five question meme from Mris

[rushthatspeaks]

mrissa asked me five questions. If you want questions, comment and ask for them.

1. At my house we play the Taft game with Wikipedia (how many clicks from a random article to Taft). If you were setting this game up, who or what would be your object topic?

Osmium. It has always interested me-- it's so dense! you'd have trouble picking up a pin-head's worth-- and it's in that gap between 'thing that is going to turn up everywhere' and 'thing that is totally obscure and irrelevant'. Of course if you click any random links in Wikipedia long enough you end up at Philosophy.

2. Would you rather design a park or a theater? What would the salient features of your choice be?

I don't know enough about theatre to design one. I would rather enjoy designing a park. Many parks do not follow the basic principle that people will sit where there are places to sit, so if you have something really nice-looking, such as a statue/fountain/rose garden, you should not only make certain that there are what you believe to be places to sit around it, but also expect that people will sit on things you may not have believed to be sittable. No, seriously, if you want people not to sit on something you need to put giant spikes on it and even then it's going to be only moderately helpful. Also, you need to decide whether you do or don't want skateboarders, bicyclists, and other things with wheels, because there's a whole list of features that will summon those people and they aren't always obvious. My ideal park is multi-use and so has bits that are okay for wheeled things and bits that are focused on spectacle-- here is a thing, you look at it-- and bits that are just landscape-wandering and bits that are Public Gathering-friendly and bits that are good to sit down in and bits that are good to walk through on your way to something else and, and this is huge, somewhere neatly concealed in a very nice artificial hill there will be clean, well-maintained, and sufficient public bathrooms. Um. Apparently this is a subject I have feelings about. I guess you can't take the urban planner out of the person?

3. Which place you read about as a kid have you most enjoyed visiting as an adult?

Lovecraft country! If I am ever bored waiting for the bus or subway late at night I speculate about which of the traces and scrapes around me are left by ghouls. I desperately enjoyed Lovecraft's grave at Swan Point-- it is a really epic cemetery-- and walked quite out of my way some time ago in Providence to see the Shunned House on Benefit Street. There is a steeple on one's way out of Harvard Square towards Central which I have long believed is the one from 'The Haunter of the Dark', it having snuck quietly out of town after all the to-do and acquired the protective coloration of a ballet school in the basement.

4. Which is your favorite lake or other fresh body of water?

That's hard. I'm more of an ocean person. I was very fond of Indian Lake, in Ohio, as a child, because it is an artificial lake which is shallow enough for a person to walk across in all directions but deep and large enough to have thriving ecosystems of fish, beaches, etc. Haven't been there in at least twenty years, though. I am fond of the view from the Red Line over the Charles.

5. Do you carry an umbrella? What kind of umbrella?

I used to, and they keep breaking, so I am between umbrellas. My favorite umbrella ever had the emblem of the Flame Alchemist on it from Fullmetal Alchemist-- it was explicitly the umbrella that Riza carries to put over Roy whenever he forgets one. It got badly wind-shredded in a summer storm too short a time after I got it, though. I should probably get Thrud to bring us back from Florence another of those umbrellas which look like the Duomo.

Comments

[boxofdelights]

Me?

[yhlee]

Five questions, if it pleases you. :-)

[jinian]

Osmium. It has always interested me

For reasons not entirely clear even to me, I currently have hearts for pupils.

[rushthatspeaks]

Aw, thanks!

[shippen_stand]

There is a steeple on one's way out of Harvard Square towards Central which I have long believed is the one from 'The Haunter of the Dark', it having snuck quietly out of town after all the to-do and acquired the protective coloration of a ballet school in the basement

Er, you know that MIT was the inspiration for Miskatonic University, right? I don't know that the church needed to move at all.

[rushthatspeaks]

'The Haunter of the Dark' is really, really explicitly set in Providence. As in, street names for various locations given.

[shippen_stand]

Ah. My source was wrong, then. And I'm not enough of a Lovecraft geek to have known that PVD was mapped in the story.

[adrian_turtle]

I want you to design a park, too.

[msilverstar]

I love your park plan!

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

Back atcha?

[rushthatspeaks.livejournal.com]

1. Why Taft? Is there a reason or a story behind it, or is it just one of those things?

2. What would be the worst possible entirely accurate cover you can imagine for one of your novels?

3. When and how and if relevant from whom did you get your lussekatter recipe/learn to make those?

4. Where would you most like to visit that you haven't yet managed to go?

5. Do you have a favorite Muppet, and if so, which one?

[chomiji]

Sure, ask me some things!

[rushthatspeaks.livejournal.com]

1. Where does your LJ/DW username come from?

2. What story of yours have you enjoyed writing the most?

3. What obscure thing you love do you wish were more widely known?

4. If offered a free and all-expenses-paid hippopotamus as a pet, would you take it?

5. What's your favorite smell?

[ckd]

Hmm. I am thinking that perhaps I would like some questions after all.

[rushthatspeaks.livejournal.com]

1. I know the C and I know the D, but if it's not embarrassing or anything, what's the K?

2. If you were a user interface, what kind of user interface would you be?

3. Read anything good lately?

4. Should you be one of the people on my list of people who can help dispose of the products of my occasional stress-baking?

5. What's the coolest place you know of in our city (in the greater or smaller sense of 'our city' as you prefer)?

[seishonagon.livejournal.com]

I used to have a Flame Alchemist umbrella, until it shredded in a tropical storm. I still have the Flame Alchemist fuzzy fleece blanket. I wuv it.

Questions would be fun. :)

[rushthatspeaks.livejournal.com]

1. So do you have an interesting umbrella now?

2. What music do you most enjoy playing in your car?

3. What's the cutest thing the dog's done lately?

4. What piece of literature do you think most needs to be translated into Latin? (Interpret 'literature' however you want.)

5. What's the video game series you've played the greatest number of games in?

[hobbitbabe.livejournal.com]

Yes please!

[marzipan-pig.livejournal.com]

Ask a relative porcine stranger some questions?

[papersky.livejournal.com]

Or maybe you should have a musketeer umbrella, which is a big black umbrella with a musketeer sword handle and an over the shoulder sheath. They also have a crusader version, which Z has.

I was deeply tempted by the duomo one, but I cannot manage a full size umbrella, it means I have neither hand, which is so annoying it's better to be wet.

[flemmings.livejournal.com]

Or a samurai sword umbrella, which I have. The sheathes are such a blessing, because they catch the drips when you're in the store or whatever after coming through the rain, so you're not making the floor slippery (or slipperier) or damaging the merchandise (in bookstores) and you can sling it over the shoulder and out of the way when not in use.

Since Canadian stores provide neither umbrella racks nor plastic sheathes as their Japanese counterparts so sensibly do.