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LJ's favorite meme: 5 questions from ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
mrdorbin
Tue, Feb. 3rd, 2009 04:53 pmYou know the drill: If you'd like five questions, just ask.
1. You can send a ten-word message to your 17-year-old self. What does it contain?
It reads as follows: Break up with Fred now. Pay more attention to Mom. Fred was my then-boyfriend. By the time I turned 17, he still hadn't gotten abusive--that would come within months, though. And the day I turned 17 was the day my doctor chose to tell me that my mother was going to die. (He was a peach, let me tell you.) I went into pretty deep and serious denial. I could have done so much more for my mother than I did. Fear and denial kept me at a distance from her.
2. Feb 3, 2009 vs. Feb 3, 2008: compare and contrast.
On February 3 of last year, I made a locked post here about being single. I'd spent the evening with two couples, found myself feeling conspicuously alone, and fled the scene as soon as I was able to do so without attracting undue attention. It was a tough, tough night. Not much has changed significantly on the relationship front since then.
I am now, unlike then, unemployed. I am further along in the room switcheroo project, though it has stalled.
And we have a new president with whom I'm much more politically and philosophically aligned than we had then. This is an enormous relief to me. I feel like there's some light at the end of the tunnel we've dug ourselves into as a nation, and I"m feeling hopeful about the country for the first time in a long, long while.
3. What are you going to do right after you finish answering these questions?
Wash dishes and consider what I may want to have for dinner. Maybe watch Keith Olbermann.
4. Five hundred years from now, what common 21st-century American practice will be most horrifying to the average person?
I can think of several things: invasive surgery, cigarette smoking, creating non-recyclable products, using petroleum-fueled vehicles, putting chemicals into food, poisoning our water supply.
5. Humanity: are we gonna make it?
That's a pretty large question. Humans are remarkably adaptive. We are also often stupidly blind. I think we'll survive, for certain values of survival. I think that climate change, drug-resistant disease and new, presently unknown diseases, pollution, and war will be our biggest challenges. As a result of these, I expect significant population shrinkage. But I do think we'll survive. I do think we'll avoid nuclear war. We'll continue to remake the planet. We will do nothing to make any of it easier on ourselves. We will probably cause the extinction of many other life forms before we're done. But we'll hang on. We are mammalian cockroaches. Just who eats who in the end will be interesting to discover.
1. You can send a ten-word message to your 17-year-old self. What does it contain?
It reads as follows: Break up with Fred now. Pay more attention to Mom. Fred was my then-boyfriend. By the time I turned 17, he still hadn't gotten abusive--that would come within months, though. And the day I turned 17 was the day my doctor chose to tell me that my mother was going to die. (He was a peach, let me tell you.) I went into pretty deep and serious denial. I could have done so much more for my mother than I did. Fear and denial kept me at a distance from her.
2. Feb 3, 2009 vs. Feb 3, 2008: compare and contrast.
On February 3 of last year, I made a locked post here about being single. I'd spent the evening with two couples, found myself feeling conspicuously alone, and fled the scene as soon as I was able to do so without attracting undue attention. It was a tough, tough night. Not much has changed significantly on the relationship front since then.
I am now, unlike then, unemployed. I am further along in the room switcheroo project, though it has stalled.
And we have a new president with whom I'm much more politically and philosophically aligned than we had then. This is an enormous relief to me. I feel like there's some light at the end of the tunnel we've dug ourselves into as a nation, and I"m feeling hopeful about the country for the first time in a long, long while.
3. What are you going to do right after you finish answering these questions?
Wash dishes and consider what I may want to have for dinner. Maybe watch Keith Olbermann.
4. Five hundred years from now, what common 21st-century American practice will be most horrifying to the average person?
I can think of several things: invasive surgery, cigarette smoking, creating non-recyclable products, using petroleum-fueled vehicles, putting chemicals into food, poisoning our water supply.
5. Humanity: are we gonna make it?
That's a pretty large question. Humans are remarkably adaptive. We are also often stupidly blind. I think we'll survive, for certain values of survival. I think that climate change, drug-resistant disease and new, presently unknown diseases, pollution, and war will be our biggest challenges. As a result of these, I expect significant population shrinkage. But I do think we'll survive. I do think we'll avoid nuclear war. We'll continue to remake the planet. We will do nothing to make any of it easier on ourselves. We will probably cause the extinction of many other life forms before we're done. But we'll hang on. We are mammalian cockroaches. Just who eats who in the end will be interesting to discover.