interview memeage

[jrtom]

Snagged from red_frog, who took it from silenceleigh, who uses it to define new characters that she's thought of, so as to flesh them out and make their motivations clear.

I have the feeling that this is the sort of penetrating interview that is nonetheless going to completely fail to illuminate certain aspects of my life. (Then again, I don't have all day, and it's not like I've really done justice to the questions that are here, never mind the ones that might not be. :> )

1. What do you look like, and how old are you?
   
   I'm quite tall, thinnish, large hands and feet, dark short wavy hair. I sometimes wear a Van Dyke-style beard. My face is quite mobile when I want it to be, but I often look somewhat abstracted, because, well, I often am.
   
   
2. Do you have any pieces of clothing or jewelry that you love? What do those look like?
   
   I have a black, green, and silver Renaissance-style outfit that I had made for my wedding: green velvet doublet with silver/green piping and detachable sleeves, black cotton pirate-style shirt, black velvet short pants, black hose.
   
   Jewelry: I don't tend to wear much aside from my hammered platinum wedding ring. Occasionally I sport a silver tie tack that is a functioning slide rule. I have a bracelet which consists of various flavors of green stones (malachite, in particular), but one of the catches is broken.
   
   More typically, I tend to wear jeans (often black) with T-shirts (also often black). I don't wear black as much as I used to, but I'm also quite fond of my black trench coat.
   
   
3. What are your friends like? What sort of society do you travel in?
   
   Geeky. Frequently artsy (musical, in particular). Skeptical. Generally very smart, and occasionally brilliant. Literate, often with an emphasis in science fiction and fantasy. Almost exclusively independently minded and opinionated, and often heterodoxical. Possessed of a keen sense of the ridiculous.
   
   The professional society that I move in--academia and research labs--is generally focused on the identification and exploration of Neat Ideas. I like this a lot.
   
   
4. What was life like for you growing up?
   
   Mixed. Filled with a lot of music, reading, studying, and screaming arguments (mine and others inside the family). Lonely: my family moved around a lot, and I have never made friends easily; I didn't really feel that I'd found a community of kindred spirits until my sophomore year of high school. Until high school, I was pretty close to the stereotype of the skinny geeky kid that is way out in front academically, but more or less completely lacking in social skills.
   
   
5. If your current life more or less burned down and you could keep only one thing or person, what or who would it be?
   
   You had to ask that of someone who just had his first child, didn't you?
   
   In all seriousness, the answer would have to be my wife, Megan. Corwin is very important to me, but mostly in potential, so far: like most not-yet-6-week-old children, he hasn't developed much of a personality so far. Megan and I have only been married for ~3.5 years, but we've been together for just over 8 years, and while I can imagine what life without her would be like (we just discussed this recently, actually), the thought makes the bottom of my stomach drop out.
   
   
6. Is there anyone who hates you? Do they have good reason? (Note: most characters will lie about that second question, but their lies are often enlightening.)
   
   I don't know that anyone hates me, per se. I've certainly been intensely disliked by a number of people (and some of my students, in particular, probably think that they have good reason--I would disagree, though). I've also inflicted some fairly serious emotional damage on a few people, but very, very, rarely intentionally, and I'm on good terms with most of them now (and the rest I've simply fallen out of contact with).
   
   
7. Are you religious? What form does your religion take?
   
   No. You could say that I'm a militant (but not evangelistic) agnostic: not only do I not believe that I have any of the Answers, but I don't believe that, short of brainwashing, it is possible to convince me that a deity such as the Christian God exists and is responsible for the universe as I know it.
   
   
8. What are you attached to? Does it bring you joy, sorrow, or both?
   
   People and places, mostly; I miss my friends that live elsewhere (that is, almost all of them), and I miss two regions that I've lived: the Pacific Northwest/Lower Mainland (what them Canajuns call the part of Canada adjacent to the PNW; the reason why they don't also call it the PNW will be left as an exercise for the student), and, oddly, Virginia. (I find this odd because my allergies are generally worse there than anywhere. However, the very heat and humidity I now find strangely and powerfully nostalgic.)
   
   There are a few things that I'm attached to (my French horn, for instance), but for almost everything I own, my primary concern in losing it would be the trouble and expense involved in replacing it. The major exception to this is my data: archived emails, notes, unpublished research, photos, movies, music, etc.
   
   
9. What do you think of people who don't follow your moral or ethical code?
   
   I don't insist that people follow my own moral and ethical codes in detail; my concern is more with the big picture. (Also see #10, below.)
   
   
10. What is your definition of evil? Good?
    
    Oy. Like red_frog, not going to try to do a real job on this one. A couple of starting points . . . deciding that the benefits of an action to me are of greater significance than the damage that I know that it will do to other people is evil, and making a point to deal fairly and courteously with people that I have good reason to believe I'll never deal with again is good.
    
    I tend to be very slow to judge someone as evil: while to understand all is not to forgive all, getting into someone's head and trying to figure out why they do what they do (which I do almost reflexively: my Devil's Advocate hat gets a lot of use) makes it difficult to simply dismiss someone as evil.
    
    
11. What have you given up to become who you are?
    
    I've not devoted much time to music in the past couple of years, and I miss that a lot; I've also never quite clicked with doing amateur acting (although memorizing lines has never been something I'm good at). Moving down to Irvine has also caused me to miss out on a lot of time with my friends (although I should point out that I've made friends down here, too). An awful lot of money, certainly, although I'm in far better shape than most people that have been in grad school for as long as I have.
    
    I also find it amusing and ironic that I found the local poly community a week after Megan and I hooked up.