You Look Like A Nail of Ottawa, ON asks: If you could have a summer home anywhere, where would you want it to be?
Oh, you mean my beach house? It’s on top of a mountain.
You Look Like A Nail of Ottawa, ON asks: You know that episode of Friends where we find out Ross has a card with five names on it? Right. What five names would go on your card?
There need be but one name: Katelin.
You Look Like A Nail of Ottawa, ON asks: What movie which never got made would you most like to see?
I skipped answering this question earlier to try and give myself time to settle the barrage of thoughts that were going through my mind with respect to this question. Ultimately I have concluded that it is impossible for me to put to paper everything that this movie would encompass. This movie would be a meld of hilarity, ridiculousness, genius, cynicism, trickery, debauchery, and plenty of other adjectives that I can’t be bothered to list. Essentially, this movie would be a formatted brain dump and would not be suitable for some viewers.
Just to humor YLLAN: American Psycho 3; Patrick Bateman returns as a Zombie (but a handsome one) and kills that stupid bitch who supposedly killed him at the beginning of American Psycho 2. Bateman would then do the world a favour and go back in time to reverse the creation of American Psycho 2 and kill the chick from That 70’s Show that played his replacement (thus ensuring no possibility of a future sequel). Oh, and Dorsia wouldn’t be the place to eat–nobody goes there anymore. It’s all about Dorsia II.
You Look Like A Nail of Ottawa, ON asks: If you could change any one historical incident, only to return to a present changed forever into a horrible mockery of the world you knew, Twilight Zone style, what historical incident would you change?
I’d give the Nazi’s WWII. Just to see.
You Look Like A Nail of Ottawa, ON asks: What was the last book (fiction only, no reference books) that you read?
The latest fiction book I have read, and am, in fact, currently reading, is American Psycho by Bret Easton Ellis.
In American Psycho, Bret Easton Ellis imaginatively explores the incomprehensible depths of madness and captures the insanity of violence in our time or any other. Patrick Bateman moves among the young and trendy in 1980s Manhattan. Young, handsome, and well educated, Bateman earns his fortune on Wall Street by day while spending his nights in ways we cannot begin to fathom. Expressing his true self through torture and murder, Bateman prefigures an apocalyptic horror that no society could bear to confront.
You Look Like A Nail of Ottawa, ON asks: Who is your favourite character on Buffy: The Vampire Slayer? You’re allowed to split this up into pre-season 6 and post-season 6 if desired.
This question is an easy one for me. I only really know of one character on Buffy: The Vampire Slayer and it happens to be Buffy, who I gather is a vampire slayer of some sort. Because I only know of the one character, this character wins the “favourite character” award by default. Congratulations, Buffy.
You Look Like A Nail of Ottawa, ON asks: If you could have lunch with anyone, alive or dead, who would you have lunch with?
Jesus Christ. (He could probably even get us a table at Dorsia.)
This morning I started a post about how stale my blog has been over the last 12 days. I started a post about how I’ve been through this cycle before, and it has been posted about before, with the explanation that I just didn’t have anything to post about.
Enter You Look Like A Nail. My a fortunate coincidence he has posted a list of questions to be answered by myself. Normally when e-mails of similar style go around I immediately delete them–those who know me well know that I have a strong dislike for blindly forwarded e-mails. If I wasn’t so dry of blog topics I would probably regard these questions in the same way, but it reminded me of the Ask Ryan section of my web log (side note: I’ve noticed that the section link doesn’t work correctly. I’ll fix that tonight.)
So here’s the latest entry of Ask Ryan.
You Look Like A Nail of Ottawa, ON asks: If you could have any job, without consideration of requirements, experience, or cash flow, what would you be doing?
“Well, I would invest half of it in…mutual funds, and give the rest to my friend, Saheib, in securities.”
That answer doesn’t work when the question is worded like this.
My job would be a collector. I would collect mis-shaped or otherwise faulty manufactured food and snack items, such as oblong Smarties, boston cream donuts without the filling, and packages of individually wrapped Life Savers that contain an very uneven ratio of cherry flavoured candies to any other flavour. These are the types of items we all encounter every day and we notice them, but we shouldn’t have to. Really the job extends to, what is effectively, a Quality Assurance Engineer for the People. Maybe it’s even an elected position.
Let me throw this question out to the rja.net readership: what would your job be?
I’ll answer one question every indeterminate time period until all 8 are done, at which time I will select another web logger to answer the same questions. Each question will be addressed in its own post and will, hopefully, be more well thought out than this. Suddenly I’m tired.
I think what I’ll do is keep the AR posts on the front page for a couple of days before they go exclusively in the AR section.
Alex A. of Kingston/Toronto, ON asks: How do you want to spend your retirement?
This is one of those questions that I had given zero thought until it was posed. (That’s my way of warning you that I haven’t fully thought this through, yet.)
I hope that my retirement will not be an escape from my career. By that I mean, I hope that I am lucky enough to really enjoy my career, from beginning to end, and that I do not fall into the trap of many today who count down the days to its end. I suppose, if I think about it, I’m sort of in the latter case right now; inspiration enough for me to make a change? We’ll see.
I would like my desire to retire to be driven by my family; more specifically, to create time for me to truely share in the lives of those I love in the latter years of my life. Hopefully my parents will still be around, as well as my wonderful wife (who I am not, as of writing, married to, engaged to, or even dating yet), our child(ren), and maybe grandchild(ren). The point of me sharing all of that: I don’t expect to retire to the Bahamas or Hawaii; I expect to retire with my family.
