JCC P E O P L E Interviews, Issue LIII: Kyle Katarn!

I've always wanted to interview Kyle Katarn. The EU character, not the JCCer!

Unfortunately, I had to settle for the JCCer.

I had a great time interviewing Kyle, precisely for the reasons I thought I would. We talked all about the early JC, Episode VII, that infamous bathroom post, Kyle's other less raunchy writing, and dodging the draft.

In the previous issue, I talked to a 2013 newbie, Zapdos. This issue goes all the way to the exact opposite, with the oldest of oldbies, a July 1998 registrant. I hope you enjoy.

My dialogue is italicized; Kyle's is not.

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So your username has the name "Kyle," which is what you've been referred to by here on the JC, but what's your real name?

Everybody calls me Marc. My full name is Marcus but I save it for special things, or my parents and whoever pays me.

What's your favorite music to listen to?

Most everything. My iPod runs the gamut to be honest. I do have a lot of stuff by Prince, Grateful Dead, The Who, The Police, Rammstein, Johnny Cash, and Bach so those are sort of my musical comfort foods.

The JC will hate this question… but I want to know! Why Bach? Why not Beethoven or Mozart?

I like Beethoven and Mozart too, perhaps just as much, but Bach's music just sort of resonates with me. I played the cello for a few years in grade school and I tried like the dickens to do a passible rendition of Bach's Cello Suite #1 and Brandenburg Concerto #3. I never did, but I still enjoy his work and can play it back in my head, note for note, almost any time I like.

Do you have any quirks?

About the closest thing I can think of along those lines is that my face is rather expressive when I am lost in thought, so every now and then people will see me with an unsual expression on my face and have it be totally out of context to what is going on. I'm a bit more aware of it now than when I was younger, but it has been known to happen on occasion.

I thought I detected you might have some quirks of the more serious kind. Am I right?

I have a very mild form of Autism, Asperger's Syndrome, and I've sort of managed to work around it so that I don't have any noticeable defecits that I once had. Eye contact was very difficult for me when I was younger, it was uncomfortable, almost like putting your shoes on the wrong feet and then running a mile in them. I eventually forced myself to look people in the eye and I now longer have any difficulty with that. Reading people has always been tough, but I have become better at it, but it is still quite the mental workout I have to do everyday in trying to work out the underlying emotional calculus of every situation and every encounter with other people.

Interesting. I always found eye contact difficult when I was a kid, too. But that was supposed to because of the double whammy of my ADHD and hearing impairment. To this day, I'm not really great at eye contact. I mean, in social situations, are you even supposed to look at another person's eyes without breaking contact while talking? Isn't that supposed to be creepy?

From what I gathered (again, having a mom who is a social worker helped, sometimes too much) periodic eye contact is what is expected. It shouldn't be one long stare and that is something which I spent years of my life wondering about, I had heard about eye contact but it felt so uncomfortable and I had no idea how long to hold it for so I just didn't do it as everyone else seemed to understand and the last thing one wants to do at that age is draw attention to their lack of knowledge in that area.

I liken it much to that feeling you get when someone tells a joke but you don't get it. You know that something is supposed to be funny, everyone else around you thinks it is, but you don't quite understand what it is or why it is so funny. Then, an hour later, it falls together in your mind and you get it and have that awkward moment where you realize that it was so easy to see but you didn't get it. Now imagine having that feeling for the first 16-17 years of your life, that is what it was like for me.

If you were a creepy person, what kind of creepy would be your "trade," so to speak?

I would be the guy who walks around pantsless in the background during live tv news reports. This would also entail stalking the news reporters so it's a sort of two for one deal on the creepiness.

What JCers would you stalk, since this is your brand of creepiness? I suppose this is the first namedrop question. Answer however you wish, but don't be too convincing.

Are any of them news reporters? I said I would only stalk news reporters so I could be the pantsless guy on tv.

That being said: I really can't stalk Dajuan, she knows me too well and knows what I drive, that and I was sort of inadvertantly stalked by her one time. I don't know who else I would stalk because I just don't have the time to travel all over the world and stalk people from the internet. Although the thought has crossed my mind to stalk one of our catfishers from about a decade back. Do you know about Tessark?

