Making an Attempt to Answer the Friday Five

OK, I am feeling really, really pissed off at Blogger at the moment, but, damn it, I initially logged in with the intent of answering the Friday Five, and I'm damned if their idea of a helpful "upgrade" is going to keep me from doing it! I just have to be careful to say what I mean the first time and not make any typos, because apparently once you hit "post," editing the current post then becomes something astonishingly like pushing Sisyphus' rock: you keep getting it where you want it, and it keeps slipping right back to where it was a moment ago.

Anyway. Right. Friday Five. Here ya go:

1. What's one thing you've always wanted to do, but never have? Visit England. I grew up watching PBS in general, and a lot of Doctor Who in particular, and I thus developed an irrational but deep-seated conviction that London is actually the centre of the universe. I fully intend to make a pilgrimage there sometime before I die.

2. When someone asks your opinion about a new haircut/outfit/etc, are you always honest? I almost never lie outright, but I don't necessarily feel the need to give a direct and unambiguous answer to questions like that, either. If I genuinely think the person is looking for an honest opinion, I'll give them one, though I'll try to phrase it diplomatically if it's a negative one. Otherwise... There are strategies to employ to avoid hurting the person's feelings without actually lying. Changing the subject often works, e.g. "Hey, where'd you buy it?" Often when asked my opinion on an item of clothing, I'll say something like, "Well, it's not something I'd wear, but hey." Given that I pretty much never wear anything but jeans and t-shirts and that I have zero fashion sense whatsoever, people who know me generally don't take that as an insult. Hell, they'd probably be justified in taking it as a compliment.

3. Have you ever found out something about a friend and then wished you hadn't? What happened? Listen, if it was that horrible that I wish I didn't even know about it, I certainly wouldn't want to tell the entire internet, would I? I mean, sheesh.

4. If you could live in any fictional world (from a book/movie/game/etc.) which would it be and why? I think I'd have to say Iain Bank's Culture (which I was initially introduced to in rip-off -- er, I mean, homage -- form in Ben Aaronovitch's Doctor Who novel The Also People, but have since read about in several of Banks' own novels). The setting is a very high-tech one, in which nanotechnology provides all the material comforts anybody could possibly want, and nobody has to work. The basic unit of society is essentially the "interest group." Everything that gets done, from the important to the frivolous (and I don't think the members of this society actually make a distinction between the two), gets done because a group of people who are passionately interested in whatever-it-is gets together voluntarily to do it. There is no such thing as vocation, only avocation. And, man, that is so the way I want to live my life.

5. What's one talent/skill you don't have but always wanted? I dunno. The list of useful things which I cannot do is so huge that it almost seems pointless to single one out...