Wondrous Apparitions, Provided by Magicians.

In honor of Perceval le Galois, I present today's game. It is a simple game in concept, but might produce interesting results. Perceval stumbled upon the Grail Castle early in life, but, out of a fear of appearing ignorant, failed to ask several relevant questions of the Grail King. Perceval was cast out of the castle, and ended up spending most of the rest of his life looking for a second chance, and the Grail King and his lands remained wounded and in waste until the knight was able to return and ask.

So. Here's the deal. In this post, anonymous comments are accepted. If you have a stupid question that you've been avoiding asking, whether it's a question for me personally, or a general question, post it as an anonymous comment. I or someone else will attempt to answer it as best we can. If your question is directed to me, please indicate that. Otherwise, anybody can (and should) respond.

Any questions?

EDIT:
Open Questions:
What do you get out of tabletop gaming?

Every morning at about 7:50 a.m., my printer produces a map to 1127 Belmont.

WHY???

Thanks,
featherynscale

Question for the Vast and Unpaid Research Department:

Can you suggest a song (or a few) that is danceable and has positive lyrics about a)a city that is ideal or magical; b)being empowered; c)being able to bring about change for the better; d)being able to enact transformation generally; e)different people working together to do something; f)claiming a place as one's own or declaring sovereignty of some sort?

Thanks!

Or, a silly little meme I found over at zianuray's place.

Ask me seven questions. Not just any seven questions though. No, to keep it interesting, use the seven questions as per below - just copy and paste the following, replace the blanks with something you want to know/ask (e.g. 3. Donkeys or sandcastles and why?), anything you want, personal, silly, surreal or deep, comment away and I'll answer honestly.

1. What do you think of _____________ ?

2. When did you last ____________?

3. __________ or ___________ and why?

4. What did you ______________?

5. What's your favorite ______________?

6. How would you ______________?

7. Who would you most like to ________ ?

While I'm posting other people's content, I thought I'd toss this up here. This comes out of this week's Free Will Astrology e-mail newsletter thingie. I enjoy the hell out of FWA, not because I'm all that excited about astrology (though I am a Leo, and I do occasionally use astrology as an excuse to be attention-seeking or proud), but because it often prompts me to think about things that are inspiring or encouraging. Frankly, I can use all the inspiration and encouragement I can get right about now, because children, I am **tired**.

So anyway, below the cut is a list of twenty questions from Rob Brezny. Some of them are interesting to me. Some are not. I'm planning on answering the interesting ones, and leaving the other ones alone. I thought I'd drop the whole list up here in case the questions might be interesting to somebody else. The words below the cut are all Brezny's, not mine.
( On to the questions! )

Thanks to everyone who filled out my poll yesterday. The backstory on that is this: at the PSD conference, I went to a presentation called Radical Hospitality. Radical Hospitality is the name of a for-sale workshop that you can have certified consultants come out and do with your congregation, to teach the congregation how to be welcoming to visitors and, to a lesser extent, how to care for the existing membership. The goal of all of this is, of course, to get more people to become UUs, which is not a terrible goal.

It was, however, a fairly terrible presentation. I will not recount the sins of the presentation, but will instead share my single biggest WTF moment.

The presenter was espousing the philosophy that in order to be welcoming to and supportive of visitors to our churches, we must first understand why people visit churches. She went on to say that a recent study had revealed that 50% of Americans say that they have either only one person in their lives, or nobody at all, with whom they can have deep, meaningful conversations, and that 20(something) percent said they had nobody at all. Of course, there was no citation to go with this data point, so I can't discover anything further about it (like how the study defined deep, meaningful conversation, or who the sample set was, or how the question was phrased, or who sponsored the research or anything). So I contented myself with going, "I bet that's bullshit."

She went on to say that this was why people came to churches, because they were so terribly lonely. I wasn't sure that necessarily followed, but I was willing to ride along with it to see where it went. She then lamented the fact that it was now easier to communicate with people electronically than ever before, and that this ability to email and post and so on was replacing "real connection", rendering people unable to have the kind of conversations they desperately need to have.

