Personal

The stuff about me and my life. The “diary” side of blogging.

Choices

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The Leaky Cauldron has been running an interview with J.K. Rowling over the past week (in three parts: one, two, and three) with questions posed by Emerson Spartz of Mugglenet and Melissa Anelli of The Leaky Cauldron. The whole interview is very worth reading — though full of spoilers, so I don’t recommend reading it if you haven’t finished the latest book yet — but one section stood out to me when I read it.

JKR: …because I think there’s a line there between the moment in “Chamber of Secrets” when Dumbledore says so famously, ‘It’s our choices that define us, not our abilities,’ straight through to Dumbledore sitting in his office, saying to Harry, “the prophecy is significant only because you and Voldemort choose to make it so.” If you both chose to walk away, you could both live! That’s the bottom line. If both of them decided, “We’re not playing,” and walked away… but, it’s not going to happen, because as far as Voldemort’s concerned, Harry’s a threat. They must meet each other.

ES: I remember thinking when I read “Order of the Phoenix,” what would happen if Harry and Voldemort just decided to —

JKR: Shake hands, and walk away? We’ll agree to disagree!

[Laughter.]

ES: What if he never heard the prophecy?

JKR: And that’s it, isn’t it. As I said, that’s what I posted on my site –

ES: I’m glad you put that up.

JKR: It’s the “Macbeth” idea. I absolutely adore “Macbeth.” It is possibly my favorite Shakespeare play. And that’s the question isn’t it? If Macbeth hadn’t met the witches, would he have killed Duncan? Would any of it have happened? Is it fated or did he make it happen? I believe he made it happen.

MA: If everyone would just shake hands and play a round of golf, everything would be fine.

[Laughter.]

Obviously, nothing necessarily mind-blowing in and of itself, but it’s a theme that I’m quite happy that Rowling has been using in the books, and expanding on in interviews. So many of the troubles people face, both on a personal and on a global scale, all just boil down to happening because one party or another want them to.

Obviously, the solution to all the world’s woes, then, is never to want to cause any sort of conflict whatsoever, so I’ll shortly be embarking on my daily routine of laudanum and thorazine to ensure I can do my own small part in making this world a calmer, less embittered place.

Erm.

Well, okay, maybe not.

iTunes “Movin’ On Up (Demrocked!’s Movinunbelievable)” by Primal Scream from the album screamixadelica (2005, 5:00).

Bad Timing

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There’s a guy who works in the mailroom just down the hall from me who greets me every time he sees me by calling my name out in kind of a sing-song fashion — “Mi-chael…!” It’s a little odd, but not really a big deal.

Unless he does it as he enters the restroom, while I’m standing at the urinal. Suddenly, my name is echoing from tile wall to tile wall, and, well, as delicately as I can put it, all bodily functions immediately cease. That’s just not a good time to be startled.

Shmoe.

What’s your funny?

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Another online quiz — though this one (unlike many others), actually gave me a result that seemed pretty accurate: the three-variable funny test.

The Wit

(60% dark, 30% spontaneous, 22% vulgar)

your humor style: CLEAN | COMPLEX | DARK

You like things edgy, subtle, and smart. I guess that means you’re probably an intellectual, but don’t take that to mean you’re pretentious. You realize ‘dumb’ can be witty–after all isn’t that ‘the Simpsons’ philosophy?–but rudeness for its own sake, ‘gross-out’ humor and most other things found in a fraternity leave you totally flat. I guess you just have a more cerebral approach than most. You have the perfect mindset for a joke writer or staff writer. Your sense of humor takes the most effort to appreciate, but it’s also the best, in my opinion.

Also, you probably loved The Office. If you don’t know what I’m talking about, check it out here: http://www.bbc.co.uk/comedy/theoffice/.

PEOPLE LIKE YOU: Jon Stewart – Woody Allen – Ricky Gervais

Humor Test Result Graph

My test tracked 3 variables. How you compared to other people your age and gender:

   
You scored higher than 54% on dark
   
You scored higher than 0% on spontaneous
   
You scored higher than 9% on vulgar

Link: The 3 Variable Funny Test written by jason_bateman on Ok Cupid

(via James)

(And, once again, I’m driven up the wall by the mind-boggling horrible HTML code that these quizes generate. I just don’t have the time to clean it up any more than I already have right now…grrr!)

Bite of Seattle 2005

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End of the Rainbow, International Fountain, Seattle Center, Bite of Seattle, Seattle, WA

A small photoset of shots from wandering around Saturday at the Bite of Seattle. Not my usual onslaught of pics this time…I just wasn’t as into it on Saturday as I am sometimes. Still managed a few decent shots, though.

