Another interview thingie
Aug. 8th, 2005 09:03 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
altivoOK, this one came from ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
moose_93395 and I like this kind of meme because people have to think and participate.
The Rules
1. Leave me a comment saying, "Interview Me."
2. I will respond by asking you five questions. I get to pick the questions.
3. You update your LJ with the answers to the questions.
4. You include this explanation and an offer to interview someone else in the post.
5. When others ask to be interviewed, you ask them 5 questions.
1. When and how did you first meet your mate?
Interesting you should ask that, because I just posted about it inkaysho's journal today.
I guess this is the place to admit that my mate and I met online first, way back in 1981, and met in person a few months later. The delay was occasioned by his being sent to DC on a long consulting job. We both lived in Chicago but met through Midwest Underground, a dialup BBS based in St. Louis. Our first messages were exchanged not on computer screens, but over portable teleprinters, the silent 700 models made by Texas Instruments and used for remote debugging and problem solving in those days. Acoustic coupler modems at 300 baud. ;P After a number of exchanges and realizing that we lived only a few blocks apart, we agreed to meet out of curiosity and not because either of us thought of the other as a possible romantic entanglement. Whoops, but the unexpected happened and boy was it nice. We actually count our anniversary from a night spent about a week later lying on a rooftop watching a total eclipse of the moon. Lunar eclipses take a long time... so we had to find things to do to keep it interesting...
2. When and how did you first take interest in horses?
This is a harder one. I grew up a city boy (well, older suburbs of Detroit) and the closest I ever got to the country was visiting my maternal grandparents who lived on a two acre lakeshore lot in Oakland County. I was never near a live horse, as far as I know, until about age 9. My paternal grandmother was in a nursing home and they had a summer party for families on the lawn. As I recall, ice cream and hot dogs were featured, but there was a pony there and you could have a ride. I declined the ride, but my father encouraged me to touch the pony on the nose, which I did. I had never felt anything so soft and I think it was then that I started wanting a horse of my own. A girl in my fourth grade class was also interested in horses (a more common girl thing I guess at that age) and she introduced me to the horse books at the library. We read them voraciously. Walter Farley, Glenn Balch, the Trixie Belden series, anything else we could find. Walter Farley's repeated theme of teen boy befriends abandoned stallion sort of set the interest for life. I'm sure my parents hoped I'd grow out of it, but I never did.
3. When and how long have you been involved in the whole furry thing?
I should refer you to some early entries in my own LJ on this topic. Suffice it to say that my younger brother and I played make-believe games in which we were dogs probably as early as when I was six or seven and he was four or five. I'm not sure which of us instigated it, but I'd bet it was me. I was deep into the funny animals comic book series but never into the superhero stuff. I adored Disney's animated features with animal characters, from Bambi to 101 Dalmatians to anything else that came along. I'm still a sucker for that kind of thing, though I think some of the other studios have grown better at it than Disney is these days. My first actual contact with furry fandom came in about 1992 when, shortly after discovering MUCKs, I stumbled onto FurryMUCK and alt.fan.furry. I'm still not through finding out what it's all about and where I fit in (or not.)
4. How many places and where in general have you lived?
Not many places. Melvindale, Michigan until 1958, then Dearborn Heights until 1967. East Lansing from when I started college until 1977, with a brief 4 months or so in Chicago in 1971. Moved to Chicago in 1977 and bought five acres in McHenry County in 1998 with my mate and partner. In 1999 I finally became a horse owner in my own right rather than having to share other people's horses.
5. What's your favorite equine related film? (cause book is too easy)
Well why is book too easy? I'd find it very hard to name just one book. I'm not much of a film fan (other than the aforementioned animated features) but Spirit, Stallion of the Cimarron is a good candidate. Others that rank mighty high would include Hidalgo, The Man from Snowy River, and The Last Unicorn (the old animated version.) I was a great fan of TV westerns as a kid, too, including Cisco Kid especially, Zorro, The Lone Ranger, and eventually Bonanza (though in that case I was of an age to have a crush on Michael Landon as Little Joe Cartwright, but I can remember all of the horse's names too.)
Edit a few minutes later: OMG how could I have forgotten? The 1960 Disney production of Toby Tyler, or Ten Weeks with a Circus, based on a hundred year old novel by James Otis, hit me right when I was vulnerable at about age ten. It's not available on VHS or DVD, so if you never saw it, you'd probably have to read the book to understand. Boy runs away from home, takes up with a circus, and through blind luck, becomes a horseback performer...
