Lit-Net Member Interviews

[dramasnot6]

is the thread open for nominations? i have a few if so...

[AimusSage]

Interview nominations
It is possible to nominate yourself or anyone else for an interview; however, all interviews are on a voluntary basis and as such it depends on the willingness of the person you have nominated whether it will proceed. Please do not give more than one suggestion at a time. Only the first nomination per member will be considered, so choose carefully who you would like to see interviewed.
The final decision as to who will be interviewed is up to the Lit-Net Town crier board of interviewers.
The Nominations are to be done by PM, so as not to clog up the thread with suggestions and such. Please contact either me or Pensive.

[Basil]

Taste one, and you will want more!

You mean like the Turkish Delight in The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe?

Beware, beware! Those cookies are evil! Eeeee-villll!!

[Pensive]

You mean like the Turkish Delight in The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe?

Beware, beware! Those cookies are evil! Eeeee-villll!!

Well, but a very good way to increase the amount of brains.

1 Brain = 1 Cookie
2 Brains = 2 Cookies
3 Brains = 3 Cookies
And so on....

But beware, lots of brains can be a distress. Fights! Lots of fights amongst brains. *shudders*

That's why I did not take any cookie by myself. But it seems as if Basil will like one?

[Basil]

An excess of brains can also make you an attractive target for the brain-eating zombies. That is why I keep my brain level so low. The zombies take one look at me and say, "Pfft! Look at that poor fellow! What a puny amount of brains he has! Why, it is not even worth the effort to crack open his skull! It is not even enough for a snack!"

So, Pensive, no thank you--no cookies for me!

[Pensive]

An excess of brains can also make you an attractive target for the brain-eating zombies. That is why I keep my brain level so low. The zombies take one look at me and say, "Pfft! Look at that poor fellow! What a puny amount of brains he has! Why, it is not even worth the effort to crack open his skull! It is not even enough for a snack!"

So, Pensive, no thank you--no cookies for me!

It is okay. You can always have some simple cookies then.

[Pensive]

Introductory questions

Taliesin

1. How are you today?

Quite well, thank you. But wasn’t that well last week.

3. How did you decide on your username?

We had already used the name Taliesin (a Welsh legendary/mythical bard) in some other forums, so we used the same on Lit-net.

4. Why did you initially join the lit-net?

We were searching for information about John Keats.

5. What would you say is the best aspect of the forum?

The people. And the fact that there is very little quarrel here despite the vastness of it.

6. How much time by average do you spend on lit-net per day?

Too much, we guess. About a bit less than hour?

7. How do you feel about smilies?

One can See a Sign of Heresy against the Nature of Tr00 Metal in their Mocking Smiles, whereas Everyone Knows that it is Metal to Look Angry and Furious and Thirsty for Blood and Not to Smile. Therefore, they should be Banned and Cut to Pieces with Blood Flowing out of them with Much Agony Included. Grrrrrrr and other metallistic noises.

No, really, we like them. Is there someone who doesn’t?

8. Being quite an old member, how do you feel the forum has changed?

It has grown a lot bigger. We don’t have time nor energy to check out all the topics. Sometimes we feel déjà vu- somebody has made a topic about something that was discussed already a year before so we have started ignoring quite a number of threads. For instance all the arguments in creationism and evolution seem to be used-up and are just re-cycled.
Plus, a lot of the old members have gone away- fool, amuse, verybadmom among others.

Personal Questions

9. What is your date of birth?

23. September of 1988

10. For all singles of lit-net, your marital status?

We’re free.

11. How would you describe yourself, your personality?

Wait, we have that wretched personality test right here… Aha! Introvert, intuitive, thinking, perceiving. Or something like that.
Other words to describe us – lazy as an old tomcat, intelligent, head-in-the-clouds, playful, good imagination and a bit loony.
“Strange? Yes. We are strange. Has anybody ever claimed otherwise?”

12.What do you do in RL? Student, work?

Student. Twelfth grade. Going to finish school this year.

