Thursday, February 28, 2013

March is Ask James Anything Month at Slurpees and Murder

That's right, you read correctly -- it's audience participation time! Something a little more straightforward and a lot more frequent than that other time, and hopefully no less enthralling.

Those of you who follow me on Twitter know that I've had an unmitigatedly disastrous back half of February, and I spent a weekend taking it not particularly well, so my apologies to all of you that had to put up with Mopey McMoperson for an uncharacteristically mopey two or three days.

In celebration, then, of it not being February any more -- because, man, screw February -- let's do a little something special for the month of March.

I've had the idea to do this in the back of my mind for a while now, partially because it seems reasonable that audience members would have unanswered questions over the seven (egads) calendar years of the site, but more particularly because -- in those rare and peculiar moments when people recognize me from the internet, or half recognize me, which always ends up being really confusing for everyone involved -- I get statements from time to time along the lines of "I know this sounds weird, but I feel like I know you from reading you. Not well, but, like, kind of." So all this month and all month long, in the interest of getting to know me better -- go ahead and Ask Me Anything!

(I know that the phrase is more commonly associated with Reddit nowadays, but I'm thinking of it more in the Tumblr sense. Not that I've ever really spent any particular amount of time on either site, but y'know. Humour me here.)

I'm pretty sure that this should work out well for everyone involved; I get an excuse to work on shorter bursts of content and less aloof delivery, the questioning party in each instance gets resolution of an old plot thread or payoff on a concept I'd left half-covered somewhere along the way, and everyone else viewing the page gets to drop by without my demanding that they read two- to four-thousand words every single gosh-dang post.

So fire away! I'm throwing open the gates, so Help a Brother Out; from the complicated ("If you had the ability to transfer one file or responsibility from one level of government to another, what would it be, and why?") to the simple ("wats ur favorite soda-pop"), leave your top-of-mind questions in the comments section below and I'll do my best to tackle each and every one. Though I may, in honesty, see fit to give greater priority to ones with actual names attached. Y'know how it is.

But enough talk! Ask James Anything!

6 comments:

unclebob said...

OK James, I will play "Stump the Band"

If Winnipeg didn't have so much immigration, left to its own, would the city population actually be declining?

And for the bonus question, "What does that say about governance?"

Anonymous said...

2. Is Uncle Bob a secret bigot?

Anonymous said...

You know the answer Uncle Bob. You're just looking for another party to back & justify your racism.

unclebob said...

Anonymous #1 & 2 - you are trying to bring your own politics and read too much into this. I am in favour of immigration. It has made Winnipeg what it is in spite of governance issues. I was trying to corner James into the realization that Winnipeg would be a lesser city without that immigration and civic leaders should be a little more sensitive to the value that immigrants bring and the values that the today's civic leaders subtract making the existing community less prolific and more inclined to cause folks to emigrate.

Don't be so oppressive and give James so much colour. He asked for the questions. Lets let the Band weigh in on this.

At least I put my name out. You anonymousketeers should play fair and stop sniping. The only reason why you don't come to the surface is that you yourselves something to hide.

unclebob said...

I think James proposed a little fun. I am up for that. Not everything has to be perfectly or politically correct. Come on James - do your thing .....

Anonymous said...

How's this AMA working out for you so far, James?