I don’t really understand the phenomenon of people composing lists of questions and then passing them around to all of their friends, who forward them to all of their friends, etc, until they achieve a life of their own, circling the internet in the same manner that rubber duckies and sneakers, washed off the decks of cargo ships, circle the Pacific Ocean endlessly, mapping out invisible ocean currents and unsuspected relationships between members of MySpace, Facebook, Friendster, Orkut, et alia.
But just because I don’t understand it doesn’t mean that I’m immune to it. Quite the contrary.
Here’s one I received recently. Feel free to not pass it along.
1. Do you have any empty beer cans lying around anywhere?
Beer is packaged in cans now? Why? Besides the fact that aluminum requires an incredibly large amount of energy to mine, refine, process, and recycle, there’s the simple matter of taste. There’s also the simple matter of heft. If I’m a bar fight, I’m not going to try to defend myself with an empty can–not when my opponent probably has an empty Corona bottle hidden in his shoe. No sir.
Or by ‘beer cans’ do you mean kegs? No, I don’t have any empty kegs lying around.
2. Do you clean out your ears regularly?
My doctor is constantly admonishing me that I shouldn’t put anything smaller than my fist into my ears. I’ve tried to explain that the only Q-tips I can find anywhere are considerably smaller than my fist, but he doesn’t seem to understand.
3. Do you lounge around in pjs all day if you have nowhere to go, or do you actually get dressed?
I used to have that habit. Now my kids are getting older, and they’re bringing their friends over to play regularly, so at least I have to throw on a bathrobe or something. As they get older, I’ll become even more diligent. I’ve already started to remember to close the bathroom door.
4. Do you still have any toys from when you were a kid?
It seems astonishing in retrospect, but my all-time favorite toys are things that I’ve had since birth, but didn’t realize the infinite delights and hours of enjoyment they could provide to me until I was well on my way through puberty. I’ve been playing with them almost every day since then, and plan to continue until well into my dotage.
I refer, of course, to logic, abstraction, and prose, which I convert, using techniques I learned as a juvenile, into playthings to amuse and distract myself and my companions during the dark hours of our existence.
Honorable mention goes to my penis.
5. Do you smoke weed regularly?
Do I look that stupid?
6. Do you like Windows, Macintosh or Linux better?
I hate to nag, but isn’t this question supposed to read “Do you like Windows, Macintosh, Linux, or something better?”
I’ll go with something better. Until it comes along, I’ll continue to use all three, depending on what the customer wants. On my own time, I’ll use a mac. Or, occasionally, something else.
7. Do you plan on going to college? If so, would you like to do it on a campus or online?
I have a feeling there are two questions here. I will answer them separately.
I don’t plan to go to college again. I’m sort of tempted to do some sort of adult education thing sometimes, because there are a lot of things that I’d like to learn, and I think some structure and critique would be helpful, but I don’t really have the time. And I would probably get terrible grades.
I would like to “do it” on a campus, because it would be just like old times, but I’d probably get in trouble.
8. How many DVDs do you own?
Enough so that I don’t know how many I have, but not enough that I know how many I have.
9. Did you know that JK Rowling is planning to make another Harry Potter book?
No, and I don’t think she really is. I would have heard already, from my daughters.
10. Are you on MySpace all damn day every single day?
No. MySpace didn’t exist when I was single.
11. Are there any pictures that you need to get developed?
I’m glad you asked, because it brings up something that I’ve wanted to discuss for a long time.
No.
12. Are you constantly running out of socks like me?
I don’t run fast enough to do that. I’d really like to see you do it, however, because I’m pretty sure that your socks would be among the last things that come off as a result of your extreme fleet-footedness. Just promise you’ll slow down long enough for me to make sure your socks have come off.
13. How many CD players are in your house?
Hmm. All my computer have CD players in them, so that makes six in the office, three in the living room, one in the kitchen, one in the basement… And in the parts drawer, in case any of these break, there’s one more, maybe two. In the basement there’s the old CD player from the component stereo, plus a boombox with two drives, for three more. The alarm clock plays CDs, so there’s another, and my daughters have on in their room as well. Then there’s the stereo in the living room, and the DVD player, which doubles as a CD player, and also the Wii, which who knows, might be able to play CDs. And in my knapsack, there’s my laptop from work, for one more. And my wife’s old Sony Discman, which she bought in case she ever decides she needs music while exercising.
OK, I think you’ve accomplished your goal of embarrassing me.
14. Do you know anyone who’s pregnant?
Maybe. I do know some females physically capable of the deed.
