Interview with a Vampire?
Mar. 31st, 2005 01:51 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
jackofallgeeks1. Leave me a comment saying, “Interview me.”
2. I will respond by asking you five questions. I get to pick the questions.
3. You will update your blog/site with the answers to the questions and leave the answers as comments on my blog.
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.
Five questions from![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
mmeubiquitous:
1) Who's the "tall dark and catholic" icon?
This is actually Nightcrawler, from the X-Men. Most people will remember him from the relatively recent X2 movie, but there was a time in my youth when I was something of a Comic Geek, and X-Men was one of my fascinations. Something that I always thought was really cool was the very strong faith-aspect that Nightcrawler had, and I was really glad to see that they kept it into the movie. The icon is a crop of a larger picture, which seems to have Nighcrawler garbed like a priest (Roman Collar and all), but apparently he's never really been ordained. (Artistic license, perhapse?)
2) What's your favorite play?
-laughs- Truth be told, I have slightly more culture than a cup of yogurt; I really haven't seen that many plays, to my general dismay. I have seen a few, though, in highschool and college performances, and even a couple professional ones while visiting family in Ohio. That having been said, the list that would make it as candidates for my favorite would be 'The Phantom of the Opera,' 'An Ideal Husband,' and 'Jesus Christ Superstar.' And I suppose, if I had to pick one as my favorite... I think I might say 'An Ideal Husband,' but only by a hair; I really like all three, and for slightly different reasons, so it's hard to compare them.
3) What character class do you play most often?
-grins- Do you mean in theory or in practice? In practice, which consists of one game of Werewolf: the Apocalypse, half a game of Changeling: the Dreaming, a couple DnD campaigns (none of which have ever gotten far, though the most recent is more promising), and a handful of bit parts scattered here and there -- in practice, I guess you could say that my 'class' is most often a Wizard (or Sorcerer, if you must differentiate). And I suppose the Theory isn't too much further removed from practice, except in that DnD would not be my preferred choice of game, and those that would be don't really run on much of a 'class' system. My favored game (in theory, as I've never played it) would be Mage: The Ascension (and potentially the upcoming Mage: the Awakening), in which *everyone* is a Wizard of one sort or another. At the same time, I'm also fond of the Knight of Tragedy, the Fighter (or in the case in mind, Troll a la Changeling) who strives to do the right thing but, in the end, becomes something of a failed and tragic figure. I like that... But then, that's not really a choice in 'class,' is it?
4) How do you like Lovecraft?
How do I like Lovecraft? Let me count the ways. Actually, I think my opinion of him is somewhat fuzzy at the moment. I mean, I like his subject material, and the way he handles supernatural elements in an otherwise-contemporary setting; I really like that. And I like the inside-someone's-skull approach that he has; that whole first-person thing has a nice effect. Some of his stories I really liked. At the same time, though, his writing style itself has, on occasion, turned me off. He has a nice way about him, but some of his stories just came off flat to me. And while I'm not sure how his stories might play out if they were any longer, sometimes I think the short-story aspect of it all does his work a disservice. -shrugs-
5) If you could have dinner with one person, living or dead, who would it be?
-laughs- Being as this is a hypothetical question, I'll assume that the 'living or dead' is meant to be more 'past or present,' as I think few people would choose to dine with a desiccated corpse. The first to come to mind was Vlad Dracolya (aka Vlad Tepes, aka Vlad the Impaler), but then the thought of his sadistic streak, and the risks involved in dining with such a man, made me think better of it. So now I have to think. There's no one Present, as I can think of, that would make for an appropriate answer to this question. So, past. The first to jump to mind (on this second search) is Maximilian Kolbe, whose name I took in Confirmation, a Catholic priest who took another man's place in a Nazi death camp. A close second is Ignatius of Loyola, a once-soldier who, I think, had an interesting view of suffering and duty. It would be a real toss up between the two of them, I think, but it would probably be one or the other. Quite possibly with more of a preference toward Ignatius.
2. I will respond by asking you five questions. I get to pick the questions.
3. You will update your blog/site with the answers to the questions and leave the answers as comments on my blog.
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.
Five questions from
mmeubiquitous:1) Who's the "tall dark and catholic" icon?
This is actually Nightcrawler, from the X-Men. Most people will remember him from the relatively recent X2 movie, but there was a time in my youth when I was something of a Comic Geek, and X-Men was one of my fascinations. Something that I always thought was really cool was the very strong faith-aspect that Nightcrawler had, and I was really glad to see that they kept it into the movie. The icon is a crop of a larger picture, which seems to have Nighcrawler garbed like a priest (Roman Collar and all), but apparently he's never really been ordained. (Artistic license, perhapse?)
