scrubjayspeaks

1. Did the house where you grew up have a newspaper delivered regularly?
Yes, the LA Times, daily. Which is something of a wonder, given we were a ways out of town.

2. Have you ever subscribed to an actual print newspaper?
As part of the household, to whatever degree that makes it my subscription. Unfortunately, at my current house, the delivery was so unreliable (I think we had something like six months of credit at one point from missed deliveries) that we eventually gave up. And the newsstand prices have become so outrageous, especially in light of the anemic state of print papers, that it stopped being worthwhile.

3. When was the most recent time you physically picked up and read a newspaper?
It's been a few years now, sadly. My dad used to sometimes pick up free copies from work at the end of the day, when they would otherwise be destroyed.

4. Do you pay for news online now?
No. For the most part, I follow individual journalists to keep up with their work, plus whatever gift links are passed around social media on a given topic.

The thing I liked about print papers was that I got a little bit of everything and could stumble upon interesting things that way. As readership fell, newspapers decided that cutting back on content would somehow save them. So the print papers became steadily less interesting. And now, the websites of papers, even setting aside the paywalls, seem actively hostile to that sort of browsing. Everything's got to funnel you toward the clickiest clickbait parts.

More importantly, though, I've become so disgusted by the editorial choices of many papers (NYT, anyone?) that I have no interest in financially supporting them.

5. Do you have any saved newspaper clippings?
Yes, there are still a few posted up on the fridge. Mostly comic strips. I used to love the comics. Not just the Sunday color ones, but the weekday black and whites. In elementary school, one of my go-to choices at the yearly book fair would be comics collections. Calvin and Hobbes, Garfield, Farside, and Bizarro all got read to the point of total spinal collapse.

Mum probably has more saved away somewhere. We used to have some advice column clippings from many years ago. There was one about communicating with one's children that said it was better to answer your child's hollering to you with "yes," rather than "what." Something about putting both of you in a more positive frame of mind, more open to whatever is about to follow. For some reason, this always stayed with me and is something I do at work all the time. Make of that what you will. :P

1. If you could go back and relive one moment or day from your life, without changing anything, what would you re-experience?
I think I would go back to the day I picked out my first dog when I was five. She was a very young puppy and wouldn't come home with us for a while yet. But we went to the breeder's place and met the current litter of golden retrievers. We were outside under the eucalyptus trees. I ended up lying on my mom's Christmas sweater, on my back with one puppy resting on my chest. That was Sara. She was very sweet and calm even as a little butterball puppy. I would go back and rest with her one more time.

2. If you could witness a moment in history, again without changing anything, what would you want to see?
Huh. The first thing that came to mind was the moon landing, which seems a little plebeian against the full scale of history. For a slightly less specific moment, I'd like to watch a dinosaur hatching and see what the parental care looked like.

3. If you could talk to a younger version of yourself, what age would you visit and what message would you give?
Oof. A fraught topic. If it's just a one-time conversation, probably the best good I could do would be to find myself at 13. I'm not sure I would even need to say anything. Seeing me as I am now, alive and transitioning, might have been message enough.

4. If you could choose one moment that would be guaranteed to happen in your future, what would it be and when would it happen?
Hm, and now we see my chronic inability to imagine the future... Anything I try to imagine feels positively arrogant in its optimism. I'd like to succeed in growing wildflowers well enough that I can stand in my field completely surrounded by flowers waving in the breeze.

5. Pretend you left a time capsule for yourself 5, 10, 15, 20 or more years ago. You just opened it. What three things from your past are you now holding and what age were you when you buried them?
*cackle* All I can imagine is what, say, eight-year-old me would have put in a time capsule. In which case, I am holding an assortment of shiny rocks, dried flowers, and small animal bones little me had found. And probably some now exceedingly stale candies.

1. If you could live in any city in the world, where would you live and why?
None of the above, thank you. Not for love or money. I barely even tolerate towns. If I had to pick a different region to live in, though, I think I'd like the Pacific Northwest--somewhere damp and green.

