A Questionnaire, Part II: The Questioning

[Exposition Owl]

1.) Surprise! The Vacation Fairy has gifted you an all-expenses-paid trip almost anywhere you’d like to go! The only condition is that it has to be someplace you haven’t already been. Where do you go? (Assume that the Vacation Fairy will be taking you to an alternate universe in which COVID-19 doesn’t exist.)

2.) What’s your ideal climate like?

3.) What’s the first song you remember hearing on the radio?

4.) what is the best tree

5.) If you could download a language directly into your brain without having to take the trouble to learn it, which would you choose?

 

[Octopus Prime]

1. Australia always had a certain appeal to me
2. Low-mid 20s Celsius and cloudy
3. Barbra Ann by the Beach Boys
4. Those big red woods with the road going through them
5. Frecnh would be very practical. But Binary would be *cool*. And Cool trumps Useful

 

[JBear]

1) I mean, I haven't been most places, so I have a long list that I'd still like to hit. Japan's probably top of the list, though.
2) "Safe", which means that I like where I'm living right now pretty well. It gets too hot here in the summer, and too cold in the winter, but we're one of the safest places in the world as far "no natural disasters" goes.
3) Diggin' Up Bones by Randy Travis. I still have it memorized to this day, and will sing it on request (and sometimes without) if in the proximity of booze and a campfire.
4) I'd say "a dead one" but even dead those asshole leave their corpses for me to have to mow around. I'm tired of fussing with tress on my lot.
5) French, so I could communicate with the cool new lady I'm seeing in her native tongue.

 

[Becksworth]

1) If vacation fairy can dimension hop then take me to some future world where I can go on a space cruise.
2) 70-80s Fahrenheit and nice out.
3) I want to say the Los Lobos cover of La Bamba was the first I recall hearing, but I also remember liking Sledgehammer by Peter Gabriel later on as a small child, but that came out first I think...
4) What am I, an arborist?
5) Mandarin would be practical given my wife, but if I knew Japanese I could play old imported games and understand them...

 

[Dracula]

1.) Vacation: Easter Island for dang sure.

2.) Clime: Mid-to-high 60s Fahrenheit, preferably with an ocean breeze.

3.) First song on the radio: Who knows, they're all mashed together with the top 40 hits I'd hear in the supermarket. So stuff like Journey's "Open Arms" and Dire Straits' "Walk of Life."

4.) Tree: The Miracle (Blasphemous, 2019)

5.) Download a language: Since I've managed to get a pretty good hold on Japanese, this would definitely be Spanish, because I'd be able to use it on a daily basis with actual people, unlike Japanese.

 

[Isrieri]

1. The mediterranean
2. ICE
3. Mozart
4. One that gives shade
5. Spanish

 

[Octopus Prime]

Can I change my answer to Question 4;

 

[jpfriction]

1. Probably Germany, I don't know. I seldom leave the US so anywhere other than here would be aces.

2. Depends on what I'm trying to do. 65 F if I'm just hanging out outside. 85 F if I'm swimming. -100 F if I'm complaining about the weather to my coworkers in CA.

3. Ordinary Average Guys by Joe Walsh? That sounds right.

4. Growing up we had woods in our backyard and I distinctly remember mapping out several different sections based on the types of trees. Ghost woods off to the east (lots of birch trees), breakable woods to the west (lots of dead trees). In reality I'm sure it was like a half acre of scattered trees but felt like a national forest to little me. To answer the question, I want to be 5 again.

5. Japanese. Seems like a pain in the ass otherwise.

 

[Droewyn]

1. The International Space Station.

2. Four seasons, summers that don't get above 85, winters that don't get below 20.

3. No idea, but the first cassette tape I ever owned was Cyndi Lauper's She's So Unusual.

4. Ooof, this one is tough. Sugar maples, maybe? They turn such pretty colors in the fall, and also the syrup is yummy.

5. Japanese, probably. It's 95% of the foreign-language media that I consume, so it'd be handy.

 

[Torzelbaum]

1. Ireland, the Netherlands or Scotland to learn more about my ancestry (once I have confirmed that)
2. Four seasons are OK and all but if it could be between 40 and 80 F and not too humid or too rainy or too dry then that would be nice.
Wow. I'm really picky.
3. I don't remember...
4. Oak (or the tree in the image that Octo posted)
5. The language of love

 

[Violentvixen]

1.) Iceland. We were supposed to do an Iceland stopover on our trip earlier this year that got cancelled due to COVID.

2.) Cool and dry, I like the high desert I live in.

3.) Wow, I do not remember. My parents tell me one of favourite records as a toddler was the Phantom of the Opera soundtrack and I do vaguely remember that.

