procrastinating

I should start on my Evelina paper, but I'm taking the Juliette Lewis Questionaire instead (I have no idea why it's called that).

Did you ever stab someone or cut them intentionally with a sharp object?
No. I'm more the passive-aggressive type. I'm more likely to slash your tires at night than stab you directly.

Do you like asparagus?
Ick.

Do you have a middle name?
Yes. It's French.

Do cats frustrate you as pets, or do you admire their independence?
They make me sneeze, so I'm glad they don't try to drool all over you like dogs do.

Did you ever break someone’s nose?
Nope. Why break someone's nose when I can just make fun of it mercilessly?

Would you say you have won more fights than you've lost?
Well obviously don't get into a lot of fights. Whenever I'm faced with a physical altercation I generally scamper away, taunting my enemy with "Oh yeah? Well you'll have to *catch* me first!"

Was there a time when you were mystified by the workings of the penis?
Excuse me while my inner third-grader goes "EWWWW! ICKY ICKY ICKY!!" I'm pretty much indifferent to it. I always think of that Seinfeld episode where Elaine says "I don't know how you guys walk around with those things! Must be like having a slinky in your pants!"

Do you look more like your mother or father?
Apparently with my hair short I look just like my mom. But I have my father's nose.

Did you ever date an older man or woman and what did they teach you?
Well I'm not really *dating* her per se, but she is teaching me lots. Mostly stuff about 9th century Northumbrian politics and cultural syncreticism in early medieval literature...

What's the first memory you have of the naked body?
Probably all the communal baths I had with my cousins when I was little.

Did you go to sleep-away summer camp?
I was always too shy to go to summer camp. Plus I was never much for group activities; I didn't even last very long in the Girl Scouts.

Do you like roller coasters?
I'm a roller-coaster fiend! When I was kid I used to cry because I was too short to ride on them.

What do you imagine happens to someone after the body dies?
I don't know; now that I've abandoned the Catholic concepts of Heaven/Purgatory/Hell I'm kind of at a loss. I'm working with a sort of Taoist principle at the moment; when we die our energy/life-force/soul/what have you becomes part of the greater energy of all nature. Something like that.

How do you explain Mozart writing symphonies at seven?
I can't; I just marvel at the infinite complexity and capacity of the human brain.

Did the female anatomy ever mystify and scare you?
Scare, no; mystify, yes, absolutely. This is a crazy beautiful contraption I'm walking around in.

Have you ever been caught in a natural disaster?
Well I very narrowly escaped Hurricane Charley, but no, not really.

Did you ever own Birkenstocks?
Birkenstocks are fucking expensive! Besides, I like my boots better.

What was your favourite expression growing up?
"I know you are but what am I?" "Oh yeah? You and what army?" "I'm rubber, you're glue..." I also threw around "Your mama wears combat boots!" a few times.

Did you ever fall in love with an animal in a way where you wished you could talk to each other like human friends?
We had a dog when I was a kid, I used to talk to her like she was people all the time.

Do you have hope for humanity? And if not, how can you honestly keep on going in the face of that hopelessness?
Yes and no. Ordinary people are capable of great things but they're more easily capable of myopic selfishness. I'm really believing Foucault's idea that there is no liberation, only resistance. You can never liberate yourself from power dynamics and structures, but you can fight them, you can change them. You can attempt to make a new world, and whether you're successful is almost beside the point; it's the attempt itself that matters. I always feel it's better to try and fail miserably than to do nothing and fail anyway. I'd rather go down fighting than go quietly. If I was living in 30's-era Germany, I'd rather hide Jews in my attic than look the other way. Join the Resistance and bomb railways. I'd probably get caught, I wouldn't be able to stop the war or the Holocaust, but it's better than apathetic sin by omission. At least, I like to think that about myself.
(Hm. So much for fluff.)