moose_93395 and I like this kind of meme because people have to think and participate.The Rules
1. Leave me a comment saying, "Interview Me."
2. I will respond by asking you five questions. I get to pick the questions.
3. You update your LJ with the answers to the questions.
4. You include this explanation and an offer to interview someone else in the post.
5. When others ask to be interviewed, you ask them 5 questions.
1. When and how did you first meet your mate?
Interesting you should ask that, because I just posted about it in
kaysho's journal today.I guess this is the place to admit that my mate and I met online first, way back in 1981, and met in person a few months later. The delay was occasioned by his being sent to DC on a long consulting job. We both lived in Chicago but met through Midwest Underground, a dialup BBS based in St. Louis. Our first messages were exchanged not on computer screens, but over portable teleprinters, the silent 700 models made by Texas Instruments and used for remote debugging and problem solving in those days. Acoustic coupler modems at 300 baud. ;P After a number of exchanges and realizing that we lived only a few blocks apart, we agreed to meet out of curiosity and not because either of us thought of the other as a possible romantic entanglement. Whoops, but the unexpected happened and boy was it nice. We actually count our anniversary from a night spent about a week later lying on a rooftop watching a total eclipse of the moon. Lunar eclipses take a long time... so we had to find things to do to keep it interesting...
2. When and how did you first take interest in horses?
This is a harder one. I grew up a city boy (well, older suburbs of Detroit) and the closest I ever got to the country was visiting my maternal grandparents who lived on a two acre lakeshore lot in Oakland County. I was never near a live horse, as far as I know, until about age 9. My paternal grandmother was in a nursing home and they had a summer party for families on the lawn. As I recall, ice cream and hot dogs were featured, but there was a pony there and you could have a ride. I declined the ride, but my father encouraged me to touch the pony on the nose, which I did. I had never felt anything so soft and I think it was then that I started wanting a horse of my own. A girl in my fourth grade class was also interested in horses (a more common girl thing I guess at that age) and she introduced me to the horse books at the library. We read them voraciously. Walter Farley, Glenn Balch, the Trixie Belden series, anything else we could find. Walter Farley's repeated theme of teen boy befriends abandoned stallion sort of set the interest for life. I'm sure my parents hoped I'd grow out of it, but I never did.
3. When and how long have you been involved in the whole furry thing?
I should refer you to some early entries in my own LJ on this topic. Suffice it to say that my younger brother and I played make-believe games in which we were dogs probably as early as when I was six or seven and he was four or five. I'm not sure which of us instigated it, but I'd bet it was me. I was deep into the funny animals comic book series but never into the superhero stuff. I adored Disney's animated features with animal characters, from Bambi to 101 Dalmatians to anything else that came along. I'm still a sucker for that kind of thing, though I think some of the other studios have grown better at it than Disney is these days. My first actual contact with furry fandom came in about 1992 when, shortly after discovering MUCKs, I stumbled onto FurryMUCK and alt.fan.furry. I'm still not through finding out what it's all about and where I fit in (or not.)
4. How many places and where in general have you lived?
Not many places. Melvindale, Michigan until 1958, then Dearborn Heights until 1967. East Lansing from when I started college until 1977, with a brief 4 months or so in Chicago in 1971. Moved to Chicago in 1977 and bought five acres in McHenry County in 1998 with my mate and partner. In 1999 I finally became a horse owner in my own right rather than having to share other people's horses.
5. What's your favorite equine related film? (cause book is too easy)
Well why is book too easy? I'd find it very hard to name just one book. I'm not much of a film fan (other than the aforementioned animated features) but Spirit, Stallion of the Cimarron is a good candidate. Others that rank mighty high would include Hidalgo, The Man from Snowy River, and The Last Unicorn (the old animated version.) I was a great fan of TV westerns as a kid, too, including Cisco Kid especially, Zorro, The Lone Ranger, and eventually Bonanza (though in that case I was of an age to have a crush on Michael Landon as Little Joe Cartwright, but I can remember all of the horse's names too.)
Edit a few minutes later: OMG how could I have forgotten? The 1960 Disney production of Toby Tyler, or Ten Weeks with a Circus, based on a hundred year old novel by James Otis, hit me right when I was vulnerable at about age ten. It's not available on VHS or DVD, so if you never saw it, you'd probably have to read the book to understand. Boy runs away from home, takes up with a circus, and through blind luck, becomes a horseback performer...
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2005-08-08 07:03 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-08-09 04:07 am (UTC)1. You occasionally use multiple characters to express different elements of yourself. I'm most aware of Rex and Morph, and I've seen others mentioned. Do you consider yourself to be a 'multiple' or is this more of an explanatory or analytical method?
2. Rather than ask about your past, some of which seems very dark and oppressive to me, I'll ask about your future. Where do you hope to be twenty years from now, and what do you expect to be doing?
3. At what point did you become self-aware as a furry personality? Was it before or after you knew there were others "like that"?
4. You seem to talk more about music and computer gaming than about literature, but you are clearly literate. Name a book that has influenced or affected you deeply and tell why.
5. You have implied that you would rather talk to five people at once, each in a separate and private window, rather than deal with all of them in a single room or conversation. I suppose this might relate to the issue of 'multiples' above, but I have difficulty operating in that way and prefer to deal with the group. Why do you think you prefer to keep each thread separate from the others?