I wish you had been more specific, more daring.

Meh, I've got enough things to occupy my time with than stalking people. Although going up to New Hampshire and finding Dr. Mark Baker (if he even exists) would be quite cathartic. ASG wasn't quite as bad as Tessark.

If you were forced to wear a warning label, what would it say?

"Contents Under Pressure"

What is your nearest-death experience?

My babysitter damn near drowned me in trying to teach me to swim when I was 7 years old. This gave me a life long aquaphobia which has never truly gone away - I'll drink water and I will bathe in it, that's about it. I was nearly trampled by a horse when I was 11, stood less than a quarter of a mile away from a tornado when I was 25, and I miraculously survived watching all of "Napoleon Dynamite". I also received some VERY unfriendly emails from the movie spoiler sites about 12 years ago when a JCer and I made up a fake rumor. The emails came only after I chatted with an Entertainment Weekly reporter about it. The guy at Coming Attractions sent me an email making some vague threat about "things" happening to me and my family.

Ooooh, what was this rumor you made up?

I should preface this by saying that my accomplice (who swore me to secrecy as to his identity, but he was an admin back in the day and very well known) and I were sick of false rumors which any idiot could tell were fake and rumors which were severly lacking in any info. Things were on the level of: "SITH LORD HOLDS SABER BY TEH BLADE!!" and "NATALIE STEPS IN DOG CRAP ON THE SET!!!111 CLICK HERE FOR PICS!!!11" and nothing good was really coming out. We were chatting on ICQ one day and talked about the rumors and how everything then just sorta sucked. We then wondered how easy it would be to come up with something fake and who would be so desparate for spoilers that they would take anything. This was in the post-TPM, pre-AOTC era and we knew a few things about the plot. I think this was late 2000 or early 2001.

At the time, we knew about Darth Tyrannus, we weren't sure if he and Dooku were one and the same. Hell, we didn't know for sure if Dooku was a real name as it sounded dumb to us at the time. We jokingly called him "Count Dookula", that's how dumb the name sounded to us. Anyway, we threw out some tidbits to a few of the rumor sites using a fake insider persona we cooked up, "Ranch Ranger" was our name. We didn't disclose anything major at first, just sort of elaborating upon the Arena scene really. Coming Attractions ate it up and a week or two later we sent them another rumor which we thought up while goofing around. We said that Tyrannus (again, nobody was sure who the hell Dooku was at the time) would wield a flamesaber and that the blade would be an actual blade but had an orange/red glow to it like a flame. It was also supposed to have a different kind of whoosh sound to it which we later said that Ben Burtt was having trouble with getting to sound "just right". The guy emailed us back in exactly three minutes with a reply of "HOLY ****!" and then asked us if he could run it as an exclusive. I told him he could and so we waited to see what would happen as we honestly didn't think this would go anywhere at all. I mean, who the hell would buy such a dumb idea like that?

An hour or so later, the scoop went up on their site. I saw it and went offline as I had to go and do something that day and I didn't get back until 8:30 or 9 that evening. I go online and find out that damn near every movie spoiler site and Star Wars board was talking about it. I was surprised as I didn't think my email was all that convincing, but what I didn't know was that starwars.com had released a preview image of Episode 2 of the lightsaber fight scene between Anakin and Dooku with the red flash of Dooku's lightsaber and people saw this as proof that our rumor was legit. My blood ran cold and I immediately got on ICQ and found my accomplice in a similar "What the hell...?" frame of mind.

We laid low for a while wondering just how big of a can of worms we had opened. I sent some other stuff and then quieted down citing personal issues. A few weeks or month later, Joshua Griffin (then one of the guys behind TFN and the JC) asked if anybody had created a false rumor as a reporter was looking for people who had done that. I got in touch with him, told him I had created the flamesaber rumor and was then put in touch with the reporter.

I did some googling just now and found the article: http://www.ew.com/ew/article/0,,20566981_104976,00.html

Shortly after this, our Ranch Ranger address received a nastygram from the guy at Coming Attractions. I also recall later reading that Harry Knowles was mad about it too, but that may have been just a rumor too.

So… wanna start a rumor about episode VII?

