Alright, now for this Liebster thingy…

Amyclae recently nominated me for this. Less recently, scponce did, too. Many thanks to both, and many apologies to scponce for taking so long to respond.

I tried answering all 22 questions. They were good questions, but some of my answers were boring. Some were so boring that even I myself didn’t want to read them. So rather than subject anyone to them, I took the liberty of whittling them down to a “best of” list of questions from each.

Do you believe in love at first sight? Why or why not?

I do. I saw it in her eyes, and I felt it in mine.

Favorite fiction novel?

I can’t pick just one. A recent favorite would be Titus Groan by Mervyn Peake. His talent for evoking a scene is otherworldly.

What is the best advice you can give to a heartbroken friend?

Soak it up. I’m serious. Heartbreak is not all bad. There are a whole lot of movies you can’t really appreciate without having experienced it. And books. All the best writing, at its core, is about heartbreak, when you get down to it. What else is there to write about?

What is the author I should know about but I do not?

I don’t know. Is it Paul Auster? The New York Trilogy?

Why do you write?

I like to have written. I like to re-read my own writing later on with distance and objectivity. Sometimes I like it a lot. That makes me happy. I like to have written more than I like to write. Is that weird?

Is there such a thing as too much pie? And if so, why are you a terrorist?

In some of those old movies with pie-fight scenes, there is too much pie. Who has access to so much pie? Those people are terrorists.

If you could elicit one completely truthful answer from everyone you met, with no social cost, what would the question be?

To atheists: Would you be willing to chat over a few beers with me and a Christian philosopher who is just as smart, if not smarter, than either of us?

Who is the prettiest girl in the world?

There are three. My wife and my two daughters.

Do you think having a bucket list is a nice idea? Why/ why not?

If your bucket list is all about you climbing Mt. Everest, or you sleeping with a certain number of people, then no. If it is about you finding a way to provide medical care to those who can’t afford it, or cleaning up network television so parents don’t have to worry about what kids might stumble upon, then yes.

What is a blog I, Amyclae, should follow?

You already follow one from my sidebar. Why not pick another? They’re all great.

11 facts about me

1. I’ve been to Moscow in the winter.
2. It was not as fun as the Riviera Maya in the summer.
3. Neither place was as moving as the Wailing Wall, the Sea of Galilee, or the Garden of Gethsemane.
4. I think I missed what might have been my first (and only) opportunity for a threesome when I just kept walking after taking that picture of those two Israeli girls on that beach in Tel-Aviv that they asked me to take of them.
5. I’m pretty sure Luke Perry thinks no one saw him fall down at the premier of 8 Seconds when he broke into that run to get back to his seat after a bathroom break, but he’s wrong. I did, and I’m not keeping quiet anymore.
6. I still feel like the 90s were not that long ago, though I realize the math indicates otherwise.
7. I would rather stay home alone than go out with people I don’t already know.
8. I felt more at home after living in Poland for a year than after living in Austin for four.
9. I don’t think that coming together in the wake of a tragedy is a uniquely American trait. I don’t think it’s even uniquely human. Ants do it. And that doesn’t make it less powerful. But it does make it less “American.” Let’s stop being nationalistic about it.
10. I hate truck nuts.
11. I love Halloween.

 My nominees

1. Ben Wonders
2. The True Meaning of Feelings
3. Big Dave 1583
4. A Blog Like No Other
5. Shane Bolitho
6. The Collected Wisdom OF Godfrey
7. Snehal Raibole
8. Nerdy Canuck
9. Mike Andberg
10. coming sooner
11. coming soon

Your instructions for what to do, if you even want to do anything at all, are here. If you want to do nothing, that’s fine too.

11 questions for my nominees

1. First off, are you comfortable? Can I get you something?

2. Why did you start your blog?

3. What does blog mean, anyway? Let’s get some clarity on this. Is it one post, or the whole shebang? A single journal entry is not “a journal,” is it? The whole journal is “the journal.” It’s not correct to refer to one post as “a blog,” is it? I don’t think it is. Yet some people do. Am I wrong? Answer me.

4. If I simplify the spelling of words like phoenix, height, and comfortable to match their pronunciations, will you start using my spellings on your blog? You would be typing fenix, hite, and comfterble.

5. What have you written that you are most proud of?

6. Do you ever re-read your own writing?

7. What is something (besides this) that you do really well? Like, I’d be stunned if I saw you doing it.

8. I’m giving you magical powers to fix one broken thing in this world. What will you fix?

9.  Favorite decade?

10. Liebster participants – mostly men, mostly women, or evenly split? Assign percentages to each gender.

11. You get to vote one band out of music history. It’s like they never existed. Who goes?