Laura asked this week: Remind me, what are the five things that make it worthwhile to get up in the morning and go to work, no matter what the weather? (Aside from getting paid, of course.) Now, this is a question that usually hits me when I am in that worst class of the semester. You know, every semester there is at least one class in which no effort of mine, no encouragement and no discipline in terms of grades ever motivates more than one or two students beyond the pathetic sitting there, not speaking unless prompted with a script …

Marvin asked the F5ers this week: The Pan-Galactic Olympic Committee has drafted you to represent Earth. The rub is that we don’t know anything about the games played in the galaxy-at-large, and they don’t know anything about ours. Because you’re a newbie you’re allowed to pick the events — five, as it happens — in which you’ll compete. You’ll have to win at least three of the five in order to save Earth from being turned into a new MacSapients franchise. What do you pick and why? Well, first of all, this question is a few months late. I finished …

This week’s Friday Five question comes from the twisted Freudian mind of Rob, from about pip, who writes: name five things you’re in denial about…go on, double dare you. That’s a pretty challenging question, given the fact that most people don’t like to admit they’re in denial about anything, and the things we tend to be in denial about are things we tend to want to hide from, meaning they’re things we want to hide from others, which makes it hard to write about them in a public place like a blog, however rarely-visited it is. Still, I’ll give it …

Adam asks, Because we never get tired of Time Travel questions, I’m wondering – assuming you know you’re going back in time for an indefinite period (possibly life), and can haul with you a couple hundred pounds of supplies, what period (pre-19th Century, just to make it interesting) would you go to if you hoped to build the local technology and set yourself up as a Connecticut Yankee, so to speak? You know, I’ve not actually read that book. It’s Twain, right? I get the basic idea, but you know, I’ve never read the book or seen the movie, either. …

Marvin‘s F5, a day late and a few dollars short: “The movie isn’t as good as the book,” is a phrase we hear a lot. Describe five movie moments?in movies adapted from books, plays, or stories?that could or should have been done better, in your humble opinion. Oh boy. THis is a tough question, because, well, I usually don’t read books upon which movies have been based. You see, I’m an incredibly slow reader, and so I have a huge backlog of books I want to read. When a “classic story” shows up as a movie, I often see the …