14. Would you to tell us a bit about your various hobbies?

Yes, I would. We like to read, first.(we are not certain whether a topic this strange and foreign would be understandable to the forum members so we won’t even try to explain what it means :P)
And second, we are a role-player. Role-playing is often described like an improvisational play with roles and rules but without audience. And in the case of DD, without any costumes, requisites or actually anything that outwardly characterizes a play. Well, or that is the most common explanation to those who don’t know anything about the topic. But it is quite indescribable, actually.
Both being a player and being a Gamemaster are interesting – in the first you really become some other person , get the opportunity of some emotions and situations that you rarely would in real life. The second, being a game-master, is basically using your imagination, creating the setting and narrative, and you are actually probably in control and that is a very good position too.

15. Do you like sports, if so do you play sports yourself?

We are lazy, as mentioned above, so we aren’t into sports much.
But we like chess and bridge and swimming and bicycling. Occasionally.

16. What of music? Play any instruments?

Yes. Flute, recorder, classical guitar, jaw harp and triangle. :P Well, We guess that only the first three count and of those, we are fluent, if we are grammatically allowed to use the term, only with the flute. We can read music and improvise freely on it, whereas our skills are more limited on guitar and recorder.

17. Do you like to travel?

Well, a bit of travel sometimes is nice, but we are not very keen on big cities – we feel that we would get lost in them and/or be mugged or stuff like that. Plus, they all tend to look quite similar, as far as we have seen them.

18. Which countries have you visited?

Finland and Latvia.

19. Could you tell us something about the countries you have visited? .

They are quite similar to Estonia, really. Finland is better off, of course.

20. What about your own country? What do you like about where you live?

What We don’t like is the seasonal depression that tends to strike many of our friends around this time of the year.
On the other side of this, We really like how everything is so different around the year. The year, the seasons really affect you. You can’t just ignore them. Plus, there is still nature here, some of it even untouched – 40 per cent of Estonia’s territory is forest and 20 per cent is marsh.
The language is beautiful too. (there is a legend about a competition of the beauty of languages where Estonian won second prize with the phrase “Sõida tasa üle silla”)
And the people… well, there are lots of wonderful Estonians too. Yep. Certainly. We know many nice Estonians.

21. You have already mentioned before that Estonia has compulsory
military service. When will you have to enter? How long must you serve? How thrilled are you at having to do this? (suggested by Basil.)

We will have to enter – when we wouldn’t enter university, then in the next autumn.
However, we will go to university so one can get one to three years of extention for studies. The service is about nine months or something like that. We are not very thrilled about it and it wouldn’t hurt to get away with insanity, for example, but when we are accredited as mentally and bodily healthy then… well, since there is a certain neighboring country (won’t name names) that has grown very aggressive diplomatically and seems to have dreams of imperialism then it would be quite good to know how to handle a weapon.

22. Many of us would have read your poems in Poetry-post.com. I wonder if you are planning to write more?

No.
We don’t plan to write more.
If we should write anything somewhere, then it is purely impulsive, but we believe that we are not very good at poetry, especially in English.

23. We will like to know about your favourite form of poetry. (suggested by toni.)

Actually, We don’t much care about form. A good poem can be of any form.
Of course, there are many interesting metres around –like the hexameter of Homeros or the skalds metre in the sagas, but we like them basically because they give the text an interesting rhytm and characteristic, alliteration and all. There is some freeform poetry that plays with the language but is freeform and that we love and some poetry that doesn’t even play with the language, but that we still like.