2. If you could speak any language fluently, what would it be?
There are so many I'd like, some of which I'm trying to learn. Something extinct that I could bring back would be nice. But much more mundanely: Japanese. I still love it, after all these years, and I still wish I could get a better grip on it.

3. When was the last time you rode a ferry and where did you go?
Hm, I think I might have been on a ferry in New York as a child. I vaguely remember that. I would have been about nine at the time.

4. What was the longest plane ride you've ever taken?
Presumably one of the three trips I've taken to the east coast from California. I only find flying bothersome in the airport--dealing with security, the terror of missing my flight, the crowds. Being on the plane, even for many hours, just doesn't cause me that much distress.

5. If you discovered a country, what would you name it?
I originally read this as "continent," which I find a very appealing option. A wandering continent, preferably. Growing up, I was heartily obsessed with the 1967 Doctor Dolittle film and the moving Sea Star Island.

It would depend on where it is and what it's like there. Probably something absurd that only I understand the significance of. When I name fictional places, I tend to insert allusions, but they aren't necessarily meant to be picked up on by others. (Is this a way of stalling while in the world building stages? I have no idea what you're talking about.)

1. Most everyone will recommend a book or two to read, but are there any you would tell people to avoid?

Not really? I've read books that I personally couldn't stand, but plenty of other people think they're great. I don't know that there's anything I would consider so deleterious to my wellbeing that I would warn others off. Or perhaps I've just jettisoned the memory of them because they felt like such a waste.

2. If you take a book on vacation, are you more likely to take something you haven't read yet or an old favorite?

Since I would read digitally when traveling, a bit of both. I like to have something new to try out, but I always have a large collection of old friends to fall back on. But then, I travel so seldom, it's not much of a pattern. I do love listening to new audiobooks when driving, though.

3. Do you read any genres by the season? Like horror around Halloween? Cozy Mysteries in the Winter? Romance in the Summer?

I do like a bit of spookiness for autumn. Mostly, it's that there are certain times of year I associate with books I've already read. That might be because of the content of the story, or it might be strong associations from the first time I read it. So I end up wanting to reread those stories at that time of year.

4. If you read a lot of Fiction do you prefer an author that has a series with the same character(s), or do you prefer stand-alone stories?

I used to (attempt to) read more series when I was younger. The problem is that I end up not wanting to read the last book, because then it will all be over. I get very hung up on endings. (It took me something on the order of twenty years to finally watch The Return of the King, though I saw Fellowship and Two Towers in theaters.) With a standalone, the momentum of the plot is enough to keep me from stalling out right before the ending. I do particularly love loose or jump-in-anywhere series, like Discworld or Wayward Children.

5. Is there a book that you wish you could read again, but experience it like it was the first time?

Actually, I quite want the opposite. I often find it hard to work up the emotional fortitude to try a new story. I wish I could artificially inject knowledge of the book into my brain in advance so that every reading was a re-reading. Just reading a synopsis or spoilers isn't quite the same--I need to know the emotional impact, not just the facts of the plot. It's why I tend to latch onto authors and read everything they've done once they win me over once. On some level, I know what to expect and it's safer to invest.

Well, okay, there's one exception: Alice in Wonderland/Through the Looking Glass. I was obsessed with that as a kid, and I wish I could again experience it in all my clueless wonder. As an adult, I know too much about the references Carroll was making to then-current politics and whatnot, so it no longer feels like a bizarre fantasy.

questionoftheday asks: How do you think you would get along with clones of yourself? Would your clones be able to get along with each other?

My answer: I have thought about this way too much! Like, I have an unrevised novel draft about, well, not clones technically, but alternate universe versions of a person all stuck together because reasons.

In my case, we would probably fight ceaselessly, because I am really bad about despising other people when they share my flaws. My self-hatred runs so deep, it comes out as hatred of others. Charming!

That being said, I suspect we would all hit the point of saying to each other: look, can we all just shut up and cuddle? We are all dying of skin hunger, so let's just...deal with that for a while, yeah? But seriously, no talking right now. After that, we might have a chance in hell of having a real and useful conversation and making efforts to take care of each other. Because who else is going to?