4.) Apple. Fruit is good, shade is good and deer get drunk off fruit that ferments on the ground which is hilarious.

5.) Chinese. Just knowing all the characters would be amazing, and give me a huge boost in Japanese as well.

 

[LBD_Nytetrayn]

Am I going alone, or do I get to bring my wife with me?

And if she can go with me, is she subject to the same rules?

 

[Exposition Owl]

Am I going alone, or do I get to bring my wife with me?

And if she can go with me, is she subject to the same rules?

The Vacation Fairy wouldn’t dream of keeping spouses apart! Still, everyone going on the trip is subject to the same rules.

 

[clarice]

1) Oh, that's easy: the moon. I want to see our planet from the outside and experience a weaker gravity.
2) Hot as hell and windy.
3) Don't remember, sadly.
4) The tree outside my window, just like the poet said. In english, XX.
5) Differential topology!!!

 

[Issun]

Why are you so interested in my affairs, Mr. Owl?

 

[Torzelbaum]

Why are you so interested in my affairs, Mr. Owl?

Well how else is he supposed to provide exposition if he doesn't know what's going on with you?

 

[Violentvixen]

1) Oh, that's easy: the moon. I want to see our planet from the outside and experience a weaker gravity.

Oh, I didn't even consider stuff like this. Although it's incredibly likely to give me a seizure I change my answer to the vomit comet, or whatever the current version of it is, private or otherwise.

 

[yama]

1.) Surprise! The Vacation Fairy has gifted you an all-expenses-paid trip almost anywhere you’d like to go! The only condition is that it has to be someplace you haven’t already been. Where do you go? (Assume that the Vacation Fairy will be taking you to an alternate universe in which COVID-19 doesn’t exist.)
France. I assume the Vacation Fairy will take me to an alternate universe in which COVID-19 doesn't exist and any consequences of it never happened and not an alternate universe in which the Syrian Revolution succeeded and created a domino effect. Then I could visit Egypt or Socotra.

2.) What’s your ideal climate like?
Subtropical, but preferably not rainy all the time.

3.) What’s the first song you remember hearing on the radio?
1979 by the Smashing Pumpkins.

4.) what is the best tree
Tulip trees.

5.) If you could download a language directly into your brain without having to take the trouble to learn it, which would you choose?
Either British, Olmec, or Minoan.

 

[Phantoon]

1) New Zealand!
2) mid 20s and cloudy. I'm from England, screw sunlight
3) absolutely no idea, it'll have been years and years ago.
4) cherry or magnolia, because blossoms.
5) Japanese, probably. Then I can act snobby about translations!

 

[Johnny Unusual]

1.) Surprise! The Vacation Fairy has gifted you an all-expenses-paid trip almost anywhere you’d like to go! The only condition is that it has to be someplace you haven’t already been. Where do you go? (Assume that the Vacation Fairy will be taking you to an alternate universe in which COVID-19 doesn’t exist.)

2.) What’s your ideal climate like?

3.) What’s the first song you remember hearing on the radio?

4.) what is the best tree

5.) If you could download a language directly into your brain without having to take the trouble to learn it, which would you choose?

1) Greece. Or Italy. I've traveled a lot but never to the Mediterranean. Or Germany. After reading/watching Monster, I kind of want to see its old world charm.
2) Late Summer/Early Fall. Kind of cool with warm sunlight. Can still wear light clothes.
3) No memory there. But I know as a four year old I was obsessed with Huey Lewis and Zamphir so... probably the former. "The Heart of Rock & Roll" maybe?
4) Apple, because it has apples.
5) So many choices. French is probably the most convenient since I live in a bilingual province.

 

[Exposition Owl]

In the Exposition Owl tradition of giving people information they don't necessarily need or even want, I'm going to break with the tradition of this thread's TT2.0 predecessor and give my own answers to the questions before posing new ones:

1.) Surprise! The Vacation Fairy has gifted you an all-expenses-paid trip almost anywhere you’d like to go! The only condition is that it has to be someplace you haven’t already been. Where do you go? (Assume that the Vacation Fairy will be taking you to an alternate universe in which COVID-19 doesn’t exist.)
Either Edinburgh or Barcelona.

2.) What’s your ideal climate like?
Mild summers, cool springs and autumns, and cold winters, with plenty of precipitation year-round. Lots of snow in the wintertime is especially necessary.

3.) What’s the first song you remember hearing on the radio?
The first one I have a clear memory of is "Invisible Touch" by Genesis. I really have no idea why, but my mid-80s child mind thought of it as being sung by C-3P0, a notion that would probably horrify both Phil Collins and Anthony Daniels.

4.) what is the best tree
When I used to live in Boston, there was one particular birch tree that I would touch in greeting every time I walked along the Charles River. I'm pretty sure that one's the best.

