[tsa]

Originally Posted by Trumgottist

Are you saying there are grocery stores that doesn't over there?

Here in NL you only pay for the high-quality bags; something like € 0.35 or so.

Originally Posted by Trumgottist

1. Do you get scared by dogs, spiders or any of those silly things?
2. Favourite part of the day?
3. Most productive part of the day?

1. Not really, although some dogs and spiders are more dangerous than others of course.

2. The evening, when the rabbits are tired of running through the house, I have a nice pot of tea, and I'm on the couch doing nothing particularly useful.

3. The afternoon.

[][][][][][][][][][][][]

1. Where is Bin Laden?

2. What is George Bush Jr. doing these days?

3. What keeps you busy these days?

[Lee in Limbo]

1. Where is Bin Laden?
2. What is George Bush Jr. doing these days?
3. What keeps you busy these days?

1. Eating kibble off of the floor in my kitchen. Oh wait, no, that's just Vlad. Bin Laden probably prefers the cheaper kibble anyway.
2. Probably spending a lot of time rationalizing all of his bad decisions and lies to his cronies in the oil business. But that's just a guess.
3. I'm trying to write a novel, and at the same time get my head screwed on straight. Neither one is going so well.

************************************************** *******

1. What are you going to name your new punk/ska/new wave/bossa nova band?
2. Why do they call them 'kippers'?
3. What should I do with the title, 'Victim of Gravity'? Story? Music? Comic? Illustration? Something else entirely?

[Maquisard]

Originally Posted by Lee in Limbo

1. What are you going to name your new punk/ska/new wave/bossa nova band?
2. Why do they call them 'kippers'?
3. What should I do with the title, 'Victim of Gravity'? Story? Music? Comic? Illustration? Something else entirely?

1. Your Moms
2. That's the first time I've heard the Moms being referred to as kippers.
3. Epitaph
______

1. Is it OK to laugh at racism? I don't mean the kind where someone is being insulted to their face, as that is a pretty rare sight anyway. I mean someone in your presence stating as fact some stereotype about another, unaccounted for, race.. and you wonder how come they didn't just.. fizzle out into a puddle of illogic. It's like the ultimate form of non-sequitur. You know, "I eat pants" or "boobs feel like sandbags". So can you be like, "lol, flush when you're done", or do you feel obliged to be genuinely insulted on the people group's behalf? I saw a TV show, where a racist comment was unintentionally comical (to me), for being so out of left field and out of place, and an obvious attempt to make things.. racy so i though of this..

2. I wonder how monotheism developed, considering how people apparently had a tendency to cover their bases, and worship as many gods as possible. Any ideas?

3. What would be your 3 wishes if you found a lamp Jinn?

[Squinky]

1. If you need to be asking other people whether it's okay, ur probly doin it rong lol.
2. Well, people are also lazy, so if you can worship one deity that encompasses everything, I'd expect that to be a lot less time-consuming.
3. A handsome prince, a choreographed song and dance routine, and the Jinn's freedom. Disney has taught me well.

***

1. Do you believe in paying for digital media?
2. Do you believe in giving money to street performers?
3. Do you believe that being an artist (of any medium) is a worthy profession, or do you see it as something better left as a hobby?

[MoriartyL]

1. Sometimes. You won't find me paying for TV shows or comics that I download, but I do pay for a lot of downloadable games on Wii. I suppose in theory, I do believe in paying for digital media. But without a job, I can't afford to pay for anything except what I want the most.
2. I kinda figured you were going in this direction when I saw the first question. For those who don't know, what Squinky is getting at is that she's been trying to get people to donate money for her new game. (Sorry, I haven't personally contributed.)
   To answer the question, I guess I don't. I've never paid any street performers. But then again, I've never heard a street performer who impressed me. But even if I did.. look, when I go out of the house I take the amount of cash I'm going to need, not my entire savings. Okay, I admit it, I'm selfish. So no, I don't believe in giving money to street performers.
3. If all artists were just hobbyists no one would ever see any art. So yeah, I think it's a darn worthy profession. But that's assuming you can make it. I don't know how worthy it is to hold out for a job in art when no one cares about what you're doing. Man, I'm depressing myself.

===============================================

1. If you knew that all you'd ever get from a person was insincere compliments, would that bother you? If so, what would you say to them about it?
2. How constructive does criticism need to be for you to take it without being offended?
3. What's the worst thing about your favorite game?

