The Syndicate

S~V~S wrote:Flat tire. Easier to fix.

You have some time to kill; would you rather read something intellectually challenging, or emotionally challenging?

Gah it depends. If I'm already emotional than I would prefer something intellectually changing, and vice versa. But in general, emotion.

Meat or cheese?

Blown up, not for the lack of remains but because I imagine that would be a fun and quick death.

Death by burning or death by drowning?

Chris Squire no contest.

You've got a band. Christian Vander or Yoshida Tatsuya on drums?

Whaaaaaaaaaaaat I always thought it was CHECKS for free, like just another way of saying money for nothing. I guess money for nothing then.

Dire Straits or Steely Dan?

Vampires, I'm not a fan of back hair.

Pirates or ninjas?

I know little about Jean-Jacques Rousseau, but Hume is almost everything I disagree with and even oppose in philosophy. Rousseau it is.

Bread or butter?

Intrinsic personal attributes, though I'd like to think my nominal identity is based on neither.

Camus or Kierkegaard?

Spinoza. Nietzsche is a good writer but his ideas are too transparently concocted from his insecurities and grrrrrl problems for me to take them that seriously. Spinoza I don't know much about but if I'm correct that his ideas influenced pantheism then he gets points from me for that because I feel it's a step in the right direction.

I'm liking the philosophy chain we got going here.

Ethics or epistemology?

Hedonism. Epicureanism is just hedonism made needlessly complicated and unnaturally modest.

Would you rather have unlimited, absolute free will and be empty or have no free will whatsoever (not even freedom of movement) and be happy?

Roll my eyes. I think Zizek nailed it by simply asking what happens the following day.

Fight Club - postmodernist garbage or visceral masterpiece? No moderate third option allowed, this is would you rather.

EDIT: I should add that I am a fan of V for Vendetta as a film, just not as a movement or inspiration for a movement.

I'd rather approach. When I'm approached I tend to overcompensate politeness, whereas when I approach others I'm more blunt (and therefore more natural).

Would you rather rap battle Kendrick Lamar or participate in a huge fishing competition where the person who catches the second-biggest fish has to eat its entirety?

Savoury. Sweet gets monotonous and is only good in the right mood.

Rice or bread?

I had to google all three of those, I had never heard of any of them. From the looks of things I'll take the former, because Allen Gregory at least has Jonah Hill going for it and King Star King doesn't look half bad actually. The Nutshack on the other hand appears truly deplorable and I don't think I could stomach (perhaps literally) an entire season of it.

Buffy the Vampire Slayer or Angel? I'm referring to the shows, not the characters.

The film. Bret Easton Ellis is a hack IMO.

Apocalypse Now or Apocalypse Now Redux?

Over the top awesome. I think the view that all acting must be extremely grounded and restrained to be immersive and effective is ludicrous and closed-minded. The reason Heat works so well is that it's not just the perfect film to have Robert De Niro and Al Pacino acting with each other, it's also the perfect film to contrast their very different approaches to acting and illustrate why both approaches are essential to the art of cinema.

Michael Keaton's Batman or Christian Bale's Batman? The performance exclusively please, not factoring in the overall films or even the character.

Dog Day Afternoon. Serpico's fun thanks to Pacino but Dog Day Afternoon has better rewatch value IMO.

The Godfather or The Godfather Part II?

I actually like Robert Mitchum's Max Cady over De Niro's Max Cady, but Travis Bickle beats both. That character strikes a perfect balance between fathomable and unfathomable, and De Niro's performance makes the film.

Heath Ledger's Joker or Javier Bardem's Anton Chigurrh?

A pile of salt! Salt can be enjoyable to nibble at on its own, whereas sugar needs to go with something else for me to enjoy it.

Which type of villain is better in fiction? One that is unfathomably, psychotically evil and seemingly without motive, or one that has a clear agenda and whose reasons for doing whatever evil they do can be understood, perhaps even sympathized with?

This may be the easiest question for me personally to answer that has been asked so far. Peanut butter and crackers. I like cheese a lot but I don't think any of it goes well with crackers at all, whereas I've been eating peanut butter and crackers basically my entire life. So yeah.

Bowtie-shaped noodles or radiator-shaped noodles?

Gah! It depends. If it's between really great and really, really buttered popcorn and a kind of chips I'm not fond of, it's gotta be popcorn. In general, however, I've got to go with chips. I'm just less picky about them then I am about popcorn for whatever reason.

Mozzarella or Parmesan?

If I looked like Jar Jar Binks people would understand my suffering. If I just talked like him, people would think that I was looking for attention.

Meat or dairy?

Miniature horses are cute but miniature donkeys are adorable, so I have to go with the latter.

Would you rather listen to your most hated song thirty times in a row or watch your most hated film three times in a row?

I practically don't live with my television already. It's in the house but I never touch it. When your laptop's a DVD player and TV blows now, why bother? I use my cell phone all the time.

Would you rather go to kitten heaven or freeform jazz hell?