Ornoth

I love the people who make up these questions…

Do you like to shop? Why or why not?

Honestly, I would enjoy shopping, if it weren’t for the fact that other people are always shopping at the same time. I just hate having to wade through piles of aimless, slow-walking midgets.
 

What was the last thing you purchased?

Some tortellini dish, a burger, a Mike’s spiked lemonade, an oatmeal stout, and some “mud pie” dessert thing at Boston Beer Works. If meals don’t count, then a green highlighter, a red Sharpie, and a new DargonZine notebook for 2004.
 

Do you prefer shopping online or at an actual store? Why?

Depends on the product. Online is generally preferred, but I wouldn’t buy clothes or anything needing fitting online. And there are products which require more research than can be performed online.
 

Did you get an allowance as a child? How much was it?

Can you remind me again exactly when I was a child? I probably got about five bucks.
 

What was the last thing you regret purchasing

Lots of things, if by “regret” you mean I wish I hadn’t had to spend the cash on it. Otherwise, probably some horrid chocolate milk that had coconut in it. Might have been Quik brand; I always buy Hershey’s fat free and cut it with plain milk.

Using one adjective, describe your current living space.

Enviable.
 

Using two adjectives, describe your current employer.

Fictitious, nonexistent.
 

Using three adjectives, describe your favorite hobby/pasttime.

Solitary, contemplative, athletic.
 

Using four adjectives, describe your typical day.

Goal-oriented, laid back, intellectual, solitary.
 

Using five adjectives, describe your ideal life.

Contemplative, creative, active, healthful, eventful.

Yes, I’m early this week. I’m that good.

Those of you who pick up the Friday Five from my page might want to know that there’s an official Web site at http://fridayfive.org/, and there’s an RSS feed at fridayfive_feed that you can put on your friends page.

What was your first Halloween costume?

The first one I remember was a skeleton. Ha ha, look at the skinny kid in the skeleton costume.
 

What was your best costume and why?

Well, that’d have to be my SCA getup. As a member of the Verminssun clan of the barbaric Veassllurds, I got to prance around in nothing but a loincloth. The front half, including the fox’s head, covered my crotch, and the back half, including his bushy red tail, covered my backside. I got a lot of looks and many comments in that one.
 

Did you ever play a trick on someone who didn't give you a treat?

On Halloween? I doubt it.
 

Do you have any Halloween traditions? (ie: Family pumpkin carving, special dinner before trick or treating, etc.)

Really, no. Halloween, the Samhain cross-quarter day, my birthday, and the end of daylight savings—all depressing events—all come within a few days, and it always marks the beginning of the worst time of year for me. So generally I try to ignore it all and hang onto the last vestiges of summer’s happiness as long as I possibly can.
 

Share your favorite scary story...real or legend!

I’m really not a fan of gothic or horror type stuff, although I do have a few classics to point out that might be worth investigating. Clarke Ashton Smith and Lord Dunsany are both very good. Lots of people will mention Poe, but I particularly enjoyed one of his more obscure stories, the “Narrative of A. Gordon Pym”. Similarly, I think people will mention Bram Stoker’s “Dracula”, yet be completely ignorant of his most excellent “The Jewel of Seven Stars”. Many folks will no doubt mention Lovecraft, but frankly once I was familiar with his style I found him awfully predictable and formulaic.

Do you watch sports? If so, which ones?

Not having a television, I generally can’t watch professional sports without making a significant effort. In fact, sports was one of the reasons why I got rid of my television back in 1994. You see, I asked myself what were the programs that I would go out of my way to watch, and there were only three (two of them sports): Jeopardy, NBA basketball, and NASCAR auto racing. Looking at it that way, I couldn’t justify spending $500 a year on cable just to watch that shit.
 
More recently, there have been a few times that I’ve made the effort to go somewhere to watch television, and those times, too, have been for sporting events: typically the NBA playoffs and the Tour de France. And I’ll occasionally go out to a Celtics game with friends.
 

What/who are your favorite sports teams and/or favorite athletes?

I don’t usually favor teams, but individuals. I have rooted for the Indiana Pacers, mostly because of future hall of famer Reggie Miller. However, I have a large number of professional cyclists whom I hope do well; that list includes local hero Tyler Hamilton, Lance Armstrong, David Millar, Francesco Casagrande, Tom Danielson, Greg LeMond, Bobby Julich, Michael Rasmussen, and many others.
 

Are there any sports you hate?

