It is loneliness that makes the loudest noise. This is true of men as of dogs.

May 21: hark back
To hark back is to remember history, which is the lesson that one of my favorite teachers tried to delicately share with me--while at the same time attempting to keep my classmates from burning each other's tails off and other such nonsense. I was the lucky one--I still remember.

---

1. You are walking down the road and you look down. There is a bug. Do you step on it?
   depends what sort of bug it is. Do we have a personal history? Have his people disrupted my people? Also, how big is it? And what's its constitution? Squishy, crunchy, none of the above? There are lots of things to consider; I might need to sit down for a moment.
2. What is one fantasy that you want to come true more than any other?
   being happy, I suppose. That seems nice.
3. Someone knocks on your door. Do you look out the window to see who it is before you open it? Do you open it regardless of who it is?
   my front door is at the top of a set of wooden stairs that are virtually impossible to climb without making significant noise; if you're here, I will have heard your approach. If I'm not expecting you, you can be damned certain that I'll be looking through the peephole before I'll unlock that door. Under the circumstances (the neighborhood, the neighbors!, the dudes in pickups behaving poorly...), it's a sensible course of action.
4. Have you ever eaten Play Doh?
   not that I recall
5. What was your favorite Saturday morning cartoon as a child and why?
   Bugs Bunny (or whatever that conglomeration was called). It's easier to explain why I didn't like the other offerings--robots, machines that turned into other machines, "little kid" or girly crap, religious propaganda...all that stuff was boring, insulting, stupid, or due to be repeated the following morning. That rabbit had depth.
6. Are you a "people watcher"?
   totally. It's one of the things I'm best at, if it's possible to be good at that in a non-creepy way.
7. I have a bowl of fruit. There are apples, oranges & pears. You help yourself to one. Which one do you choose?
   as always: it depends. If the pears are soft and almost too-ripe, I'll take one of those. If not, and the apples are Golden Delicious and almost too ripe (yellow/pink and verging on mushy-soft), I'll take one of those. If not, I'll take an orange--but only if they're overly large, have thick peels, and are room temperature.
   I'm kind of picky about fruit.
8. What is your biggest pet peeve in the blogging world?
   anonymous comments from condescending twerps who troll the 'net on Sunday evenings looking for keywords upon which to pounce.
   No, seriously: lurkers who never bother to comment. If you like what I'm doing well enough to read it regularly, it wouldn't be inappropriately forward of you to drop a line once to give an upward thumb. Or something. I'm not looking for equal time (and I'm not really offering it, to tell the truth) but I sometimes have a hard time imagining that I'm typing this for anyone other than The Cat and The Wall.
9. What is one religion that you could just never see yourself joining?
   sorry, my brain just doesn't work that way.
10. What word do you use far too often?
    "fucking". Alas, I very rarely use it as a verb.
11. How long do you spend in the shower?
    depends on my purpose and location. This morning, before work, I was in and out in maybe 10 minutes. Tonight, after an odd workout, it was probably closer to 20, maybe 25 minutes. At my parents' house when they're not home to squawk about the water, I can easily be in there for a half hour, 45 minutes. (They have an outstanding guest shower re: water pressure, and also a comfortable tub.) For some reason, I'm usually super speedy at The Cat-Beast's. Probably because I've typically managed to forget some major component of the shower experience, like body wash or conditioner. Or socks to wear afterward (i.e. I've packed zero socks, in the winter). I tend to think of their place as "home, northwest" and forget that I don't have supplies of everything on hand...yet....
12. If you were to write a personal ad about yourself, what would it say?
    "please don't bother."
13. Your favorite flavor of soup is...
    a homemade twist that I make that's sort of French Onion meets Beef Noodle. Can you guess the ingredients? That's right: beef, noodles, very heavy onions. Garlic, too. Very occasionally water chestnuts. Beef stock, of course. And nothing else.
14. You are sitting on a bench in the park and a bug walks in front of your feet...
    ...and I cycle back to my answer for number one. How strange!

[stolen from The Cat, who got it here; the title quotation is by Eric Hoffer]