For the hell of it, just a compilation of some polls I've participated in within the last month or so. Poll questions are in bold. Anything in italics is setup by the person conducting the poll.

Do you hold any truly bizarre fears?

Sure, you can avoid black cats, or hide under a desk on Friday the 13th, but do you hold fears that you, and only you hold? Fears so obscure there isn't a fancy word for them?

I'm not afraid of spiders. I face them calmly, unless they're on me, then I quickly brush them off. This has made me the designated spider capturer/killer. But I'm really squicked out by sowbugs. I'm not decaying vegetation, so there's zero chance of them attacking me, but there's something very creepy about them. Oddly, their cousins the pillbugs don't bother me nearly as much. I guess they seem drier.

Not an object, but I worry about the bathtub falling through the floor when I'm in it. Not every time I take a shower, but pretty often.

Could a really smart monkey do your job?

Although a monkey could not do my job due to their limited proficiency in computer use and evaluation of written English, I'm fairly certain a monkey with a word processor might do a better job producing work for us than some of the kids do; most do fairly well, but there's a small number, yeesh. Although, maybe the ones that seem to be 4 pages of blank verse (or as a coworker asked about one exemplar Tuesday "is this a word scramble?") might actually already be being written by monkeys...

It's August 2031; describe your (and/or your offspring's) daily life

I'll be 54. Hopefully by then I will have met and married my future husband at least 20 years earlier. Either we'll be happily childless, or the 2-4 kids we will have adopted (probably young, orphaned siblings too "old" to place easily) will be high school to college age or just past, so maybe I'll have a grandchild soon. My baby brother, who will be 48 then, will be happy, successful - the proud owner of a grocery store - and still close to me. My dazzling writing career will have surfaced, so I'll have no worries about retirement. And even if it hasn't, the baby boomers will for the most part have passed on, so the restructuring of SOS into a logical, sustaining entity, will have begun.

Don’t tell us why you love the book; SHOW us--in 100 words or less.

What I propose is this. Name an author you love and then identify a work--book, short story, or essay--by him or her which you find particularly memorable. It can be funny or sad, pithy or eloquent; it doesn’t matter, as long as you think the passage noteworthy. Having identified author and work, the poster should then quote a brief passage--try to keep it to under a hundred words or so--that exemplifies why you love this writer. It can be from the beginning, the end, or anywhere in between.

Once you’ve quoted your hundred words, stop. Don’t give context, don’t explain your choice, don’t mock the previous posters’ taste in literature: just trust in the words you’re quoting.

"I cannot get you close enough, I said to him, pitiful as a child, and never can and never will. We cannot get from anyone else the things we need to fill the endless terrible need, not to be dissolved, not so sink back into the sand, heat, broom, air, thinnest air. And so we revolve around each other and our dreams collide. It's embarrassing that it should be so hard. Look out the window in any weather. We are a part of that glamour, drama, change and should not be ashamed."

-"I Cannot Get You Close Enough" By Ellen Gilchrist

What non-physical traits do you find attractive?

Inspired by the "Are funny women attractive?" thread, what other non-physical traits do you find attractive?

Smart, of course.

Funny, but a certain type. Sarcastic wit.

Well read and/or artistic, but not so much guys who write, too (I'm too competitive)

A touch of arrogance. (guys with a good sense of self-worth aren't usually needy)

A sense of ambition at least equal to mine

What's your dream job?

Let us say that, as a result of the result of an unfortunate computer error, your legal status in your country of residence is changed from “citizen in good standing” or what have you, to some combination of “wanted felon”, “enemy combatant”, “communist”, “alien invader”, “infernal spawn of evil”, “Hitler”, and “litterbug”. As a result, you are stripped of your job, lose all of your possessions and are incarcerated and subjected to interrogation and some rather uncomfortable probing. The whole incident is quickly cleared up when some friends sign sworn affidavits stating that you are no litterbug.

Quite naturally, the government is embarrassed over this situation and makes a deal with you not to raise a stink. In exchange, they will arrange for you, your dream job. You may live wherever you want, do whatever you want and work for whomever you want. What job would you like?

I found out yesterday that my boss, a man who I have nothing in common with other than an interest in poets who killed themselves, has the same dream job that I do: writer for The Weekly World News.

I was still a teenager when I decided that would be the coolest journalism gig ever. Were I granted this wish, this is what I'd want. I'd like to work from this area, though, rather than relocate.

Your most awesome and ridiculous fantasy

This question was asked by someone whose fantasy is to do a Prussian Blue cover band with her Asian friends. (Prussian Blue is a white power sort of band with little kid singers). Her question to us: "Of course, there is so much obviously wrong with this plan I won't ever bother to list the reasons why it wouldn't work, but it's one of my favourite fantasies. What's yours?"

When I am ruler of the free world, I'm going to dismantle NASA and put the funding into something of true scientific worth: the manpanzee project. Oh sure, we'd have to create an entire new set of laws, but wouldn't it be cool? You really could be a monkey's uncle. Okay, chimp-human hybrid's uncle.

Of a slightly more serious bent, picture this:

Let's combine snowflake adoptions with stem cell research. From what I've read it's possible to split an pre-embryo into up to 8 in order create identical babies; sort of like a starfish. In order to appease both the people who think that we ought to use embryonic stem cells for disease research [B]and[/B] those who think the embryos ought to be allowed to be kids both, let's take a cell or two from embryos and let the rest be adopted. The six or seven cells that are adopted by a couple who want to use it might go on to be a baby, and the one or two cells could go on to be a new stem cell line since they're just going to clone the cell repeatedly anyway. If the embryo is still given the opportunity (since there's no guarantee for implantation anyway) to become a child, won't the moral debate go away?

What Mundane Things Fascinate You?

Not talking about very important things or fields of work, necessarily. But little, everyday things that, when you see or hear them, utterly fascinate you.

Jellyfish. The New England aquarium has an exhibit of many several types, and oh my, I was in heaven when I visited right before Christmas. I probably took 40 pictures of jellyfish alone. The best part? You could change the lights in one exhibit and make the jellyfish change colors!

Decorative Fountains. I can resist sticking my fingers in the water. We have one at work, and when we first got it we were told to stop putting our fingers in it, since I apparently have a lot of company 

Multiples. I find it fascinating that people can have 2, 3, 4, even up to 7 babies at a time. How do they cope? How do you deal with 4 or 5 two-year-olds?

Which people of the same gender do you find to be just "damn good looking?"

Beautiful girls I envy:

Gillian Anderson

Alicia Witt

Keira Knightley

Sarah Thompson

Jessica Alba

So the next question is, which people of the opposite sex do you find drop dead gorgeous?

Drool-worthy guys:

Ryan Reynolds   

Heath Ledger

Adrian Grenier

Paul Walker

Colin Farrell

Kevin Zegers 

Eric Szmanda