I'm Being Interviewed! Does This Mean I'm a Celebrity?

It's the latest goofy fad sweeping the blogosphere: bloggers asking each other silly questions. Ferro Lad's done it on his blog, and it looked like fun, so I told him I'd play. Thus, his questions and my answers:

1. If you were the wardrobe consultant for a TV series that does makeovers (a la that Queer Eye show), and you had to work with Daffy Duck, how would you dress him? Well, given that what I have is not a "queer eye" but a "science fictional eye," I'd have to go with his "Duck Dodgers in the 24th-and-a-half Century" outfit as a starting point. Now, green is a good color on Daffy, and the shirt is fairly flattering to his avian form, so we might as well keep that. The hat, however, has got to go. If that yellow bobble is meant to be an antenna, it's an unwise idea, as it only leaves him wide open to picking up Martian mind-control rays. But if the duck genuinely feels he is in need of a radio-communications device on his head, modern microminiaturization can provide one that's virtually invisible. On the other hand, if that thing's meant to be decorative... Well, the less said about that fashion choice, the better. Perhaps we could simply replace the whole thing with a nice, shiny space helmet. Silver is making quite a comeback in spacewear these days.

Of course, Daffy's biggest fashion blunder has yet to be addressed: his unfortunate lack of pants. While one does have to admire the boldness of this particular choice, nevertheless, there is undeniably something disturbing about anthropomorphic figures wandering around sans trousers. Perhaps Daffy's desire is to show himself off for the alien space babes, but if so, he should take heed of the old adage that less is more. A suitable compromise between concealing and revealing might be to adopt the "Next Generation" look and extend the spandex shirt into a skin-tight full-body garment.

2. What would be your response if you were walking along the sidewalk and a passing motorist not previously known to you honked his car horn in a very 'hey baby' mode? (Optional: substitute whistling construction workers.) I've actually had stuff like that happen to me. The drunken teenagers that cruise up and down the streets here will hoot and whistle at anything. My reaction usually is to startle, because every time I hear a honking horn when I'm walking my hindbrain is convinced that I'm about to be run down by a semi. Once I recover myself, I inevitably try to act cool and ignore them. Unfortunately the panicked start really does kind of ruin the effect.

3. Are missing socks the result of miniature 'black holes' in the time-space continuum, or are they fleeing to an unspecified third-world country in preparation for a bloody revolt against mankind? (Feel free to offer another alternative.) The former theory is substantially correct, although, contrary to common belief, the wormholes created in washing machines and dryers do not generally lead into alternate universes. Instead, they simply suck the socks through into other portions of our own universe. Many of them end up in other washers or dryers, generally in laundromats. (Scientists have speculated that this may be due to the large concentration of dryer-created wormhole vortices warping the local fabric of spacetime around these establishments.) Many others have reappeared on the planet Fleegle, some 300 light-years from here, where they are regarded as signs from the gods, and where an oracular preisthood devoted to interpreting these signs has become the entire basis of Fleeglian society. It should be very interesting to see what happens when the Fleeglians make first contact with Earth and discover us wearing their sacred oracles on our feet!

The third-world-revolution theory, however, is nothing but conspiracy-theory silliness.

4. Who should Leif Garrett face in the next Celebrity Boxing special? Mrs. Garrett, from The Facts of Life. It could be the Battle of the Garretts! Or, wait, is she dead? If so, never mind.

5. Did you hear the one about the Scottish housewife and the Icelandic pony? No, but I am the proud originator of the world's dumbest and most obscure slightly-off-color Farscape joke:

A Pa'u, a Stykera, and an Orican were talking. "I'm dying," said the Orican, "but I have no one to perform the Ritual of Passage for me."

"No problem!" said the Stykera. He whipped off his mask and, glowing brightly, promptly crossed her over to the Other Side.

"Wow!" cried the Delvian, basking happily. "Frell me dead!"

And if you actually got that one, congratulations, you're as far gone as I am.


OK, at this point, you may be wondering, "Gee, Betty, how do I play?!" Well, the way the rules to this go, apparently, is that I'm now supposed to invite people to solicit me for questions.

The rules, as they appeared on Ferro Lad's blog, are:

1. If you want to participate, leave a comment saying "interview me".

2. I will respond by asking you five questions - each person's will be different.

3. You will update your journal with the answers to the questions.

4. You will include this explanation and an offer to interview others in the same post.

5. When others comment asking to be interviewed, you will ask them five questions.

Sounds simple enough, no? If, for some unfathomable reason, you actually are interested, be sure and leave your blog/journal URL and an e-mail address for me to send the questions to you. I can't promise to achieve quite the same level of inspired surreality as Ferro Lad, but I'll see what I can do.