That Interview meme

[sistermagpie]

Happy birthday--a day late--to dorrie6!!

It's dog city outside! There's a dog party for cancer research in the park and they're now all walking back, tired and happy, or having brunch at cafes. Marigold was wary at first--as soon as she saw the roommate was taking her down streets they don't usually walk on she planted her little dirty feet and said NO VET! But once she got to the Frosty Paws stand she was quite happy with the party. She's now snoring behind the toilet muttering in her sleep about how she was the prettiest dog there.

In other news,

From fictualities:

Probably I'm the last person on LJ to do this, but in case I'm not: if you'd like to play, say so, and I'll ask you five questions, which you then answer in your own LJ and repeat the process. If you don't want to play, feel free to snark at my answers regardless.

1. If you could design your own city, what three things would you include to make it not just livable, but an exciting and vibrant place to be?

The thought of my designing a city seems like a recipe for disaster, but here goes!

Good system of public transportation--including walking
I can't get my head around cities where you have to drive everywhere. The most basic thing to any city seems like good buses, good subways, and things you can walk to if you want. I feel like without that I wouldn't feel connected to the city itself and the people in it.

Free or cheap entertainment
There's a joke I've heard on more than one sitcom where someone will say that New York is great because of all these cultural things you can do. The other person then says, "Do you do those things?" and the person always says, "No, nobody does. But it's there!" That joke always confuses me because I don't know anybody who *doesn't* take advantage of these things fairly regularly. Nobody does everything all the time but people really do go to the theater, the opera, the ballet, the symphony, jazz concerts, outdoor dances, outdoor movies, fringe theater, book readings, museum exhibits, cabaret acts.

Access to adult education
In whatever you want. Really good ways to learn about whatever you want. Language, music, art, yoga, martial arts, sports, mechanics, engineering, cooking.

I guess the principle joining everything is wanting to make people feel like they can go out and carve their own place in a city, where everything is built from the ground up. It's at people level. So nobody would ever feel stuck where they were.

2. Which minor HP character (not the Trio, not the Marauders, not Snape or Draco or Dumbledore) do you think is most intriguing, the one you'd most like to learn more about, and why?

Some of my favorite minor characters have already gotten their say, so learning more about them would just reinforce what we know. But my answer is Regulus Black. I'm pretty sure we're going to get more information about him. I want to know how he felt about Sirius and his family, how he came to finally see his life the way it really was, see the truth of how to be a real man, that sort of thing.

3. If you could be ten years old for a day (and school was out), what would you do?

Here's the question that made me take all day to do this entry. I'm going to assume this would involve going back in time so I wouldn't be suddenly a ten-year-old in 2006 with no clue how to be that! If you asked me what I wanted to do for a day when I was ten I'd probably have said, "I dunno," which is what I think now, but in a good way. I've never been one for activities--I like days where I or my friends just happened to hit upon something that was fun. So I'd probably want to get together and do something that involved walking around, coming up with a fun pretend game to play--maybe walk to the movie theater for something we really wanted to see. Then I'd come home and have some favorite TV rerun I'd like watching, maybe ride my bike some and at night hopefully I'd have a really good book to read before going to bed.

Basically, my idea of a really good day now is totally not very different from a good day when I was ten, with the addition of a couple more things that I've discovered are fun to do since then.

4. If you could perform one spell from the HP universe, what would that spell be?

I would totally be an Animagus if I lived in that world. Of course it would kind of suck if the animal I was wasn't something I enjoyed, but since you become the animal that's right for you I figure I'd get some self-knowledge too, and it would probably feel very much like you were "coming home" in a sense. If you "were" an animal in your basic nature, I should hope you wouldn't be disappointed in it.

5. Apart from music, what's your favorite sound?

Wind through the trees is a big one (though that sometimes mixes with the big bells my mom has hanging up in our backyard, which is nice), and crickets too. I think I'm going to go with the sound of American Crows. If fall has a sound, it's this sound. Crickets is of course a sound of summer, and fall is my favorite season.

Comments

[sistermagpie.livejournal.com]

Your description of the ideal city makes me miss New York horribly. I think that the first one -- good transportation -- makes the second two possible.

Absolutely. I was surprised at how easy the Animagus question turned out to be. When I read the books I think I just wonder why on earth everybody doesn't do it!

And here, questions:

1. If you were going to write your own trademark fantasy epic, who would the hero be and what sort of adventure/quest would s/he have?

2. You're a minor character in a Henry James character. Write your own biting sum-up paragraph description.

3. Did you ever have an imaginary friend?

4. When you were a child, what place in your world scared you the most?

5. What did Sam find when he went over the sea?

[sistermagpie.livejournal.com]

You're a minor character in a Henry James character. Write your own biting sum-up paragraph description.

Err...make that a minor character in a Henry James novel.