A little while back, I was browsing Michael Kelly's website and I read something that I can't find there now (I think it was under 'About Me') – a question and answer thing like one of those that people used to send round in e-mails, starting with the question, "What are you doing right now?" That kind of thing. Anyway, I decided to answer these same questions myself and send them to Mr Kelly.
I suppose he must have been impressed with my levels of boredom, or something like that, because he took pity on me and devised some proper questions for me to answer. So, here we are, the results are below:
1. If you could choose one famous person or historical figure to resurrect, who would it be?
Actually, this is a difficult question to start out with. No one really stands out for me. Thinking about it, I'd like to resurrect an early Hollywood actress (one of those that had finger-curls and so on), to see if she really spoke offscreen the way she did onscreen. If she did, then the existence of God would be more or less established.
2. Which fictional character ought to exist in reality?
Me.
I don't think that's going to happen, though, so I'll have to nominate someone else, instead. It's easy really – the Doctor. The Doctor must exist. Who cares about Father Christmas – when you lose your faith in the Doctor, it's all over.
3. Which fictional character would you change places with if forced to do so, bearing in mind that you can't change the plot and when the book or film ends you will revert to the beginning again? Your answer may not be the same as for number 2.
Aaargh!!!!!!! Even though I saw the sentence, "Your answer may not be the same as for number 2" before I answered number 2, I didn't see this coming. Now I'm forever doomed never to be the Doctor. In that case, I currently think I should be John Locke out of Lost, because he's an older man who's also really cool and admirable, and I'm currently worried about aging. And he seems to have attained some kind of peace of mind, which, now that I'm nearing 40, I'm worried about more than anything, I suppose.
Either him or James Bond.
4. If you had to live a single day of your life over again, which, why?
Damn. These are all straight-to-the-heart kind of questions. I should really take my time over these. There is a day that I consider to be the best day of my life – or at least to contain the best twenty minutes of my life – but I think to revisit it would just be too painful. And, every other day in my life has just been crap. Or is so deeply buried in childhood that I don't remember it as a distinct day.
I'm really not sure I can think of one that is worth revisiting – that's the sad truth. I have never, ever had any kind of Lou Reed Perfect Day in my entire life. No one has ever said to me, "This is your day!!" It never has been my day. I've never taken the lead role, or even much of a 'supporting role'.
I am, in fact, a waste of four dimensions.
Sorry. I can't think of one. If I do, I'll come back to this question.
(Coming back some days later, I still can't think of a day. Okay, maybe this. There was a day that sticks in my memory as mysterious. I think it was in Greece, but I'm just not sure. I was quite young. There was some old abandoned building, with bullet-marks in the walls. The walls were four feet thick or more, and there were round, glassless windows. There was an immensely strong wind. If I held out my coat, like wings, the wind almost lifted my off my feet. If that was a real day, I would re-live that day.)
5. You can abolish either one intellectual concept or one geographical country. Which, why?
Either/or, eh? Not both? Okay, let's see… I'm tempted to abolish Japan, just in order to piss off Momus. I can't abolish the States, because I'd never get to ressurect an early Hollywood actress.
I know, I'd abolish Germany! No more people being all serious about Nietzsche! No more Wagner! No more Germans thinking they can speak English better than you!, or saying, "You may have won the war, but we have won the peace!" Etc.
6. What would your place be in an alternative world in which the Roman empire still exists?
At the age of about nine, I was forced, in a school play, to take the part of the Roman poet, Delirious, who would spout lines like: "Take my hand, my gentle dove/Say that you will be my love/Together we will go through life/I, your husband, you, Mrs Delirious." Needless to say, this was typecasting. It can only have been a kind of echo of a previous existence. So, I imagine that's what I'd be – some kind of state poet writing bad Latin verse.
7. What advice would you give to a young person who wanted to become a writer? Try not to be negative.
If I'm trying not to be negative, the advice must be, "Don't give up!" Otherwise, it would be, "Give up!"
But no, really, I'd give very bad, perverse advice like, "Write exactly what you want to write." Also, I think this is true – you can't wait for inspiration, you have to sit down and write.
8. What advice would you give to a young person who wanted to become a criminal?
Think big!
