Preface: After I suggested to Duker that 25 things are somewhat stupid and that we should do Proust Questionnaires instead, he did just that and said as his preface, ” I stole this idea from Jess _____, who stole it from Vanity Fair, who stole it from somebody else, etc. At some point Marcel Proust was probably involved.” Just so you know, I stole the idea from a coffee table book about the Olsen twins. Also, I’m choosing to answer these questions secularly for the most point as I feel that the religious answers would obviously dominate many of the questions and would be to-an-extent pre-packaged.
1.What is your idea of perfect happiness?
Usually this happens at the Foundry or McCoys or somewhere in between Kansas City and Topeka, but as soon as I go back to the way-greater Kansas City area and sit down for dinner with all of the people I love most, I’m filled with the purest sense of happiness I’ve ever known. I’d love for all of my groups of people to be re-uinted somewhere nice in the future. I miss everyone dearly.
2.What is your greatest fear?
Rape with the instrument of penetration being a gun. Terrifies me. Also, after having seen the orphanage, that I will have a child, like it, and it will turn out poorly.
3.What is the trait you most deplore in yourself?
Irrational emotiveness. Not all the time, but sometimes when I get really upset about something I just can’t stop emotions that I can see at the time as being irrational. So I try to just convince people I should be left alone and not forced to talk about my feelings until my feelings aren’t crazy, but you know how people are. They’re pushy.
4.What is the trait you most deplore in others?
Dullness.
5.Which living person do you most admire?
I think there is something very admirable about all of my friends and the people I surround myself in my life. I like people who I feel like we have something to learn from each other. Maybe our next conversation will be filled with silence and maybe it will teach one or both of us something we’d never have imagined by ourselves.
6.What is your greatest extravagance?
Sushi.
7.What is your current state of mind?
Healthy. Lately, I’ve been balancing a discussion I had with a doctor about psychiatry and a slew of readings about Islam, ideas I’ve been exposed to via Big Love marathons, hang-ups I’ve always had with churches, and my understanding of Catholicism to better explore my own religion. It’s nice to look for religion from inside of it. I’m not positive I’ve done that before.
8.What do you consider the most overrated virtue?
Impartiality. I like Justice though, so don’t get me wrong. I just love a little bias sometimes.
9.On what occasion do you lie?
I think in high school I got into the habit of lying to my mom about little things, like if I was going out to eat I would say that I was doing something else, to avoid a fight about something that we’re just going to disagree on. Sometimes, I find myself still doing it, in part because her arguing with me about whether or not I should go out to eat has not stopped and in part out of habit or to make sure I’m still good at it.
10.What do you most dislike about your appearance?
I wish my eyebrows were more feminine, but I could wax them to get them that way and I don’t and they’re not that bad, they just are not-waxed so I doubt I consider it that big of a deal. Also, I would like to lose some weight. But that’s because of clothes. I still think I look good naked.
11.Which living person do you most despise?
I think underhandedness and hypocrisy are despicable. I do not like anyone who relies on these traits to enjoy their own successes.
12.What is the quality you most like in a man?
Loyalty.
13.What is the quality you most like in a woman?
Loyalty.
14.Which words or phrases do you most overuse?
I like to say “so hard.” instead of “so much.”
15.What or who is the greatest love of your life?
Kyle. This answer is also pre-packaged and obvious, but I also believe it to be true.
16.When and where were you happiest?
Some of those early days at James’ house. I felt like I was at my social peak and I knew it. It is some of my first memories of being overall and generally happy. My wedding day and the pre-party, the reception, and the after-party are certainly the most fun I’ve ever had. I was really happy then.
17.Which talent would you most like to have?
I want a better singing voice. I used to have one that was better or at least had potential, but then I only listened to some combination of screamo and Ani Difranco until I graduated high school so it went away.
18.If you could change one thing about yourself, what would it be?
I wish I were once again a prolific poet.
19.What do you consider your greatest achievement?
I had a conversation with Dudley the other day about how I hate this question in interviews. I usually say that I’m a first-generation college graduate in my immediate family and I find that to be significant. Honestly, I expect the best out of myself so in order for me to view something as a greatest achievement I would have to be expecting failure from the onset or doing better than the best that I had expected. I don’t think that’s a bad trait, necessarily.
20.If you were to die and come back as a person or a thing, what would it be?
Something handmade, inanimate only in the sense that it could not speak words on its own behalf, something that warms or adds uniqueness to a room. Maybe folk art. Specifically, a J.R. Dickinson sculpture.
21.Where would you most like to live?
Chicago, Pennsylvania, New York, San Francisco. I am undecided.
22.What is your most treasured possession?
My oldest copy of Alice in Wonderland. I love how it smells like it lived in a house where my grandfather smoked pipes. I love that it was clearly drawn in by my mother and aunts and uncle. I love the memory of the secret thrill I got when I would sneak into storage and look at it before I finally brought it upstairs to read it when I was a freshman in high school. Also, our copy of Lives of the Saints.
23.What do you regard as the lowest depth of misery?
A feeling that your death would go unnoticed. I think there’s a reason that undergoing a process of unexistence is the classical interpretation of Hell.
24.What is your favorite occupation?
Writer. Sort of in the independent historian branch of things.
25.What is your most marked characteristic?
My humor.
26.What do you most value in your friends?
Their senses of humor. As far as I’m concerned, you get one area in which if someone makes a joke about that you are allowed to cry. Mine is animal abuse. Other than that, learn to take a joke.
27.Who are your favorite writers?
Vonnegut, Palahniuk, Hardy, Block
28.Who is your hero of fiction?
Witch Baby from the Dangerous Angels series by Francesca Lia Block in my youth and Novinha from the Ender’s Game series by Orson Scott Card in my adulthood.
29.Which historical figure do you most identify with?
St. Therese Little Flower. Since I was little, though, I’ve always thought that if I was reincarnated, it’s more likely that I am the reincarnation of someone completely unknown.
30.Who are your heroes in real life?
My parents, in their own respects. Michael Crabtree.
31.What are your favorite names?
Abigail Lorraine. Thomas Andrew. I have more names for restaurants I hope to open with Kyle in a pipe dream than I do names for our children. It’s just a fact.
32.What is it that you most dislike?
In terms of things that are not ideas, Olives. Hands down.
33.What is your greatest regret?
In most cases, I only regret what I didn’t do.
34.How would you like to die?
Maybe I’m supposed to say how meaning of what, in which case, I hope I die of natural causes in old age. I also believe that between my intake of trans-fats and aspartame, I will be so well-preserved that I’m likely to go on living at least .01% even when I am legally dead.
35.What is your motto?
“The worst that can happen is adventures.” — T-Rex, Qwantz Comics by Ryan North
“Everything was beautiful, and nothing hurt.” — Kurt Vonnegut
