The Interview Game

   Yes, I know I have already played, but that was, like, months ago, and it's come around again, and I couldn't resist. It has morphed a little bit since I played it; generated some more specific rules, which I will mention momentarily. I followed it backwards several levels from a couple of AOL journals I read to see if I could trace it back to someone I recognised, but it has obviously travelled far and wide. I most recently read it in Rebecca's journal, where I volunteered to play one more time. Her questions, and my answers follow. But first, the rules.

   If you would like to be interviewed by me, leave me a comment below. The first five to ask (that I didn't interview last time) will receive 5 personalised questions from me. You answer the questions in your journal, and make the offer to interview the first five that ask you. That's all there is to it. I swear. (Well, a link back would be cool, too.)

   And now, with no further ado, I present to you, my interview with Rebecca.

1) A publisher has just handed you a million dollar advance to write a book. What direction would you go? Fiction, nonfiction, love story, mystery, sci-fi, chick lit <ok thats was for humor, but it works for Nicholas Sparks>, adventure, poetry, ok this list could go on and on.......... your sitting at your computer, blank page staring bold and white at you, what would you write to earn your million dollars?

   Well, I must say this. If a publisher were to present a check for one million dollars (picture me holding my baby finger to the corner of my mouth there) to a previously unpublished writer, who had presented them with no draft, chapters, or even ideas, and said, 'go wild,' I would. Straight to Monte Carlo. The fools!
   That's, what John, about 300 times the industry average advance that might be paid to a previously unpublished writer that showed them a half written, promising looking, piece of work? Four hundred times? I have another strategy I might try.
   I am thinking of dashing off several dozen really, really bad science fiction stories, along with a series of increasingly better written cover letters. Then, I will send them in to a publisher, about one every six weeks, starting with the best (well, least bad) story, attached to the worst cover letter, and working my way through the lot. So every package I send will have a more promising sounding cover letter, and will contain an obviously worse piece of writing. How long do you think it would take before they offered me some amount of money to just go away? The beauty of this scheme, is that no one would ever buy any of the stories, so I would be free to simply move on to the next publisher in line and do it again. No? Don't think it would work?
   I am not answering the question here, am I? Quite frankly, I am tap dancing, because the whole idea of writing something like a book fills me with dread. I currently have no fewer than ten blog articles sitting in my work in progress file that I have put aside to finish later. Some of them are months old.
   A couple of them are just text files with several ideas jotted quickly in them for future development. One or two are articles that are this close (picture me holding up my hand with my thumb and forefinger really close together) to being concluded, except I am no longer sure what my conclusion was.
   They started out like freight trains, but somewhere along the line, my brain threw a switch, and they are no longer going to the destination I had printed on my mental ticket when I started them. I can't decide whether to go back and find the original set of tracks, or to follow the new ones to the altered destination. So they sit on a siding, waiting.
   In another, to start a new metaphor, I know exactly where I want to get to, but I can't remember how I planned to get there. And I'll be damned if I'm going to stop and ask for directions.
   Several of them I just got bored with and never finished.
   And you want me to write a book? One worth a million dollars, no less. Let's just see if I can finish this interview first, shall we?

2) You have a two distinctly different poetry journals. At what age did you discover you enjoyed this form of written expression? Have you ever submitted any work for publication? Poetry.com does NOT count.

