Angel's still on the list of future blog topics, but for tonight's post I've answered Estella's five questions! Some other questions have also been answered...so I think I'm all caught up now on that front. Alrighty, HERE WE GO!
1. What's your biggest pet peeve?
Taking the time to speak/write in detail on a particular issue that I've examined in depth and thought a lot about, only to have people dismiss my thoughts with a wave of their hand and a curt saying along the lines of, "Well, that's just your opinion." It's maddening, frustrating, and depressing all at once... Sigh. It's also pretty frustrating when they insist that my writing is "too complicated," especially when I'm writing about a complex issue. Too often have I read columns (etc.) in which the author says in five words what really required thirty to say clearly and well, and it's really irritating when people go around saying, "Whoa, that was a really great argument!" No it wasn't, morons. A conclusion without premises to support and back it up is not an argument -- it's like shouting, "Five!" without stating the problem to which 5 is the answer, or it's like writing an answer to a complex Calculus problem without showing any work. You may be right, but if your intent is to make people think even a little, you're not helping them by not giving them anything to work with. Yeah, they may know the right answer, but they've no idea how you arrived at it and they have no clue how to solve similar problems that they might encounter. I'm going to stop here before this turns into a rant about the decay of thought that results because the well-known columnists of large newspapers write for the lowest common denominator (to avoid alienating their audience). Or I could go on about the problems of democracy, since it forces would-be office holders to kowtow to (or attempt to manipulate) the stupidity of the masses, because stupid or not, the people control the vote. Oh, I could go on, but Plato and others noted well the cons of democracy millenia ago...
2. Describe the last time you looked around and thought, "Man. Right this second I am completely and perfectly happy."
How does one describe something that's never happened? I don't think I've ever looked around and thought that. Granted, there may have been a few times that it did make sense to say I was completely and perfectly happy for a moment, but I don't think I was thinking about anything at all during those moments... or at least not about how happy I was. I know that I was pretty happy in this one dream in which I shared a Go-GURT with an old classmate and crush (same person) on a park bench, and I've had dream picnics with other crushes during which I was probably pretty happy. In waking life, my happiest moments have probably involved liquor. During freshman year, I remember being pretty happy after my first frat party, when my crush at the time took my arm around her shoulder and helped me walk home since my motor skills were kinda screwy... And I remember being pretty happy when I'd sit alone in my dorm room, drinking and watching dvds... And I remember being pretty happy drinking and watching anime on my computer. Sitting at the bar drinking with Pam a month or so ago was pretty nice too (though I probably wouldn't call it a moment of complete and perfect happiness, and especially not after Dawn of the Dead ruined my buzz by sucking). Give me good company -- whether it's a real live person or engaging characters on the screen -- and some drinks and I think I'll be pretty happy, but I'll be too busy paying attention to my "companion" to be really reflecting on it. If I did, I'd probably dismiss it as the effects of the liquor, or tell myself that the movie/show would eventually end or that my human companion would someday turn against me, and then I wouldn't be happy anymore.
3. Why do you think John and Holly McClain were never able to get their shit together?
Who?
Okay, a google search yielded one result for "john and holly mcclain". Guess what it was? Estella's blog! But apparently they're the Bruce Willis and wife couple from Die Hard, which I haven't seen in years... But if I had to take a stab at it, I'd say it's because she couldn't handle her husband having such a dangerous career. Also, Holly really loves her donuts but John kept inviting Carl Winslow over and he kept eating them all. A dangerous job is one thing, but stolen donuts are grounds for divorce.
4. What was the last lie you told? Be honest.
I guess I lie to myself every day when I wake up in the morning, get out of bed, and don't hang myself or take a bath -- one that involves scrubbing my wrists with a razorblade before lathering up with electrical current -- since I suppose that on some level it means I think or hope or possibly expect things to get better today. But I know full well they won't, so I guess that constitutes me lying to myself. I don't think that's what you meant, though, so to answer your question honestly, I dunno. If I lie -- or should I say, when I lie, since we all do it -- it's not a conscious thing, and if I'm thinking about it, usually it's less of a "lie" and more of a misunderstanding involving the meanings and connotations of specific terms. And even there it's not an intentionally deceptive thing a la Bill Clinton -- it's just that I choose particular words for particular reasons and with particular nuances that people don't always get. Seriously, I'm pretty honest. Lying's really not my bag... and I've had enough lies told about me to make me really averse to doing it, at least knowingly.
