Monday Questionnaire
"Answers that might be long, but which should be kept brief" Edition
1. Describe your last interesting encounter with a stranger.
2. Name something you expect to happen to you or around you over Thanksgiving, since it seems to happen every Thanksgiving.
3. Float is a pretty pacifist space, making it a nice oasis in the hostile internet desert. (Maybe this should be Strained Metaphor Edition.) Tell us about the last time you were frustrated to the point of wanting, if only in your imagination, to slug somebody.
posted by Eric @ 9:56 AM
4 Comments:
1. On a plane home from a conference this weekend, I sat next to a man who'd been flying for twenty hours straight. From Iraq home to the U.S. He hadn't seen his family in a year, and is going back for another tour of duty next year. I've never seen someone so eager to get home.
We talked for a while and were clearly of different minds politically: he believes there were WMDs, sees the mission as a noble one, and supports the neo-con idea of establishing a democracy in Iraq in order to spread it throughout the region. To debate him would have been impolite, and so I didn't, but I asked him a lot of questions about things over there and how it all works, and he was happy to talk about it. When we landed I thanked him for everything he's doing. He was holding a photo of his wife the whole time.
2. My younger sister will refuse to eat most of what my mom has cooked. My mother will claim, helplessly, that she is unappreciated. I will attempt to smooth things over by making sarcastic remarks.
3. Last night at a concert, the two drunk women behind me thought nothing of singing along, loudly and off-key, to the songs they knew; and carrying on conversations during those they didn't. One such conversation took place on a cell phone. I kid not.
I didn't say anything, though, because they were drunk, and because I'm trying to train my brain to ignore things like that when I'm trying to have a good time. Which, largely, I did.
1. I was doing self-acupressure on my wrist while riding the T. A older man sitting across from me, looking eccentric in bright red spectacles, asked whether I was taking my own pulses. I explained that I wasn't, and he began to tell me about pulse diagnosis in the Ayruvedic tradition. It was clear he had never taken pulses, only read about it. Although I'm somewhat weak at pulse diagnosis, I listen to pulses fairly regularly, using the Chinese tradition. It was one of those odd cases where he was lecturing me, although very nicely, about something I knew more about than he did. I didn't mind, though.
2. Upset tummy.
3. Anger isn't my usual vice, but a composite picture of bad drivers comes to mind.
1. I tend not to encounter strangers. Although in Philadelphia this past weekend, I ran into a handful of almost-strangers -- people from my "past life" as a budding academic, and even a couple of people from college. It's a strange thing, trying to explain to them how I got from academia to advertising, and yet was still attending a religion conference.
2. I'll watch the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade while curled up under a blanket and eating Pillsbury cinnamon rolls, and I'll end up calling my Mom and Grandma at least three times during the parade to discuss the balloons. We love balloons.
3. Um, every day at work, there's at least one person who does something stupid enough to earn a good slugging. Outside of work, probably a friend who constantly IM's me to rant about something or tell me about some random event in his life, but he never asks me how I'm doing, or if there are any random events I'd like to share. I find his level of self-absorption and the medium in which it's displayed immensely frustrating.
Welcome, new anonymous friend. Hope you'll stick around.
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