What activity, task, or game most brings out your competitive streak?

I’ve never been very competitive. I have been related things before however. I’ve been impatient, I’ve been disappointed, but mostly it’s because I don’t measure personal success just for myself, but rather did I help anything greater than myself improve? That’s what I’m most proud of, not the little personal wins, but the huge towering wins that an entire band of people can claim working together. I rarely have these feelings mind you, so infrequent I do treasure them when they come.

Mostly I don’t follow sports or engage much in game play. The only guilty pleasure I have is Letterpress, but even in that game I’m not lusting after winning, or even smurfing my opponents. I’m much more apt to enjoy a long game where people leave the obviously difficult-to-play character alone, say a lonely Q, Z, or X and spend the rest of the time trying to assemble words to move the game along. In many ways, the way I play a game is a lot like that saying you’ve heard about enjoying the journey more than the destination when you are going someplace new. The destination is rarely as rah-rah as the journey it took to get there. Unless you’re speaking about Paris, in that case, it’s the opposite.

I try not to play with overly competitive people because if I win, they lose poorly and if I lose, they gloat. They are usually poor losers and poor winners. The best response to winning a game is to offer the loser to play again. The best response to losing a game is to offer the winner to play again. Again it’s not about the number of right or wrong, win or lose, but in how much fun you had. Life is a lot like Who’s Line, the games are made up and the points don’t matter.

Do parties and crowds fill you with energy, or send you scurrying for peace and quiet?

I quite enjoy throwing parties and attending them, however it has a limit. There is only so much socialization I can do before it starts to really wear me down. I need a balance, much like the tides are balanced, so if I spend too much time traveling and feeling disconnected I balance that out with staying at home and reading, for example. I couldn’t put on the mantle of the high-pressure socializer for very long before I would devolve into a grumpy, grunting misanthrope. For all the wonders that are other people, hell is other people as well. Take everything in measure, including them. It’s the times when you don’t have to deal with other people that gives you the recharged batteries to put up with other people when you must. The balance must always be maintained.

Pick a contentious issue about which you care deeply — it could be the same-sex marriage debate, or just a disagreement you’re having with a friend. Write a post defending the opposite position, and then reflect on what it was like to do that.

People shouldn’t be expected to learn anything new once they are done with primary education. If they are too old, there is just no way that they can acquire new skills, nor should they. Skills aren’t as important as simply living a quiet life. Be quiet, be meek, hope that the troubles of life just pass you by. If you aren’t special, if you aren’t unique then you will fade into the background and you’ll be safe.

I just can’t continue. The bullshit is just too thick. It flows too furiously. The more I write the more irritated I become and it’s just pure sarcasm. I don’t understand how anyone could live this way. I don’t even.

What are you more comfortable with — routine and planning, or laissez-faire spontaneity?

I like to blend the two together. Having a plan is always a good idea however leaving yourself open to spontaneous events is worth so much more. The best of both worlds after all is a more balanced approach. I am very fond of creating a third option to a duality question and synthesizing my own options in situations. When I went to Paris I discovered that while walking around the city, if you are actively looking for something in particular you will not find it. You will only find it if you resolve that you don’t care to find it and you are tired of searching for it, then you’ll end up standing right in front of what you were originally looking for. So, a plan? Yes it can help, but without serendipity you won’t actually find what you are looking for, not really.

You have the choice to erase one incident from your past, as though it never happened. What would you erase and why?

I’ve written about this before in other posts that were concerned about the past. I wouldn’t change anything about my past and that includes this topic as well. If I started to edit my past then I would no longer be who I am and that would mean that on some level, my life is a sham. Since I can’t live like that, even having the potential to change anything about my past would invalidate my life and shame me deeply in regards to how I live my life today. So no, I own all of those incidents – the good and the bad and I hold them close and treasure them. They all make me who I am right now, how could I be any other way?

The Tooth Fairy (or Easter Bunny, or Santa Claus . . .): a fun and harmless fiction, or a pointless justification for lying to children?

Life is dark enough without these characters to help buffer how dull life could be without them. In comparison it’s better to have these comfortable lies in place than the alternative of dull banality. Children’s minds are wide open and introducing a little bit of wonder into their lives is, as far as my feelings dictate to me, a good thing. The point of these characters is to give kids hope, someone to think about while they are growing up learning how to behave as a good person when they get older. Being good for Christmas, being good for the Tooth Fairy, being good for the Easter Bunny to hide eggs – these things all concentrate on one thing, to be good. If there is no reason for it, then it’s not as easy to explain to kids the why behind being good. The ends justify the means, at least in this case I think.

If you could have any author –living or dead – write your biography, who would you choose?

My biography would be a funny thing, I would need someone with a good grasp on the absurd and with a nice turn of phrase that I could appreciate. Who would I choose? There are some classic authors that come to mind but mostly because they seem appropriate that they come to mind, not because they would do it very well. Out of all the names you could choose, of all the people the one that’s the best fit would likely have been Voltaire. Anyone who wrote Candide would likely be able to grasp my life and give it the tone it deserves for my biography.