New Game: Interview the Next Person

[justTripn]

Yes, but I'm equal parts homebody. That's why timeshares work for me. By trading my timeshare week, I can go anyplace in the world, but come spend alot of that time nesting in my cute little house. Our timeshare is in the mountains of Virginia, but by trading, we've also been to Sedona, Arizona; the Poconohos (Pennsyvania); Honolulu, Hawaii; and the beach in North Carolina. My biggest adventure was living in Thailand for two years (way before I owned a timeshare). I was a homebody there too.

Q: Are you a thrillseeker? (rollorcoasters, high diving boards, skiiing, roller blading, surfing? High speed car chases? LOL That type of thing) Me yes. I like thrills that don't actually involve danger, like rollorcoaster rides.

[Bookworm]

Q: Are you a thrillseeker? (rollorcoasters, high diving boards, skiiing, roller blading, surfing? High speed car chases? LOL That type of thing) Me yes. I like thrills that don't actually involve danger, like rollorcoaster rides.

Yes, but I'm also a bit control freak so I like thrills where I'm in control of the situation. So I would never go Bungee jumping, but I love skiing and I loved driwing a car very fast in an Autobahn in Germany and I would like to learn surfing and I love sailing...

Q: Continuing with this theme what is the most dangerous exciting thing you have ever done?

[Aquarius]

In my 20s, I hopped a fence with a couple of friends and went exploring at an old abandoned mental institution. One of the people I was with had been doing it since he was a teen, but it was my first (and only) time. It was a real adventure, complete with parking the car a few roads over, putting on dark clothes so as not to be spotted by police patrols, grabbing flashlights, etc. There were all these underground tunnels that connected the buildings. Some of the buildings were just piles of rubble, and some were intact. I have no idea how long we wandered around, but it was really scary, like on Ghost Hunters or something! There was evidence of kids partying and stuff, but there was also some very artistic graffiti. In one building we found an intact nurse's station, and the "specials ward," which was especially creepy!

It's a golf course now, but if anyone's curious, here's some pictures from a website I found: http://www.northville-tunnels.com/



Q: Have you ever had a paranormal experience? Tell us what happened.

[Alelou]

I'm not sure it was really paranormal, but I was out carousing in Edinburgh, Scotland for Hogmanay (New Year's Eve) after starting out with my cousin's family in a neighborhood I didn't know well, not that I knew anywhere in Edinburgh all that well. Anyway, somehow or other I had managed to hike back to that neighborhood from the festivities up at the Tron (the old kirk up in the old part of town where the young people hang out to count down the old year and generally party -- for me this was highlighted by slugging whiskey out of someone's bottle that was being passed around and kissing a bobby!!!) and I suddenly became absolutely certain that I must start running down the street like a maniac RIGHT now.

And so I ran breathlessly up to the friends' house just as my cousin's family was pulling away from the curb ... and I yelled them down to stop ... which they did ... which meant I got to go home the easy way that night instead of hiking around in the dark for another hour or God knows what.

(What's remarkable to me now is how comfortable I was walking around a city in the middle of the night. Edinburgh was great that way back then. I'm not sure it still is.)

[Alelou]

Question: Does your family have a ghost story?

[Aquarius]

My family doesn't per se, but *I* do...

It was about a year and a half ago. I woke up way before my alarm went off, it was probably about 5:30-6am. My cat Elvis was sleeping happily at the foot of the bed.

All of a sudden, there was this vibration, with a kind of clanging...imagine change on a saucer that was placed on top of a very loud subwoofer. That's what it was like when it peaked. And as it peaked, I couldn't move.

I'd been lying on my back, on the right side of my bed. I felt a hand reach over from the left and grab my cheek, and turn my head toward the left. I was overwhelmed by a sense of fear, but not all of it felt like mine, if you know what I mean.

Suddenly, I hear ambulance or fire sirens passing by outside, and I was released. My heart was pounding, and the whole time, the cat didn't budge. And aside from Elvis and I, the bed was empty. I'd never been so freaked out in all my life. (Well, that's not really true, either; I've had other freaky shit happen that scared me like that, too.)

Any way, as I thought about it since, I'm pretty convinced that those sirens were for whoever was in my bed with me that morning. I've come to believe that someone was dying, and they were terrified, reaching out to anyone who would listen, and maybe I just happened to be "tuned to the right frequency" at the time. The more I thought about it, the more sad I was than scared. If I'd understood what was happening at the time, I would've tried to offer some comfort instead of being freaked out of my mind.



Do you believe aliens have already visited Earth?

[Kevin Thomas Riley]

^ It was probably a case of sleep paralysis

Do you believe aliens have already visited Earth?

Nope. I'm a firm sceptic on this matter.

Q: What do you think is more likely, that aliens one day will visit Earth or that our first "first contact" will take place in space or on some extrasolar world.

[Aquarius]

^ It was probably a case of sleep paralysis

That's been suggested to me before, but I maintain that I was already awake and moving around in my bed before the "encounter," rather than just coming out of sleep.

[Alelou]

Hmm. Well, after vividly seeing a garbage truck that clearly wasn't there last week, I'm not going to fervently maintain anything.

Brains are very weird.

[Asso]

Do you believe aliens have already visited Earth?

Nope. I'm a firm sceptic on this matter.

"There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio,Than are dreamt of in your philosophy."

[Kevin Thomas Riley]

^ Quoting Hamlet won't make me a believer in alien visitations!

My question still stands:

What do you think is more likely, that aliens one day will visit Earth or that our first "first contact" will take place in space or on some extrasolar world.

[Asso]

^ Quoting Hamlet won't make me a believer in alien visitations!

My question still stands:

What do you think is more likely, that aliens one day will visit Earth or that our first "first contact" will take place in space or on some extrasolar world.

Me, too, I'm not a believer in Alien visitations, but I think Amlet was right.
I prefer to not delive into the matter.

On some extrasolar world. Probably it would mean we're at square. You know: To trust is good, but to not trust is better.

Q: And... how do you imagine the Aliens?

[justTripn]

"There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio,Than are dreamt of in your philosophy."

Hamlet? I thought he was quoting Q. I guess that goes under, "You know you're a Star Trek fan when . . . "

Sorry, I'll let someone else picture the aliens, but it's a great question.

[Alelou]

We're conditioned by Star Trek to expect humans with facial appliances. We're conditioned by other sources to expect giant heads and eyes and long fingers -- sort of a cross between Kewpie dolls and elves. If the building blocks are the same and evolution works in similar ways on other planets with similar conditions, then yeah, maybe. Is there a narrow range of conditions in which intelligent life can evolve? Then the facial appliances thing might not be so far off. Or maybe we'll run into hortas and intelligent swarms and ectoplasm and all sorts of weird sh*t.

Of course, the distances are so vast the chances of us running into ANYTHING before our little blip of existence is up is just about nil. I honestly think that our thinking about aliens is simply a reflection of our thinking about the aliens on our own planet -- people from other races and cultures or even those odd people who live a few doors down.

Q: When you are having trouble getting something done, what usually helps you the most?

[Pitseleh]

Doing something completely different. if I have trouble with a design or on how to make a model or something like that, I try to concentrate on something else and my mind starts processing the other stuff better without the pressure.

Worse vacation ever? Why? (I just came back from a not-so-pleasant trip to Mexico)