Answers!

Questions already -- thank you!!

What are your happiest memories from your whole life? (Limited to your top 10.)

I don't know that I could rank them (or even isolate the "happiest" from a big pile of happy ones), but here are 10:

1) Finding out my first poem was published. (It was "Dancing Naked". Be gentle.)

2) "Will it freak you out if I use the L word?"

3) Walking in Berkeley with my hand on his neck.

4) Those four days before I found out he was married.

5) Christmas in Spain

6) My first day as a real, live, UC Berkeley employee

7) The day Munchkin The Elder was born. (My sister's previous child had been stillborn, and MTE had some problems being born, so oh, man, what that a euphoric day.)

And now ordinary, everyday joys are fighting to be on the list, and they all belong there, so I'll stop here.


What do you want to be when you grow up? Or are you grown up already, in which case, are you what you wanted to be?

I'm definitely grown up already. When I was little, I wanted to be a singer, and I did that. Then I wanted to be a mom, and I sort of did that. Now I just want to be a good, happy person, and I'm doing that.

What would your ideal social/political system for the world be? What rules and guidelines would you have people live by?

Ooh, good, important, hard questions. In my ideal world, so much would be different from the way it is now that I'm not sure my ideal world is possible. That said, ideally, I'd like a modified communism (note the lowercase "c") in which everyone's basic needs were a given, and things above those were based on things like merit, work, differing inclinations, and a gift economy. As for rules, I would immediately eliminate the criminalization of what Peter McWilliams called "consensual crimes" (prostitution, drug possession, drug use), and put teeth into laws against things that actually harm another person or their property (rape, robbery, assault, murder). In addition, I would spend a LOT more time and money, proportionally, on education and oversight for the people trusted to enforce the laws and exact the penalties.

In my ideal world, enough food and basic health care are a given. Education is free to all who want it and are qualified to continue with it. The cost of goods is not just a factor of how cheap they are to make and distribute -- the cost to the environment (including the people and animals in it) is factored in, as well.

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juliansinger asks:

What color is thought?

Honestly, most of my thoughts are in text, so I'm gonna have to say black and white.

How do you deal with procrastinatory urges?

Sometimes, I just give in to them. Sometimes I set a ten-minute timer and let myself procrastinate until the bell goes off. Sometimes I pick something else I'm supposed to be doing and use THAT as the task-avoidance task.

What do you like best about sex with men? Women?

Sex with each individual man/woman I've been with is enough different for each person that this question isn't meaningful for me. That is, sex between any two men I've slept with is likely to be more different than sex with any particular man vs. any particular woman. My brain is a little fuzzy, so I'm not sure I'm being clear.

How tall is your mother?

Shorter than I am, and shrinking with age.

What are your thoughts on how forgiveness happens? (I mean, you may not have any.)

For me, it's threefold:

1) Recognize that holding anger/hatred/grudges hurts me more than it hurts them.
2) Do my best to find empathy for that person. For example, when I was forgiving my parents for how they'd treated me when I was a child, I thought about what they'd been doing when they were my age, and how hard that must have been. The classic example for me, when I was 27, was to think, "When my dad was my age, he had three kids, was in the Navy, and was married to my mom. That's a lot to deal with." Likewise similar thoughts about my mom.
3) Time.

Are guinea pigs any fun?

I'm not a pet person, in general, but I have to say YES, he's much more fun than I thought he'd be.

Whyyyy?

My mother would answer this question thusly: "Y's a crooked letter; if it were I, it would be straight."

Come be my neighbor (in North Oakland)!

[no local filter, sorry]

I've posted here before about how great the woman is who owns the house we live in. She's done amazing things to support us since we got the teenager, as I've mentioned, and she's just basically the best homeowner either of us has dealt with in our many years of renting. (See how hard I had to work to avoid the word "landlady", which I hate? ;-)

Well, she also owns the apartments behind our house, and one of them is going to be vacant soon. There's an open house this Saturday at 11. The place is two stories, with a back yard of sorts, off-street parking, and US as neighbors! What could be better? Nothing, that's what. (We really do like our other neighbors, as well. It's a nice little community.)

The posting is at http://sfbay.craigslist.org/eby/apa/1057205252.html

I'll be off reading for that Bar exam thingy* on Saturday, so I won't be around, but how cool would it be to have one of you as my new neighbor?




*(I can't remember if I mentioned that I'll be a reader for one of our students who will be taking the Bar.)

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I've been working on getting sterilized since last November or so.

Me, to someotherguy: sterilization appointment april 6 (consult, not surgery.)

Him: You know, if America had socialized health care you'd have to wait months for an appointment like that...