The interview

Lissa, of Stuff and Junk, being a professional television, um...person, has decided to put her mad interviewing skillz to use making the lives of other bloggers miserable. I, who mock her unfortunate linkage disability by my very existence, could not resist, and so am saddled with the unenviable task of pouring out my heart and soul in response to five questions. They are as follows:

OK Mr. Wiseacre,

Welcome to the chamber of DOOOOOOM! Or Lissa's five questions:

1) You have a chance to taste the world's top fifteen beers at home in one
week or travel to an exotic land. Which one do you choose and why?

2) Tell us about your ideal job?

3) You have a chance to fulfill one wish on your list, which one do you
pick, and why (yes you can do more than one if you MUST)?

4) Tell us about one regret in your past and if you had a chance to change
it would you?

5) Choice of a) or b) Have you experienced a defining moment in your life,
or what is your best memory of an event that incited change in your life?
Explain.

Have a great time with these!


1) I see you have decided to start me off with some soft toss. I appreciate it. The short answer to number one is, of course, "are you freaking nuts?" The whole answering a question with a question faux pas aside, the short answer is not really why we are here, is it? Therefore, the long answer follows.
   The first option is to stay at home and try fifteen of the world's top beers. That brings up the whole issue of how you determine what the world's top beers are. If you go simply by the most popular brands, the top fifteen list would be populated by names like Asahi, Carlsberg, Corona, Heineken, and Kirin. All of those brands are in the top 10 best selling beers in the world, with Budweiser, 'The King of Beers' sitting on top of the heap. Expanding the list to fifteen allows even Bud Light to sneak in. Quite frankly,I have tried all of those, and...meh.
   I am sure, however, that Lissa was thinking differently. She intended to offer me the choice of trying the world's fifteen best beers. So, what are they? Here is one list of top beers. Here is another. They overlap a little bit. They are also Americentric. If there were more European representation on the list, I am sure it would look a little different.
   OK. For the sake of argument, let's pick one list. Do I want to sit at home and try a bunch of different beers? Or, do I want to travel to an exotic country, where I could, if I so chose, try a bunch of different beers?
   Which takes us back to the short answer. Next question?

2) OK, so that's not soft toss anymore. Girlfriend's playing for real now. My first thought? I would like to have been the one who applied Cleopatra's nipple rouge. On second thought, perhaps not. A simple, involuntary, vascular reaction, and it could have been, "off with his head!" if you know what I mean.
   When I started thinking about this question, the lyrics to an old, psychedelic-era song popped into my head. The chorus of Traffic's, The Low Spark of High Heeled Boys goes:

The percentage you're paying is too high priced
While you're living beyond all your means
And the man in the suit has just bought a new car
From the profit he made on your dreams...

   Obviously, my ideal job would take me out from under the thumb of that 'man in the suit.' I would like to work for me. Perhaps as a writer. I know, I know, there are already more of those than the market can support. I did not say it was a well thought out plan.

3) How come you did not offer me bonus points for mentioning world peace? Jendo got bonus points. Hardly fair.
   So, screw world peace. Pipe dream anyway. We are an antagonistic bunch of assholes, we humans. The Chinese hate the Japanese. The Greeks hate the Turks. The Arabs hate the Jews. The Irish hate the...uh, Irish. World peace just ain't happening.
   I had to think about this one some. If I had the chance to fulfil one wish on my list, I would have to start a list then, wouldn't I? I mean, I have a fabulous wife, a bright, precocious son, the continued use of all ten fingers and toes...what more could I ask for? We have a friend, the mother of one of Matthew's school chums, who was recently diagnosed with ALS (Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis), or Lou Gehrig's Disease. In less than six months, she went from living a normal, everyday life, to living in a wheelchair, with the knowledge that her life expectancy is 3-5 years. So, what do you want I should wish for myself?
   OK, so I have to wish. Thinking back over my lifetime, one of the things I see as being unfulfilled potential is the space program. We went to the moon when I was four. Now I am forty, and we are having difficulty breaking orbit, for Christ's sake! Thirty-six years ago, the human race was able to send a man to another celestial body using oversized tin cans and computers less advanced than some of today's universal remote controls. The technological progress we have made since nineteen sixty-nine in astounding, yet we cannot even take the next step, and get a man to the next closest planet in line.
   We are a rapidly expanding infestation on this little ball of rock, and one day soon we will reach the limit of mother earth's ability to sustain us. There are two alternatives. We will expand into space, or we will die. My wish is to see mankind exploiting our solar system in my lifetime. There.

4) Eye-yi-yi! Regrets? Yeah, I probably have some, but I choose not to dwell on them. I am a real 'take it as it comes' kind of guy. Sure, there are things I regret doing or saying, but they are done, or said, and over with. Ain't no going back and changing them, now.
   I know, I am not playing along. OK, there was this time when I was six... I was playing T-ball. It was the final game of the season, bottom of the last, bases loaded, two out, little Paul at the bat. The coach came up to me and said, "hit the ball down the third base line, and run to first base." I hit the ball down the first base line, and ran to third. Three down, game over, we lose. Kinda set a tone, you know?

5) Lissa's been sending me e-mails, trying to light a fire under my butt. I guess I have been taking too long to answer these questions. The truth is, I have been stuck on this one.
   Sure, I have had my share of interesting, funny, sad, dramatic or tragic experiences. Anyone who gets this far has. One in particular those who really know me could probably point to as being 'life altering.' (I don't mean to be cryptic, but it is not something I am prepared to talk about here.) But, how 'defining' or 'life altering' was it? How can I know? There is no way to say how my world would have unfolded had things happened differently. Things might have ended up much the same as they are now, or I might have become a completely different person. Thinking about it is wasted time and energy because, well, because things happened the way the happened, I am who I am, and time machines do not exist, so there is no way of changing it.
   If you want to split hairs, every single moment of your life is a defining moment. We make a million little decisions every day, most of them totally unconsciously. I had peanut butter on my toast this morning, instead of jam. Would my day have gone differently if I had chosen the jam? Probably not, but you never can tell. I went to the post office before the grocery store today. Who knows what might have happened to me if I had done it in reverse order. As I look back over my life, I have many memories that stand out. Can I point to any of them and say they changed the course of my life? No, not one. Or, yes, all of them.


   As these things go, now that I have participated, I am required to propagate. If you would like me to interview you, drop me an e-mail, or leave a comment here, and I will send you a list of five questions designed specially for you.