I don’t hate any, but there are several that I find uninteresting. That list includes just about everything not mentioned above, but at the top of my “boring” list are baseball, football, golf, hockey, college basketball, horse racing, bowling, skating, skiing, drag racing, and many others.
 

Have you ever been to a sports event?

Yes. Not worth getting into.
 

Do/did you play any sports (in school or other)? How long did you play?

For the past five years or so my primary sport has been endurance cycling (and commuting). However I have previously gone through phases of competitive running, soccer, baseball, bowling, and archery. I have also spent a lot of time doing recreational racquetball, billiards, inline skating, golf, swimming, rock climbing, skateboarding, and tons more.

Who is your favorite singer/musician? Why?

I can’t say I have a particular favorite musician, either artistically or personally. I enjoy a number of artists’ work from a variety of genres, and there are several musicians whom I count as interesting personalities, but I don’t feel the need to obsessively order them in a particular ranking.
 

What one singer/musician can you not stand? Why?

In contrast, Stevie Nicks really annoys me, both musically and personally, although I’m sure there are numerous others.
 

If your favorite singer wasn't in the music business, do you think you would still like him/her as a person?

Do you mean “favorite” artistically or personally?
 

Have you been to any concerts? If yes, who put on the best show?

Have I been to any concerts? Probably a thousand, many of them very memorable. Again, I can’t give you one best, but I’ll tell you who were most memorable. For local bands: Powerman 5000, the Bentmen, Upper Crust, Concussion Ensemble, Emergency Broadcast Network. For national acts: Dance Hall Crashers, Prince Buster, Moby, and Laibach. However, I think the gold medal goes to KMFDM, the Toasters, and (believe it or not) Gary Numan! Without question the worst national act I’ve seen was Yes.
 

What are your thoughts on downloading free music online vs. purchasing albums? Do you feel the RIAA is right in its pursuit to stop people from dowloading free music?

The recording industry is wholly and perfectly within their rights and is morally and legally obligated to crush the illegal copying and distribution of copyrighted works. As someone who has purchased about fifty albums as a direct result of Audiogalaxy.com, I believe they’re also just as emphatically going about it in completely the wrong manner. By trying to use the legal system to pass and enforce laws which are in practice unenforceable, they have placed themselves in a directly antagonistic relationship with their customers: about the stupidest thing a business can do. Instead, they should have used a three-pronoged strategy: first, encourage music swapping; second, use the new technologies to enforce limits on the number or longevity of user-copied material; and finally, find ways to make people want to possess licensed copies of their works by increasing the value-add in the packaging, or giving additional benefits to customers who purchase electronic distributions. And shutting down Internet-based radio stations was one of the most shortsighted tactics I’ve ever seen from an industry known for its avarice.

Looks like the children running the Friday Five are doing their best to prove their incompetence again, repeating the same inane, predictable questions over and over again. How difficult can it be to come up with five unique questions each week? Especially when you consider they have a readership of thousands who continually feed them prospective new questions? The dearth of originality has me once again on the verge of quitting and deleting all the Friday Five postings I’ve ever made. Another week with questions as pathetic and redundant as these, and I’ll do just that.

Are you going to school this year?

I’ve been going to the New England School of Art and Design at Suffolk University for a Certificate in Electronic Graphic Design for the past two years. However, I decided to take an LOA this semester to conserve cash and concentrate on my job search. However, I am hoping to take a short course in Macromedia Flash at MassArt in October.
 

If yes, where are you going (high school, college, etc.)? If no, when did you graduate?

See above.
 

What are/were your favorite school subjects?

You asked this question last year, stupid. See my response here.
 

What are/were your least favorite school subjects?

Probably sciences and maths. The former were just a joke, and the latter utterly impractical.
 

Have you ever had a favorite teacher? Why was he/she a favorite?

You asked this question last year, stupid. See my response here.

How much time do you spend online each day?

Probably about 14 hours per day.
 

What is your browser homepage set to?

Usually it’s set to
about:<center><span%20style=%22font-size:200px;font-family=Monotype%20Corsiva">Microsoft%20Sucks</span></center>
but for the time being it’s set to this.
 

Do you use any instant messaging programs? If so, which one(s)?

AIM.
 

Where was your first webpage located?

In all likelihood my personal site was my first, which probably would have been located at <http://northshore.shore.net/~ornoth>.
 

How long have you had your current website?

I really don’t know. Both DargonZine and OrnothLand would have gone up around 1994 or so, although both were at different URLs back then. So let’s say a decade. The “newspaper digest” style entries now seen on OrnothLand go back to April 1998.