5. Mayonnaise or Miracle Whip?
Depends on the food. Miracle Whip, I think, goes way better with cheese sandwiches and seafood, whereas mayonnaise probably tastes better with chicken sandwiches and on pizza. But since fat free Miracle Whip almost always tastes better than fat free mayonnaise on anything (I've had some pretty good fat free mayo of the Hellman's variety -- or was it Kraft? -- but it was pretty expensive stuff, and the cheaper mayos can be pretty awful), and since I almost always go with the fat free spread incarnations (one of the ways I try to stay in shape), I've gotta go with Miracle Whip. w00t!
And that does it for Estella's five. Wanna play too? Here are DA RULES...
1. Leave a comment, saying you want to be interviewed.
2. I will respond to up to five of you; I'll ask you five questions.
3. You'll update your website with my five questions, and your five answers.
4. You'll include this explanation.
5. You'll ask other people five questions when they want to be interviewed.
Alright! So if you want to be questioned by me, lemme know in the comments. FIVE SLOTS, SO HURRY! And now, some additional questions that've recently come up or that I never got around to answering from before.
Actually, before I get into these, let me clear up an apparent point of confusion -- the Blog of Wes (where you are now! or should be...) and Scary-Crayon are more/less two separate and independent entities... I was going to try and think of a fancy metaphor to explain the difference, but it'd be easiest just to compare SC to a magazine and Blog of Wes to the blog of the magazine's chief editor. I may talk about SC a lot in here, and you'll find out a lot about what's going on with the site that you might not otherwise find out, and I highly recommend reading the blog if you're a fan of SC (and vice versa), but the blog's not technically a subsection of SC. However, if SC does get a blog -- I'm not too keen on the idea at present, but I am considering it -- that'll be duly noted and readers of Blog of Wes will probably be among the first to know. 😉
Oh, also, the site has a hyphen not just in the url, but in the name as well -- i.e., "Scary-Crayon" (though I don't abbreviate it S-C). But don't everyone who's linked it with a space go rushing off to change it, since one of these days I may just decide to just start calling it "Scary Crayon" without warning and/or explanation for seemingly no reason at all. But if you're curious about the story of the hyphen (nobody's asked, but I'll assume it's interesting enough to talk about for a bit), here goes. I could've easily called the site "Scary Crayon" and made the url www.scarycrayon.com, but looking over the sites that I enjoyed and had content along the lines of what I'd post on SC, I saw that most of them had hyphens in their titles and/or urls -- namely, Chibi-Clan Nudity (now Ice Anvil Online), X-Entertainment, I-Mockery, and Encyclopedia Obscura (note the hyphen in the url, www.encyclopedia-obscura.com). So much like a folk singer singing an updated version of a traditional song will keep one of the original verses, even when all of the other verses are entirely new, I threw in a hyphen to mark SC as part of the ongoing "tradition" of random crap humor sites.
Also, note the picture above (which is also, more/less, the SC "logo" graphic at the top of the sidebar, and in modified form on the SC splash page) -- which, by the way, is the sight that's just behind and to my left when I'm typing at the computer, and was the image that inspired the name -- the crayon itself doesn't actually say "Scary", nor is it very frightening by itself. Rather, it's the blank, red-eyed stare of the creature behind it -- which I've dubbed the Crayon Beast -- that lends the scene any unnerving qualities it might've had... yet the Crayon Beast isn't what it seems, and it couldn't sit upright like that without the crayon there to support it. Suffice it to say that without the crayon there, the scary Crayon Beast would not exist, and without the Crayon Beast the crayon itself wouldn't be very scary at all. So the Crayon Beast (which I guess could be nicknamed "Scary") and the crayon are in a sense wedded, hence the hyphenated name, "Scary-Crayon". 🙂
I'm totally going to steal the above explanation and make an article out of it or something for the site...or maybe add it to an "About the Site" page. Ah, the possibilities...