   I do not have clearly denoted memories of my younger days. There are images and scenes I can look at, but they are fragments, and I usually cannot place them in an exact context. I know I was a huge fan of the work of Doctor Seuss at a very young age. Heck, I still am.
   Doctor Seuss had a unique system of rhyming. If he couldn't find a word that rhymed,he made one up. Hop On Pop may have been my first exposure to poetry of any form. Many of the Mother Goose fairy tales were in the form of rhyme as well. Patty-cake, patty-cake...
   So, I was exposed to basic poetry at an early age. I don't remember anything about poetry at all again until high school. I am sure there was some study of it at grade school. My mother may actually have some of my old school work around somewhere. I must remember to ask her about it, and look to see if there is anything that resembles poetry in it. In high school, I remember reading Sympathy for the Devil in grade ten English class and thinking how cool it was the teacher was teaching a rock music song as poetry. It was part of a class section on poetry, but that is the only poem I remember.
   Scratch that. That would also have been the first time I ever saw an e.e. cummings poem, and that definitely was an influence on me later. Poetry doesn't have to rhyme.
   I don't remember writing any poetry as a class assignment in school at all. The poetry I do remember writing in high school fell into the category of doggerel and whimsy. Unfortunately, as I have lamented elsewhere, most of it is lost (like tears in rain [I love that line from Bladerunner]).
   It was in university that I started writing poetry in a more serious tone. Not only did I study it in several creative writing classes, but it was all around me. Universities are a fertile field planted with young, passionate artistes. I hung around the edges a little bit, and a good friend of mine at the time helped with a cross pollination of ideas. The results are what you have seen in (not cowboy poetry).
   The Cowboy poetry journal started out as a joke. There was a discussion on the AOL journals message board about people who start a new, holiday themed journal for every holiday that comes along. Someone, who shall remain nameless (ahemme), insinuated, in a rather unsubtle way, that they were simply exercising a strategy to get their journals featured in the weekly AOL Journal Editor's picks on the main journal page.
   I decided that, as a satire, I would start a journal about one of the most obscure and silly holidays I could find, and see if I could get it featured as an Editor's Pick. Someone directed me to a website that recorded every single 'official' holiday it could find, and I somehow stumbled across National Cowboy Poetry Week. I thought it was perfect. I was sure AOL's Journal Editors could not fail to make observance of National Poetry Month in April, and I undertook to get myself featured for Cowboy Poetry. I figured I could just knock off several ditties about cows and boys, and do some linking to other cowboy poetry sites out there, and I was a shoe-in.
   It turns out I had miscalculated on several fronts. First, there is an absolute ton of Cowboy Poetry out there. Do a google search for "cowboy poetry," and you will find about 78,000 related pages (I show up on page four of the results). Second, 'knocking off' a couple of ditties turned out to be more challenging that I expected. Not only does it have a balladic structure, but cowboy poetry has to be about, well cowboys. It is way harder to do than that silly thing I banged out for poetry.com. Third, and this is the one that knocked my scheme on its ass, AOL's Journal Editor completely ignored National Poetry Month. That surprised me. At time of writing, there is still one weekly Editor's Pick set to come out in April, so we shall see, but I don't have high hopes.
   Fourth, because there is a fourth thing, it turned out I am actually enjoying Cowboy Poetry. I am enjoying reading it, and I am enjoying my own efforts to write it. Who knew?
   Poetry will never be something I expend a significant amount of time doing. It is just something I dabble in forfun. That must be why I am enjoying the whole Cowboy poetry thing. It is fun.
   I have never submitted anything for publication.

3) You seem to be firmly planted on the facts only side of life. Things that are mystical, theories lacking in tangible evidence, spirits and ghost antics seem to get you riled at times. Of course it also provides you with good humor material for your journal, so you have to give it alittle credit. Was this a position you've always had, or was it part of an evolution of time and research into these, sometimes popular mediums people believe in, that turned you away?