"Star Wars Episode VII: Fifty Shades of Gonk"

IF you started a rumor about episode 7 with an eye for something that would sound genuine, what would you do?

Hmmm. I'd probably come up with some corny Han and Leia dialogue. He'd have a beard and Leia (who Han is now happily married to) would make a comment about him being scruffy looking to which he'd respond "Here we go again" as an homage of sorts to their dialogue on Hoth in ESB. That or I'd come up with some rumor about how the Falcon had been changed somewhat, maybe make the dish on top in an oval or rectangle shape and then watch as the fanboys squirm.

Favorite CAR, FOOD, EUROPEAN COUNTRY, COMEDIAN, ARTIST, DECADE, PETTY DICTATOR

Car: Chrysler 300C
Food: Chicken
European country: Deutschland
Comedian: Steven Wright
Artist: MC Escher, Van Gogh, Caravaggio
Decade: 1980s
Petty Dictator: Tough to say, but the fascist ones have always been the better dressed ones. They had such sharp looking uniforms. Commies tend to wear ugly looking rags.

So why were the 80s your favorite decade? Because it's the one you grew up in?

To an extent, yes, it was when I grew up, but it was also before the 24 hour newscycle and people constantly being aware of everything going on and always being angry about it. Sure, there were still political and social hijinks going on then, but it wasn't as in your face as it is now with everybody being passionately for or against everything at every waking moment of their day. That sorta changed after the early 90s and cable news began to ramp things up, people became a lot whinier in that era.

From people currently active on the JC, like active in the past couple months, who would you select, if you were the producer in charge, to write Episode VII? What half-dozen people, do you think, would do the absolute best job?

Frankly, I'd like to be the one doing the writing. I'm of the opinion that films, tv shows, books, etc, tend to get suckier with more writers. Too many cooks and all. As for who would do what in the film - I honestly don't know off the top of my head. I guess OZK could do the practical FX work, you know with the limbs getting chopped off by lightsabers and all that. I figure that he would be something of an expert in things getting cut off and how they would look due to his medical schooling and other interests. Besides, real fake blood is better than CG fake blood.

I think Tunick would be a good Second Assistant Director or something like that, maybe give him some scenes to direct and if he does a good job then I'd bump him up to 1st AD or something for the next film, but I don't want to give him too much either. Ender Sai could do publicity as he's good at talking things up like that. I think Darth Guy would be a good gaffer, I don't know why, but I think he wouldn't be bad at it. Zapdos could be in charge of craft services, serve up some lutefisk, and put some hair on everybody's chest. I'm not too familiar with the people in 7SA, so I really can't do any of them justice. Not that I hate them or think they're terrible people, but I don't know where any of their strengths lay so I cannot accurately assess them.

What would your Episode VII look like?

Actually, I wrote up a synopsis for Episodes 7, 8, and 9 late last year and posted them in the 7SA forum. The thread has since been archived and it is a long'ish post, so I'll link it: http://boards.theforce.net/threads/star-wars-vii-your-synopsis.50005051/page-3#post-50139159

Lots of geriatric humor there. What is it we just hate about seeing our beloved heroes grow old? This has happened in part already with the last Indy movie, of course.

I don't think we *hate* seeing our heroes grow old, we might not like seeing them as something other than the young, spry, and agile heroes we remember. Whether we like it or not, people change with time, that applies to real people and characters. Very few people want them to change from what they remember but they have and do change. As for the jokes in my synopses, old jokes are easy to do and we had no idea what the films would be about then, just as we really don't have any idea now.

What is the best joke you know? Or what is the best joke you told in company that got the biggest laugh?

I'm not good with canned jokes, I know a few, but I prefer jokes which are a bit more spontaneous and off the cuff. With that being said:

A red sports car is driving down a costal road on a sunny day. The driver has the wind blowing through his hair and his only concern is keeping the car on the road. Suddenly, a police officer pulls him over, asks to see his ID and walks back to his car. A few minutes later he walks back with the driver's ID and a ticket. The officer says "So, Mr. Heisenburg, do you have any idea just how fast you were going?" to which he replies "No, officer, I don't. But I do know EXACTLY where I am."

