204. Preliminary Interactions with Kristine Barsky, Invertebrate Biologist, California Fish and Game

http://stokastika2.googlepages.com/kristinebarskyratedxquestionlist.pdf

When I first started interacting with Kristine Barsky (fisheries biologist, California Department of Fish and Game), I made a few booboos. The first booboo was that I compiled a preliminary "ultimate" question list of questions of all possible things you could know about rock crab, from biology to chemistry to physics of atoms to integration of science and management and regulations. That was not good to give Rate X Unadultrated (however spelled) question lists, especially to people you have never ever met. In fact, Kristine is the first person who I interviewed formally without ever meeting her before. Everyone else I just tagged along with a shaky camera, and I'm on a second round.

This Rated X Interview List was GOOD FOR MY OWN PURPOSES, but NEVER GIVE TO ANYONE ELSE. You don't want to scare people away before you even MEET them!

Mind you, I am writing this blog quasi-brain dead. I need some sleep.

Kristine was very kind to let me go with this boo boo. Her husband is actually an underwater videographer, and so she even provided a lot of input of where to do the interview... in which she recommended the National Marine Sanctuariies Museum at the Ventura Harbor... a nice break from her office too!

I do admit, Kristine was quite skeptical of me, but for all needed purposes. She was perhaps equally as skeptical as Charlie the geography-majored crab/lobster fisherman. But now, after he found out I wasn't a dirt-digging sadistically irrational "enviro," we are ALL in good terms. I only make friends. I thrive off of everyone's positive traits and abilities. I can't deal with making enemies. It's like an addiction, some kind of inherent addiction I have. Genetic? Maybe. Or maybe my parents gave me some good manners from the getgo. A professor casually commented one time that the quality of the interview also reflects not only the person in front of the camera, but the person asking the clever questions behind the camera. That was a nice, indirect compliment!

By the time Kristine and I met, I had a much more simplified question list. She was much happier with it, and the interview went well. I will include the Simplified Question List in a near-future blog.

Kristine was also the first person she could not answer certain questions that I ask, given that she is representing California Fish and Game (she was wearing the agency's shirt)! I respect that entirely. Since then, I told everyone I am interviewing that no one has to answer a question if they don't want to. And if someone has something to say that I did not mention, just go ahead and blurt yourself to the camera!!!

But this situation has made me want to ask a set of questions that I was not going to ask otherwise. I only ask these questions in the most liberal of interviews. The discrepancy between individual views versus the individual view point in light of the agency they work for. You think you have freedom of speech in America, but the truth is, you are under the rule system of whoever your employer is. Micro-governance. So, for the liberal "artist-minded folks" I am interviewing, I will ask them How they Classify Themselves and then I will ask them How Society Classifies Them. I then started theorizing about Fight Club the movie after realizing this Discrepancy... how the narrator represented How Society Classifies the Individual versus Brad Pitt, who represented How One Classifies Oneself... and in the end, how two dichotomized characters merged into one integrated whole... after a shootout... after mega-dynamite destruction of giant skyscrapers.... It's almost as if this Discrepancy exists everywhere. And the only way to integrate discrepancy is through abandonment of societal rules and some strange mental form of system destruction (for me, it's system DECONSTRUCTION) in order to reconstruct from scrap and become one whole piece? Who knows whether I am interviewing anyone who is truly being "themselves" without any form of societal or system construct imposed upon the way how they behave... except... maybe... T$#!*l.... But that's a whole different story....

Kristine hasn't seen my 7-minute film. I certainly hope she doesn't. I don't want ANYONE to see that film. I tell everyone I am starting from scrap. That was something I had to turn in last year.
In the end, I really hope Kristine Barsky will like some end products of this film....