OK! Now onto those other questions.
Wendy asks, What were [you] drinking?
Answer: The same thing I'm drinking right now! Boulaine SloeGin mixed with tonic water. It's actually the same mug of the stuff that's been sitting next to my monitor since last night, so it's kinda warm now... tastes like fresh fruity blood.
De asks, What the frig is a "w00t"?
"w00t" is an exclamation along the lines of "huzzah", "excelsior", "woo", etc. -- it's probably a variation of "woo". Note that the first letter of the word is left in the lowercase even though it's generally the first and only word in "sentences" containing it -- for example, "w00t." -- except for when all of the letters in the word are capitalized -- a la, "W00T!" The all-caps variety, however, is quite rare. You'll note also that while a few others have preferred to spell it "woot", it is most commonly spelled with zeroes instead of "o"s, though often enough you'll find it spelled "w3wt". The term is pronounced "wee-oowt", but very quickly, so it's a two-in-one syllable thing. (Cf. the pronunciation of the name "Kyo".) And while I have heard it actually spoken in public on occasion (usually by me), given the spelling of the term, you'd be right if you guessed that the term is mostly relegated to online usage.
Next, from Dee (not to be confused with De, despite the pronunciation being the same), we have two older questions: Given your appreciation of the sunset, which term do you prefer, dusk or twilight? and Why?
I don't think that I've ever drawn a visual distinction between the two, and the images that are appearing in the google image searches I just ran aren't helping me to make one... But if twilight is the stage of sunset during which the sky goes from blue to white with reddish-orange tints, and if dusk is the stage that follows, during which the sky progresses to darker reds and oranges and deep purples, then I prefer dusk. The latter, I think, far outstrips the former in terms of beauty... Also, given the distinction I've drawn, twilight seems to signal the end of the day -- but I do not hate the day so much that I would delight in its end. However, I do love the night, and the dusk represents the beginning of the night... which explains why I should prefer it.
And finally, MF asked, What were you talking about on TAB's site, regarding how torture dried your tears?
Ah, what indeed. To answer that in full would require a detailed history of my life, but I've touched on some of the highlights in the blog before... Suffice it to say that in my short years I've had my share of torments heaped upon me. During my freshman year of college I was seriously accused of plotting to murder the entire freshman class of my residential college. Thirteen persons -- many of whom I would have called friends at the time -- were responsible for relaying that information to the administration, among a number of other slanderous remarks. And around the same time, shortly after writing two or three poems to a dormmate to whom I felt really close and whom I really liked (she was the same one who walked me back to the dorms after that first frat party, mentioned above), I was called into the Dean's office and threatened with expulsion and legal action, among other things... Let's just say that you have no idea (or at least I hope you don't) what it's like to have an authority figure sneering down at you and insisting that you did something awful (i.e. rape, but they were very careful to tiptoe around the word) to anyone, not only when you did no such thing, but when you would never do any such thing because you really and truly cared about that person. And then when you say, "I didn't!" and protest, your accuser narrows her eyes and hisses, "Don't play dumb with me. You know what you did." And then, comparatively recently, I watched my sister tell the police that I've tried to kill her multiple times -- again, I've never done any such thing -- just for the sake of getting me into trouble. When the police left, she laughed in my face with glee and shouted again and again, "I HATE YOU!!! I HATE YOU!!!" She might've saved her breath; when one does to another person what I watched her do to me, that much is quite obvious. (By the way, looking over that past post, what I wrote there is true and fine, but that was kinda mean what I said about Bacardi towards the end. My sister may be a cruel and nasty person -- at least to me -- but Bacardi is A-OK in my book, even if he is kinda dumb and peed on the floor today. Yep, my sister and the dog are back in town.)
Anyway, I've not exhausted the list of injustices to my name, but I don't enjoy talking about them so I'll stop here. Suffice it to say that if you knew them all, like Batman in "Heart of Ice" upon viewing the Freeze tape, you might utter, "My God!" Whereupon I would reply, "Yes... It would move me to tears... if I still had tears to shed."
Alrighty, that's all for now. Comment if you want to play the FIVE QUESTION GAME (!!!), comment if you've got anything to say about any of the answers I've given above. Ja!