24. What’s your favourite season? Why?

Are you aware that it is December now?
When we wait a day or two with this interview, then it will finally start to snow. (it has been an abnormally warm December this year) And then we will say that we like winter most. It will be finally cold, as it is supposed to be and snow will be falling slowly. Everything is asleep, so calm and cold, soft and frozen, no one seems to hurry.
But ask in February and we will be waiting for spring. Spring! Water! It will be flowing everywhere and you see how everything wakes up, how everything starts to bloom, there is so much energy around and the air is so clear, cold, but so brisk and clear and the wind in March is something that probably makes us catch a cold, but it is worth it.
And then comes the mud and you start slowly to tire of spring . There is no connection point between spring and summer, there is only May, and that is neither. Oh dear, May.
Summer is long and then there is the sun. Sometimes the night is only a few hours long. A few hours, can you imagine it? We can’t. We don’t remember sun anymore. Or wait, we think we saw it yesterday, didn’t we?
In August, the crickets come and August nights, that is something very beautiful.
And then it is September. School used to start then. Well, next year too, but then it will be university. Indian summer. End of long rest and things will start to change quickly. But the colors are so warm and the air is brisk and the slight mists and rains are somewhat mystical and you just want to get lost in the hills and small groves, only hoping that your feet won’t get wet. And there is still sun to warm your face, although it is not so warm anymore. But still, sun.
And our birth month.
October. Much harder stuff than September. There might still be colors, but there is lots of grey already. Grey. It is grim and hard stuff. Now rain seems only mystical when you are made of rougher materials and can ignore it. But there is still sun. We think. And you shouldn’t forget Bradbury, either. The Writer of The Great Autumn, as somebody said.
In Estonia, the end of October and the beginning of November vaguely form a time called the spirit-time, when Estonians used to think about their dead relatives. We still do that, although we don’t cover tables for them any more. But candles are still put on the windowsill.
In November the grayness reaches its maximum and there isn’t any snow yet, although Old Man Weather occasionally tries some snowfalls since October, already. But it won’t stay, probably, until the end of the month. Snow, to calm the mind and milden the seasonal depression and n ow we have reached the point where from we started before.
And you want us to choose?

[Pensive]

25. Do you have a personal hero, or someone you look up to?

We look up to dissidents. Andrei Sahharov, Unknown Rebel, and especially Die Weiße Rose (if you haven’t heard about them, do a Wiki search or something). They were nonviolent, also. Oh, reminding us of Gandhi and his ahimsa.
We also look up to the whole Singing Revolution and its main figures and other non-violent revolutions.
About famous writers – we don’t know how they were as persons so we can’t tell whether we look up to them.

26. Tell us the mystery behind “we.” (suggested by Pendragon.)

It was just something we started to do and we have gotten used to it. (actually, if you like conspiracy theories, there is something crucially important about the way we started calling us “us”, but we have had a slight memory loss or we were brainwashed by KGB or something and don’t remember it any more, but sometimes in the middle of night we wake up with a smothered scream, half-remembering the grotesque details of the reason, but then we again fall asleep and will have forgotten it by the time when morning arrives)
But we really like the theories that people have made about it over the time, like
*royal we
*animist beliefs
*me and my ego
*me and my crow
*schizophrenia (our original idea)
and others.

27.Where do you see the path your on taking you?

Well, probably we’ll go to the university next year, but about other things:

The Road goes ever on and on
Down from the door where it began.
Now far ahead the Road has gone,
And I must follow, if I can,
Pursuing it with eager feet,
Until it joins some larger way
Where many paths and errands meet.
And whither then? I cannot say.

J. R. R. Tolkien

Favourites

28. We can’t have an interview on a literature site without asking the
obvious questions, so who is your favourite author?

Let us think.
Strugatski brothers, Zelazny, Simmons, Pratchett, GRRM, Robin Hobb, Ray Bradbury, Neil Gaiman, Ursula K. Le Guin, De Lint, JRRT, Pelevin, Hargla, Jääskeläinen.
My, we ought to pick some who are not speculative fiction, shouldn’t we?
Then, Astrid Lindgren. Or Twain. Or Dostojevski. Or Hašek. Or Bulgakov, although he is really a speculative fiction writer. Ah, shucks, We can make some room for a genius.

29. And your favourite book?

“Someplace to be Flying”, “Song of Ice and Fire”, “Master and Margarita”, Shveijk, “A Night in the Lonesome October”, “Lord of Light”, Maksim Kammerer trilogy, Hyperion-tetralogy, Earthsea quartet, damn, there are many more.

30. What kind of music do you enjoy

Well, we are not very good at categorizing music, but most of the bands we listen to are lyrics-oriented, mostly mild rock, folk, pop, metal or punk. (well, that said a lot). We do like older Estonian folksong and sometimes (about once a week) meet with a group of people to sing those songs. We also sing tenor in the school choir. Song festival is coming this summer, you know?
We also like classical music. And old modes. We have a soft spot for the old modes.