The downside is that the joke sorta falls flat if you're unfamiliar with Heisenburg's Uncertainty Principle. I told that joke once and it started a year long relationship with a science teacher, so I'd say that was the best joke I've ever told.

What is the greatest prank you have ever pulled on someone or has been pulled on you, or that you witnessed in person?

My college roomate had invited his family over to our apartment one day for dinner. It was April Fools Day so I knew something was up. We were all sitting around the table when he stood up and matter of factly announced that he was gay. I was about to ask him if he had told his girlfriend about this when his mother said to him "That's OK, dear, we already knew anyway." and they carried on with the meal. He had to get his girlfriend (now wife) pregnant before his family started to believe the whole thing was a prank gone terribly awry.

If you were in complete charge of the conception, formation, and theme of a theme park, what would it be? What would be some rides? Games? Fair food?

It would be like the scene in "Being John Malkovich" where John Malkovich goes into his own head. Everybody would be given masks at the door so they would all look like John Malkovich and the only thing on the menu at the concession stands would be Malkovich.

Who is your most interesting ancestor?

I have a couple of them actually. If I narrow it down to *just* blood ancestors then the one who interests me the most would be my great-great-great grandfather who left Germany in a hurry as he was to be conscripted to join the Prussian Army. The story handed down through the generations is that he was chased away from his farm by several soldiers armed with bayonets. He had a head start on them, but they had soon caught up to him by the end of the day in a field with many piles of hay. He hid in a pile on the far end of the field as the soldiers began to jab at the piles with their bayonets hoping to either kill him or to scare him into coming with them. Thankfully, night fell and they had left the field before they got to where he was hiding. That night he made it to a boat which went to London and then on into New York. He sent a letter back home once he had settled in northern Iowa and told his wife and children (one of whom was my great-great grandfather) where to find him and they came over here soon thereafter. In short, I'm descended from draft dodgers.

Before Roger, you had Jar Jar. Do you think you like the jester archetypes?

Perhaps. But the Jar Jar icon was also chosen for another reason as my family had a dog who reminded me of Jar Jar. He was a Chihuahua but he had these big floppy ears, was about the same color as Jar Jar, and was often flicking things with his tongue. I really couldn't hate the character as he reminded me too much of our dog who was really friendly to everybody and he came into my family's life much in the same accidental way as Jar Jar did in the films.

What was your pet's name?

Our pet's name was Smocco. He was given to my sister by an ex-boyfriend who was a pothead. He was the runt of his litter and was about 6 months old when we got him. He had been given some alcohol (along with some other substances) when he was young and so we're not entirely sure if that lead to his very friendly demeanor as it is entirely possible that he was brain damaged. The boyfriend came up with the name when he was stoned and my mother wanted to call him something else, but that was the name he responded to, so we changed the spelling and made it look Italian or something. It seemed to fool the vets. The vet's office loved seeing him as he was the friendliest Chihuahua they had ever worked with and actually liked having him over for a checkup.

Who is the perfect woman?

Hmm, well, Bea Arthur is dead, so I can't really name her.

It's tough to say exactly. I tend to be a magnet for crazies. I had one woman reveal to me on our first date that she was awaiting trial on forgery charges - I paid for that meal in cash. Another one seemed fairly normal until she told me that her job was as a fetish phone sex operator. Another told me after two dates that she was selling a kidney to get money to prevent her home from being foreclosed upon. I haven't had the best in luck with women. All I will say is that I cannot describe the perfect woman for me, but I'll know her when I see her.

You *let* her get away, didn't you?

Perhaps. The jury is still out on that one.

What happened there?

Regarding the one who I let get away: I won't go into detail as it is a very long story - and one which has yet to be completed at that.

So you're from Iowa… Isn't Captain James T. Kirk from Iowa? In the fictional Star Trek future, anyway.

Yes. Riverside, Iowa lays claim to being his "future birthplace" and they have an event every June to celebrate his -200something'th birthday. It was just a way for a small farming town to get some notoriety, it got Gene Roddenberry's OK, and it does bring in guests, so it must work.

Dare I ask if you've ever been?

Once, about 20 years ago, but George Takei and Walter Koenig were there and it was a drive of under 2 hours, so why not?

