Questions. Longevity. Morphology. Incept dates.

[erikred]

mkb_cbr asked:

1. Do you plan to have kids? If so, will you raise them bilingual?

Yes, and yes. The timeline is still unclear, but yes, we'd like to have at least one bairn, and yes, we plan to raise him/her bilingual. I can't imagine not. Being able to speak another language, even at thee coarse working-class level I have, opens so many doors. It's like an intiation into some not-so-secret, not-so-exclusive club; you feel a part of something bigger than what you had before. Someday, my children are going to regard my Japanese the way we used to regard our grandfather's Danish-inflected English. That makes me grin for some reason.

2. Do you think being tall has helped to shape your personality? In what way?

God, yes. On a purely physical level, I can still remember the day some kid threatened me in the lunch line and I realized that his threat was utterly ridiculous given our physical disparity. I just laughed. Pretty soon he laughed too. It really changed things, realizing that my size was a ticket out of a lot of trouble like that.

Also, there's almost no aspect of my current life that isn't affected in some way by my height. I can't walk through the streets without getting told how tall I am, and if you were to follow me at a discreet distance through a crowded shopping mall, you'd see people getting whiplash as I walk by. My height gets me attention; I like to think my good humor and fun-loving personality keep the good attention and defuse the bad.

I'm outgoing and gregarious because I'm tall; it's sort of a way of going with the flow, not fighting with destiny all the time. At heart, I'm a pretty shy, retiring fellow-- no, really, I am. I like reading books, watching movies, and hanging out with Yoko. As soon as I leave my house, however, there's no point denying that I'm going to stand out. I could be surly and withdrawn, scowl at people, but really, what's the point? Engage and disarm, that's what I say. It's easier for me to interact than it would be to withdraw, and frankly, we all walk away a little mellower when the encounter goes smoothly. Heh, social engineering, I guess, always looking for a more efficient way.

And yeah, being tall is a 24/7 ego-trip. When I was walking down Broadway, between 12th and 13th, a woman pulled her bus over to the side of the road to open her door and holler, "How tall is you?" What sort of toad wouldn't be flattered by that sort of attention? On a ferry from Xiamen to a smaller island off the coast of China, I had the absolute grinnning attention of an entire boat. Hot damn, how do you not grow to love that?

I like to think that being tall is the physical side, but being tall has made me the confident human being I am today. No denying it.

3. What aspects of your life today would your 18-year-old self be surprised by?

For one, he'd be surprised that I was still alive. The 18-year-old me had no idea that he didn't have Marfan Syndrome. That would certainly brighten his mood. He'd be surprised to find me married. He'd also be surprised that I was bilingual and working in technology. He'd think I was a bit more down with the Establishment than he'd like to be. And he'd probably wonder why I'm not in the SCA or going to Renaissance Faires anymore.

4. What drives you to blog?

Info-whoredom. When I was freshman in high school, around 1984, some friends and I formed a club to study current events with an eye toward Orwell. I was responsible for reporting on Asiana. It was a blast, following Reagan's mad policy dashes across the globe. When I was at Cal, I had a cheap subscription to the New York Times, and I used cut out articles and pictures that interested me and tape them on the dorm-room door. I'm a rabid news-junkie, and blogging helps me focus that. Not so much recently, mind you, but the need to share stays fresh. There's just so much going on that if you blink, you'll miss it. Blogging keeps me from blinking.

5. One morning you open a fresh box of Honey-Nut Cheerios and out flies the Honey-Nut Bee, in the flesh. (Or in the chitin. Whatever.) The bee says, "Congratulations, you won our contest. I'm going to snap my fingers and you'll suddenly have six years of serious study/training in the field of your choice." What field do you choose?

Medicine/genetics. I wish I had the discipline to go back to school and start from scratch, but I don't, and I don't have the money to fund it. If I could six years of free study/training, with the attendant accreditation, I'd choose medicine/genetics in a heart-beat. Between cheaper mechanics, nanotechnology, and stem-cell research, this is the cutting edge. As it is, I'm pretty content to keep on doing what I'm doing now.