   I do not have a good answer for this question. I did not have an experience with the church that turned me away. I have always been an atheist. Sure, I have dabbled in religion. I went to church on and off as a child. I once spent an entire two years in Sunday school. But I have always recognised the fundamental inconsistencies within the Christian religion. I must say, they have got it down, though. The whole there is no evidence because God refuses to let there be evidence, because he wants you to have faith shtick was pretty inspired on someone's part.
   I have never had a bad experience with a psychic or a medium either, because I have never visited a psychic or a medium. Just as I have never visited a snake oil salesman.
   Maybe I have just never had a need. There has never been an empty place inside of me that I needed to go outside of myself to fill up. I have never asked myself, "why am I here." I have always simply been able to accept that I am here, and that there does not have to be a reason why.
   Other forms of the paranormal, or mystical, like astrology, tarot reading, mediumship, etc., are no different from religion in any way. They are just people looking for answers. The thought that we are here, alone, and that there is no reason, no order, no purpose, just scares some people to death. They need for there to be answers.
   And there have always been enterprising souls available to provide those answers. A million years ago, a guy figured out that if he put an old wolf skull on his head, danced around a bit, and said some generally reassuring things, he could get out of the mammoth hunt in the morning. Thus the Shaman was born. Every single practitioner of mysticism is descended from that first tribal medicine man. The Reiki provider has discovered that she can light some candles, play some soft music, let her client lay down and relax for a half hour, say some vaguely scientific sounding things about lines of energy, chakras, and chi,and collect seventy-five bucks. Sure beats working for a living.
   The people who espouse the paranormal, however, (besides religion, because they don't need any evidence), cannot provide any convincing evidence to support their positions. They cannot point to any studies which support their claims. They have never been able to trap a specimen of Bigfoot. They also, wilfully choose to ignore clear evidence that what they do has no efficacy.
   The sad part is that my position, firmly on the facts side of the fence, seems to put me in the minority these days. A rapidly growing segment of the population believes in things for which they can be shown no supporting evidence, and they do not care.
   The Shamans continue to eat well, without having to put their own skins on the line baiting the spiked pit.
   In the end, of course, anything I say here is meaningless, because we are talking about belief, and beliefs cannot be changed. The astrologers, presented with 37 different studies that showed no correlation between birth information and personality traits, continue to practise their craft on the unsuspecting. How do they get away with it? Simple, their clients are perfectly willing to ignore the evidence as well.
   Richard Rockley, in his blog Skeptico, recently quoted one of the major proponents for Intelligent Design theory: "The critical thinking and precision of science began to really affect my ability to just believe something without any tangible evidence."
   I don't know what else to say.

4) What do you appreciate more in a person, a good sense of humor or the ability to hold an intelligent conversation with you?

   Wow, I had several hundred words typed out in answer to this question, and I just deleted them all. It is a tough question to answer because I do not think I agree with the assumptions inherent within it. One certainly does not need to be an Einstein to hold forth in conversation with me. In fact, I know an awful lot of people with whom I just cannot keep up. I am one of those guys whose smarts all come from a good memory. I can regurgitate facts and ideas until the cows come home. It is unlikely that any of them originated with me.
   As for the sense of humour... I like to think I have one. It can be a little dry at times. It can be a little off the wall at times. Most people just plain do not get me. Figure this: I do not think Mel Brooks is even remotely humorous.
   So I don't know. Yes, I like to converse with someone in an intelligent manner. And yes, I like to joke around with people. Can I not just converse with somebody humorously in an intelligent manner? Of course, any intelligent, funny conversation is all that much better if the intelligent, funny person I am conversing with is also a knockout redhead playboy model.

5) I really liked this question Carly had asked in my interview so you get it too. If you were commissioned to create a painting that would best represent your life as a whole, what would it look like, what colors would it be, and to which museum would you allow to display it?

   I am not talented in any way in the visual arts. So, whatever the painting of my life looks like, it is going to be pretty amateurish looking. Unless, of course, we step into fantasy-and...
   Give me a long narrow canvas, about fourteen inches high, and thirty-six inches wide. Give me several thick brushes, maybe some spatulas, and a large variety of shades of brown paint. Say, amber, auburn, bay, beige, bister, brick, bronze, buff, burnt sienna, chestnut, chocolate, cinnamon, cocoa, coffee, copper, drab, dust, ecru, fawn, ginger, hazel, henna, khaki, mahogany, nut, ochre, puce, russet, rust, sepia, snuff-coloured, sorrel, tan, tawny, terra-cotta, toast, and umber. We will end up with a canvas covered with random brush strokes of random shades all jumbled together. From a distance, it will look like a homogenous bar of brown. Up a little closer, it will look chaotic and random. Only at very close range will the continuity of threads of colour interconnected along the entire length of the canvas be apparent. They will call me the next Jackson Pollock. Which might or might not be better than being called the next Rabo Karabekian, depending on your point of view. I will sell it to a local corporate customerfor $18,000. Two years after my death, it will sell to a private collector for $832,000,000.
   I told you we were in fantasy-land...