15. What kind of dog food do you feed your dog?
I don’t have a dog.
If I did, I’d probably feed him or her something high-quality (pride would not permit me to malnourish a friendly guardian of my decrepit manse) but dry. Like Purina dog chow, or whatever turns out to be good. I’d do research. I’d experiment. Due diligence would be done.
But I know I wouldn’t feed the dog table scraps, nor would I feed the dog canned, wet dog food. That stuff looks and smells terrible. It looks like it just came out of the hind end of something with an upset stomach..
16. When you see a baby, is your reaction “Aww, how cute!” or “Eww, get it away!”?
My reactions are never that simple and easy to describe.
Besides, overly constrained questions are one of my pet peeves.
16. When you see a baby, is your reaction “Aww, how cute!” or “Eww, get it away!”?
Neither. Even if I’m thinking it.
I’m an adult. My reaction to a situation and my feelings about that situation can be decoupled.
17. How many pairs of shoes do you own?
I don’t know.
18. How many mugs are in your house total?
A bunch. I can’t believe anyone cares enough about this answer to make it worthwhile for me to actually root around in the cabinets and boxes in the basement to get a precise number. It’s probably not even worth finishing writing this sente
19. Do you own any wine glasses?
Yes.
20. What about fine china? Does your family even use it?
Yes, but we rarely use it. It’s covered with gold leaf, which makes washing it a bit of a hassle. The big family get-togethers when we’d be most likely to use are the meals that have the most attendees, and therefore are when it’s most tempting to use the dishwasher… but this would ruin them forever.
21. Eventually do you want to get married?
Marriage should never be wanted eventually.
Getting married is like ripping off a band-aid. The question of marriage should never be taken lightly, but once you’ve weighed all the alternatives and settled on marriage as the only tenable course of action, it should be done quickly, with as little thought or hesitation as possible, lest one or both of the parties contract a case of cold feet.
Also like ripping off a band-aid, it is good to have an ample supply of alcohol, gauze, and various ointments standing by in readiness.
22. How many computers are in your house?
I think I already answered this when I was counting my CD players for you. It’s a bunch. From this century, however, fewer than half that number.
23. Do you still play old school Nintendo games?
This question makes no sense. There are no “old school” Nintendo games.
Spacewar is old school. Hunt the Wumpus is old school. Adventure is old school. Rogue, Hack, and Moria are old school. These are games the parents of people who play Nintendo games used to play when they were the age their children are now.
Although this question makes no sense, I think I can still answer it. No. I don’t think I even have any Nintendo stuff around the house, except the Wii.
24. Have you ever been to Hawaii or Alaska?
Twice, and once. I’ve flown over Alaska a few times without landing. Looked pretty awesome from up there.
25. Would you ever want to live in either of those places?
No, although both are pleasant to visit.
Hawaii is not really compatible with my ghostly-white complexion. I don’t tan. I barely even freckle.
Alaska is spooky. I was there in June, and the sun kept following me around. It seemed to circle the building while I was working. I don’t know why it seemed to be some interested in me; I hear during the winter it wanders off and shows no interest in anyone. I don’t think I’d survive an Alaskan winter.
26. What kind of sense of humor do you have?
Juvenile.
27. What was your last phone conversation about and with whom?
Something boring, with someone from work. ‘Nuff said.
28. What was your grade point average in high school?
Pretty pathetic. I don’t remember the number, but I clearly remember my high school guidance letting out a low, long sigh and rubbing his furrowed brow for about thirty seconds at the beginning of our mercifully brief sessions. I think the topic of vocational training came up a few times.
After I was kept back for a year, and then when I decided that maybe college was a good idea after all, I turned it around, but by then the damage was done to my average. The average of two dreadful years, one average year, and two good years is still fairly dreadful.
29. What is one of your favorite movie quotes?
Anything from “Animal House” qualifies.
30. What song do you have stuck in your head right now?
“Birthday” by The Beatles. In a few minutes, it will be “Yer Blues”. At least, that’s what my iPod says, and it’s in charge of sticking songs in my head right now.
31. Do you have an innie or an outie?
One of each.
32. How would your friends describe you?
I don’t know. Ask them. If you want a really honest answer, don’t ask them in public.
In the meanwhile, I don’t mind people saying nice things about, especially if they’re plausibly true. For example, people might say that occasionally I string together a sentence that is a self-contained joke. Perhaps even somewhere in this note.
