect them, as opposed to worshipping them as some think - doesn't seem all that silly.

It's the reincarnation and implication of a soul that would be difficult to accept if it weren't for that injury to the frontal lobe. Let's say I just accept the soul thing, believing that my everlasting soul escapes my body at death and becomes part of the rest of nature and all that. Right, sorted - an idea so abstract that it might as well be irrelevant (the concept seems no different to me than an Atheist's concept of inexistence). But reincarnation just doesn't make sense to me at all. Firstly, restricting it to sentient beings, the numbers don't add up - there are more sentient beings than ever before, to the point that the majority have entirely new souls. However, it's not restricted to sentient beings - if I'm really unlucky/lucky, I'll come back as a tree or something. Ok, let's say I accept that. In my life as a tree though, how can a tree live either a good or bad life? It can't; it just... is. Perhaps its goodness comes from its uses (the tree provides shelter for a poor little homeless orphan in a rain storm for instance), but I never chose to do that; if karma's tallying up what I have no say in anyway, why bother at all?

Well, thanks to my fried frontal lobe, I needn't worry about such things, so a Hindu I would become. Besides it seeming the least offending of religions, it is also the most appealing to me (one doesn't necessarily infer the other). Hinduism seems to have by far a more positive relationship with the cultures and societies that host it than Christianity ever does with ours.

Question Time

This is a very interesting idea; Nikita sent me five personalised questions to answer here, the answers of which I'm pretty proud of - excellent questions by the way, so thank you. However, as my answer to question five is as long as the first four combined, I'm going to keep it for the following post, thus sparing you such fatigue.

First, the rules:
•Leave me a comment requesting an interview.
•I will e-mail you five questions. I get to pick the questions.
•You then answer the questions on your blog.
•You should also post these rules along with an offer to interview anyone else who e-mails you wanting to be interviewed.
•Anyone who asks to be interviewed should be sent 5 questions to answer on their blog.
•It would be nice if the questions were individualized for each blogger.

1. Have you ever written anything which has made you feel happy right down to your core? If yes, what was it about?

Not right down to the core; I'm always either far too critical of anything I've done, or too apathetic to improve on anything I'm kinda chuffed with. However (in no apparent order):
1) An essay on eroticism in Citizen Kane. I was looking to do something actually worthwhile with the essay, so I thought fuck it, and ended up getting a 1C and an underlined 'really liked this'. Yeah.
2) Perhaps because of the circumstances in which it was conceived, a short story about the end of the world, written for a summer project with Davus as a gift for Conor (just cos), is something that actually, I'm pretty bloody chuffed with. Especially so when I turned it into a properly edited radio drama - probably my favourite thing to come out of coursework so far.
3) That time I wrote an essay about Tess of The D'Urbevilles without ever actually reading it, just using notes from class time, and how it still got a B.
4) I remember thinking fuck yeah after a creative writing piece for Standard Grade - it was all about a terrorist strike (or something) where lots of people died of too much laughing gas. Uh, yeah...


2. What one of the characteristics you see in yourself do you think could be used to define you?

I have to admit, I am kinda proud (and certainly relieved) that people seem taken by my laugh, and how much I seem to use it. Is a laugh a characteristic? Well, not necessarily of my personality as such, but it's a good indication that I'm a happy and friendly guy. Or disturbed and nervous.

3. Would you sleep with your best-friend's partner if you truly felt that you loved them?

Does the best friend have to know about it?

Heh, ok, no. What would be the point? I couldn't possibly believe that anyone is so important that I'd risk ruining any of my friend's happiness for. I mean come on, suck it up. Honestly (and this probably isn't always a good thing), it's probably in my nature to just say 'ah well'. Even still, I know better than to believe in a 'one true love'; there's always someone else. There's just far too much risk of heartache for other parties, of which I'm not at all prepared to gamble on.

4. Have you ever stayed up all night?

Hahahahahahahahahahaha - far too often probably, but why not? I'll sleep when I'm dead, as Bon Jovi once said. Most nights, whether I have work at 9 the next day, I'll be going to bed at 3 or 4 (right now, it is 3.54am), so staying up all night has never been much of a stretch. Though I do always promise myself that I'll make a raised effort to chill out and indulge the next day. It's only fair.

In a dark, dark street there was...

How irritating; I was sitting in bed, already to write a blog, and then do a bit of reading before inevitably having to sleep, but at the same time I opened my laptop, we got a power cut. Humph.

Mind you, I've always loved power cuts, and I'm not entirely sure why, since they generally get in the way of something that I'm doing at the time. Personally, a power cut brings about the same excitement as seeing a bit of snow in the air, an experience I've always felt so compelled to share with anyone around me at the time, no matter how obvious it is to them (does anyone greet snowfall with quiet indifference? I hope not. ).

A slightly odd experience when everyone's in bed, and therefore, no one else cares. It really felt like something I ought to tell someone. But nah. I just lay there restless (slightly irritated by the fact that while I know there are three candles next to me, there's not a chance I'd manage to find my lighter), and think about the bit where Bilbo wakes up in a pitch black room, and wonders whether he'd even opened his eyes at all. I try fooling my brain into thinking my eyes are shut. It didn't work in case you were wondering.

Of course, silly me, I forgot to actually switch off the lights, so half an hour later, the lights all pop back on, and well, should I continue with my intentions of blogging? Well, why not?

Why not? As Davus has pointed out, I should probably have someone around to answer that question at all times... I think my relationship with this question shall be the subject of my next post since I never managed to get around to it this time...

Another Year, Another Blog

I suppose it was inevitable. I'm just a sucker for categorising.

I had one blog, and that went rather well actually, above average readership at points, and oft updated, without any feelings of obligation. 

Then, I thought, how about I show and tell all my photos on another blog, so that the pictures could all be kept together for neatness' sake. This was a largely laborious addition to my blogging routine, and all aspirations and intentions were defeated by blogger's terrible uploading system. 

Despite all this, one day I decided that to get me back into the spirit of blogging, and updating what blogs I had already, I should really start yet another new blog, this time to keep all my videos in a neat pile. That didn't last long. Making a video each week is tough enough, but if no one's looking, what's the point? 

Eventually, I did get into the idea of making an effort at blogging again, but at the same time, I was doing an Online Journalism course, which sapped all my energy for net publishing, and while the blog connected to my website might actually have been good if I stuck at it, I, well, didn't stick at it.

And now, as a new year begins, I am consolidating and starting anew.  As long as I do one thing I'm half proud of each month, I'll be happy.  There we are, a new year's resolution just like that. 

You wanna see what we did for New Year?

Well, we stacked Macbook Pros.  'Cos we could. 

We accepted no half measures.
Handsome devils. 
Uh, well...  And a sunset on a New Year's Day.

I can only hope 2009 makes as much sense as this video.  

Click to play... Bitch.