than other holidays? Have you witnessed the actual moment of the death of anything or anyone? Are you comfortable in drawstring pants?
If someone approached you saying “Lead me to the music,” how would you respond? Is there a name to complete this progression: Rasputin, Robespierre, Robbe-Grillet, Robert Goulet, and…? If you could spend some time with a young Judy Garland or a young Lucille Ball, whom would you pick? If you had house painters drinking on the job, would you provide them booze? Is there anything or anyone that you’d say you are “enamored of”? If you could disappear from your native country and live comfortably in another, what country would you choose? What is your position on the recreational use of drugs, and, if you partake, do you have a favorite drug? Is to your mind the phrase “cruel and unusual punishment” in any way oxymoronic? Can you define “ayurvedic”? If you were in a metal-roofed bungalow in a tropical country during a seemingly endless monsoon rain and were told that you were under house arrest and not to leave the bungalow, which instruction you could barely makeout under the deafening rain on the metal roof, what would be your first response? Will you buy expensive stationery or will pretty much any old paper do for your correspondence? Have you ever crossed a river sill? Do you know what is meant by halberd and halyard? Do you sleep in pajamas? Do you enjoy defecating? Is there hope for peace in the world, all over it and at one time?
Will you be traveling significantly this year? I believe I asked you this before, but let me again if I did, because it is important to me: can you picture those old metal roller skates that had a metal shell or clamp up front under which you slid your shoe and a leather ankle strap in the rear to secure your ankle, the chief feature of which skates was that they had no flexibility or suspension and the wheels gained no traction whatsoever if you were on a surface smooth enough to pretend to skate on in the first place, and which, the wheels, since that surface was generally concrete, gradually wore down to sandblasted-looking remnants of themselves and became even more useless and treacherous than they had been new, so that the net effect of skating on these things was akin to ice skating on concrete? Weren’t those old metal rollerskates great? Would the equivalent today to the old metal roller skate not involve some Kevlar/Teflon-ey wheels, a microchip gyroscope, a laser level, a GPS, a twenty-four-hour customer-service support hotline, a built-in cell phone with a speed dialer to call it, a liability waiver/rider to attach to one’s homeowner’s insurance policy, and a streaming video feed into the brain of the skater of an exciting virtual landscape to skate when the skater just preferred to put on the skates, or think about the skates, and stay on the couch?
What would you say is the essential business of living well? Do you know that Native American tepee rings—the rings of stones that held down the tepee fabric for a tight edge—are still in place all over the West? Is forging metal somewhat akin to kneading dough? Do you depend more heavily on air-conditioning than you think you should? If you could eat but one meat, what meat would it be? In Scrabble, do you consider yourself loose or strict when it comes to challenging competitors’ words? Where on a ten-point scale, with ten being salacious and one disgusting, would you put pornography?
Do you tolerate speech impediments in newscasters? Are you made nervous or content or indifferent by a landscape of red clay? Do you sometimes mistake Germans for Scandinavians? On average, how many times a day do you talk on the phone? Do you know precisely what is meant by an A-line dress? Can you clog? Are you bothered by keys that apparently fit nothing, and will you save these just in case or throw them away? Do you recall what the deal was with Howdy Doody or, like me, do you merely
If someone approached you saying “Lead me to the music,” how would you respond? Is there a name to complete this progression: Rasputin, Robespierre, Robbe-Grillet, Robert Goulet, and…? If you could spend some time with a young Judy Garland or a young Lucille Ball, whom would you pick? If you had house painters drinking on the job, would you provide them booze? Is there anything or anyone that you’d say you are “enamored of”? If you could disappear from your native country and live comfortably in another, what country would you choose? What is your position on the recreational use of drugs, and, if you partake, do you have a favorite drug? Is to your mind the phrase “cruel and unusual punishment” in any way oxymoronic? Can you define “ayurvedic”? If you were in a metal-roofed bungalow in a tropical country during a seemingly endless monsoon rain and were told that you were under house arrest and not to leave the bungalow, which instruction you could barely makeout under the deafening rain on the metal roof, what would be your first response? Will you buy expensive stationery or will pretty much any old paper do for your correspondence? Have you ever crossed a river sill? Do you know what is meant by halberd and halyard? Do you sleep in pajamas? Do you enjoy defecating? Is there hope for peace in the world, all over it and at one time?
Will you be traveling significantly this year? I believe I asked you this before, but let me again if I did, because it is important to me: can you picture those old metal roller skates that had a metal shell or clamp up front under which you slid your shoe and a leather ankle strap in the rear to secure your ankle, the chief feature of which skates was that they had no flexibility or suspension and the wheels gained no traction whatsoever if you were on a surface smooth enough to pretend to skate on in the first place, and which, the wheels, since that surface was generally concrete, gradually wore down to sandblasted-looking remnants of themselves and became even more useless and treacherous than they had been new, so that the net effect of skating on these things was akin to ice skating on concrete? Weren’t those old metal rollerskates great? Would the equivalent today to the old metal roller skate not involve some Kevlar/Teflon-ey wheels, a microchip gyroscope, a laser level, a GPS, a twenty-four-hour customer-service support hotline, a built-in cell phone with a speed dialer to call it, a liability waiver/rider to attach to one’s homeowner’s insurance policy, and a streaming video feed into the brain of the skater of an exciting virtual landscape to skate when the skater just preferred to put on the skates, or think about the skates, and stay on the couch?
What would you say is the essential business of living well? Do you know that Native American tepee rings—the rings of stones that held down the tepee fabric for a tight edge—are still in place all over the West? Is forging metal somewhat akin to kneading dough? Do you depend more heavily on air-conditioning than you think you should? If you could eat but one meat, what meat would it be? In Scrabble, do you consider yourself loose or strict when it comes to challenging competitors’ words? Where on a ten-point scale, with ten being salacious and one disgusting, would you put pornography?
Do you tolerate speech impediments in newscasters? Are you made nervous or content or indifferent by a landscape of red clay? Do you sometimes mistake Germans for Scandinavians? On average, how many times a day do you talk on the phone? Do you know precisely what is meant by an A-line dress? Can you clog? Are you bothered by keys that apparently fit nothing, and will you save these just in case or throw them away? Do you recall what the deal was with Howdy Doody or, like me, do you merely
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