Somewhat, In the Hot Seat

You may recall a while back that I was going top start a bi-weekly feature here on this site called In The Host Seat. Do you remember that? Yes? No? Well I do. I started with the infamous Habid and then didn't get around to doing another one because real life interfered with my fun life as it so often does. Hence the Hot Seat Feature got put on the back burner where I left it simmering until it almost evaporated away. Until now. I sent out a slew of email invites for personal and web friends to participate and the response has been great, so look for this to be a real bi-weekly - or every other Wednesday - feature from this point forward. I borrowed many of the questions from the famous Bernard Pivot questionnaire most well know from the show, Inside the Actor's Studio. I find them to be very interesting and revealing questions. Other questions are pretty general and are things we all typically ask folks. If you have suggestions for questions (man did I just open this up for weirdness or what?) or would yourself like to participate drop me a line and let me know. I make no promise that your submitted questions will be used. My goal with this feature is for folks to get to know each other and to have fun. Now, without further APU... please welcome my web friend from across the big pond, Somewhat Muchly to the Hot Seat. She was the first to reply to my invite. In fact she replied to my email a few minutes after I sent it and had her answers to me that evening! Somewhat and I met over a year ago through Theme Thursday and have been web friends ever since. She is well known for her photos of cemeteries and flowers and in fact she coined the term Flower Porn.

WB: So, Somewhat what are your favorite three TV shows?
SM: The Simpsons. Must I choose any others? Okay, The X-Files and Buffy, but not the last couple of series in either. One of the things that most stuns me about The Simpsons is how they keep coming up with both the funny stuff and the clever stuff, season after season.
WB: Woo hoo The Simpsons and Buffy and X-Files! It's no ownder we get along. We could have a pretty sweet butt-numb-a-thon together!

WB: When and where were you born?
SM: In Sheffield, in the north of England, in 1972.

WB: What was your childhood like?
SM: I’m the oldest of three born very close together, so I had to be pretty self-sufficient while Mum was busy with the babies. I learned to read very early and spent a lot of time hiding with books. I also spent a lot of time being lectured about God and how I was a sinner going to hell. That part wasn’t so much fun.

WB: What is your favorite childhood memory?
SM: Going to stay with my Gran and Grandad on my own when I was about four, and being allowed to sit by the open fire in my pajamas and eat cake *after* I’d cleaned my teeth. They were my favourite pajamas with parrots on them, and my Grandad was my favourite person in the world.

WB: Where do currently reside (general geographic area)? Is it where you really want to be or would you like to be living someplace else? If so, where?
SM: I live in London, England right now; in September, I shall be moving to the middle of nowhere in Brittany, northern France, to live in the house we’re restoring. This has been the dream of myself and my husband for the last two years; I just hope our dreams come true.

WB: What person, or what group of people has most influenced your life?
SM: I would have to say St. Paul. If he’d been a bit less of a misogynist and a lot less of a salesman, the Christian church would have been very different, and therefore my parents would have brought me up in a very different way.

WB: What do you do for the Shitty Little Job (SLJ) and do you love or hate it?
SM: Currently I work for myself, selling craft supplies via the internet. I love it. Previously I have had many SLJs in offices that I have absolutely hated, and quitting the last one knowing I would never go back to that scenario was one of the best things I’ve ever done.

WB: What profession other than your own would you like to attempt?
SM: When we move to France I’m hoping that we’ll become almost self-sufficient in fruit and vegetables. So I guess I could say gardener for this one.

WB: What profession would you not want to attempt?
SM: Anything that involves being in an office in a suit taking orders from some pointy-haired boss.

WB: What are your hobbies and interests?
SM: Photography, books (reading them, obviously, but also buying them and rearranging them on my shelves and generally loving them as objects), cemeteries, investigating the history of the place(s) I live, playing on the internet.

WB: What are your favorite three movies?
SM :The Wicker Man, The Others, The Royal Tennenbaums. And everything with Alan Rickman in it.

WB: What are your favorite three books?
SM: Today I’m going to pick Tigana by Guy Gavriel Kay, His Dark Materials trilogy by Philip Pullman and The Quincunx by Charles Palliser, but if you ask me tomorrow, I might pick three entirely different ones, say The Secret History by Donna Tartt, George R R Martin’s Song of Fire and Ice series, and Mervyn Peake’s Gormenghast trilogy. I did tell you I can’t count, didn’t I?
WB: I am reading Pullman's His Dark Materials trilogy for the third time myself! I hear rumors that they are talking movies!

WB: What are your favorite foods and drinks?
SM: Cheese, mushrooms, asparagus as ingredients; Indian or Thai as cuisine, so long as it’s vegetarian. Drinks: diet coke, grapefruit juice, black coffee, white wine, water.

WB: What is your favorite curse word?
SM: Fuck is great: such a versatile word. Cunt is also great and needs to be rehabilitated as a word for the female genetalia, as all its synonyms sound like something a five year old would say.

WB: What is you favorite word?
SM: Putrescent. Or ersatz. I also like the French words quincaillerie (ironmongery) and pamplemousse (grapefruit).

WB: What is your least favorite word?
SM: Any of the ones with an inbuilt value judgement: “immoral”, “unpatriotic”, “sinful”.

WB: What turns you on creatively, spiritually and emotionally?
SM: Mystery, unattainability and the smell of Eternity by Calvin Klein.

WB: What turns you off?
SM: Narrow-mindedness.

WB: What sound or noise do you love?
SM: My cat purring.

WB: What sound or noise do you hate?
SM: The sound of trees being cut down.

WB: How did you find the web site of Will Burnham? What keeps you coming SM: back?
I *think* it must have been from Theme Thursday. I admired Will’s photography from the very beginning; it seems to have an edge over many other people in that Will doesn’t just take great shots, he produces great pictures. Some of my favourites have been the pictures he takes with model trains, planes and Star Wars figures; there’s a whole story behind both the image itself and how it was taken. I also love Will’s sense of humour (I’m English, that’s how I spell that word), and how he manages to make even the most mundane parts of everyday life into great entertainment.

WB: If Heaven exists, what would you like to hear (insert deity of choice here) say when you arrive?
SM: Bar’s on the right, library’s on the left.