Current mood:	thoughtful
Current music:	The Simpsons

I have succumbed to the interview meme. Other questions welcome.
(updated: new set of questions and answers added)



I find it interesting that your sermons attract so little attention. Do you believe that people have largely, conciously, decided to become spiritless?
Just because people don't comment doesn't mean they're not paying attention... but there is a distinct lack of a spiritual dimension to most people's lives. The answer is "no". A spiritual dimension is not vital to life, and people can cope without it - that doesn't bother me. What worries me isn't that people have decided to become "spiritless" - it's more that they haven't decided it and have stayed that way through apathy. I have no problem with anyone who thinks about things, and then decides they're an atheist and that there is no world beyond what we see and experience directly. Most people, though, have never made a conscious decision to remove spirituality from their lives - often they've just never thought about any of the big questions, and that's a sad thing.

If you had the choice of a universe that was truly God-less do you believe the world would organize a common series of rules to live by, or would anarchy reign until things broke down into a mad-max endgame?
Hmm... tricky one. After a short time, you'd get several independent communities with rules for themselves which would work in isolation, but inevitably some of these would start to expand and conflict with each other... there would then be a long and rather painful conflict between these communities until they changed to tolerate each other, or until one was victorious. (It could be argued that this is already happening.)

I've always tried to make my own rules flexible, so that if I encounter someone who lives by a different system then the two can coexist - that's the only sustainable option, but in the above situation the communities would all have to start off with very flexible, tolerant rules, and that's unlikely. This is also why I am against evangelistic religions of all kinds.

I know that you're very choiral, but I know nothing of your film interests. What three films are your current favourites?
X-Men 2, definitely. I'm really looking forward to seeing how that develops. I seldom watch films, but other favourites include Shakespeare in Love (Gywneth Paltrow looking nice for once and dressed as a pretty guy, Joe Fiennes, the two of them in bed together... mmm, okay, I'm shallow sometimes) and I also liked Lord of the Rings. I don't go for serious movies - when I watch films, it's to relax.

If you had the opportunity to be worldly famous, what would you like to be famous for?
Composing. I'm working on it (recent choir performance in Canada, and a world premiere in Edinburgh on the 22nd of June).

Going back to religion again which of the sins do you belive to be the most insidious?
(from dictionary.com - working or spreading harmfully in a subtle or stealthy manner; intended to entrap; treacherous; beguiling but harmful; alluring)
If you're referring to the classic seven deadly sins - well, the most insidious to me is sloth. I can easily procrastinate and avoid work, and really have to drive myself quite hard to get work done, and pride is also very easy to let into your life. As for sin as defined last sermon, in the sense of causing spiritual harm to others - ignoring other people's needs and moods and being selfish is one of the easiest and most tempting things to do.

A lot of big budget films have fantastic sound tracks, if you had the chance to go back and either re-write or take credit for the soundtrack to one film which film would it be, and which would you do?
Strangely, I don't often notice film music. It's all very bland and matched to the action, because that's what the directors want. It would have been nice to do Lord of the Rings though, and put in some sung versions of all Tolkien's lyrics from the book as part of it.

Can you pin down the single most, personally, interesting thing you have ever done?
You have touched on one of my deepest fears there... I have a severe insecurity that nothing I've ever done has been particularly interesting. To an outside observer, it would probably be taking the leap to start my own business, but there isn't anything I've done that I find outstandingly interesting.

If you had to eradicate either the Double Bass, or the harmonica from the worlds history which would you choose? WHy?
The harmonica. It's ridiculously limited, you can only put certain combinations of notes together, it's stupidly difficult to play in relation to what you can accomplish with it, and it doesn't fit into any other musical grouping unless the choice of key is shaped around it. The double bass has been vital to the development of the orchestra - if you only had 'cellos, the difference in sound and writing would be very noticeable.

Seriously, c'mon, we all want to know .. what do you think of Morris Dancers?
They are clearly deranged, plotting to take over the world with their evil handkerchiefs and sticks and multiple ties. There's only one troupe left in Scotland, because we realised what all the other ones were up to and burned them at the stake. Bwahahahaha.

Er. Yes. That was a corner of my brain I hadn't used for a while.



(that's epicurial - these html things don't work inside cut text)
1) What, exactly, are the Morris Dancers?
Good point, this may be confusing other non-UK folk (and possibly even some UK folk). They are a strange English country dance tradition. It's something weird involving bells, hankies, sticks, and a person in each troupe called the Fool who wears mismatched socks and either three or four ties at the same time. I wish I was making this up.

2) When you think about how many girls would be willing to sleep with you just because you have a sexy Scottish accent, doesn't it make you regret, just a little bit, that you're gay?
Another note for people who don't know this: I'm actually bisexual, and pretty much 50/50 in terms of attraction to one gender or the other. I've probably not made that obvious, though, due to the lack of female love interest at the moment (or just because guys make themselves a lot more obvious). Not one girl that I've met has shown a desire to sleep with me because of my sexy Scottish accent (or any other reason for that matter :( ) - possibly because I don't have a sexy Scottish accent, but rather one that has been corrupted by four years spent down south and turned into a bastard abomination of an accent which, according to my sister, makes me sound like a fifty-year-old bloke from London. Any attempt to change this makes me sound either ridiculously camp, or drunk and Glaswegian (not sexy, trust me on this.) Again, I wish I was making this up...

3) Would you rather get into a fight with a boxer or a kung-fu master?
Boxer. They can't run after me as fast as a kung-fu master can, and if they caught up with me, they wouldn't expect me to fight dirty and kick them in the balls. Which I would. If anyone seriously wants to fight me, I'll try running away, but when I fight back I do so in order to win, and sod the rules. (On the other hand, it depends which kind of boxer. I'm scared of dogs.)

4) Is it a party in your head, all the time?
Mostly yes, but I'm sitting in the kitchen being boring, enjoying the food, chatting to a few close friends, and trying to ignore the noise and drunk people.

5) What food do you love so much that you'd eat it till you puked?
CHOCOLATE!!! And also fresh strawberries. They don't really work together, surprisingly.


I dread to think which body part is going to answer the next set of questions...