Quizzes...I got yer quizzes here....

Terry Teachout has a neat-looking quiz, and as my regular readers know, my knees turn to jelly in the presence of a quiz. (At The Store, they won't let me go anywhere near the shelves where the issues of Cosmopolitan are kept.) Here's the quiz, with Mr. Teachout's answers removed and mine substituted. Because, well, reproducing his answers would be kind of dumb.

(Since this quiz seems to require a high degree of self-knowledge, I'm going to call it "The Self-Delusion Quiz".)

What is your most marked characteristic? Warmth, I hope. I aspire to chivalry.

What is the quality you most like in a man? The ability to not be willingly obtuse.

What is the quality you most like in a woman? A willingness to laugh, and a smile to match.

What do you most value in your friends? The fact that they accept my own absurdities often with little comment.

What is the trait you most deplore in yourself? Laziness.

What is your favorite occupation? Does this have to come up in every quiz these days? Writing. Maybe I'll learn to do it someday.

What is your idea of perfect happiness? I don't know, really, but I know that it needs to be shared.

What do you regard as the lowest depth of misery? Loneliness.

In which country would you like to live? This one, right now. While I'd love to experience New York City in the 1950s -- Broadway at its height, Leonard Bernstein on the podium at the NYPO -- there's too much stuff I'd have to give up to go back there. I'm not trading DVDs to have the 50s.

Who are your favorite writers? Tolkien, Guy Gavriel Kay, Steinbeck, Shakespeare, Barbara Tuchman, Edward Gorey, Harold Schonberg, Carl Sagan, Stephen King

Who are your favorite poets? Shakespeare, Tennyson, Whitman, Robert Burns, Poe, Alan Jay Lerner, Ira Gershwin, Cole Porter (What, I can't consider lyricists to be poets? Well, it's my blog, and I'm doing it.)

Who is your favorite hero of fiction? Tom Joad in The Grapes of Wrath.

Who is your favorite heroine of fiction? Jehane bet Ishak in The Lions of Al-Rassan.

Who are your favorite composers? Mozart, Berlioz, Rachmaninov, Copland, Wagner, Brahms, Beethoven, Turlough O'Carolan, George Gershwin, Frederick Loewe, Percy Grainger, Ralph Vaughan Williams, Duke Ellington, John Williams, Erich Wolfgang Korngold, Miklos Rozsa (or Rosza -- I cannot imprint the correct spelling of his name upon my brain), Howard Shore. (The question doesn't specify genre of music, so I see no reason to do so, either.)

Who are your favorite painters? John Constable, Arthur Hughes, Alan Lee, Tad Naismith, Adolph Schaller, Jon Lomberg. (I don't know many painters.)

What are your favorite names? Katherine, John, Paula, Jennifer, Maria, Eliza, Luke, Matthew -- heck, pretty much any Biblical name. There are some amazing names in that book. (Except "Obadiah" -- I never liked that one. Or "Job".)

What is it that you most dislike? Broccoli. Highlander (the movie). Britney. Ravel's Bolero. The New England Stupid Patriots. People who live in Buffalo but bitch about how much they hate living in Buffalo. People who never seem to have any inkling that maybe, just maybe, their religion isn't quite right in all the particulars. People who look down on what I read, what I listen to, what I write. I dislike all of those things.

Which talent would you most like to have? I'd like to be able to dance a bit -- especially those wonderful Irish step-dances. I could probably learn some of that stuff, if I took the time and expended the effort.

How would you like to die? Painlessly, after a long and full life. (Or not at all, until I'm throroughly sick of everything.)

What is your current state of mind? I could go for a bit of pizza. Or, less specifically, I vacillate between a sense of high optimism and a certainty of unrelenting doom.

What is your motto? "Here's a health to one and all, to the big and to the small; to the rich and poor alike, and foe and friend! And when I come back again, may my foes have turned to friends, and may peace and joy be with you until then!" (Alternatively, my motto is "I'll most likely kill you in the morning.")