[Lee in Limbo]

Originally Posted by MoriartyL

1. If you knew that all you'd ever get from a person was insincere compliments, would that bother you? If so, what would you say to them about it?
2. How constructive does criticism need to be for you to take it without being offended?
3. What's the worst thing about your favorite game?

1. It wouldn't so much bother me as mildly disappoint me, as I'd be forced to reconsider whatever feelings I have for them and reduce their actual importance (i.e. influence) to me.
2. Criticism has to be well thought out. I still take it a little too much to heart, but if the criticism is well reasoned and I don't have to make allowances for the fact that they're a tactless cretin, then I can accept it graciously and work out whether the information is useful to me or not. Blanket dismissal or the ever-popular 'you suck' just earn avoidance.
3. The worst thing about my favourite game is that it did almost nothing revolutionary, which tags it as a sort of failure to save the genre from malaise.
________________________

1. Cake or Death?
2. Cake or Pie?
3. Cake or Lie?

[Hammerite]

1. Cake.
2. Cake.
3. The Cake is the lie.
__

1. Did you miss me?
2. Good way of telling a girl you like her without sounding weird (bear in mind, I'm not asking her out because she's probably not interested in me )?
3. How sweet is this?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ui5TGMWNEPo

[MoriartyL]

1. Were you gone?
2. Sorry, I only do weird. If I liked a girl, I'd probably say to her "I like you." and not care how weird it sounded. Haven't met a girl I'd want to say that to, though.
3. Not particularly.

=================================================

1. Do you know any girls or women with Asperger's Syndrome? I've only met two in my life (one in her sixties, one around five), but I know a whole bunch of men. (Though few of these people are aware of the classification.)
2. Do you ever feel guilty for not liking something you think you should like?
3. Do you find me annoying?

[Squinky]

1. Not personally, though I have read stuff over the internet written by women with Asperger's. (here's one salient post in particular) I've long suspected that I may have a few autism spectrum traits myself, though not enough to be a full-blown Asperger's case. Still, I've read a lot that seems to suggest that Asperger's manifests itself differently in females than in males, and that a lot of people don't know exactly how. So, yeah.
2. Not often, but it's been known to happen. I try and investigate where my dislike comes from, in those cases.
3. Nah, you're all right.

***

1. How much of who you are now was shaped by your childhood?
2. When you offend someone without meaning to, what do you do to try and set things right?
3. What's your opinion on pumpkin pie?

[tsa]

Originally Posted by Squinky

1. How much of who you are now was shaped by your childhood?
2. When you offend someone without meaning to, what do you do to try and set things right?
3. What's your opinion on pumpkin pie?

1. I think more than I realize. My parents were quite tough with me, which I didn't like at all, but later I realized that I would never have come as far as I have if they weren't. It tought me to not give up easily and not to expect help from other people all the time. They also tried to stimulate me to develop myself in the directions that I like and am good at.
2. That happens every now and then, especially in email conversations. I usually apologize profoundly and try to explain what I meant.
3. I never had pumpkin pie so I don't have an opinion on that.

----

Your first question was very interesting Squinky, so I based my questions on that one.

1. What aspects of your upbringing were essential in making you who you are now?
2. In what ways would you be different if you had the parents of your best friend?
3. Which aspects of your upbringing would/did you change when raising your kids?

[MoriartyL]

Originally Posted by tsa

1. What aspects of your upbringing were essential in making you who you are now?

Thank you for asking that - this is something I've been thinking about lately. This will be long.

I asked my mother a few weeks ago, whether she thinks I'd have done better in school if she and my father had done something different with their parenting. And she just said to me, "No. You have Asperger's Syndrome". And that answer surprised me but on reflection she was right. My parents did push me to do homework and excel in school and all that, I just didn't care. Ultimately my DNA had a lot more impact on me than my upbringing.

Nonetheless, there is one thing about how my parents raised me that is essential to who I am today. When I was 7, we moved to Israel. If we had stayed in America, I'd be pretty much who I am now, but in a much less pronounced way. I'm not sure if I'd ever even have been diagnosed with Asperger's Syndrome. The trouble with moving to Hebrew was not only that I was exposed to kids and teachers of much less, shall we say, western cultures, but also that I was suddenly expected to do everything in Hebrew. And I have never learned to speak Hebrew well. I just don't have the vocabulary. So that got me mocked and bullied a lot, and from trying to be friendly with everyone I switched to hanging out with a very small group of English-speakers. That sense of self-enforced isolation is something I'm only starting to get over now.

