Pop Quiz
by Tony Nowikowski
 
1.   What is your name?         Anthony Matthew Nowikowski. Call me anything other than Tony, though, and I won't know who you're talking about.
2.   How old are you?         35
3.   Where do you live?         Cincinnati, Ohio (for the moment)
4.   What do you do for a living?         Building Better Web Pages Through Chemistry.
5.   Do you drive?         All the time. Usually far faster than the legal limit.
6.   What do you do for joy?          Drive far faster than the legal limit.
Go to bars to see live ORIGINAL music.
Read.
Consume alcoholic beverages.
Live with my beautiful wife Melinda.
7.   What is your pet peeve?   And how much does it weigh?  Does it sleep by the door?  Is it housebroken?         Misplaced apostrophes. And while I don't think they excrete much, the buggers DO seem to be multiplying at a pernicious rate,
8.   Do you write, paint or play?  All at the same time?  (While juggling a dozen eggs and riding a unicycle?)          What you've seen here on NoneList the last couple of weeks is pretty much my entire artistic output ...

        Of all the musical instruments I don't play, I guess I don't play the bass the least worst.

        Do cartons of egg substitute count?

9.   Who is the most impressive character you've ever met?         If I say "my wife", it's gonna sound like either a suck-up or a cop-out, but it's true ...
10.   Have you ever read, acted, performed, thrown up, etc. in public?         About a dozen times in '97 I took part in a sketch comedy/improv troupe thing that a couple of my friends had put together. Even tried doing stand-up ... ONCE. Made me realize that while I can be genuinely funny, it's not necessarily the kind of funny wot lends itself to public performance.

        I may yet have a go at some form of community theatre, although I haven't really ACTED acted since high school.

        And I don't think I've actually PUBLICLY puked since about the fourth grade .. drunken porcelain-hugging don't count!

11.  What piece of literature or art moved your soul to ecstatic waves of bliss?         Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas moved me, although I'm not exactly sure it was "ecstatic waves of bliss" ...
12.  What was the first thing you ever encountered that made you realise that art is important?         The Grand Canyon. Seeing something that majestic, made me understand how you'd want to try to capture the experience, to share it with the rest of the world.
13.  Would you consider yourself an artist?  A good one?  Why or why not?         Naaah, I'm at best a solid craftsman.
14.  What are your favorite things that have ABSOLUTELY nothing to do with anything else?          90 MPH on I-75 in rush-hour traffic.
Sleeping in on Sundays.
When the many lines of code you've written to make your web page do cool things DO the cool things without crashing the server.
Homemade pesto, with fresh basil from the pot on the back porch.
The anticipation before Daltrey's scream at the end of "Won't Get Fooled Again".
15.  What are your favorite things that have ABSOLUTELY everything to do with everything else?         The look in Melinda's eyes when she smiles at me.
16.  What's the meaning of life?         See #15.
17.  Why?         Because. Just because.
18.  True or false: the Three Stooges represent the apex of American cultural achievement.         False.
19.  True or False: Shemp was funnier than the original Curly.         Mu.
20.  Who's da man?         We is all da man.