Poetry and the 700th Post

First, a great poem from today's Writer's Almanac:

"Literature in the 21st Century" by Ronald Wallace

Sometimes I wish I drank coffee
or smoked Marlboros, or maybe cigars—
yes, a hand-rolled Havana cigar
in its thick, manly wrapping,
the flash of the match between
worn matchbook and stained forefinger,
the cup of the palm at the tip,
the intake of air, and the slow and
luxuriant, potent and pleasurable
exhale. Shall we say also a glass
of claret? Or some sherry with its
dark star, the smoke blown into the bowl
of the glass, like fog on portentous
morning, the rich man-smell of gabardine
and wool, of money it its gold clip?

Sometimes I wish I had habits
a man wouldn't kick, faults a good man could
be proud of. I'd be an expatriate from
myself, all ink-pen and paper in a Paris café
where the waiters were elegant and surly,
the women relaxed and extravagant
with their bobbed hair and bonbons, their
perfumed Galoises, their oysters and canapés,
and I'd be writing about war and old losses—
man things-and not where I am, in this
pristine and sensitive vessel, all
fizzy water, reticence, and care, all reduced
fat and purified air, behind my deprived
computer, where I can't manage even
a decaf cap, a mild Tiparillo, a glass of
great-taste-less-filling light beer.

Wonderful, huh? Good stuff.

This is just a quick post to ask for a blog favor. I'll soon be blogging my 700th post, and for that I'd like to answer seven questions, posed by the two or three of you who are still reading this blog. If you've got a question, post it in the comments and I'll answer it in post 700. Any question will do, from my middle name to my favorite candy to my take on The Brothers Karamazov (actually, I've done that last, but you get my drift).

As you were.