The upside of that isolation was that my personality got a lot stronger than it would have been if it were ever exposed to normal people. I came to value my interests much more, in the absence of a social life. I'd just barely been exposed to games in America, but with the widespread piracy in Israel I was able to find games and I took them more seriously than I would have if I had people to hang out with in my free time. At the same time, I learned to express in music what I didn't know how to express in Hebrew words. (In America, my parents tried to get me to play piano and I couldn't sit still. In Israel, I asked them to let me play piano.) Asperger's Syndrome or no, if I'd stayed in America I would have ended up much more normal.

Moving to Israel also, for most of my school years, put me in schools where the genders are separated. When I was a little kid I hung around with girls all the time, now I'm really shy around them. In the last two years of high school I was in a coed school, but there weren't any English-speaking girls in my class so I was doubly ashamed to ever talk to them. Understand, when I'm talking in Hebrew every minute or so I need to pause to find the word I'm looking for, and usually I fail and just ask the person if they know English so I can say the word I'm thinking of. It is not at all pleasant for me to have a conversation in Hebrew.

So ultimately the part of my upbringing which most impacted on my life was moving to Israel, but it changed me in ways which my parents couldn't possibly have anticipated. For them the decision to move to Israel was purely religious; it was between them and God. And all the events that made me a more unique kind of person than I'd otherwise be, that's between me and God. I guess I can thank my parents for getting the two of us in touch, though. I love Israel.

2. In what ways would you be different if you had the parents of your best friend?

Wow, tough one. Well, first off, my best friend's father is dead. So I guess I'd have a more morbid worldview, probably. And his mother has a bad leg, and he spends all day every day helping her out. I can't picture myself agreeing to be in that position, but I dunno, different parents does mean I'd be a different person. Plus, they're from South Africa, so I'd have a totally different background. Wowsers. I can't even imagine how different I'd be with my best friend's parents.

3. Which aspects of your upbringing would/did you change when raising your kids?

I'd make sure ahead of time that my wife and I were on the same page. There were too many disagreements and mixed signals between my parents.

If you'll excuse me, my mother just called up the stairs to say that the rain outside is getting heavy so I'm going to run out. Whoever wants to write questions, go ahead.

[MoriartyL]

Sorry about that. Rain is really rare here, so I can't pass up an opportunity to wander around outside while it's coming down. But it's died down now, so I'm back.

1. Let's say you have to move your birthday to any other day of the year. (Never mind the logic of it.) What day?
2. Let's say you can pick a specific age that you're going to die at. It has to be an actual number (so not "infinity"), and you can never change your mind about it. No dying ahead of time, no prolonging your life. That's when you die, and not a day sooner or later. What exact age would you like to live to?
3. Let's say the moon is made of something, and it's not what scientists think it's made of. What would you like the moon to be made of? And you can't say "cheese". Anything else.

[Maquisard]

1. I'd move my birth one day into the future. That way I would've been born on feb 29th on a leap year. I'd be celebrating my actual birthday every fourth year. As a kid I thought I dodged a bullet there, as I figured having a birthday every four years would actually cause me to age four times slower. Now, I'd appreciate the opportunity to jokingly say I'm 6. Would make me feel younger. Also, I'd think birthdays were a much more bigger deal for the rest of my life, as opposed to just kind of getting bored of them, eventually... Ok, so you got the logic of it too.
2. 75. Not too old, not too young. I'm comfortable with the neat, tidy, idea that I'm a third of my way through, at this point.
3. Play-doh
________

1. Any recent revelations in terms of awesome movie, tv show, band, that you'd like to share?
2. You're now part of an improv troupe. What's the first character you create on stage? If, say, the other person was imitating a squirrel.
3. If you could have anything in the world for your next meal, what would it be?

[Lee in Limbo]

Originally Posted by Maquisard

1. Any recent revelations in terms of awesome movie, tv show, band, that you'd like to share?
2. You're now part of an improv troupe. What's the first character you create on stage? If, say, the other person was imitating a squirrel.
3. If you could have anything in the world for your next meal, what would it be?