20 years ago... that was when you were in high school, then. What was high school like back in the early 90s, anyway?

One kid had a cell phone and it came with a bag that he had to carry around with him. We joked that he would be sterile from the ungodly amount of radiation that thing must have put off. In private, we felt sorry for him as we all wondered just how short of a leash his parents must have had him on. Computers were in just a few classrooms, later maybe every classroom had *a* computer off in the corner somewhere or on the teacher's desk which wasn't really used in class.

I went to an alternative school for my junior and senior years and we had a lab with brand spankin' new Compaq machines running Windows 3.1 AND had internet access. At the time, most people hadn't the slightest idea of how to use the internet and most people just used the DOS versions of MS Works to type up papers and reports. When I started high school I was thinking about going into marketing as my career and wound up realizing that IT was my calling, mostly due to my school being a bit more free form and allowing me to experiment with the computers instead of worrying that I might break them.

As far as other things about school, we obviously didn't have facebook or twitter, so "cyberbullying" would have been something uttered by somebody who was high on who knows what. Also, student/teacher flings were a fact of life and nobody said anything about them. I had an 8th grade English teacher who was quite flirty with me, she was easy on the eyes and me being an 8th grade boy, didn't mind it one bit. Schools weren't as locked down as they are now. When my high school added a "liaison officer" we all thought the school board had gone off the deep end - why the hell would we need a freaking police officer in the school building? Bullying was also tolerated a bit more, but also kids weren't killing themselves because of it either. Most of our art teachers were middle aged hippies (one art teacher at my first high school was at Woodstock) and the rumor was that they had some connections to get drugs. I took an art class my sophomore year and found out that yes, Mr. Dinsdale could put you in touch with some friends if you were willing to share with him. It was also funny how half of the kids in that class claimed to be making "pottery" or "glass vases" only for it to be painfully obvious that they were making bongs. Also, our lunches weren't too healthy as we could purchase fries and pop everyday. Also, the day Kurt Cobain was found dead was like 9/11, people wouldn't shut up about it for months and MTV stopped playing videos (which was a rare occurrance in those days) to have the same people yammer on about Kurt into the wee hours of the morning. All I could think of was "This sucks. When the hell are they going to play videos and Beavis and Butthead again?" - if I only knew...

I don't think I've ever listened to Kurt Cobain. I mean, I probably have, but didn't realize it, because it was background music.

If you've listened to Nirvana then you've listened to Kurt, he was their lead vocalist. You honestly couldn't go a day back then without hearing something from Nirvana.

What is the best decision you've ever made?

Not listening to my mom back in 2005 when she kept telling me to buy a house because anybody could get credit. She was a little ticked when I told her that was exactly the reason why I wasn't planning on buying a house. A few years later she admitted she was mistaken and thanked me for being stubborn and having actually paid attention in my economics classes.

Would your life be considerably different if the JC had never been it?

Definitely. I'd likely have a very different set of friends, wouldn't have made several trips, wouldn't have had exposure to quite the range of personalities as I have here. This isn't to say that my life would be radically different, but it would be a very noticeable difference had I not have ever come here at all.

So, very different set of friends- what does that mean? Less nerdy friends?

No. But a less diverse range of friends. I have travelled overseas with a friend I met here, had a relationship with another, and had a lot of very deep friendships with many. None of them really fit the description of being "nerdy", at least not in the classic taped glasses, loud shirt, short pants, gigglesnort, Steve Urkel type of nerdy. Then again, being nerdy is sort of the in thing nowadays, so maybe they are nerdy!

Oh, so, now that nerdy's in, ALL your friends are nerds, but not so when nerdy was out?

I was into it before it was cool, so would that make me a nerdy hipster then?

So, let's talk about what is certainly your most infamous post and one of the most infamous in the history of the JC… The bathroom post.

The bathroom post was a joke. It did not take place at all except for in my mind. It came about out of a fit of boredom at work. It was Labor Day and I was minding the shop at work along with about five other co-workers. We got in at 9am on Labor Day and were bored out of our minds by 10:30 that morning. Since our boss wasn't in, we started emailing each other the raunchiest jokes and stories we could think of just to see who could tell the nastiest and craziest stuff. Since canned jokes aren't my thing, I decided upon something different and so I wrote up that story.

