You Are Here > People Like Us

20 Questions with Ian

<< < (2/18) > >>

ian, ready to knead:
I think I’d go with ‘be less orange’, as established, it’s the colour of 70s, a lush burst of everything from saffron to burnt sienna that marked the debut of the colour era. He mostly looks like he’s been wrapped like a Coronation Street confectionary. He may noisily ruckle as he moves, like a badly shrink-wrapped a gorilla (not an art to be practiced to perfection, leave the gorilla alone, but some news for Chompsky).

Not a brag, but I was in St Lucia when he was first elected, in the bar with a bunch of vacationing Americans teetering on the edge of their own holiday resort civil war. I date my Beard of Authority (an ongoing source of epithalamic lament) to that holiday. My facial hair will forever be entangled with the election popularistic gibbon. It had almost reached the age of hirsute maturity as he was inaugarated. I feel this gives us some common ground.

In a nod to The Other Place, the tribal nation of the Yaccaffaffla, I did once muse on the Sunny Delight’s appeal to his voters (as a former resident alien, they never asked for my opinion, taxation without representation only applies to aliens – don’t park in Roswell – and DC), only to find that idle speculation branded me a racist. It’s true I have eaten my lunch several times by the infamous status of Robert Lee in Charlottesville. Less of a pilgrimage, more of a sandwich in the park. Can you catch racism from eating a sandwich next to a monument to the leadership of the south, enquiring minds need to know. Probably wise that the statue of Colston went swimming, Bristol wouldn’t be ready for an epidemic of slavery. I should send thoughts and prayers, I’m sure the publication of the Cass report has caused much distress and searching for suitable Nazi metaphors, alas, unicode lacks formal support for the doppelte Siegrune which would have provided a suitable ending for CaSS. I’m sure they’ll work it out, a Nazi fetish isn’t just for Christmas, it’s for life.

So advice for Trump? I’d stick with ‘don’t’.

sam:
Merch:


Having recently learned all about shape and drape, now I must fit shrink-wrapping into my brain [your link again]. Almost thought I'd clicked into a forum bestiary.


Admin & mods, here to service your every need



As for what sounds like a manifestation of Trump Derangement Syndrome, my understanding is that this has its roots in Bush Derangement Syndrome as coined by Charles Krauthammer, who may have been a character in Inglorious Basterds. It's more contagious than Covid.

Is there anything you miss about The Other Place?

ian, gently kneaded:
Shrinkwrapping brings me to mind of the wrongosaurs of Crystal Palace. Finding an entire colony of somewhat imperfect saurians in a local park otherwise famed for its incendiary conservatory (and my wedding photographs, unrelated) is a delight as are more those occasional Victorian paleontological abbreviations that put the wrong in a concrete saurus. Of course, the ichthyosaurus is not a dinosaur at all, rather – as everyone knows – a large fish. I like the fact that dinosaurs are now widely believed to have been feathered, but before we think them friendly, consider The Terror Birds of South America. I wouldn’t have tried to shrink-wrap one of those. Revenge of the Turkey Twizzlers.

Is there anything I miss about the other place? Interesting question, my internet adventure has been random, and one of the delights of the internet is that you meet people who perhaps you wouldn’t otherwise, which I think is a valuable thing (and one annoyance is then when people start to thought-police that diversity out of existence, for what fun is a life of constant unerring agreement). I was never really a cyclist per se, more the functional and practical variety, so no real interest in cycling for its own sake, so a cycling group wasn’t something I sought out, rather stumbled in and didn’t leave. There were some peak moments and it served as a handy distraction activity and I like writing random things for no particular gain or purpose, but like all groups, it shifted over time, and recent unpleasantnesses made the decision for me. If someone keeps throwing their faeces your way, better not to pick them up to fling them back (even if you are a chimp). It’s a shame I don’t have grandkids because that’s the advice I’d give them and they’d surely be thankful.

It is, of course, a little sad to leave a group you’ve been a contributor to for over a decade, but equally, there’s a sense of liberation when you know it’s no longer the right place for you.

To return to Trump, deranged indeed. The fracturer of the American dream and many other crimes in waiting, I suspect if he wins, the less the advent of new fascism, and more four years of tawdry incompetence and gaudy headlines. He’s the merry opposite of fascism’s brutal corporatist grind. Admittedly, the election looks grim, two old men who ought to know better slugging it out like the monsters suits at the end of a Godzilla movie. Won’t someone think of downtown DC!

sam:

--- Quote from: ian, gently kneaded ---my wedding photographs
--- End quote ---


If you saw Hill Street Blues, you may remember she used to call him "Pizza man".


--- Quote from: still ian ---There were some peak moments[1]

--- End quote ---

At the risk of flattery, which can kill a good interview dead, if I could put together a dream forum[2] team, you'd be my first draft pick.[2b]

1. Archived for the benefit of anyone else who has been comprehensively banished (not having your DIY sense) and doesn't wish to download Tor.

2. Forums are for dinosaurs which still walk the earth.

2b. I recently watched Draft Day, Kevin Costner's best performance since The Big Chill.

I'd also pick a number of peeps who probably wouldn't expect to be on my wish list.


And it would sound like music, and the music would sound good

You were expecting maybe a question:

--- Quote from: Rodney King, more or less ---Why can't we all just get along?
--- End quote ---

ian, kneaded more:
I believe I can date my first crush to the delightful Joyce Davenport. Worryingly I note she’s now older than my mother. Well, she was back then too. Joyce or Colonel Wilma from Buck Rogers. I was spoiled for love in the early 80s.

I’ve still not read Inferno, though I do have a paperback somewhere. I like to impress guests with my library. I did plod through the Da Vinci Code but then I’ve also read the Book of Mormon cover-to-cover (I was, for my many sins, marooned in a Durango hotel by a snowstorm). I think the Continuing Adventures of Moroni beat Robert Langdon hands down. Sorry Dan. There’s no animosity between us, we’re both terrible writers, and share the same delightfully grumpy intern, the aforementioned Sophia Langoustine. She’d get a real job if it weren’t for her trust fund. Neither of us would find our ways out of Tuscany without her.

Why can’t we all get along? Everyone wants to be right, but sometimes to the exception of ever being wrong, which can too easily become a fundamentalist pursuit. Then the tribalism, perpetually caught in an approval spiral with your peers, so concerned to step out of line that you are forced re-script reality. That often winds into modern ridiculousness online, and probably warheads and bullets in the real worlds. There's a sunk cost. I try to be wrong five times a day. It's not as hard as people think.

Navigation

[0] Message Index

[#] Next page

[*] Previous page

Reply

Go to full version