March 2023 Five Questions
- joneworlds@mailbox.org

1.  If  you  were  a potato  chip  (potato  crisp,
 croustille), what flavour would you be?

I would choose  to be good ol' ammonia  & dog shit
flavour chips.  Because then no one's going to eat
me, and I'll survive.  Unlike most chips.  Bet you
can't each just one...

2. What's the  most unusual way you've  made a new
friend?

I  remember Glen  and  I had  the  4-runner up  on
stands one day,  for us to re-do  the brake lines.
And our pizza delivery comes and I'm trying to dig
my  wallet  out  of  my  pants  pocket  inside  my
coveralls, for to pay the delivery guy, whose name
is Anil.  And in my fumbling, I accidentally knock
the pizza out of his  hands, and wouldn't you know
the box  comes open  and it lands  face down  in a
puddle of oil and brake fluid.  So I'm down on the
floor trying to  clean that up, and I  go to stand
up,  hit  the frame  with  my  back, and  I  guess
the 4-runner  was not  stable on those  stands and
the front  end falls off, onto  Glen.  Brake rotor
goes right  through his skull.   Killed instantly,
as they say.

And then I'm totally losing it, and Anil the pizza
guy  stays right  through that  with me,  and held
space and  held me, and we've  been friends since.
And now we go together  to his trauma group, since
then.  For if you  thought my story's awful, you'd
never want to hear what all Anil had to watch them
do to his sister years ago.

And  you   know,  Anil   even  helped   me  finish
that 4-runner.   Together the took the  truck down
the east  side of  Lake Chowdercatt  the following
spring.   Glen would  have  been  glad, he'd  have
wanted  that.   Although  on  the  trip  back,  we
accidentally  slid it  off the  road and  down the
bank.  And I never bothered to come back for it to
winch it out.  So it's  still there I guess.  That
would've  pissed  Glen  off,  he  never  had  much
patience with that kind of carelessness.

But anyways, the point is  that was a weird, awful
way to  make a new  friend in Anil.  But  it's not
too  often you'd  find  a friend  who'll help  you
clean  your  other  friend's brains  off  a  brake
rotor.  You surely often won't.

3. Tell  me of a  film, miniseries, play,  or book
wherein  your   sympathies  for   the  protagonist
shifted  to   the  antagonist.  What   caused  the
sympathy shift?

I remember watching Return of the Living Dead. The
one with the zombie-turning gas from that old army
barrel,  and those  punk  kids.  And  I guess  I'm
rooting  for  the  guys  who  opened  the  barrel,
because  you know  I got  a  soft spot  in me  for
bumbling  numb-skulls like  them  guys.  But  then
there's  that  scene  when  the  zombies  eat  the
police's brains, and then  have the wherewithal to
use their  radio in  the car  to call  for backup.
Send more  cops, send  more brains.  And  then I'm
just like, way to go  zombies!  That's a big brain
move there.  Don't let  anyone tell you otherwise.
Big brain.  Rock on, zombies.

4.  I wish  to improve  my Gopher  phlog. I  could
justify the text, or add RSS functionality, or add
external   links  of   interest.  What   are  your
recommended  resources for  getting me  beyond the
basics?

I like  what you  got.  What I  suggest, and  I do
this, but I think you  actually do too, is to take
out as many dates as  possible.  I think it's that
"garden"  idea.  I'll  speak for  myself, and  you
take   from  it   what   you   want:  avoiding   a
chronological order will keep my deal fresher to a
newcomer's  eyes, if  ever  I  stop adding  stuff.
Like if  something happens  to me.  I  think about
that  now,  you know,  and  maybe  you would  too.
Maybe next week this  gopherhole's all that's left
of me,  because something'll  smush MY  brain this
time.  Like  an ogre.   Or a  zombie.  Or  a brake
rotor.

5. What's  an entree you  prepare so well  at home
that you don't order it at a restaurant?

I   never   found   a   place   that'll   make   a
peanut-butter-spaghetti-cucumber-mustard  sandwich
as  good as  I do.   Or that'll  make one  at all,
actually.  Believe me, I tried.  I asked Turk, and
he told me to get the fuck out of his store.  So I
won't ever order that again.  Because if Turk ever
were to  cut me  off, I'd never  find a  corn beef
sandwich as  good as  his, and  then I  don't know
what I'd do.  I surely don't.