Boredwalk Community: The Most Reliable Method of Birth Control

Welcome back to our weekly Boredwalk Community series, where we ask Boredwalk fans fun questions! This week we're talking to Amelia J., who is looking grammatically sound in her Oxford Comma Appreciation Society tee!

1. What's your actual day job and what's your dream day job?
Until I got dragged under by disability, I was a Public School Teacher. (Imagine chest thrust out and chin raised in a noble stance!) As such, I was not allowed to ever wear jeans or a t-shirt. So now that I have no dress code to honor, I revel in acquiring as many sarcastic, punny, or just weird t-shirts as I can and wearing them constantly. (Friends in my tai chi class are always saying, "Wait, there's Amelia! What does her t-shirt say today?")

My dream job? Oh, if only there were some way I could be forced to read books I'm interested in for a living! I don't really want to become an editor because, except for the "editing" part of fixing grammatical, spelling, and word-usage mistakes, editors are forced to read a lot of things that have been submitted to a publisher that they may have no interest in whatsoever.

2. What's your biggest pet peeve?

That every editor at every publishing house, TV news station, and newspaper has apparently died. I LOVE to read, but grammar, spelling, and word-choice errors can really spoil it for me. Both of my parents were teachers and "Grammar Nazis." We made a game out of being the first to comment on an error in anything anybody said, particularly on TV. (The comedian Demetri Martin says that correcting someone else's grammar is THE most reliable method of birth control. Works every time!)

3. What's a book you think the Boredwalk community should read?

Well, my personal favorite is Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead by Tom Stoppard, but we all ought to read Six Degrees by Mark Lynas, about the effect six degrees of difference in temperature is going to have on the Earth, and our oceans, and all forms of life as we know it.

4. What's the most useful piece of advice you've ever received?

"Stop that!" As someone with severe ADD and poor perception of social cues, if people didn't occasionally break into my thoughts and make me aware that I'm doing something weird or unacceptable, I probably wouldn't have any friends.

5. Where can the rest of the Boredwalk community find you?

Over there, in a box, occasionally with another introvert. Unless the metaphor has put on weight.