5.) If you could download a language directly into your brain without having to take the trouble to learn it, which would you choose?
One that sits at the intersection of "potentially useful for research" and "too hard to learn the conventional way," so probably either classical Chinese or classical Arabic.

 

[Exposition Owl]

And now, the next round of questions!

1.) Spicy food: yea or nay?

2.) What musician or musical group would you really like to see perform live?

3.) The time has come to build your supervillain hideout/secret lab/Fortress of Solitude/final boss lair. In what awesome but impractical location will you build it?

4.) Submit a catchphrase for a new fictional character. You have five seconds to think about it. Catchphrases that take longer than five seconds to come up with will not be accepted.

5.) seriously, tho--y kant metroid crawl?

 

[yama]

1) A thousand times yea
2) Schooltree
3) The bottom of the Mariana Trench
4) Die, bad robots, die!
5) Because they have contragravity organs

 

[Octopus Prime]

1. Yea
2. They Might Be Giants
3. Huge tower connecting Earth to the Moon
4. Time to FUSTIGATE
5. Weak knees

 

[Vidfamne]

1) Yes
2) Yes
3) Yass, Australia
4) Yes?
5) Yes

This input was brought to you by the Shitposting Unit

Spoiler

1) Yes for ajvar alone
2) Karen Dalton, who is dead, so Diamanda Galás
3) Novaya Zemlya
4) Your aristocracy is borrowed
5) I don't care about Metroid

I wish these inquests were Well-style interviews (maybe those exist past the Veil) because these always seem a bit ephemeral and everyone's talking past each other

 

[Exposition Owl]

1) Yes for ajvar alone

I had never heard of this dish, and now I think I might need to track some down. A spicy sauce with eggplant and red bell pepper sounds delicious! What kind of peppers do you use to add heat?

I wish these inquests were Well-style interviews (maybe those exist past the Veil) because these always seem a bit ephemeral and everyone's talking past each other

What's a Well-style interview? Maybe we could do things differently.

 

[Becksworth]

1. No, much to my wife’s chagrin.
2. Do we have a time fairy? If so, I heard Oingo Boingo’s Halloween shows where pretty wild.
3. Heli-Carrier
4. Well that happened...
5. I wonder what that kid is up to these days?

 

[Johnny Unusual]

1. Yea but I'm not a BIG spice guy. Still, I'm fortunate in that most spicy food places don't have the courage to get REAL spicy, but that's usually the level of spice I'm happy with.
2. A lot of my favourites are dead or broken up. Weird Al, I guess.
3. My home town. But I'd force everyone to act like everything is normal.
4. I don't want to live anymore. *Seven real time minutes of barely audible sobbing*
Wow, that one got... dark.
5. I haven't read any books by Kant so I don't know.

 

[Vidfamne]

I had never heard of this dish, and now I think I might need to track some down. A spicy sauce with eggplant and red bell pepper sounds delicious! What kind of peppers do you use to add heat?

Red chili peppers. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

If mixing it with feta and/or cream cheese (that works well e.g. on "Danish" rye bread, or scooped up on celery), sliced peperoni (as well as sliced orange/yellow bell peppers (not for heat), sliced chives, sliced red onions) are also a good addition.

What's a Well-style interview? Maybe we could do things differently.

Spoiler for length

Spoiler

The inverse of this thread: Someone volunteers to be interviewed ("down in the Well"), anyone on the forum can ask him/her questions ("tossing questions into the Well"), and the Well-dweller of the week answers any that he/she feels like answering on a public forum. It's a "tradition" I've seen on several forums around 2009-11, always by this name -- no idea where this started, though.

The main issues are that interviewers will either overstep with their questions, or alternatively (and it's even worse) be all too self-conscious about asking "potentially awkward" questions. Both always happen.
One could agree on handing over the questions in private, perhaps even anonymously, although the latter would make it more difficult to see if anyone were "monopolizing" the questions. I'm also not sure if this makes much sense on what I gather is already a tight-knit forum. I like short stories, though. Maybe one could rather tie this idea into a fiction contest?

4. I don't want to live anymore. *Seven real time minutes of barely audible sobbing*

That's one way to play Seven Minutes in Heaven.

 

[Violentvixen]

1.) Spicy food: yea or nay? Yea

2.) What musician or musical group would you really like to see perform live? Muse

3.) The time has come to build your supervillain hideout/secret lab/Fortress of Solitude/final boss lair. In what awesome but impractical location will you build it? Deep in the ocean

4.) Submit a catchphrase for a new fictional character. You have five seconds to think about it. Catchphrases that take longer than five seconds to come up with will not be accepted. SCIENCE

5.) seriously, tho--y kant metroid crawl? Spheres