9. You are employed as a phone-sex operative. What is your speciality fantasy routine?
My speciality fantasy routine is that I am frigid, denying any release for the sex urge in the caller, or any future hope of release.
10. You have a time-machine and a DNA extractor. Which two historical or famous figures would you cross-breed so as to create a child that combined their characteristics, and why? Same-sex couplings are possible.
I think, at the moment, I'd be keen on crossing Gautama Sakyamuni with Kanehara Hitomi, because it annoys me that Buddhism has all this ascetic stuff about eliminating desire and so on in it, which tends to make me feel like giving up on writing. Kanehara is not only very sexual, but a writer – hopefully their child would be a living demonstration that there's another way.
11. Name an incident from your past that might disqualify you from running for government.
Nothing too exciting, just the usual petty crime.
12. You have a portable hole. What do you use it for?
To escape, forever.
13. Name something you have learned (not cynical, worthwhile) from someone you do not admire, or grudgingly admit one good quality in someone you despise.
I'm not sure I really despise anyone. Maybe I do. I think I admire everyone in the sense that I look up to them. This is a good question, but I can't think of anything at the moment, so I'll come back to it.
…
Okay, I'm coming back to this one, too. The only thing that comes to mind is that I've just read a Dean Koontz book. It's not my kind of literature, but I found some of it quite funny, like his sarcasm about nihilistic writers. I got a sense of some kind of integrity there, even if I think my politics is very different to his, and my aesthetics are vastly different.
14. Tell a war-story from Dungeons & Dragons or a similar rpg, OR a video game, OR a board game, OR a party-game such as hide and seek: something where you really kicked arse and have been longing to boast about it for years but no-one has ever asked. OR say how lovely I am.
I don't remember ever kicking anyone's arse, even in a literal sense. I do remember that I once tried playing the Middle-Earth role playing game with my brother, with me as the dungeon master, and it was very frustrating, because he would think laterally and get past all the obstacles and monsters with ease. For instance, he was a low-level wizard, without much power, but decided to use a spell meant for cooking (boil water) to boil the brains of all his adversaries.
Oh, I once potted a ball after bouncing the white off two cushions (in pool), but it was a complete fluke. The only competitive thing that I can really boast about is that I did well at university (scoring, for instance, the highest mark the department had ever given for my dissertation), 'despite' being a mature student and therefore surrounded by supposedly sharper and livelier minds.
You are very lovely.
15. The way to coax yourself into jumping down from a quite high place that looks scarily high but isn't really is to imagine you have an eye in your foot and are looking down from that. I think I discovered that. Tell me something you think you discovered.
I think I made up the joke about second-hand toilet paper that did the rounds at our primary school. I also discovered that you can't see anything without also seeing your nose.
I also discovered that I am magical. No one else has.
16. You're in a bar-room fight against Ernest Hemingway, Norman Mailer and Virginia Woolf. Pick two writers to be on your side. Describe tactics and likely outcome.
I would choose Mishima Yukio and William Burroughs. Mishima could disembowel himself in front of everyone, and, while they were distracted, Burroughs could shoot them all.
17. You need to stage a heist on the Vatican Cellars as you suspect the Catholic Church of hoarding lost episodes of Dr Who and Steptoe and Son. You're going in disguised as entertainers for the Pope's birthday party. Skills required will include the ability to get past deadly traps, laser alarms, pressure pads, swinging pendulum-blades etcetera; code-cracking or safe-opening; the ability to take out, disarm or otherwise pass a platoon of ten-foot nuns armed with flamethrowers; and someone to keep the Pope completely distracted while the rest of you sneak downstairs. Put together a team of one historical figure, one film star or other entertainer dead or alive, one fictional character and one person you knew in your own youth to accomplish this mission. Describe reasons and/or tactics.
I'll have to go by instinct for the selection here. This might be stretching it a bit, but for the historical figure, I'd go for Hadad the Haitian Zombi priest, who was a case study in the 1951 book My Six Convicts. He apparently had strong hypnotic powers, the ability to raise himself from the dead, and to "deflect […] bullets from the anatomical headquarters of [his] spirit".
