Recently I asked you all to ask me questions -- and here's the second installment of answers. (The first was answering marta and Shawn's questions about John Edwards.)
Cat asked: "If you could have named yourself any name - when you were younger (first name) what would it have been?"
I actually would have named myself Mary. Um, not "Mary," as in "I really would have picked my real life name," but Mary, as in "my name is not actually Mary, but I do like it."
When I was little I had this (growing up Catholic, go figure) plastic statue of the Virgin Mary that had a little white light bulb in it. The plastic Virgin Mary was dressed in blue, looked very serene and exuded a soft blue light in my bedroom at night that made me feel safe and calm. I've left the Catholic church, but that little plastic Mary light left me with a sense of the mystical desirability of the name Mary.
Addicted Rantings asked: "How many pets do you have (if any) and what are their names, or pen pet names?"
I have one cat and one goldfish. The goldfish doesn't have a name in real life, because it just happens to be the sole survivor of a tank full of nameless fish, who were at one point victimized by my kids' addition of glue to the tank. The cat does have a real life name, but I haven't given him a pen name yet. I'm pretty sure I've mentioned him on the blog at some point, if only because his vomit was adding to some chaos or other I was busying cleaning up.
It's hard for me to come up with pen names for the people and animals in my life I've had a hand in naming. I haven't yet given my kids pseudonyms on the blog because I love their real life names so much and think they suit them so well. I named the cat with love too, so I'm not going to pick another one for him right now.
Sophie asked: "If you could be part of Neo's posse, fighting the Matrix, what would your name, bio, and avatar costume be?"
Oo, that's a good and difficult one. I can think of lots of cool names, none of which fit me... I think I'd like Ophelia, because I identified with her character once upon a time and always liked the name. I think, like Cypher and Neo, I would have been born in the Matrix with all the complicated feelings that engenders. But I'd generally stay on the ship, working the computers and equipment, because I'd be too scared to go back in again. And I think my costume would be something a little like a tattered 80's version of the post-apocalyptic world of the future: some black, updated version of Pat Benatar's "Love is a Battlefield" dress.
Shawn asked: "Why the name MPJ?"
The initials are not my real life initials, but they do contain elements of the initials of people who are important in my life. I picked the initials first, then added the name "Mary P Jones" to them when I decided I wanted to my gender to be identifiable when I commented on other blogs.
SAWife asked: "This probably has been answered before, but who's the lady with the typewriter?"
The lady with the typewriter is some poor unwitting model whose image was licensed to Strumpfkunst, who created my blog header. I wonder if the model knows that she gets pasted up all over the Internet as the alter ego for a crazy lady?
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