I'm really only answering these because I want to answer one of them. I'll let you guess which one. And then I got long-winded about several other questions, so it all worked out. From, as always, the TMI Tuesday Blog:
1. Have you ever cheated at a board game? Why?
I can't recall ever doing it, but I probably have. Why? To win. Or maybe to get a goddamn game of Monopoly to finish for once.
2. [At w]hich board game are you unbeatable?
I'm easily beatable at nearly all games. I don't know why. I'm good at coming up with games but I'm not great at playing them. There was a period of time when the only things which informed Star Wars Trivial Pursuit were the original trilogy and nothing else, and I could clean up at Star Wars Trivial Pursuit because I used to have an encyclopedic knowledge of those movies, but then they made more of them and I got older and now any small child with a passable knowledge of Star Wars could take me to the cleaners. I'm still slightly depressed about this.
3. Which mythological creature would be your worst roommate?
Medusa because I'd be a statue in minutes. Is there any other answer? I guess if you're a goat, a chupacabra would be a bad roommate, but I think being turned to stone forever is probably just as bad as being killed by a chupacabra.
I'd probably make a fine roommate for a vampire because we'd keep similar hours and I don't like the sun any more than the undead, though if they smelled as bad as I imagine vampires smell and left dead bodies lying around, that might be a problem. They never cover corpse smell in the sexy teen vampire books. I feel like there's no amount of Ax Body Spray which could cover up the stink of a decomposing undead husk. Just me? Probably just me.
I would get pissed off at a werewolf for trashing the place every time there was a full moon, I'm not going to lie, and I guess that annoyance would last longer than being turned to stone would (I mean, the actual action of being turned to stone, not the being stone part) but still, being a statue, even if the statues that Medusa creates don't retain awareness and are just dead, would suck pretty hard.
Who else? I know the answer to the Sphynx's riddle (it's "man," in case you ever run up against a Sphynx other than the one in Egypt which is only called a sphynx because the Greeks ran around naming things in Egypt for a while) and other than that the Sphynx seems pretty chill. I wouldn't want to live under a bridge with a troll and I like goats (again with the goats) so I don't think I'd get along well with a troll, but again, as long as they didn't kill and eat me, I think it's still a better situation than being turned to stone.
A giant would be interesting. I'd have to put my natural desire to have sex with them to one side, depending on how big they were; I'm not a size queen but I play one on TV. Giants are sometimes described as horrible monsters and sometimes just big people, and I'm fairly tall, for a woman, so if the giant was of the masculine persuasion and seven or eight feet, I'd be curious, I won't lie. I feel like I could pleasure a giant of the feminine persuasion no matter their size, though I might have to enlist some help, which would be fun.
Bigfoot would be hairy and sort of the same boat as a giant, but again, as long as Bigfoot or yeti or whatever missing link wasn't actively killing/eating me, we'd have a better relationship than me with Medusa. The worst part about Medusa is that she wouldn't even have to mean it. She could be totally cool with me and mine but one look and I'd still be stone.
Going with Medusa. And if you can believe it, this wasn't the question I wanted to answer, but it caught me off-guard.
4. Give us a three song playlist. You can link to the songs if you wish.
The first three songs of Rage Against the Machine's Evil Empire, and I will be taking no follow-up questions at this time.
5. What famous person have you met or been within a few feet of (music concerts and book signings do not count).
Mary Oliver once told me a poem of mine was good but needed work, particularly a part which she found to be entirely too clever for its own good. I argued with her about some of it. Yes, I argued that I knew poetry better than Mary Oliver. If you have any idea who Mary Oliver is, you'll find that more amusing. She was very nice about it.
Other than that, I have very few famous people stories. Mary Oliver is really only mildly famous anyway, if you know poetry much at all. I don't know. I once got good enough at something that someone famous' brother let me take his advanced course in it even though I was patently unqualified to do so, but to reveal whom I'm talking about wouldn't add much to the story and would definitely narrow down my identity more than I'm comfortable with. Hell, I was in New York City for a bit and managed to never run into anyone famous out walking their dog in Central Park, mostly because I was in Brooklyn and never went to Central Park. I hear it's very pretty, but I'm scared of Manhattan.
Bonus: Is a hot dog a sandwich?
