five questions from rockstarbob

1. From whence did come your facination with dudes in period costumes?

Too many movies, too many books I suppose. A penchant for the unusual. The idea that everyone looks a bit better dressed up. Fascination with historical customs, manners, peculiarities. I think there was quite a bit that went into it over time. I love the elegance of such things.

2. What is so appealing to you about the "fantasy" genre of literature/movies/etc.? Or: Why wizards?

Well, it was a large chunk of my childhood reading. I was escapist, but somewhat practical. I couldn't very well imagine I would turn into an elf. But wizards, that was close enough to dream about. They were so often human, or ordinary in some way and changed through will, study or fate. I could dream about that. I loved the idea of magic, of enormous books of old knowledge and all that sort of thing. Magic is a fond wish when you're young and lonely and want to change things around you. I wanted to write them, I wanted to be them. Then I took up D&D later on, and it was a similar bit of escapism.

I read so many great wizard stories. They were dear to me, friends in my head and in the middle of the night. So many of them were flawed, and I could identify with that more than with more otherworldly creatures. Magic just made more things possible, and made the choices they faced that much more prickly.

3. Please compliment yourself on at least three things that are awesome about you.

I am occasionally brilliant and for the most part pretty smart. I like that. It's probably the only thing that saves me from despair these days. (Well that and Skvorecky.)

I'm not really that pretty, but I have very attractive and well-proportioned lips. I like them. The eyes are a good color too.

I can bake all sorts of things with flair, but especially pies. I am not sure why, given how impatient and reckless I am in the kitchen. But I can bake, and bake well. It gives me great satisfaction.

4. What CD do you have on repeat lately and why?

Our Lady Peace's live album. It has some of my favorite songs, and it's one of my favorite bands. It's cathartic. The last time I went to a concert was years ago and it was this band.

5. And because I really loved this question: What is the single, unobvious thing you would wish to eliminate from existence with a snap of your fingers?

The smoking ban? Haha. This question is very difficult. I can't decide! I think unpaid lunch time at work. I would get rid of that. I have thirty miutes lunches, unpaid and it ticks me off. I can't eat that fast, much less go anywhere for lunch. It's ridiculous.

on a perfect blue day, think about dying.

He lived through a steel mill explosion in 1973, when the furnace blew up. It burned the black man working beside him until the man’s skin was white. The explosion threw him from thirty feet up, and he broke his back in two places so now he uses a power chair. He lived through previous suicide attempts and hospitalizations. In 1986 he met a girl with a bubbly spirit, someone who was patient and kind and talked to him. He thought he could live through all that until this year when his wife had a stroke. Her children from a former marriage took her away and put her in a nursing home and wouldn’t tell him where she was. Now he’s alone, rattling around in that big empty house. He can’t take it anymore, he’s scared and hurting. He doesn’t know anyone in this town and it’s been a long time since he saw a doctor. It hurts so badly that he doesn’t know what else to do. He wants to die. So he goes down to the store and uses the payphone to make a call. There’s nowhere else he can go. He sobs into the phone, afraid and lonely. On the other end of the phone, a girl keeps asking him to hang on and asks him about the first time he met his wife, about his life, about what he’s done before and if he has hurt himself today, if he has a plan, if he has a weapon, how long he’s been thinking about suicide. She keeps telling him to hang on, that she will get someone to help him, she will send someone. He stays on the phone with her, weeping and talking until the officer can get there. She promises to pray for him before he goes, and the kind officer picks up the phone to tell me someone’s there.