rhetoric! game and match!

[jazzfish]

From sir_alf:

1) Name 3 movies that have had a tangible impact on your life.

a) Labyrinth. Muppets and Brian Froud and Jennifer Connelly and David Bowie and a very witty script. It shaped my idea of what fantasy can do.
b) Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead. My introduction to existentialism.
c) Basquiat. The soundtrack introduced me to Gavin Friday, John Cale, and (indirectly) Leonard Cohen. The movie itself got me into Warhol, independent/artsy films, and scattering Reese's pieces all over the theatre.

2) What's your favorite piece to do on the cello?

The first Bach cello suite. It's expressive, it has interesting fingering, and it's not so familiar that people can necessarily tell when I slip up.

3) What skill do you not have that you'd still like to accquire?

The ability to carry a tune.

4) What artform do you think is the most underappreciated?

"Underappreciated," like "underrated" and "overrated," is such an odd concept. It's basically saying "my aesthetic preferences are inherently superior to those of the majority of the human race." (As an aside, I refer you to Chuck Klosterman's article on the ten most accurately-rated bands in rock music history.)

Having said that, SF in general could do with more critical recognition, and I'd like to see the SF short market become viable again.

5) Have you ever wanted to design a game? If yes, what would it be like?

In elementary school I wanted to write text adventures along the lines of Enchanter. When I was working at Syncad I kicked around the idea of learning Inform for the purpose of writing "Dissolution," a foggy surrealist masterpiece of a game. (Bits of this later surfaced in a story I wrote for one of Ed Falco's classes.)

I've run a weird RPG scenario called "You Wake Up" twice now, and I keep meaning to polish it and try to sell it somewhere. I once designed a simplistic Icehouse game that was mostly lacking in fun.

I've had a fragment of a board game design for awhile now. There are riots that break out in various areas of the game board, and there are police tokens that can move from area to area. A riot can't break out in an area that has a police token, but if a police token is in an area that's already rioting the riot won't stop until the police token leaves. I call this the Daley rule.

---

From psilan:

1) What single object purchased for $25 or less has given you the greatest return on investment?

The first Fluxx deck I bought, in late summer of 1997. It's directly responsible for getting me into every Origins since 2000 for free, and it arguably got me (back?) into gaming in general.

2) Supposing you had the power to greenlight any novel or comic series to be made into a feature film, which would you choose and why?

Grant Morrison's We3 seems to have been optioned already; speeding that along would be good. The 100 Bullets story "Hang Up on the Hang Low" would be pretty awesome as well. I have ideas about neat things to do with Nick Sagan's Idlewild but they're mostly spoilerriffic.

3) If you could be apprenticed to any one person currently living, who would it be? What would you hope to learn from them?

Teresa Nielsen Hayden, and everything. Steve Brust's blurb for Making Book (at the bottom of the page) explains why better than I can.

4) What one piece of advice would you give to a friend or relative who will be starting college in the fall?

College guys/girls aren't any different. They're just high school guys/girls without parents.

5) I take it from your answers to other interview questions that you're not too happy with Christianity in general. Did something happen in your life that turned you off to the faith?

The short answer is "a bunch of little somethings." The long answer is spread over somewhere between ten and twenty years. It's a story that might be worth telling; if you're super-interested, snag me at Origins and I'll go into detail.

I'd also like to observe that I have little quarrel with the things that Jesus actually taught. It's everything built up around it that gets me.

---

And from salzara_tirwen:

1) If you were a fruit, what kind would you be?

Lime. Not in a coconut.

2) Which fictional character should G. W. Bush be locked in a room for one hour with and why?

Ferris F. Fremont (from PKD's Radio Free Albemuth), so he can get a better appreciation of what a powergrubbing paranoid politician is /really/ like.

3) What do you think about when you're driving long distances?

The music. The woman next to me (or how much better this trip would be if there were one, depending). The skyline and the critters. Whether there's a cop in that cut in the road.

4) Where do you want to go but have never been?

Vancouver. Wales. Portland. Rome. Thera. Geneva. Lots of places.

5) I can't think of any more questions to which I don't already know the answers, so tell me something random.

My cat's breath smells like cat food.