No, a hot dog is a sausage. If you're asking whether a hot dog on a bun with assorted condiments is a sandwich (and yes, I'm being pedantic because this is a question rife with pedantry), then no, a hot dog as typically served by the American cook is not a sandwich, it's a rudimentary taco. Since tacos are themselves merely a sub-category of the great family of wraps, hot dogs are wraps. Interestingly, that means that hot dogs and sushi are the same type of food, taxonomically. I use "wrap" here in a technical sense distinct from the American usage to mean "tortilla wrapped around something." A "wrap" in the technical sense is "any distinct thing which comes in one piece and surrounds a different distinct thing." I wish "wrap" hadn't been co-opted by American reluctance to call things "burritos."
Sandwiches require two pieces of bread. If you want to make your hot dog into a sandwich, you must place it between two pieces of bread. Note that this definition means that a sub is not, in fact, a sandwich if the two halves of the roll remain joined.
I'd draw a diagram of the taxonomy of things placed on one or more pieces of bread, but sadly the world will have to wait for my dissertation on how pizza and burritos share a common ancestor and are closer to sushi than a grilled cheese sandwich is.
Hot dogs are easy. Pocket pitas are where the system breaks down into quanta. For the record, most gyros, falafel sandwiches, and other such pita-using delights are wraps because the pita isn't the pocket variety, but once you put things inside the pocket of a pita they're pies, which are, way way back, wraps rather than sandwiches. It's all about the number of distinct things surrounding the other distinct thing. It's topology.
Did you think you were going to get a lecture about the topological nature of various foodstuffs from Lexi's Smut Blog?
6 comments:
love the answer to hot dog and 100% agree
i didn't think of werewolves or vampires as mythical creatures - silly me. But another great answer.
First, I'm suitably impressed by the Mary Oliver story. Arguing with her over poetry is a bit like arguing with Miles Davis over jazz. It takes hubris. But, it raises (not begs) the question: why was she reading your poem? Were you in a workshop? If so, where? This is a side of you you've ne'er hinted at before. In any case, if you ever lack for material, you could always turn that poem into its own post (even with all its overwrought-ness).
Also, I must emphatically disagree with you on the sandwich front. The French slice a baguette down the middle and stuff it with shit. It's a fuckin' sandwich even though there's not two pieces of bread. I mean is a club sandwich a sandwich? It has 3 slices of bread! (Answer: of course.) So numbers of slices of bread is irrelevant. That said, the French are not really sandwich people. They haven't really figured out that multiple things can be included. A cheese sandwich has . . . well, just cheese. I mean, it's great cheese on great bread, but still. Though they do sometimes stuff the baguette with fries -- which is every 8-year-old's dream -- and it's totally rad.
Also, the most famous person I care about having met is the guy who invented cool ranch Doritos. That's all I got.
@Anon: It takes not really knowing who Mary Oliver is to argue with Mary Oliver about poetry, which is my only excuse. I took an intensive, bit more than a workshop, but in the same spirit. Can't reveal where because privacy and so forth. And I've written poetry for the blog before, mostly FFF but some other stuff too. I even have a tag for it, "Poetry Corner." But I'm not going to post a poem that isn't at least marginally smutty, so the poetry that Mary Oliver thought was a bit too clever for its own good will remain unposted, I'm afraid.
Sorry, one piece of bread does not a sandwich make. Next you'll be telling me that the bread is immaterial and that a stuffed potato is a sandwich. Come now. A club sandwich is a club, which perhaps is a genus of sandwich or perhaps related to but distinct, descended from a foodstuff which contains more than one piece of bread which isn't a sandwich necessarily. Just because our inexact language calls things sandwiches doesn't make them so. Our inexact language calls plenty of things the wrong title. We called whales "fish" for the longest time.
I might accept that a sandwich is the overarching category of "things which can be held in the hands" but that makes a slice of pizza a sandwich, and that dog won't hunt, monsignor. The Earl of Sandwich gave us a perfectly good definition of a sandwich when he coined the term, and I intend to die on that hill.
Only kidding. Honestly, I don't really care what a sandwich is. It's the sort of linguistic ridiculousness which is fun to hold dire opinions upon, but which really doesn't matter in the grand scheme of things. There is no non-self-referential definition for sandwiches, and thus, like most things in life, there is no truth, only matters of opinion. My opinion, as a purveyor of smut, is entirely beside the point.
Someone had a house party full of imaginary mythological creatures.
1. Hahaha. Monopoly is one game I have refused to play as an adult because as you mentioned it never ends.
3. Love your answers to #3. You had me smiling and laughing.
Bonus: This dissertation on hot dogs is just so good. Waiting for the diagram and the pizza/burrito linkage :D :D
Thanks for the great read.
-H
I'm 7 months late, but happy 15 year blog anniversary, and thank you for letting us into your life
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