2) What's your favorite play?
-laughs- Truth be told, I have slightly more culture than a cup of yogurt; I really haven't seen that many plays, to my general dismay. I have seen a few, though, in highschool and college performances, and even a couple professional ones while visiting family in Ohio. That having been said, the list that would make it as candidates for my favorite would be 'The Phantom of the Opera,' 'An Ideal Husband,' and 'Jesus Christ Superstar.' And I suppose, if I had to pick one as my favorite... I think I might say 'An Ideal Husband,' but only by a hair; I really like all three, and for slightly different reasons, so it's hard to compare them.
3) What character class do you play most often?
-grins- Do you mean in theory or in practice? In practice, which consists of one game of Werewolf: the Apocalypse, half a game of Changeling: the Dreaming, a couple DnD campaigns (none of which have ever gotten far, though the most recent is more promising), and a handful of bit parts scattered here and there -- in practice, I guess you could say that my 'class' is most often a Wizard (or Sorcerer, if you must differentiate). And I suppose the Theory isn't too much further removed from practice, except in that DnD would not be my preferred choice of game, and those that would be don't really run on much of a 'class' system. My favored game (in theory, as I've never played it) would be Mage: The Ascension (and potentially the upcoming Mage: the Awakening), in which *everyone* is a Wizard of one sort or another. At the same time, I'm also fond of the Knight of Tragedy, the Fighter (or in the case in mind, Troll a la Changeling) who strives to do the right thing but, in the end, becomes something of a failed and tragic figure. I like that... But then, that's not really a choice in 'class,' is it?
4) How do you like Lovecraft?
How do I like Lovecraft? Let me count the ways. Actually, I think my opinion of him is somewhat fuzzy at the moment. I mean, I like his subject material, and the way he handles supernatural elements in an otherwise-contemporary setting; I really like that. And I like the inside-someone's-skull approach that he has; that whole first-person thing has a nice effect. Some of his stories I really liked. At the same time, though, his writing style itself has, on occasion, turned me off. He has a nice way about him, but some of his stories just came off flat to me. And while I'm not sure how his stories might play out if they were any longer, sometimes I think the short-story aspect of it all does his work a disservice. -shrugs-
5) If you could have dinner with one person, living or dead, who would it be?
-laughs- Being as this is a hypothetical question, I'll assume that the 'living or dead' is meant to be more 'past or present,' as I think few people would choose to dine with a desiccated corpse. The first to come to mind was Vlad Dracolya (aka Vlad Tepes, aka Vlad the Impaler), but then the thought of his sadistic streak, and the risks involved in dining with such a man, made me think better of it. So now I have to think. There's no one Present, as I can think of, that would make for an appropriate answer to this question. So, past. The first to jump to mind (on this second search) is Maximilian Kolbe, whose name I took in Confirmation, a Catholic priest who took another man's place in a Nazi death camp. A close second is Ignatius of Loyola, a once-soldier who, I think, had an interesting view of suffering and duty. It would be a real toss up between the two of them, I think, but it would probably be one or the other. Quite possibly with more of a preference toward Ignatius.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2005-03-31 07:13 pm (UTC)Answer me these questions, er, five...
Date: 2005-03-31 07:43 pm (UTC)2) What does your LJ Name (There's Beauty in the Breakdown) mean?
3) Why are you at the University you're at now, and what are you doing there?
4) What is your preferred Philosophical system (Aristotelean, Lockean, Utilitarian, etc) and why?
5) Where do you get those
wonderful toysvintage photos (http://www.livejournal.com/userpic/21853356/434109) for your icons?no subject
Date: 2005-03-31 08:42 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-03-31 09:41 pm (UTC)2) Again from your Interests, and because at face value it seems against the grain for you, to what capacity (how and why) are you interested in 'social limitations'?
3) What's the most interesting fact you've learned recently?
4) Do you believe in any sort of supernatural reality, or is everything limited to science texts? Elaborate all you can.
5)In a million words or less, what are your political attitudes? Elaborate all you can.
no subject
Date: 2005-03-31 09:02 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-03-31 09:58 pm (UTC)1) In your words, what is a militant atheist, and why is it hard being one?
2) As a Philosophy Doctor, what is your favored philosophical system, and why?
3) What do you mean by saying that you're a moral realist without believing in moral ontology, and why do you think most people around you have it wrong?
