In college I loved the list-of-questions forwards that circulated around. Your favorite ice cream, brand of fizzy drink, subject in school. This reminds me a lot of those. They’re very self-serving & ego stroking, so I’m kinda embarassed that I want to do this. That’s why I’m hiding mine below the fold: if anyone wants to be interviewed by me, however, I would be happy to return the ego stroke

John’s Questions & My Answers:
1. Okay, Miko-goddess-girl: you’re stuck on an suburban island full of white collar professionals and soccer parents who seem to be worshiping you. They’ll do anything you ask and believe anything you say. What kind of religion would you start?

Ah, the suburban desert. Great group you’d like, called Antigone Rising, does a song which includes the line “the grass on suburban lawns/never looked so…black”. DH & I enjoy Snow Crash’s concept of burbclaves and get really creeped out by them. Sorry, stalling.

I don’t know if I’d go for full religion, at least not at the beginning. I’d start by reversing some major gender roles: put them at ease with a barbeque picnic and then see who was doing the barbequing & baseball playing and make them examine why they were acting the way they were. I guess my first commandment would be that they were all in my image and deserving of respect.

I’d outlaw leaf-blowers. Unforseen consequences be damned, those things are pure evil and must be stopped. I’d do something about the creepy lawns that are always found around burbclaves, and make SUVs a moral offense.

2. Jana and I are fans of Mr. Miko. What is one of his more endearing qualities or habits?

His calmness. He said the other day when we were doing judo that I was the angry one & him the calm one; it’s true. Rarely does a day go by that I don’t get angry at something. Him I’ve seen angry only once and it totally freeaked me out. His calmness is infectious. To me, at least. He’s like my portable buddha.

3. What kind of law do you want to practice?

More and more, environmental. Maybe implement those leaf-blower & SUV fantasies I used to say “internet or environmental” by which I meant more than just intellectual property, since that actually doesn’t interest me as much as does the formation of laws for a new country. The Internet is like early America: there are some natives who know the score that no one listens to and it’s still pretty wild, dangerous, and unexplored. Coming up with the rights of people when they’re in that country is fascinating to me, but at the end of the day, we still have to breathe and eat. And as cool as teh Internets is, we can’t live there yet.

Every day, I see the need for environmentalism, either in the form of laws, incentives, or suits. Personal action is the most important, obviously, but I don’t see it happening on its own. I’d like to nudge it along.

4. Just how geeky can you be? Out-nerd the rest of us. Prove to world that you deserve that Geek Girl title.

LOL! (or should I say lolz?) I actually say “wtf” because to me it’s more expressive than saying what it stands for. The first time I did it, I surprised myself and my roommate, but I kept saying it. Now the internet version, “wtf” sounds less expressive to me than “double-ewe-tea-eff!?” (I just discovered the interrobang, which I’ve determined needs to be used much more often.)

Geekiness comes in many different forms & I’m sure I could outgeek just about anyone in Star Trek but not even be able to carry on a coherent conversation about manga with a true otaku (although I’ve been called otaku by plebes).

My current geekcrush (the former being, of course, Wil Wheaton), is Mohammad Haque, or Hawk (incidentally, just like him, this was once me; people used to call if I went offline. Not since I got a laptop, tho). Steve Jobs is, of course, a given. I name my computers & peripherals and it took me a month & many tears to decomission Jane. I will still believe that she was gaining consciousness after one of her upgrades (but before we “fixed” her): she was talking to me and anyone on my buddylist. And not random symbols, either, but actual words…*ahem*

Before I discovered trackballs (I heart trackballs), I came down with a pretty bad case of carpal tunnel, which I thought at that time could only be cured by surgery. My fondest wish was (I’m really not fooling anyone with this past-tense stuff, am I? I’d still love to have this) that when they went in to futz with my nerves, they put in an ethernet jack. Now, of course, I’d rather wireless access, but either way: direct hookup of brain to ‘net: how cool would that be?! I’d love to be an escaped borg: not a huge fan of having to be a drone, but sure wouldn’t mind all that wetware
5. You have the power to raise awareness of one cause in a big way but only at the expense of lowering the profile of some other, relatively popular cause. Which one would you pick to highlight, and which would you doom to obscurity?

Global climate change would be my cause, but more than just “fixing” the problem: actually having people live with the earth & not just on it. Finding out ways to have amenities we take for granted but have them be harmonizing with the way we live the rest of our lives. As for which I’d doom, I could just throw a dart…I honestly think that this would solve a lot of our problems, including breast & prostate cancer (the breast version of which is very close to my heart & the prostate version of which baffles me by its relative media obscurity), probably famine & drought, hopefully war (since a real solution would require global cooperation). So, as much as I would gladly doom each of those to obscurity in favor of my cause celebre, I guess I’d choose space travel as the one I’d doom. It’s the one that I don’t think would be affected by it and one of the hardest to give up. But I also don’t think that we, as a species, is in the right place for space travel if we can’t take care of our own planet.

Thank you, John, for letting me in on this, I had fun! And thank you to anyone who made it this far for hanging out while I talk about myself