1) Hmmn. Two, actually: King's X are still to my mind one of the most underrated rock bands I've ever heard, and the new Transatlantic album has grown on me to the point where I deliberately don't put it on so as not to burn out on it.
2) I would be an old man sitting on a bench with a bag of bread crumbs trying to feed the squirrel, whom I was confusing with pigeons.
3) My wife's lasagna.
____________________

1) If you could design your own operating system software, what feature would you make the central feature?
2) If you had to change just one thing about your favourite story, what would it be?
3) Have you ever done something in real life or had an idea about something in real life that you thought would make a great piece of gameplay that you've never seen in a game before?

[Squinky]

1. I'm too inept a software engineer to design an OS as anything other than a joke, so... puppies!
2. My current favourite story is the one I'm working on right now, and I'm making changes to it on a pretty much consistent basis. As for stories other people have written, I wouldn't want to change them, because the stories wouldn't be theirs anymore. Stories are by nature imperfect because they mirror real life.
3. I still need to find a good home for my "conversation options appear as the character thinks of them" idea, which I've had since ought-six or thereabouts. I also need to create a character who says "excuse me" whenever s/he bumps into inanimate objects.

***

1. :) or :-)?
2. Pants or no pants?
3. Halloween or Christmas?

[MoriartyL]

1. :)
2. Pants! Pants. Please, pants.
3. I have no experience with either one. I pretty much only know of them from Hollywood movies, and I don't see any reason to care about them. But from what I've seen in movies, Christmas seems to be the more pleasant one of the two. I'm not into scary stuff. Oh, plus it's my father's birthday, so that date actually has some relevance to my life.

=================================================

1. What's the last time something surprised you by being good?
2. What's the last time something surprised you by being bad?
3. What's the last thing something surprised you with its very existence?

[tsa]

Originally Posted by MoriartyL

1. What's the last time something surprised you by being good?
2. What's the last time something surprised you by being bad?
3. What's the last thing something surprised you with its very existence?

1. That happens to me every now and then, but I can't come up with an example right now.
2. The movie "Up" was a big disappointment to me.
3. Yesterday I watched a TV program (Bite Me) in which a guy shows dangerous animals and plants. If they are not too dangerous he lets them bite him. Yesterday he showed a plant that had silica hairs (which is surprising in itself because silicon-based substances are not much used in nature) that were drenched in poison. Touching them would result in instant excruciating pain. The guy touched the plant with a small part of his fingers (he was smart enough not to use his fingertips) and collapsed almost immediately. It was much worse than he expected. The cameraman was really worried about him. The guy was able to remove most of the hairs with a resin that people use to remove unwanted body hair. He had to vomit violently after that.

===

I like your questions Moriarty so I pass them on to the next person.

[Maquisard]

1. What's the last time something surprised you by being good?
2. What's the last time something surprised you by being bad?
3. What's the last thing something surprised you with its very existence?
___

1. Hmm. Yesterday, Halloween parties. Well, just one in particular, where people were creative with costumes. The other one, where everyone was either a witch or the undead, and most definitely a gigantic nerd, was a bit more on the lame side. Good music selection though. Still, can't figure out what I've been doin' all these past halloweens to miss out on the fun?
2. surprisingly bad, hmm.. Couple weeks ago. Pizza. Pizza should by definition be awesome, so I'm always surprised when I take a bite out of pure suckage. Rarely happens though.
3. There was on another forum a discussion about the advent of android technology (yeah, I know I just badmouthed nerds ), and people hypothesized human looking bots would initially come about because of the sex trade. Then someone mentioned something called "real doll" exists already.. I will say no more.
_ _ _ _

1. How sociable are you in real life?
2. How long can you hold your breath? (please supply up to date information)
3. What's the weather now like where you currently live?

[Squinky]

1. Much more than I once was, but I'm still no social butterfly. Owing to my introversion, I often need to mentally prepare myself for prolonged periods of social interaction.
2. I made it to about 42 seconds just now. I'm so not Guybrush Threepwood. (Though I suppose I could have cheated, since I know how to circular breathe... but that only works for holding notes on an instrument, not actually holding one's breath.)
3. Raaain.

***

1. What's the worst-tasting thing you've eaten in the last little while?
2. How much of Marienbad My Love are you able to read before your eyes start glossing over?
3. If a gypsy brass band walked up next to you right now and started playing a song, how would you react?

[Maquisard]

1. a lolly-pop.
2. As in from boredom? 2 paragraphs.
3. I'd whip out my 20 dinar bills.
_________

1. Do you read manga/comic books?
2. If you could win any award, which would you want, and what for?
3. Do you like flying?