When is it okay not to listen to the words? Explain about a song you really love that has lame lyrics or lyrics you simply don't understand.

At first, I thought this was going to be a really hard internal debate.  Have I not listened to a lot of songs in my years?  But really, there was only one answer for me: “It’s the End of the World As We Know It (And I Feel Fine)” by R.E.M.  It’s got a great tune, a memorable chorus, and guitars that really make you want to jump and dance.  But when you get down to it, the lyrics are jibberish, and I mean complete word salad.  The first line about earthquakes is the only one the really fits the title.  Honestly, what does Leonard Bernstein, Lenny Bruce, birthday party cheesecake, or symbiosis have to do with the end of the world?  Absolutely nada.  And that’s what makes the song awesome.

What is your favorite month of the year? Why is it so special? Describe it with all five senses.

Selfishly, I would have to say that my favorite month is April, the month of my birth.  It’s hard not to love the praises people wish you, the calls you get from family and friends that are too far away, and the chatter of friends commiserating after they meet through you.  But even past that, it’s the middle of spring when the trees are the greenest.  Rains mix with the grass and the leaves to give an earthy smell to the world around you while the birds that have emerged from their winter holes sing their sweet serenity.  I forget the fruit that blooms in this part of the season, though I believe that it is peaches.  If that’s the case, I can’t wait to bite off a moist, succulent chunk of the fruit and nurse it down to my stomach.

Empathy for a doomed man

Noon came like it did every other day, but to James it may as well have been midnight.  Like always, he felt as though his stomach had turned to worms.  But today, the worms were livelier than ever before.  Makes sense, he thought dully.  This is my last day alive.

Before long, he heard the key turn on his cell door, which opened to reveal two guards.  He got up and walked with them past the jeers of prisoners and the stern glares of onlookers.  In no time at all, he was strapped to the chair and looking at the man who would pull the switch and end his life.  A rush of different emotions coursed through him like the rampaging rapids.  Memories flooded past his eyes, showing everything from his childhood to his horrible crime.  But he kept a stern face.

Books or movies?

Make a list of books you’ve read that have also been made into movies you’ve seen, such as Charlotte’s Web or The Hobbit. Next to each title, note whether you preferred the book or the film version. 

Lord of the Rings – Movie

J.R.R. Tolkein’s bibliography is a game changer to the literary world, but the guy’s prose moves at the pace of grass growing.  The movies not only attached faces to our heroes that perfectly fit, but shocked the world with an impressive score, handled a lot of the character dynamics better, and made certain things clear to the viewers that casual readers couldn’t decipher.

The Hobbit – Book

The same cannot be said for the next adaptation of Tolkein’s works.  I’m not against the idea of expanding the adaptation into multiple movies and I felt the love triangle gave Kili’s death a lot more weight than in the book, but three movies just made it feel too flabby.  What we were left with was a lot of stuff that went nowhere and some really bizarre pacing.

Coraline – Movie

Neil Gaiman’s writing is always amazing and whimsical, but when you combine it with the director of The Nightmare Before Christmas and the visual brilliance of Laika, you have an amazing work of art.  Take something great and make it even better.  That’s the sign of a great adaptation.

Harry Potter – Book

What makes the Harry Potter series so great is the nuance and attention to detail within the world and the characters.  Both of those elements are lost in the series’ translation to screen.  While the movies aren’t bad by any means, they feel very hollow and insubstantial compared to their literary counterparts.  It would have been a lot better as a television series, where less essential elements would have been cut and the world would have been more fleshed out.

The Hunger Games – Movie

The Hunger Games has a lot of interesting ideas, but its worst enemy is its own prose, which is in the first-person present-tense and can be very hard to follow.  The movies don’t have that problem, but also added some things that greatly improved the tension and the stakes.  The amazing acting doesn’t hurt either.

The Princess Bride – Book

This one was a really tough call and there’s no disputing the genius of the movie.  However, I have to give this one to the book for the sole purpose that it has the Zoo of Death and Buttercup’s final badass proclamation at the end.  Both are good, but the other just has some of my favorite parts.

Twilight – Neither


Movie?  Book?  Does it matter either way?  We lose as a species by the mere fact of its existence.

Describe patience in concrete sensory detail

Patience is a clenching of your chest as time goes on, followed by a calming of the nerves from the top of your head downward.  At first, the whole thing can be unbearably painful, a pinching in the sides of your arms as the thing you want is out of your reach.  Tolerance builds, however, and with time and repetition, the pinching dies down.  Perhaps it even goes away.  I wouldn’t know.  I’m not very patient.

Other staples of the early onsets include a vibrating in the toes, one that no one can be sure if it’s intentional or reflex.  After all, one is apt to pace when they’re impatient… oh dear.  I’ve spent this paragraph talking about how impatience feels rather than patience.  Have I been doing that this whole time?