31. Which are your favourite bands/singers/composers/etc.?

Oh dear.
Most of these will be a total mystery to you since they are Estonian bands, but here they go: Vennaskond, Dagö, Singer Vinger, Sõpruse Puiestee, Jäääär mainly. Also Somnambuul, Kiritöö, Metsatöll, Metro Luminal, Aapo Ilves, Tarmo and Toomas Urb and Simon and Garfunkel.
Of composers we like Grieg, Chopin, Mozart, Tormis, Tobias, Rahmaninov, Shostakovitš and JSB. The list is not complete though.

32. Tell us something about your favourite movie.

We guess that the movie that has impressed us most is “Donnie Darko”. We are not very good at talking about movies really, so we just suggest it.
We haven’t seen many movies, but here are some other movies we have enjoyed: “Cube”, “Good-bye, Lenin”, “Monty Python and the Holy Grail”, “Schindlers list”, “Butterfly effect”, “La vita e bella”, “Pi”
But there are so many legendary good movies that we haven’t seen but wish to see.

33. Your favourite food?

This, again depends of the moment, but as a substance that we are generally on good terms with: chocolate.

34. Your favourite drink?

Fresh mild apple juice, made straight from apples. (real apples, home-picked, not from the other side of Europe and covered with the whole Mendelevian table)

35. Your favourite game in the Games sub-forum?

2 truths and a lie, Brain Teasers, Poetry Contest, we used to like where you’re supposed to kill the person above you, and we absolutely loved the murder mysteries, the one where you were supposed to spoil the wish of the above person.

36. Amazons or Dastardly Stans?

This is an interesting question.

37. Any other favourites we should know about?

Crows, jackdaws and marshes.

38.What is your favourite smilie?

The The reason behind this is is a person on another forum with the banana as his avatar. A person who can be very mean and sarcastic and witty. And very funny at the same time.
And it is a nice absurd smily in its own.
Hmm, and Stans Ye Olde Prophecy seems to hold a grain of truth in it.

And now, the most important question of them all

40.How do you like your turnips?

Raw, dripping of blood, still screaming of the pure agony of being ripped apart. Tr00 kvlt metal. And other such noises.

Thank you for the interview!

You’re welcome.

[Nightshade]

oh bravo : such an interesting person(s), but dnt you get sick of snow afer a while? you know when it turns to muddy slush??

[Virgil]

Oh I enjoyed that. I did not realize Tal was so young, so smart, and so talanted. Very good Tal. I must admit I do not know that much about Estonia, but you make it sound great. Actually my only knowledge (other than its geographic location) is the Estonian chess great Paul Keres, who I enjoyed following his games from my chess books when I was young and into chess. Great job to you too, Pensy for the interview.

[Pensive]

Introductory questions

11. How would you describe yourself, your personality?

Wait, we have that wretched personality test right here… Aha! Introvert, intuitive, thinking, perceiving. Or something like that.
Other words to describe us – lazy as an old tomcat, intelligent, head-in-the-clouds, playful, good imagination and a bit loony.

Wow, from when did online personality tests start being so exact? If it would have been for me to describe Taliesin's personality, then it would have been the same words. Just a little more stress on: thinking, perceiving, head-in-the clouds, quite lazy but intelligent and I forgot to mention very good in maths.

(it has been an abnormally warm December this year)

Oh on the other hand, here the climate is quite cold. It is snowing quite a lot in the northern areas of Pakistan now a days. This is a bit strange...

And hey Night and Virgil, I am glad that you people like it!

[Pendragon]

Bravo, Tal! I like your answer on the "we" although I admit I would hardly be one to say anything, how many names do I go by? "Out Of Many, One". Multiple Personality? Nay, vivid imagination, but I do have my spirit guide, the cougar!

[Madhuri]

Such an interesting interview, after a very long time I have come across someone who doesnt want to run to big cities, instead wants to be away from all the hustle-bustle. You do seem to be very content with what you have, Tal....very good....

[RobinHood3000]

VERY cool, Tal - didn't know we had a resident GM!!

[ShoutGrace]

Very good interview, interviewer and interviewee. So many authors and so much music I've no conception of . . .

Actually my only knowledge (other than its geographic location) is the Estonian chess great Paul Keres, who I enjoyed following his games from my chess books when I was young and into chess.

*sigh* Paul Keres, perhaps the strongest player never to become world champion. One of my favorite chess players.