The Questionnaire - my own answers

So far I've had a couple of responses to the questionnaire I offered in my previous posting and some of their answers were so good I wanted to steal them so, in order to avoid feeling the same about any others that arrive, I thought I'd get my own out of the way. So, here's my offering:

1. If such a choice were possible and meaningful, would you prefer to live in a real or a virtual world? Why?
   A: Real, because that’s what virtual aspires to be anyway (although it would be nice to ride unicorns, to remain at an age you can select for yourself, and not to have to perform embarrassing private functions associated with waste products and other secretions).
   
   
2. You have permission to paint a celebrity in a colour of your choosing. That doesn’t mean you make a portrait, you actually get to cover them in paint. Tell us which celebrity, what colour, and why?
   A: Mick Jagger – black. Black because it’s negative and anyway he sang about it, but mainly because his ‘dancing’ is that of a white middle-class Englishman who can’t dance and also because he can’t sing. Oh, and he’s a ‘Sir’ – ludicrous.

3. What do you think of the word ‘nice’? In what contexts would you use it?
   A: Immensely irritating because it’s so appropriate for so many contexts and stops people finding a more specific, more accurate word. I’d use it when I meant anything but nice.

4. You have the chance to spend an evening with a film star of your choice. Whom would you choose and what do you hope the evening would bring? (Be honest.)
   A: George Clooney. I’d hope all his qualities (and physical attributes) were contagious. (Failing that, Isabelle Adjani – no need to say what I’d hope for.)

5. Complete the following sentence – ‘If I won the lottery and discovered that the prize had to be shared with 3 million other winners, I would …’
   A: … become the world’s biggest serial killer.

6. If you had to change nationality, which would you choose and why?
   A: French. They know how to live, how to relax. They assume that everyone else wants to be French, too.

7. Nominate 3 types of people for a long custodial sentence in a prison that uses painful experimental therapies to ‘cure’ its inmates. (NOTE. Obvious categories, such as bigots, tyrants, traffic wardens, estate agents, bankers, politicians and family and friends of Rupert Murdoch do not count.)
   A: People who drive in the middle lane of the motorway when they’re not overtaking. Footballers who feign injury. Anyone who makes any sort of noise which disturbs me (which is most noises, most of the time).

8. Your fairy godmother grants you a wish. You can curl up in front of the fire with your favourite object. What is it? (NOTE. You can define ‘object’ in any way you like.)
   A: A complicated kit for making a full scale wooden model of one of the great tea clippers.

9. A beggar sitting on a blanket on the pavement (OK, sidewalk, if you insist), says as you pass, ‘Fortune has favoured you but looks less kindly on deprived and desperate beings such as myself. It would be a kindness if you were to redistribute some of your wealth to redress the balance between you and I’. What do you reply?
   A: (OK, I confess I altered this one in order to allow me to make one of my pathetic gags based on linguistic things. Originally, I was just interested in the idea of how people would respond to an apparently educated, sophisticated beggar, but as I wrote it, the gag occurred, so I would say to him …)
   The final pronoun should be ‘me’ not ‘I’.

10. Would you like to be immortal? Why or why not?
    A: I want to cheat and be somewhere in the middle because I hate the idea of outliving family and friends and the degeneration involved would be intolerable but, on the other hand, I have huge curiosity about everything so I want to know what happens.

11. What music would you play through loudspeakers at night outside the house of someone you disliked intensely?
    A: Mozart’s Queen of the Night, sung by Florence Foster Jenkins. You can hear it at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MM6qntPpyZ0

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