FAQs
Questions I may have answered once upon a time...
Shooting the shit...
Why did you begin writing in the first place?
That’s a tough question. I guess that communication is always something that I have been interested in. My mother was a very social and expressive person, but my father communicated mostly through paper plates taken from his petrol kiosk that he told me were frisbees he had bought for my birthday (this meant he loved me, or something), or grunts that may as well have been scribbled over the first drunk Egyptian’s attempt at hieroglyphics (this means anything from he was hungry, to well, literally anything).
No, as in why did you begin writing this FAQ in the first place?
Oh. That’s easier. I guess it was decided that this site was edging fairly close to being quote unquote extremely fucking bland, and it was thought that some personal, irreverent content might help spice it up a bit.
And how do you think this is going?
Not, well, if I’m being totally honest. Martin Amis said that stream-of-consciousness was now effectively extinct as a prose style, so I don’t know why I thought I — ward of the penis joke and herald of the mildly amusing footnote — might be the one to prove him wrong, or resurrect it.
Shall we say absolutely anything that someone might find remotely interesting, if for no other reason than to reward their having made it this far?
Sure: Thomas Edison was so upset with his son’s ineptitude, that he paid him $35 a week to use a different name, which he did, using the name Thomas Willard. I find this is both interesting and thematically relevant, as it is a thought I often return to when I reflect upon my father’s impression of me. Hey, at least it wasn’t that bad!
Well, to be fair your father didn’t have as much money as Edison did to throw around. And also, he was notoriously frugal.
That’s true. And also, fuck you FAQ.
How about something interesting related to writing?
I mean, that is to do with my writing, which if I keep at anything on any topic long enough tends to devolve much more often than not into a bit about my father considering me a disappointment.
Guilty pleasures are fun.
Gone In Sixty Seconds. Nic Cage version, not the original. I dunno what it is because I don’t even like cars. In fact there are few things I care less about on this planet than cars. I do love Nic Cage though. Still. And a great soundtrack, and an underrated Delroy Lindo performance. And I do like how Nic Cage has to step in to save his hot-head brother and become his surrogate father because his actual father is nowhere to be found and ok yeah there it is again.