Because I’m about three days behind in my e-mails and other online activities, I’m rather impressed with myself that I got this up within the same week it was posted. 🙂
1. What does it say in the signature line of your e-mails?
At work, the usual hoopla about who I am, where I am and the website to visit if people happen to want to know more about my newspaper. At home, I do a simple signature with my name and e-mail address, because all these mail forward programs strip out the original e-mail addy. I used to be cutesy and put quotes in the signature, but Pride Fag trumps it with 17 quotes and all 9 of his academic degrees, and I realized how pretentious it is that a quote (or acronyms after your name) that means something to you could ever do anything but waste the reader’s time.
2. Did you have a senior quote in your high school yearbook? What was it? If you haven’t graduated yet, what would you like your quote to be?
Eeek! Don’t ask me to pull out that book!!! It’s been collecting dust since 1992. I don’t remember contributing a quote, but if I’d had the opportunity, it would have said, “Fuck all of you — I will never see any of you again, and I will be more successful than all of you put together. Watch for my name in lights!”
Of course, I do remember voting on a class quote by Langston Hughes — “Hold fast to dreams, for if dreams die, life is a broken-winged bird that cannot fly.” And our class song was “Wind of Change” by the Scorpions (all my metal-head friends and I made sure that was chosen!).
3. If you had vanity plates on your car, what would they read? If you already have them, what do they say?
Bah. I keep trying to get vanity plates, but every combination of letters and numbers that I’ve come up with are already taken. I wanted to do something simple like “writer” or “goddess” or something that would make people realize how fabulous I am. 😉 Failing that, I want a plate big enough to say, “Back the fuck up, motherfucker!” or “Hit me and live, and I will kill you with my bare hands.” Or some other vitriol related to highway rage.
Down here in NoVa, the capital of the vanity plates, I’ve seen some really creative ones. There’s the “IH8-495” (they hate the Beltway — who doesn’t?) and of course its counterpart, “IH8-395”). I saw a Maryland plate with “2ndHOME” and it made me laugh. I want to do something along those lines, if I can think of something that hasn’t been claimed.
4. Have you received any gifts with messages engraved upon them? What did the inscription say?
I think my grandparents might’ve gotten me an engraved bracelet some time ago. Or not. The memory fails me. So I guess not.
But every time Shan buys me a book, she inscribes a message inside the front cover. Most of the books have to do with writing or starting a business, and she always throws in some encouraging words that make me feel empowered.
5. What would you like your epitaph to be?
You know, I always loved “Spoon River Anthology” and what really surprises me is that, 15 years after I read it, the epitaph of “Lucinda Matlock” sprung to mind:
“At ninety-six, I had lived enough, that is all
And passed to sweet repose
What is this I hear of sorrow and weariness,
Anger, discontent and drooping hopes?
Degenerate sons and daughters,
Life is too strong for you —
It takes life to love Life.”