While he wasn't hypnotising the giant nuns, he could confuse them by saying things like, "A thousand pardons if I have inconvenienced you with my spiritual ascendancy." Then he could kill them. Hopefully he could do the same with the Pope.
Being entirely practical, my fictional character would be Vila Restal, from Blake's 7, because he was a professional thief, and the best safecracker in the entire galaxy, and would therefore be useful against the various traps and locks. However, being a coward, he might take a lot of persuasion, where Hadad's hypnotic abilities would come in handy again.
The entertainer would be Dobin, the pantomime horse out of Rentaghost, because the lost episodes could be hidden inside the costume to be smuggled out, and, any time we needed to hide or encountered more Papal guards, Dobin could perform a series of comic 'freeze' poses, or defeat the enemy with slapstick routines.
Finally, the person from my youth would be…
… I've actually been in a quandary about this for days. Sadly, my childhood would appear to resemble, to some extent, that described by Larkin in 'I Remember, I Remember':
And here we have that splendid family
I never ran to when I got depressed,
The boys all biceps and the girls all chest…
So, I can't actually think of a single figure from my childhood that I'd want to take on this escapade. Or not a human one. I've decided I'd have to take my toad, Goose Pimple, because he would fit nicely in my pocket, and give me a sense of well-being throughout.
18. You and your team from the previous question are rewarded by being given your own house-share sitcom. Describe a plotline for the pilot episode.
Goose Pimple reveals that he is a well-known superhero in the world of amphibians, but advises us that we must keep his identity secret while he is working on the important case of the vast numbers of amphibians that are mysteriously becoming sterile. Meanwhile, the hind and front parts of Dobin are competing for the same part in a pantomime about centaurs. Eventually, the hind part decides to play the supporting role of the front part of the sidekick centaur to the front part of the lead centaur played by Dobin's front part. Invited to the opening night, I fall instantly in love with the actress playing the part of the nymph Stilbe. She resists my attractions, but upon being kissed, turns into a newt. There now ensues a love triangle between myself, the newt and Goose Pimple. The newt falls in love with Goose Pimple as a superhero, but does not know his true identity. Meanwhile, Hadad is communicating with the dead spirits of the lost civilisation of Chaldea in the front room, and is receiving ominous messages. Vila has just come back in time through some sort of fluke time-hole thing, and is relieved to be out of the clutches of the evil Federation. As a result, he is larging it up in various nightclubs. Unbeknownst to him, however, something followed him back down the time-tunnel. I think you can see where this is going…
Goose Pimple wants to be loved for himself, not as a superhero, but is afraid for various reasons to tell the Stilbe newt who he really is. In a fit of jealousy and self-sacrifice, I tell her. They confront each other in the spare room, but there comes a hideous screaming. I rush in to see Goose Pimple prostrate on the floor. The Stilbe newt has stolen his gonads. Hadad reveals that a demon from Chaldea has been ranging down the time corridors in search of the means of artificially inseminating its otherwise doomed race. Incapacitated, Goose Pimple is unable to track it down.
Meanwhile, it looks as if I am about to shop Vila to some Federation agents who have been searching through the nightclubs, releasing tear-gas and shooting people with lasers. I give the time and location where they might find their quarry. That time and location is a pit full of toad gonads, where Hadad has worked his sorcery so that none who enter the pit may leave. The Federation agents arrive and soon throw down, in disgust, a life-size model of Vila made of toad gonads. Their disgust quickly turns to fear as a newt demon, hungry for these gonads, and alerted by the scent of gonad agitation, arrives on the scene. A tussle follows, and Hadad sends them together down a twisty-turny time tunnel to obscurity.
Relieved, Vila, Hadad, Goose Pimple, Dobin and I go out clubbing. Goose Pimple is drowning his sorrows with tequila until a sassy salamander catches his eye. "It's a shame I haven't got any gonads," he laments. Vila buts in, "Er, what about these?" "Where did you get those?" exclaims Goose Pimple. "I stole them off some newt. I thought they might come in handy some time." Everyone laughs as Goose Pimple pops the gonads back in.
Etc.
I'm afraid it would be the worst sit-com ever. The moral of the story, I suppose, is not to invite me next time you're writing the script for a sit-com.