Sorry I’m late… It was PMC weekend…

What time do you wake up on weekday mornings?

Whenever it happens. I’m normally a morning person anyways, so most people would consider it early. However, the Puggle is even more of a morning person than me, and he’s been getting me up very early. Since he’s gotten me into that habit, now I find it impossible to sleep in late. So now I get up anywhere from 5am to (if I’m really lucky) 8am.
 

Do you sleep in on the weekends? How late?

What’s a weekend? Every day’s a weekend when you don’t have to work! But no, I don’t sleep in. I can’t sleep when the sun is up.
 

Aside from waking up, what is the first thing you do in the morning?

Typically, pet the cat a little while waiting for him to get off my chest, then get up, go to the bathroom, and urinate. Bring my water glass and cell phone into the kitchen. Feed the cat. Get a glass of OJ and vitamins. Log in, check mail, forward spam to uce@ftc.gov. Read the following online: Boston Globe, Cat of the Day, Get Fuzzy, Boston.com, Cyclingnews.com, My Yahoo!, NWS Boston zone forecast, and my LJ friends page.
 

How long does it take to get ready for your day?

I’m Ornoth. I am always ready for my day.
 

When possible, what is your favorite place to go for breakfast?

My kitchen. Sometimes a breakfast out can be good, but I don’t do it very often. Around here, probably Bickford’s would do. They’re pretty traditional New England big breakfast kinda stuff.

When was the last time you cheated?

When was the last time you stole?

When was the last time you lied?

When was the last time you broke or vandalized another's property?

When was the last time you hurt a loved one?

Interestingly, I find myself unable to answer these questions. In general, I go a long way to avoid these behaviors, but when I do lie/cheat/steal, I do so without remorse or conscience. Because I am so blasé about it, I honestly couldn’t tell you the last time I lied/cheated/stole. It probably wasn’t too recently, but then again I don’t pay enough attention to be able to say with any certainty one way or the other.

What were your favorite childhood stories?

I don’t have any specific affinities for any writing prior to 7th grade (12 years of age). However, my English teacher at that time read some juvenile lit aloud each day in class. We went through Madeleine L’Engle’s “A Wrinkle in Time” and J.R.R. Tolkien’s “The Hobbit”. The latter made enough of an impression that I went on to read and enjoy the slightly more adult “Lord of the Rings” trilogy and become a hardcore Tolkien fan.
 
I also aped “The Hobbit” the following year in the first piece of fiction I ever wrote, a 4-page, 2200-word quest to bring healing medicine to an afflicted prince. Instead of Gandalf the Grey, I had Galor the Elder. In place of Mirkwood my story introduced the Wood of Darkness, a place haunted by the spirits of the dead trees, which took the form of skeletal flying monkeys (a là “Wizard of Oz”). Instead of the Misty Mountains, I had the Murky Mountains, and instead of Gollum I provided the Farog, a solitary subterranean beastie with a poisonous bite. Tolkien’s Beorn was replaced by a healer named Thodin living alone between the wood and the mountains. The story was titled, appropriately enough, “Ornoth’s Journey”, after the protagonist, a prince who undertook the quest along with his brother and sister and the wizard. The opening line, reworked a thousand times in dozens of subsequent revisions, is forever branded in my mind:

Spring came early to Gamdorn, and all of the fields were alive with color, as a stranger clad in a dark robe stroke up the walk to the doors of the large Royal Hall…

But that’s getting rather afield from the original line of inquiry.
 

What books from your childhood would you like to share with [your] children?

My what???
 

Have you re-read any of those childhood stories and been surprised by anything?

Re-reading Tolkien was something of a letdown, because by then I’d become a very proficient fantasy writer and editor myself, and I found his work quite different in style from that which I preferred. While he still retained the sense of wonder that is absolutely critical to the success of any fantasy story, I disagreed with his pacing, and had outgrown the remoteness and the moral absolutes of high fantasy, having found low fantasy both more palatable and more fertile for stories of real human interest.
 

How old were you when you first learned to read?

I have no recollection. A typical age. Three to five?
 

Do you remember the first 'grown-up' book you read? How old were you?

No real recollection, although the “Lord of the Rings” might qualify.

You’d think that as a writer I would have stronger opinions about fiction, but in truth I consider prose a rather cheap commodity. After all, much of it is poorly-written, and even the stuff that’s well-written is easily come by and available in a near inexhaustible quantity. Therefore I don’t tend to value fiction very highly. That might seem an odd view for someone who claims creative writing as their primary method of artistic expression, but so it is.