Things may not work out this way and, in fact, I may not want them to. When, and why I retire will be largely affected by my wife so things may be different. It isn’t even fair for me to say that this would be the perfect retirement because of unknown factors (for example, if I even get married, and have kid(s)). I suppose I could paint a perfect retirement picture but it would be very, very vague.
So, coming back to your original question: I want to spend it with family, first and foremost. Oh, and I’d like to have a small job of some kind. Be it teaching the occaisional night course at a local college, or acting as a consultant. Basically just a little something to keep my mind active, and to give back.
Stephanie C. of Toronto/Hamilton, ON asks: What are your plans for summer?
Well, I hope I’ll be working full-time before the summer beings so my plans won’t be overly dramatic. No backpacking in Europe, or interesting summer job (hopefully my full-time job will be interesting). But I can say that I will be attending this year’s NASCAR Nextel Cup race at Watkins Glen International. Last year I did not attend the race because good ol’ A was getting married, and I wouldn’t miss that! (Alex, the answer is “no”.)
Apart from that, I have no real plans or expectations. But hey, Stephanie, what would you say about some camping?
I’m going to play a little bit of catch up with the Ask Ryan questions, seeing as there’s nothing else to do at 3 a.m.
Amy L. of Toronto, ON asks: Ryan, what is your favorite Family Guy quote?
I cannot pick a favourite. Really, I can’t. I have an appreciation for every episode and the individual lines and gimmicks from each episode. Those who know me have certainly noticed the frequency that Family Guy is reference in my every-day life. While I cannot pick a favourite line in general, I can pick a favourite line under many specific circumstances.
Right now, for example, I’m reminded of the episode when the Griffins become their own reality TV show. At the end you see Meg writing in her journal on a computer which is then edited (unvoluntarily) by Stewie. Yes, I also want to KILL THEM ALL.
Wait…what? Who am I killing now?
Ash from unknown parts of Oregon asks: Ryan, do you prefer .5 lead or .7 lead when using mechanical pencils?
I have to question the inspiration of such a question. I have spoken of, and will continue to speak of, the great benefits of the Pilot G2 but I have never mentioned my preferences with regards to pencils. The reason for this is simple: I am not a pencil person.
Even through math classes in high school I avoided using pencil and the reason isn’t clear but I think it is, like the guitar, a reason of feeling. Writing with a pencil can feel either: a) like you are scratching a surface that is quite bothered, and very resistant, to your attempts; or b) smooth as glass, with absolutely zero feedback as to whether your authoring attempt was successful. Both of these feelings are uncomfortable to me which is also why I cannot use a very fine tipped pen (too scratchy) or a foutain pen (too smooth).
Then there is the issue of a traditional pencil versus a mechanical pencil. Obviously, in this case, the question refers to a mechanical pencil. Given the choice, I’m not sure which type of pencil I would select. A traditional pencil has a sturdier structure to support the graphite, however it’s feel is inconsistant and the structure is not reusable. A mechanical pencil solves the consistancy and reusability issues, but sacrifices graphite strength to achieve this. Being a pen user, I have not experienced pencil enough lately to make a proper selection.
Regardless of the above issues, I have not yet answered the question. The answer: I prefer a 0.5 mm lead size for a mechanical pencil.
That’s it for today kids!
I had the idea to start an FAQ sort of section to the blog recently but I completely forgot about it until Alex’s comment to my non-update. Don’t worry–you haven’t been missing out on this section for very long (recently in this case means the past couple of days). I’ll answer the two questions Alex posed in her comment, ignoring the rest of the comment so as to not wear this section out on its first post.
Question 1: Why you stopped wearing your fedora.
The first time I read this I must’ve added a word and a question mark because I honestly thought this was a question. Anyway, I stopped wearing my fedora for primarily three reasons:
I would definitely own another one. If I wasn’t so tired I would write about how I came to get my fedora.
Question 2: If you could play a musicial instrument what would you play and why?
The Piano. I think that I would find wind instruments to be a bit stressful, especially in the beginning: the majority of your energy is used in moving air into the instrument. And I do not enjoy playing string instruments: the feel is distracting, and the indiscrete nature of strings scares me. The piano is an instrument that I know I can enjoy playing, and play relaxed.
I had a musical keyboard (I guess you’d call it) as a young fellow. Whilst I wasn’t very skillful with it, I was able to play your typical children’s songs and I enjoyed doing so (rather than playing with the weird sound effects). This keyboard was a gift from my grandmother whom I don’t see often (as she lives in Nova Scotia), so it also held meaning to me. So I think the piano is more comfortable for me at a subconcious level because of this connection.
Chopin, who was a pianist, is one of my favourite classical artists. I am not at all a conossiuer of classical music but I can honestly say that what I’ve heard from Chopin has topped the list for me.
And finally I would have to say that, recently, Taylor Hanson has added more inspiration for me with regards to playing the piano. I can remember watching the Late Show with David Letterman when Hanson was on to perform Thinking of You to promote 3 Car Garage. I had heard Thinking of You many times before but this performance was the first time I really noticed the piano solo. It’s not at all a difficult or very impressive solo but I did, and still do, really enjoy it. Even more recently, I think the piano work in Crazy Beautiful is also very great and very inspiring.
I guess that ends the first installment of Ask Ryan. Future questions can be passed along via comments or e-mail.
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