It does have a very slight grain of truth to it. I was at a gas station after work one night before I wrote that up and one of the clerks was complaining to another clerk about a similar mess someone had left in there only to be found by a very incontinent older customer who just sat down in the mess and THEN told the clerk about it. I stood there with this odd look on my face as these two guys were yakking about it totally oblivious to my presence. I made note of the situation and filed it away for later use.

And again, for the record, that incident did NOT happen to me. I made it up based upon what I heard elsewhere and just added some stuff for comic effect. In all honesty, I thought the thread would be locked and deleted in minutes. I seriously had no idea that it would go on to such legendary status. I even took a screenshot right after I made the post so that I could prove that I had just made such a raunchy post on the board in case it did get deleted.

I should also point out that this does not mean that ALL of the crazy stuff I post about is made up. My neighbor's self-castrating dog was very real.

bathroom post: http://boards.theforce.net/threads/a-funny-thing-happened-to-me-on-the-way-home-from-work.21556038/
castrating dog: http://boards.theforce.net/threads/my-neighbors-dog-just-castrated-himself.26977020/

Kyle, I imagine you work a 9-to-5 job. You're 35 years old (almost), so you might have a wife, even kids. You've been considering getting a house. I'm just wondering… you're a great storyteller, you're very entertaining yet concise every time you post. Are you a writer? Have you ever considered it?

Why Iowa? Why not La-La-Land?

I have considered it, the problem for me is that I rather enjoy Iowa, my family is here as are many of my friends. I do have an interest in writing and I work on some projects when I get the time. LA isn't a bad place, but it just isn't for me. I've been there and I have read up on the entertainment biz, know a few people in it, and I know that if I do have a role in it then I'd rather do it from here in the Midwest and not out there. Granted, I am single and might be able to swing it as I have about 15 years of IT experience under my belt to fall back upon, but Iowa is my home. I enjoy the frigid winters, the hot and humid summers, and the gorgeous spring and fall days and that just isn't possible out in LA. Tunick thinks I'm nuts, perhaps I am.

But what about the writing? Have you ever tried to make something work, to finish something, just to see, you know?

Yes. I am working on some projects off and on. One is kinda sorta sci-fi, the other is more of a collection of interwined short stories taking place in a suburb like the one I grew up in which explores both the good and bad sides of the people there. Much of it is based off of people I knew and things which took place. The hard part is reworking them into such a way that I don't end up the defendant in the biggest libel case in history.

Would you like to share with us something you've written?

The restroom post doesn't count then?
Seriously, much of my work is still in the first or second draft stage and I'm not quite comfortable with sharing it as of yet. Also, I have scaled back some of my writing as of late to focus on my job, especially as I am still in the first year. I have spent the last 2 days exhaustively going over iOS 7 and writing up documentation for the attorneys in my firm as they're all itching to get it on their phones and us in IT are doing everything we can to make the transition as painless for them as possible.

Let's say you are the gatekeeper to all sorts of July 1998 accounts. You give them to the users here who you've appreciated most over the years. Who are they?

Katya_Jade, mostly for just being who she is.

Jedi Greg Maddux, he doesn't come here much these days but he is a dear friend of mine and we have, quite literally, gone to the ends of the Earth with each other.

Darth Tunick, mostly because I hated him when I first met him as he was pretty young and really rubbed me the wrong way when I first met him here only to see him grow and mature in his time here, that and he also puts up with me telling him how awesome Iowa truly is.

OZK, quirks and unconventional opinions aside, he is a standup guy and can backup his opinions with a reason, even if others may not agree with it.

DantheJedi: The guy is about as resilient as they come, he gets a lot of crap from people for his occasional gaffes and yet he soldiers on at times when other people would just run off into the night. We need people with thicker skins.

Coruscant: You've been at this interview for a while now and you haven't given me any easy questions. This kind of a mindset would have been very helpful in the days where we were freaking out over a blurry still photo of Qui Gon, Obi Wan and Jar Jar in the bongo and trying to make sense of something we had never seen before.

