Answers to Jo’s daily questions for November 1-15, 2022.
1. What immature behavior have you displayed recently?
Nothing irl, but so much just in general in online fandom, always to do with shipping.
2. What are some very salty foods you enjoy?
Potato chips. Mettwurst.
3. What are some major global events that have occurred during your lifetime?
Well, the COVID-19 pandemic, obviously.
Internet.
Mobile and then smart phones.
Russia’s attack in Ukraine.
The fall of Berlin Wall.
Chernobyl.
9/11
Several recessions
4. The restaurant is out of your favorite salad dressing. What do you order instead?
Salad dressing isn’t a factor in my choice on what to order – I don’t even think about it. I don’t have a favorite salad dressing because I almost never use it (we didn’t use them when I was a kid and I’ve never learned). I decide the hot dish, and then side dish is whatever.
5. What do you imagine people see when they look at you?
A fat woman.
6. Are there any bridges you don’t regret burning?
Not sure how to answer this… I don’t think I’ve ever burned a single bridge. I’ve just picked other paths.
7. Have you been stung by a stinging critter?
Insects? Sure! Other stinging things? Don’t think so!
8. Of all the famous artifacts/exhibits you’ve seen in museums or art galleries, which was the most disappointing when you saw it in real life?
I don’t think I’ve seen any famous ones. If it’s not Mona Lisa level famous, I’m not sure I’d know it’s famous? There was this time in 1998 when my then best friend and I were in London, and went to see this comics exhibition in British Museum (I think it was British Museum?) and first we had trouble finding it because it was so unnotable that we went right past it, and then when we realized that that is the comics exhibition our reaction was “is that it? it is! it’s so… insignificant” we were both so disappointed because frankly our own collections were more impressive. Or maybe we never really did find it! Or maybe we just never recognized the importance of the items on display! The British Museum was otherwise fabulous, and the comics exhibit wasn’t the reason we went there so we were otherwise very impressed!
9. What’s a snack item you have difficulty eating in moderation?
My snacks are things like candy, chocolate, cookies, potato chips, cheese… And oh, all of them! Literally. It’s what I struggle with, eating fewer snacks and more proper (hot) meals! I don’t feel hunger and got no real appetite, have never really liked hot food and eating proper meals feels like a work (literally, while I’m chewing it it feels like work) and often tastes like cardboard. So to make myself eat something I have a bad habit of eating too many snacks because when I don’t I tend not to eat anything and then get nauseous. Crohn’s Disease apparently also causes lack of hunger and appetite. I’m working on this but there’s setbacks whenever I get this certain level exhausted because then I don’t want to eat anything, even snacks, and real food is totally unppealing even more so than normally so I eat something quick and usually unhealthy just to get something in my belly.
10. You’re an extraterrestrial scout sent to assess if it’s worth making contact with Earthlings. What are your main observations and recommendations?
Earthlings are violent and self-destructive. Stay far away and check back in in 1000 years, by which time Earthlings have either learned to live with themselves and their environment, or killed themselves off.
11. Today is Remembrance Day/Veterans Day. Do you know anyone, or have a distant relative, who died in a war?
Our Veteran’s Day is actually in April. And I actually don’t know, my family never talked about the war. I know my grand-parents didn’t die on either side, and that some of my father’s siblings were send to Sweden to be safe during the Winter and Continuation War and stayed there in those families after and never came back except for short visits as adults. But other than that, I don’t know. Finland hasn’t been a party in a war since the Continuation War except for some UN peacekeeping.
12. What’s a good song about freedom or being free? It can be a single line or the entire song.
Nina Simone’s Feeling Good.
13. Do you have a charity you regularly give to?
No, I don’t have enough money to do that. If I did that I’d have to go to a breadline to get free, donated food myself.
14. Is there one particular decision/choice you made in your life that is largely responsible for where you are now?
No. Health problems are my main thing now, and I could not have stopped/avoided/prevented Crohn’s Disease no matter what I did. Anemia, iron defiency, chronic migraine – I might have been able to avoid or lessen them if I had had the money *and* the knowledge to go see a good doctor in time to get them treated them well and properly before they became dire.
I sort of regret that I moved back to my home town after the library studies – I probably could have gotten jobs easier if I stayed in the Helsinki Metropolitan Area. But I also think that I’d have had to move away from there anyway even if I had gotten a full time job because the cost of living and the rents and everything is so high there that I couldn’t have afforded to live there on a librarian’s salary as a single.
But as a whole – no single decision/choice I made could have made it so that I’m not chronically ill the rest of my life with Crohn’s Disease and probably with chronic migraine. Those are genetic things.
15. Pick up the nearest book (magazine or any available printed material will do). Turn to page 24 (or the closest to it). Go to the 7th line. What is it?
“Äitiä ja isää painoi jo ennestään syyllisyys. Henryn vuoksi.” It’s from a Rebecca Martinsson novel called “Isien pahat teot” (original title: Fädernas missgärningar) by Åsa Larsson.