Okay…who washed their car?

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For the past week, we’ve had gorgeous high-70’s to low-80’s sunshine throughout Seattle, with more predicted through the weekend and on into next week.

So how come I woke up to grey skies, rain, and “possible thunderstorms,” according to Weather Underground? Some fool must have gotten the urge to wash his car yesterday. Everybody knows that that’s the surest way to bring on a sudden burst of rain!

Ah, well…I’ll just keep my fingers crossed for the weekend. This weekend’s the Bite of Seattle food festival, so I’ll likely be wandering around the Seattle Center for much of the weekend, camera in hand. As long as nothing unexpected crops up, I should be out at the Vogue on Saturday night, too — things have been so busy lately that I haven’t been able to get out dancing as often as I like, but I need to get some bouncing in when I can.

And to close (for the moment, at least), a shot I took yesterday at Westlake Plaza of people camped out in the sun on their lunch break.

Lunchtime, Westlake Plaza, Seattle, WA

Acid bath

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The front steps of the empty section of the Convention Center that was being used for the temporary Seattle Central Library were being washed off today, sending streams of water running down the sidewalk. As I walked along, I started stepping over the rivulets, not for any sane (if somewhat stupid) reason like not wanting to get my shoes wet…

…but because somewhere, in the back of my brain, I’d decided that it wasn’t really water, but streams of acid running down the street that would eat through the bottom of my shoes and into my feet if I accidentally stepped into one.

Some days, it’s really hard to remember that I’m 32, and not 12.

iTunes “Auzonomous (Hot Tracks)” by Quinn from the album Roadkill 2.1 (1993, 6:23).

Bring the camera, momo!

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After getting a call from my optometrist letting me know that my new sunglasses were ready to be picked up (I lost my old pair a few weeks ago), I got ready to go. On my way out the door, I looked at my camera sitting on my desk. Should I take it?

I debated back and forth for a couple seconds, then decided not to. As I’m wearing my mocker kilt today, which doesn’t have the big cargo pockets that the original does, I’d have had to strap the little camera case onto my belt, and I didn’t really feel like carrying that with me. Besides, I was just running about a mile away into the International District and back.

I should have known better. It’s some sort of corollary to Murphy’s Law; by leaving the camera at home, I was virtually guaranteeing that I’d later wish I had it with me.

After picking up my shades (so nice to have those again!), I decided to take the long way home, heading down through the International District, up through the Financial District to Westlake Center, up Pine, and then up 8th back to home. It was a nice day, I was in the mood for a walk, and hey — with the sun out, I needed to break in the sunglasses.

As I walked down Jackson through the International District, I noticed that one of the streets was blocked off, and it looked like there were booths set up in the street. Some sort of festival going on? Indeed it was, as I found when I headed over to investigate — I’d blundered right into the Chinatown/International District Summer Festival. Kicking myself for not having my camera, I spent a pleasant few minutes wandering through a marvelous mish-mash of color, culture, and language (one where my fair-skinned, kilt-wearing self was definitely in the minority).

Thankfully, the festival is going on all weekend, so I’m hoping to head that way tomorrow to see what I can get shots of.

After leaving the festival and continuing down Jackson, I hung a right on 4th and started working my way towards downtown. A few blocks up, I noticed police bikes on the street corner, blocking off a section of sidewalk next to a construction site where a building is being demolished. It didn’t look like anything had gone wrong with the demolition, though, as midway down that side of the street were a couple vans, a small crew of people, and what looked to be a fair amount of film camera equipment.

I couldn’t quite puzzle out what was going on, as there didn’t seem to be much activity at that point. There were a couple guys sitting on the corner that looked to be part of the crew, so I asked them if they could tell me what was going on. “Sure,” one of them said. “They’re filming a Chevy commercial.” I didn’t get more details than that — the conversation soon switched to my Utilikilt — but apparently, a Seattle construction site may be featured in a future Chevrolet commercial at some point in the future.

Just across the street from the film crew was a fountain that two teens had stopped to cool off in. As I walked by I looked up, and the guy called to me, “Hey! Good to see you!” Turns out that he’s a guy I’ve seen around town from time to time — I took a shot of him and a friend at the Pride parade — and he was showing a friend from Canada around Seattle. They’d just missed the Underground Tour and were killing time for a while when I came by, so we ended up chatting for a few minutes.

After letting them continue on with their day (which, when I looked back, started with them getting absolutely drenched in the fountain), I continued up 4th, through Westlake Plaza, up Pine, and then up 8th until I got home. All in all almost a four mile walk over the course of just under two hours. Not too bad, and a very pleasant afternoon.

Tomorrow, though — I’m bringing my damn camera.