I know some of these are tough, so take your time. *plushie hugs*
no subject
Date: 2005-08-08 07:33 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-08-09 04:38 am (UTC)1. OK, here's the setting. Reincarnation is genuine. You have just died unexpectedly as a result of a major accident. Because your life was not complete, there isn't enough karma to determine how you will come back. The greater powers give you your own choice. You can become any animal you wish, and be reborn in any time period of earth's history. You get to choose the gender too. The only limitation is that you can't be human. What do you decide, and why?
2. You are taking an evening walk along a country road. A nice looking horse is tied to a fence, wearing a saddle and bridle. No one seems to be anywhere near. The horse looks into your eyes and you hear a voice in your head. It says "Here you are at last. I've been waiting forever for you. Please untie me and let's get going." What do you do and where do you go?
3. A wizard offers you a one-time choice. If you wish, he will transform you into a zebra and place you among a wild herd in Africa. You would retain your human intelligence and reasoning abilities, but not the ability to speak. It will be up to you to find your social equilibrium in the herd, deal with predators and sickness, using only the physical abilities of a normal zebra. You will have an awareness of the zebra's instinctive responses, but can override them by rational thought, and if you succeed in escaping predators and other natural dangers, he promises you that you will live the same lifespan you would have had as a human. The choice is irreversible once taken, however. Do you accept?
4. A friend you have known for a while in furry fandom is self identified as a wolf. You've found him to be a pretty decent sort, but a little cool and aloof especially when it comes to any physical contact. After sharing a couple of beers one evening, he confesses to you that he is a genuine shape-shifter. You express doubts and he demonstrates, transforming himself into an apparently strong and handsome wolf who lets you touch him and feel his pulse, and then returning to his human form. If you will have sex with him and allow his wolf form to bite you once, breaking the skin, you will acquire the same abilities. There's only one drawback: you must make at least four converts a year or you will die a painful, rabies-like death. Would you accept?
5. Those were all fun questions. This one is serious, and if you don't want to post the answer in public, it's OK. Do you consider yourself a zoophile? If so, what does it mean to you?
(I know, I know. But I did say I intended to make people think and participate. :))
no subject
Date: 2005-08-09 05:07 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-08-08 10:12 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-08-09 05:00 am (UTC)1. Most of your posts are very political. I can easily perceive an angry idealist struggling with the realities of human society, but there has to be more to you than that. Quite a lot more, I suspect. So, your fairy godmother flies in the window today, trailing sparkles of fairy dust. She feels guilty about something, apparently thinks she messed up somewhere along the way. So, she will grant one, and only one wish. Her powers are extensive, you can have her change any one thing or make any one thing happen. (No, you can't wish for more wishes.) Think carefully. What is your heart's greatest desire?
2. You seem very critical of US and UK politics and society, but you aren't entirely approving of your own country either. Of all the countries and political-social systems you know (only actual existing ones, no hypotheticals here,) which one do you think is the overall best. If there were nothing preventing it, would you choose to live there for the rest of your life?
3. Some people feel that the very existence of money inevitably leads to a culture of predation. "Wolves" prey upon "sheep" within society, accumulating wealth at the expense of the weak or less advantaged. Do you agree? If so, should we do anything about it? If you disagree, why don't you think this analogy works?
4. Your English is better than that of many native speakers. I can only assume that you have been exposed to writers who used English, probably exposed extensively. Name a book written in English that has influenced your thoughts or feelings, and tell why.
5. Where do you expect to be twenty years from now, and what will you be doing?
*sits back on his haunches like a donkey, ears raised and listening*
no subject
Date: 2005-08-09 09:08 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-08-09 08:16 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-08-09 08:56 am (UTC)1. Set the wayback machine for when you were about 11 or 12 years old. I feel confident you were a reader. What were you reading? Was there ever a book back then that made you sit and stare into the distance and really, really wish you could be in it, part of it? What was it and why?
2. I know you have good reasons for keeping relatively clear of the furry fandom that have little to do with your own opinions about it. But if those reasons didn't apply, what then? What exactly do you think about furries, given what you know and have seen? (Go ahead, be brutally honest, no pulled punches.)
3. I like your music. You play the guitar well, in addition to writing really fine lyrics and performing them with meaning. When did you first become interested in guitar and what kind of music did you think you wanted to play?
4. I'm sure you have a lot of singer-songwriters that you like or admire. Please name one that you find inspirational and explain how.
5. A UFO lands in your backyard and the little green men (not bug-eyed-monsters, but yes, they are green) want you to come away with them. They are very polite about it, but insistent that you have a very large fandom in their world who are begging for you to come perform and write songs for them. They can only offer once, and if you go they will never bring you back. You will have about 30 minutes to choose what to take with you, but you will never see earth again if you accept. They promise you a longer, healthier life than if you remain on earth, and all the luxuries their obviously advanced culture can provide. If you agree to go, what will you take? If you decline, what is your reason?
*giggles* Really, these are all serious. I'm quite curious to read your answers. ;)
no subject
Date: 2005-08-09 12:47 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-08-21 03:55 am (UTC)If you do,make em good tho
no subject
Date: 2005-08-21 05:28 am (UTC)