4) Do you believe in any sort of supernatural reality? Elaborate as much as you can.
5) In a million words or less (use contractions if you're pressed for space), what are your political attitudes?
Have to do this in 2 parts again...
Date: 2005-04-01 04:29 am (UTC)The terms a bit of hyperbole. I guess the militancy bit comes from frustration with the attitude (at least in the circles I often run in) that agnosticism is the only respectable position. I don't there's good evidence for the existence of G-d, I don't think it's a beneficial posit, and I don't see why I should hedge my bets.
The reference to Camus is to "The Myth of Sisyphus." What Camus realizes is that taking the position that there's not some intelligence making the universe all hang together raises some serious questions that many folks who reject religion don't really answer. Now, part of my problem with religion is that I don't think positing G-d really answers them either, but just gives the appearance of it - but that's another story. But taking atheism seriously means - to put it in a cariacature - that no, not everything will work out fine in the end on its own and that hence we have a heavy responsibility to do something about it. And well, there's a good chance that evil will win and nothing will get resolved. Cheery, eh?
2) As a Philosophy Doctor, what is your favored philosophical system, and why?
I'm a Pragmatist, basically. More in the Deweyan mold than anything else (but I keep meaning to write a paper boosting for James' definition of truth). More specifically, in the fields I focus on: a fairly radical particularist, and more or less a consequentialist about morality; a deliberative democrat in my political theory; and a Realist (though a weirdish one) in the philosophy of law.
no subject
Date: 2005-04-01 04:29 am (UTC)I'm a moral realist insofar as I think it makes sense to engage in reasoned debate about morality, and that it's not subjective, or relative, and so on. There's a lot more to say... with a couple caveats, I would say that, generally speaking, moral questions have objectively right and wrong answers. What I don't believe in is moral ontology - I don't think there's any metaphysically substantial universe of moral *objects* out there. Which may seem like a bit of a quibble, but I think it's an important one - there are genuine moral truths, on my view, but they're true in virtues of features of the social world, not in virtue of special moral facts. There. Clear as mud.
What I meant by the second bit was just that, though I'm a moral realist, I have a lot of problems with the ambient received morality. Many, many folks around me hold moral views that I can't wrap my head around, and that I think I can give solid arguments against. So I think that goodly portions of the folks around have gotten morality substantively wrong.
4) Do you believe in any sort of supernatural reality? Elaborate as much as you can.
No. No worries, I have as much against Wicca as I do against Catholicism. :)
But hey, I could be wrong.
5) In a million words or less (use contractions if you're pressed for space), what are your political attitudes?
Yeah, sorry about that one long comment back around the election. Basically, I think of myself as a classic Millian liberal (with a couple little twists). I think the ideal of society should be one in which people are more or less free to choose their way of life and stand or fall on its merits, with the goal being that such experimentation will promote human flourishing. But - I think that that ideal is a bit of a cruel joke if we don't do much better at making sure that people are competing on something more like a level playing field to start. And I think there should be a social role for making sure that a misstep isn't permanent, but that folks who lose out can get back into things (I'm enamored of Friedman's "golden trampoline" model), and that as part of that we have an obligation to ensure that everyone can count on a baseline of support from society if all else fails. OK, this is about to be a long story.
I'm not sure I can quickly encapsulate my foreign policy theory, as it's something I've been giving a lot of thought to. I think the neocons have a lot of stuff right, and a tremendous amount of stuff wrong - but I'm closer to them than I am to liberals with whom I tend to agree on domestic issues, but who also tend to be isolationists and protectionists. I'm probably a Wilsonian idealist/internationalist, but we all saw how well that worked out, so I'd rather not be forced to admit it.
no subject
Date: 2005-03-31 11:16 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-04-01 05:16 am (UTC)2) In all the monologues you've experienced, which is your favorite? Reproduce it if you can.
3) What are your thoughts on God, Religion, Christianity, and Catholicism? Be as specific as you can.
4) Family, friends, lovers; what is your most treasured memory and why?
5) If you could sum up your attitude toward life into a single maxim of no more than three sentences, what would it be?
no subject
Date: 2005-04-01 09:10 am (UTC)#2... a monologue I've seen or a monologue I've done?
And damn... you gave me some hard freakin' questions! Good ones... but hard ones. Give me some time, but I'll get them to you.
no subject
Date: 2005-04-01 03:09 pm (UTC)And yes, ha, I suppose I am something of a difficult interrogator, ne? Take whatever time you need.