Interview meme again
Jun. 11th, 2003 11:59 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
radegundQuestions from ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
ailbhe:
1) Do you keep multiple copies of some books so that you can always lend them to people without risking losing the book?
Not something I've ever done - too organised! I have bought a second copy of a book that clearly wasn't coming back, though - I think that's more my style. Sufficient unto the day be the purchases thereof.
2) What made you think of asking me about fashion, of all things?
I don't know, really. I had a question buzzing around in my brain, refusing to land so I could nail it, and it was about resisting peer pressure and the demands of one's superego, and I think it bumped against some comments you made about being an ex-goth chick (which is quite a clothesy thing in my book) and looking for swimwear that wasn't black or awful (or both, presumably), and I wondered how much you care about what you wear...
Or something.
(Me, I'm must waiting for this fecking low-rise thing to blow over so I can bloody buy trousers again. Christina Aguilera, if that's her name, has a lot to answer for.)
3) If you were able to rule the world, would you? Why [not]?
Oh, an emphatic no to that one. I don't have the temperament to make the kind of pragmatic decision that a world ruler would have to make all day every day. For me, the coin is usually still spinning. I'm not a happy collapser of wave-forms. I have an apparently unshakeable capacity to see and empathise with all sides of a conflict, and an extreme reluctance to pass judgement.
Some see this as intellectual or moral weakness, but for me it's a philosophy: I'm an agnostic. For me this means that I don't believe things, as such. I have working hypotheses, but I don't generally claim that I'm right about things. I don't claim to have answers, and - this is the crucial bit - it doesn't bother me.
The ruler of an entire world would need to have answers. Quick, and probably ill-informed answers. She would rarely ever get to see anything other than the vast picture - it'd be like trying to crochet with boxing gloves on.
Also, I have other reasons for being alive, and they'd have to be jettisoned, or at least postponed, if I were to take on the job.
4) Do you ever speak Irish, really? Whole conversations?
It happens, yes, from time to time. Many of my good friends are still fluent, and after a few pints it tends to emerge, for some reason.
I occasionally use it at work, too - with, among others, an extremely erudite English colleague who researches Celtic Latin and teaches Welsh once a week in his lunch hour. I edited a paper in Irish earlier this year (it was about pronouns ... hot stuff, I can tell you).
But no, not often.
5) Does your novel pass the piglet test - do two women have a conversation with each other which is not about men?
Yes. It does. Of course it does. No, I'm sure it does. It's got to.
*sheepish grin*
But seriously, yes, I can think of several examples - not Big Central conversations, though. I'll certainly look out for this when I'm revising, because it's a craptrap I'd particularly like to avoid falling into. (Having said that, my protagonist does spend most of the book in a very man-crazed state, so there's less scope than one might wish.)
ailbhe:1) Do you keep multiple copies of some books so that you can always lend them to people without risking losing the book?
Not something I've ever done - too organised! I have bought a second copy of a book that clearly wasn't coming back, though - I think that's more my style. Sufficient unto the day be the purchases thereof.
2) What made you think of asking me about fashion, of all things?
I don't know, really. I had a question buzzing around in my brain, refusing to land so I could nail it, and it was about resisting peer pressure and the demands of one's superego, and I think it bumped against some comments you made about being an ex-goth chick (which is quite a clothesy thing in my book) and looking for swimwear that wasn't black or awful (or both, presumably), and I wondered how much you care about what you wear...
Or something.
(Me, I'm must waiting for this fecking low-rise thing to blow over so I can bloody buy trousers again. Christina Aguilera, if that's her name, has a lot to answer for.)
3) If you were able to rule the world, would you? Why [not]?
Oh, an emphatic no to that one. I don't have the temperament to make the kind of pragmatic decision that a world ruler would have to make all day every day. For me, the coin is usually still spinning. I'm not a happy collapser of wave-forms. I have an apparently unshakeable capacity to see and empathise with all sides of a conflict, and an extreme reluctance to pass judgement.
Some see this as intellectual or moral weakness, but for me it's a philosophy: I'm an agnostic. For me this means that I don't believe things, as such. I have working hypotheses, but I don't generally claim that I'm right about things. I don't claim to have answers, and - this is the crucial bit - it doesn't bother me.
The ruler of an entire world would need to have answers. Quick, and probably ill-informed answers. She would rarely ever get to see anything other than the vast picture - it'd be like trying to crochet with boxing gloves on.
Also, I have other reasons for being alive, and they'd have to be jettisoned, or at least postponed, if I were to take on the job.
4) Do you ever speak Irish, really? Whole conversations?
It happens, yes, from time to time. Many of my good friends are still fluent, and after a few pints it tends to emerge, for some reason.
I occasionally use it at work, too - with, among others, an extremely erudite English colleague who researches Celtic Latin and teaches Welsh once a week in his lunch hour. I edited a paper in Irish earlier this year (it was about pronouns ... hot stuff, I can tell you).
But no, not often.
5) Does your novel pass the piglet test - do two women have a conversation with each other which is not about men?
Yes. It does. Of course it does. No, I'm sure it does. It's got to.
*sheepish grin*
But seriously, yes, I can think of several examples - not Big Central conversations, though. I'll certainly look out for this when I'm revising, because it's a craptrap I'd particularly like to avoid falling into. (Having said that, my protagonist does spend most of the book in a very man-crazed state, so there's less scope than one might wish.)