Seanan McGuire (seanan_mcguire) wrote,
Seanan McGuire
seanan_mcguire
  • Mood: amused
  • Music: Glee, "Don't Rain On My Parade."

Things Seanan Isn't Allowed To Discuss With the Reporter.

So I have a reporter from the Contra Costa Times coming over this afternoon to interview me and take some pictures for a local author profile piece. This is pretty cool. I've never been profiled in the newspaper before. We've cleaned the whole house (for values of "we" that mean "mostly my mother"), my room is slightly less of an EPA hazard zone than usual, and the cats have been thoroughly lectured on not throwing up in front of the cameraman. After a great deal of discussion, I have agreed to the following list of Things Seanan Isn't Allowed To Discuss With the Reporter (unless she starts it):

1. The Black Death.
2. Parasites.
3. How parasites caused us to evolve gender.
4. Endemic bubonic plague in California's ground squirrels.
5. The X-Men.
6. Crazy Australian mermaid shows.
7. Anything involving venom.
8. Dinosaurs.
9. The inevitability of the zombie apocalypse.
10. Anything that involves socially unacceptable hand gestures.
11. The ineffective nature of H1N1 as a slatewiper pandemic.
12. How my pandemic would be better.
13. Pandemics, period.
14. My collection of My Little Ponies.
15. My collection of plush weaponry.
16. My collection of plush viruses.
17. Banana slugs.
18. How to evolve a society of pseudo-mammal telepaths from parasitic wasps.
19. Why you would want to do that in the first place.
20. Giant squid.
21. Reality television.
22. Bedbug reproduction.
23. Anything Kate won't let me talk about during dinner.
24. Necrosis.
25. The slow conversion of aspartame into formaldehyde.
26. Monkeyspheres.
27. The fact that the turtle couldn't help us.
28. My limited and specialized knowledge of ASL.
29. The virtues of the machete vs. the meat cleaver.
30. That vial of liquid mercury I bought at a garage sale.
31. Tarantulas.
32. Cheese.
33. Jerusalem crickets.
34. What I did last summer.
35. The vast disparity between women's "appropriate" weight and the things women eat in television commercials.
36. Evil Dead: the Musical.
37. Why you should turn to cannibalism immediately when stranded on a desert island.
38. Kuru.
39. Flensing.
40. Parthenogenic reproduction.
41. Reasons to go crawling around in a sewer.
42. Observing autopsies.
43. Why yoga is better with Rob Zombie.
44. SyFy Original Movies.
45. The drinking games that accompany same.
46. Why I went to Waverly Place last time I was in Manhattan.
47. Pie.
48. Pi.
49. Structured poetry.
50. People as an available source of protein.
Tags: interviews, magazines and me, pandemic time, silliness, so the marilyn
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  • 170 comments

Admittedly, my tenure in journalism was brief...

lastwordy_mcgee

January 7 2010, 19:30:30 UTC 7 years ago

...but if I were still doing that for a living, I would totally use your list as my "List of Topics to Ask Reticent Interviewees" every SINGLE time, regardless of who I was interviewing.

That might explain the above use of "brief."

Regardless, I want to print this list and use it at parties, when small talk is needed. At my very own parties, any of the above topics will go over like mad. At other people's parties, they will serve as effective filters for deciding who is worth talking to and who is not, thus saving me from the horror of mingling.

You, as usual, are brilliant and your list makes me smile. My very favorite birthday ever was spent at #36 (which then led to one of my very favorite "there was this one time..." stories ever, involving Ash's understudy having to stand-in for Ash's sister that night, script in hand and all, resulting in a MASSIVE standing ovation). Also, I would pay any gym any amount of money for #43. I may have to use your list as my LJ writing prompts for a while, since I have a memory, story or association for pretty much everything on it, including #23 if I replace "Kate" with "my stepmother."

Re: Admittedly, my tenure in journalism was brief...

seanan_mcguire

January 7 2010, 22:53:18 UTC 7 years ago

Brief, yet clearly awesome. Also, I appreciate the fact that your parties would allow all these things as conversation starters. You clearly throw the right kind of party.

Evil Dead: the Musical is one of the true gems of our time, and I love it like whoa.