Rorie (Level 23)

Not to toot our own horns, but I have to say it's been neat seeing so many of the promo slots this week be taken up with black and white stills. I'm sure there are plenty of readers of the website who can count the number of black and white films they've seen on both hands, but if you're up for a challenge, try and dig up one of the movies we're talking about this week and see if it doesn't tickle your fancy. Floratos' piece on High And Low reminds me that I need to watch it again; it's one of Kurosawa's best works, and probably still the best kidnapping movie ever made.

Hey,

It's been a month or so since we did a Ramblin' Rorie, so let's get some questions in for next week's installment! Maybe it'll be a Thanksgiving treat for you guys. Don't forget that this is for Whiskey Members only!

It's called "The Idea" by Mark Strand:

For us, too, there was a wish to possess
Something beyond the world we knew, beyond ourselves,
Beyond our power to imagine, something nevertheless
In which we might see ourselves; and this desire
Came always in passing, in waning light, and in such cold
That ice on the valley’s lakes cracked and rolled,
And blowing snow covered what earth we saw,
And scenes from the past, when they surfaced again,
Looked not as they had, but ghostly and white
Among false curves and hidden erasures;
And never once did we feel we were close
Until the night wind said, “Why do this,
Especially now? Go back to the place you belong;”
And there appeared , with its windows glowing, small,
In the distance, in the frozen reaches, a cabin;
And we stood before it, amazed at its being there,
And would have gone forward and opened the door,
And stepped into the glow and warmed ourselves there,
But that it was ours by not being ours,
And should remain empty. That was the idea.

It meant a lot to me at one point in my life, and while that might have faded somewhat, it's still an exceptional poem to me. I'm curious if any of you have any ideas as to what the cabin in it is supposed to symbolize. I have my theories but I'm curious to hear others. There are, of course, no absolutely correct answers, so theorize away!

If you submitted a freelance writing sample, as per that article I put on the homepage a while back which I'm too lazy to dig up the link to, just be advised that I haven't had time to sift through them yet. I have over 160 or so sitting in my inbox, and that's a lot to go through! I'll try to take a look at them sometime soon, but my general business level, which perhaps I mention a bit too often, is not abating. But I appreciate your patience if you threw something in the ring and have been waiting a response. I move at a turtle's pace sometimes.

Remember that Gizmodo story from a few weeks ago? (I'd link it, but christ do I never want to visit Gizmodo ever again.) Where the girl dated a guy on OkCupid and decided she hated the thought of going out with someone who played Magic professionally, and turned it into something like a million pageviews?

I wanna be that guy.

Well, that’ll probably never happen, but this should be fun: I am going to crowdsource my online dating profile. That sounds like a horrible idea even as I type this, and it probably is, but let’s see how well you guys really know me. I have had OkCupid profiles before, but I never bother to log in after a while (mostly due to a horrible work/life balance that sees me either working on something on Screened or worrying about something on Screened most of my waking hours), so I figure I might be able to keep my interest up if I make it into a game, and it seems to work for my friends. As such, you guys are going to write my profile for me, and I’ll do my best to keep you abreast of any developments. I’ll likely fold whatever happens (and I wouldn’t expect much) into future Ramblin’ Rorie episodes, so it might wind up being a subscriber-only feature, but it should be entertaining.

Let's change the "gay" answer here to "sex machine," shall we?

You can check out what an OkCupid profile looks like here. All you basically have to do is either go to my Biography page here on screened, and edit the questions that OkCupid uses for a profile or, if that devolves into an edit war, you can make a topic on my forum and answer the questions as you see fit. Here are the categories that OkCupid makes you fill out:

• My Self-Summary
• What I'm Doing With My Life
• I'm Really Good At
• The First Things People Usually Notice About Me
• Favorite Books, Movies, Shows, Music, And Food
• The Six Things I Could Never Do Without
• I Spend A Lot Of Time Thinking About
• On A Typical Friday Night I Am
• The Most Private Thing I'm Willing To Admit
• You Should Message Me If

Answer any of those questions as you imagine I might. Or as you imagine the ideal Matt Rorie, ladies man, might. Be inventive and creative, because I have no time to be. I'm counting on you, here.

I’ll take care of all the personal factoids (height/weight/religion) and the questions/answers on the site, so all you need to do is fill out the rest of these questions as you suspect I might, or, perhaps more entertainingly, answer them in the vein of whomever edited my Screened profile and made me sound like the bastard offspring of Chuck Norris and Athena. Whatever you do, don’t use my real name, don’t refer to Screened.com specifically, and you should probably make sure that not every answer is nothing but “puppy puppy puppy,” because that’ll get old right quick.

You can also submit your favorite pictures of me in this thread, or a thread on my personal board, and we’ll see if I use them in the profile. Whatever wacky good stuff you can capture from videos, perhaps. Nothing too embarrassing, I should hope.

This is an absolutely retarded idea and I am fascinated by how it might turn out.