33. Would you kiss a really ugly person for $10,000?
There are so many facets to this question that it twinkles and glitters like the sequins of the half-unfastened outfit of a Las Vegas showgirl, pinned to the stage by the beams of a dozen spotlights, writhing uncontrollably with ecstasy as my tongue slowly, methodically, scientifically and yet inexorably searches for the perfect roll, pitch, yaw, depth, mode, skew, kurtosis, and frequency to drive her over the brink, gibbering with pleasure, during the bachelor party I will swear on the bible never happened.
But since time is short, I will focus on one simple and obvious aspect.
Who decides who is or is not really ugly? Because I’m willing to let you pay me $10,000 to call my wife really ugly. I’m going to kiss her anyway, and she’ll laugh it off when she gets her half. Heck, for $5,000, I might even get more than one kiss.
If it’s up to you, and you don’t happen to think my wife is really ugly, then my answer is probably no. I choose who I kiss, and the freedom to make that choice is worth a lot more to me than $10,000. But if you happen to find Guo Jingjing hideous, maybe I’ll take your money anyway.
37. How many hours of sleep did you get last night?
Not enough. I had a terrible nightmare. No, not the one with the monster. A different nightmare.
38. Are you capable of murder?
In the right circumstances, we all are.
39. Are you pro life or pro choice?
I don’t believe that it’s up to me to impose my beliefs on other people, so I’m both.
I am pro-life but I support the notion that other people can make their own choices.
40. What is the last thing you spent money on?
Lunch.
41. When is the last time it snowed where you live?
I think it started around 4:30am. I have forgotten the date, however.
42. when is the last time you exercised?
Exercised my what?
Please refer to the answer to #47 for additional related discussion.
43. Have you ever lived in another state?
There are so many different meanings of the words “life” and “state” that I could have a field day with this.
But I sense the trap.
So, I will merely answer that if two years in Rhode Island counts as living in another state, then the answer is “yes”. Otherwise, the answer is “probably”.
44. Do you think anyone really reads the surveys you fill out?
Accidents do happen.
45. How many friends do you have on myspace?
How many friends do I have that use MySpace? I don’t know, but not a huge number. I’m not a member of their core demographic. Or any of their peripheral demographics.
How many friends do I have connections with on my MySpace account? I’m not sure, but I think I canceled my account, but I might have simply abandoned it.
46. If your friend count goes down, do you try to figure out who deleted you?
I don’t know what my friend count is right now, I don’t know how to figure it out, and I don’t care all that much. As long as people keep sticking stuff up on my wall, and are reasonably friendly, I figure I’m doing OK. I’d rather have a smaller number of good friends than a large number of random people who can’t remember why they friended me in the first place.
However, the question presupposes that my answer could be different, and therefore it may be true that there are a lot of people out there who do count their friends regularly and try to figure out who dropped them, etc. I also suspect that that sort of people are the sort of people that I am most likely to drop.
47. what scent are you wearing right now?
Sometimes the questions reveal more about the questioner than the answers reveal about the answerer. This is one of those times.
Unlike most of the other questions in this list, questions #42 and #47 do not refer to general characteristics, habits, or tendencies. They ask about very specific details that are defined relative to the moment when the questions are answered. They are also written in a different style, using a different set of constructs. Instead of asking “Do you often wear a scent?”, which presumes nothing about the answer, or “What scent do you usually wear?”, which makes a mild and easily negated presumption that the answerer wears a scent, the question makes a strong assumption that I am wearing a scent at this very moment, and provides me no easy way to defeat the assumption that this is a question whose answer one can reasonably expect to name that scent. And yes, I have stopped beating my wife.
When one examines the question more carefully, one finds two more troubling clues. First, the capitalization of the first word of the question is inconsistent with most of the other questions, indicating carelessness, perhaps anxiousness, but in any case an unwillingness to revisit the question long enough to proof-read it. This is clearly an off-the-cuff question; unpremeditated and perhaps even spontaneous.
Second, the repeated reference to the present: although “are you wearing” clearly indicates that this question refers to the present condition, the questioner did not feel that this was sufficient, and therefore appended a completely redundant “right now”. This reinforces the evidence that this question was not subject to the same care as the other questions.
Coupled with #42, with its similar issues, I infer that the questioner is not interested in my answer. This is a rhetorical question; a reminder to take a shower. Duly noted.
48. Do you text a lot?
No, but I prose too much.
49. Do you shop at WalMart regularly?
No.
50. What..s your favorite store at the mall?
The store where they trade apostrophes for periods. You should check it out–they’re having a two-for-one sale right now.