The Rules:
1. Leave me a comment asking for an interview
2. I will respond by asking you five questions. I get to pick the questions
3. You will update your LJ with the answers to the questions
4. You will include this explanation and an offer to interview someone else in the same post
5. When others comment asking to be interviewed, you will ask them five questions

Comments

[narwhale.livejournal.com]

Okay, so now I gotta ask, how tall are you?

[erikred.livejournal.com]

7'. A horribly old demonstration photo follows:



Yes, that's the ceiling my head is about to poke.

[narwhale.livejournal.com]

Damn. How's the weather up there?

Hardy har har. I crack me up, I do.

[erikred.livejournal.com]

About the same as down there, but I've got a better view of the dandruff and bald spots.

[narwhale.livejournal.com]

A friend of mine that I always thought was ridiculously tall-- except you've got six inches on him-- often says much the same thing. Except only he describes it as getting a better view of girls' cleavage, given that he can just look straight down.

I don't wear halter tops around him anymore.

[erikred.livejournal.com]

See, why you want to be denying a brother an opportunity for some happiness in this life? (^_^)

[narwhale.livejournal.com]

It's part of the Female Code. Where possible to deny a male happiness, we are obligated to do so.

[eumenide.livejournal.com]

That is one of my favourite pictures of you.

Can I ask you questions without being interviewed my ownself?

[erikred.livejournal.com]

What kind of egotist would I be if I said no? Go ahead!

[eumenide.livejournal.com]

Fantastic! Enough about me, let's talk about you.

1. What work of art has affected you the most in terms of immediate emotive response and why? It can be visual, theatrical, cinematic, written - whatever you determine art to be, we'll work with that.

2. Tell me about one of your heros.

3. If you could change place with any historical figure from any area and any time for a day, who would it be? Why? What would you do?

4. What is your first memory?

5. Were you always patient, or did you have to learn to be?

Also, Unleashed opens on the 13th. Expect email from me.

[erikred.livejournal.com]

1. Les Miserables, by Victor Hugo. It made me ache with utter compassion for the despair of the human condition and the very human need to keep on getting back up.

2. Toussaint L'Ouverture was born in Haiti in the 18th century. When the French Revolution sparked the overthrow of the colonial government in Haiti and the slave revolt that founded the current nation of Haiti, Toussaint rose to the occasion: he transformed the chaotic mob of former slaves into an army that routed the French forces while single-handedly easing the transfer of ownership of the land from the hands of the oppressors to the oppressed. He was betrayed by Napoleon and died in prison, a victim of his own idealism and his faith in the French Revolutionary precepts of liberte, egalite, and fraternite.

3. Tricky question. If you mean, I could change place with this individual and muck about with history, well, I'd feel pretty much obligated to change places with one of Hitler's bodyguards and put a stop to that madness before it all began. From a strictly experiential point of view, however, I'd change places with

4. I'm very young, maybe two. My dad's back from Vietnam. We're lying on our backs in bed playing the periscope game, which is a game where my dad describes a scene and I pretend to look through a periscope and see the scene. He's describing riding in a helicopter over the rice fields and forests of Vietnam, and I see it all rushing by below us.

It's doubtless a false memory, a construction from years of movies and some vague memory of hanging out with my dad, but I remember it quite vividly.

5. Learned. Mellowed a lot. T'ai Chi and a lot of humor helps a lot.

Five months to answer! How 'bout that for patience? :)

[erikred.livejournal.com]

You know what? I just can't finish the third one. It's just too good, and I know that if I came up with a response, I'd then want to reverse myself a moment later. Instead, I'm turning this on you. Who would you choose, and why?

[alfvaen]

Well, feel free to interview me. I already posted my plea for interviewees some weeks ago, and nobody bit, so I am serene in my karma.