In fact, I heard some variant of "OH NOES THE INTERNETZ ARE DESTROYING ABILITY TO COMMUNICATE MEANINGFULLY" about four times over the course of the conference, from different speakers. Something lit up in my tiny brain at this point, because the speaker would almost inevitably go on to lament the fact that the denomination was unable to attract younger people in the quantities we would like to. I'm thinking the Luddite attitude might have something to do with that, no?

So anyway, in reaction to that, I had to ask you guys. Of course, I am stacking the deck in favor of people who feel socially connected and able to have deep conversation through electronic communications channels by taking a self-selecting sample from a social networking site, but hey. I'm fully aware of that. Part of the point of the exercise was to reassure myself that you were all still out there. :)

The Hot Nurse asked me to donate a piece of jewelry to the silent auction her son's school is having as a fund-raiser. I have no problem in the world doing that, of course, but she also said, "You know, you should include your business card so it's like advertising." This is also undeniably true. However. I do not have a business card. I do not have a business card because I do not have anything to direct people to via a business card. I need a website.

There are a couple of things that block me from having a website. I'm pretty sure I could put one together, even if was just a shop on a larger site, or something I put together with somebody's e-commerce toolkit. However. In order to do that, I'd need good photographs of my work. I do not seem to be capable of producing good photographs of my work. I think it would help me to have a light-box and some sort of display platform, which I could probably build. It would also help me to use a tripod. I think I have one somewhere. But that's all I know about. If some of you other picture-taking folks could point me to some tips on taking good up-close photos of shiny things, it would be greatly appreciated.

Also, I would need a name for said website, and the jewelry business it would allegedly represent. Any suggestions there would also be appreciated. I've been using 'Entropic Trinity' but, of course, it's just my work, and the entropic part perhaps suggests that the things are likely to explode or disintegrate at any moment, which is not really what I want to convey.

So, what do you think?

Worse offense against reason and the cosmos:
- Getting a myspace account in order to download music from band promo pages
OR
- Hijacking someone else's myspace account in order to download same?

Discuss.

I saw this little request pop up here and there on my list, and it looked like fun, so I'm posting it here. If it's the sort of thing that gives you hives, you are, of course free to ignore it. I'm re-posting the text as-is (as-was?), mostly to preserve the line about she-turnips, which I didn't write, but I like.

I know very little about some of the people on who read my journal. Some people I know relatively well. (Some I know too well. You know who you are.) I read your journals, or we have something else in common and we chat occasionally. Some of you I hardly know at all. Perhaps you lurk, for whatever reason. But you read me and I thank you for your interest in my words.

But here's a thought: why not take this opportunity to tell me a little something about yourself. Any old thing at all. Just so the next time I see your name I can say: "Ah, there's so and so...they listen in rapture to the love-music of she-turnips." I might feel compelled to mock your musical taste, but I'll certainly remember you.

I'd love it if every single person who friended me would do this. Yes, even you people who I know really well. If you would like, post this in your own journal and see what gems of knowledge appear.

Extra added bonus: Comments are screened. (I'm hoping someone will tell me something juicy.) If you want commentary on your comment, please mention that it's okay to un-screen (de-screen?) the thing.

Not that I don't love reading about when you all threw up last, and whatnot, but we seem to spend a vast amount of our journaling time answering lists of questions that were probably written by 15-year-olds. I'm personally inclined to harness that tendency to appease my curiosity. Therefore, I present:
( Ten Questions, The Answers To Which I Will Genuinely Find Interesting )

Since I was sort of hoping this would reach meme-level, here's what I'd like to see: answer the questions, here in the comments thread, or in your own journal. You don't have to answer them all. To perpetuate the meme, you could either re-post my questions in your journal and ask your friends-list, or, if you don't like my questions, you could make a post including these instructions and replacing some or all of my 10 questions with questions that you're really interested in seeing people answer.