---

That's all! Thanks for the interview, Marc. I look forward to reading or watching some of your stories. Get something out there!

I am in the process of restoring old PEOPLEs. Unfortunately, I did not save the old PEOPLE threads, so they're all truncated. If you were a PEOPLE interviewee and you saved your issue, please let me know. It would be greatly appreciated. Otherwise, these will be restored by going the (very) long way around.

Past Issues

1. FamousAmos
2. DarthIgnant
...
50. tom
51. Jabba-wocky
52. Zapdos

Thanks for dropping in,
~Coruscant

 

i like how you managed to work a joke as unfunny as the individual you interviewed as your opening line. very meta

unfortunately i deffo stopped reading at that point

 

and the gorgeous spring and fall days and that just isn't possible out in LA.

Kyle Katarn

Ahhh, so not true! There are many gorgeous spring & fall days, helped by the Santa Ana winds (when they're not a destructive force at least). It's not a "traditional" stereotypical fall here in the L.A. area, but the air does get a bit crisper, and the sight of seeing multiple palm trees sway back & forth due to the wind is ever so relaxing. I love L.A. in the same way you love Iowa... we each see the value in each place (especially/particularly for the other person), but we know we could never convince each other to completely change our minds.


Thanks for your honest & kind comments... many more thanks for being a stalwart member of this community, a good friend to me, and someone with a wicked sense of humor.

 

I'll be honest, I love reading these things, and this interview was no exception. I don't understand the perennial hate.

 

well, youre an administrator on a star wars message board. i like you ramza but yes. yes. yes you do have brain problems

 

Congrats on the namedrop, Tunick.

 

he was, like, really excited about that. you can tell because that's, like, a really long post for him

 

Someone's bitter.

 

I've always been supportive of the concept of namedrops, not particular recipients.

 

There was another namedrop question about a burning building. He was supposed to name 15 out of thirty something who he'd save. He only saved 12 (beezel was one of them). He said the rest of us burned to death because he doesn't know us or we've been ***holes to him.

 

I thought this was going to be a math word problem

 

Err, uh, well, I thought the tone of Kyle's response was affable, though.

 

I call it as I see it, harpua, don't be offended by my honesty.

 

I'm not offended... I actually thought it was funny.

 

Also, I recall using the term "dick", not "***hole", there is a difference. See "Team America: World Police" for the clarification.

 

Yeah... well, I opted for *** hole, because that paynus word isn't postable.

 

I dunno, it's sort of ambiguous because it's got a clause specifying that it needs to be a specific reference to genitalia. Certainly allowable in the context of clarifying original nomenclature, IMO.

 

Okay... well, he thinks we're dicks.

 

Not everybody is a dick, only some people, but certainly not ALL people.

 

The list...

Leona
Debo
Lazy Storm Trooper
HL&S
Darth Guy
GrandAdmiralJello
harpua
beezel26
Sith-Lord-Gunray
Ramza
FamousAmos
JoinTheSchwarz
Master_Jacen
I Are The Internets
solojones
tom
rhonderoo
Katya_Jade
Zapdos
Ender Sai
Obi-Zahn Kenobi
Jabba-wocky
MrZAP
Rosslcopter
Dark Lady Mara
AaylaSecurOWNED
Jabbadabbado
Lord Vivec
Katana_Geldar
Kev-Mas_Colcha
Tunick
Rogue_Ten

Here's who he saved:

Leona, FamousAmos, solojones, rhondaroo, Katya_Jade, Zapdos, Ender Sai, OZK, DLM, ASO, Tunick, and hell, beezel. I picked them because, well, I know them and/or like what they post. In fairness, Zapdos and Ender would be woken up just because they would have come a long way and to die in a hotel fire on the other end of the world kinda sucks. The others would die because I either don't know them or they've been dicks to me in the past and I have a long memory

 

HAAAAAAARPP!!!!!!

edit: that was a bad question....

 

Hey! I asked permission... don't paint this like I'm betraying... anything.

 

so you're essentially a murderer the kierkegaardian sense. interesting

 

I'm the one who put him in that situation. And pushed him, too.

 

pushed him to choose three short of the total he was allowed to save? to murder in his heart by omission?