Someone Liebsters you

The good news: I got an award I've never heard of!

The bad news: No money! Why was this even invented?

I shouldn't be an ingrate, though. I've been Liebstered by Elijah Armstrong, and now I have to write a blog post about it/myself in order to accept. Well, at least no trees will die in the making of this immortal work. At least I don't think there are a lot of tree-burning power plants left in the world, though I could be wrong. And for all I know this is a prestigious award; I just happen to avoid those sectors of the Internet where people approve of stuff.

Basically, when you get one of these, you answer a list of wacky questions, then write your own list of wacky questions and send them to your own chosen bunch of blograts. The detailed rules are at the end of this post, preceded by a list of my nominees and a list of questions for them. (If you are on this page because I have nominated you: scroll to the bottom and read the rules to orient yourself.)

And thank you, Elijah! I may be a smartass about it but I appreciate any crumb from the table of the gods. Not that I don't hate the gods, but I'll still eat the crumb. I don't think Elijah is an immortal, however (correct me if I'm wrong), so that's a shitty metaphor. Anyway. Here's a link to Elijah's amusing and informative blog:

http://elijahlarmstrong.wordpress.com/

...and then we commence. His questions for his nominees, and my answers:

1. Are you a synaesthete of some variety or other?

I get touch sensations from sound, which makes ASMR videos my drug of choice these days. Free drugs!

 

2. What, to your knowledge, is the most unpleasant documented method of execution (past or present)?

Jobs. Or maybe necklacing. It's a toss-up.

 

3. Do you enjoy highly automated or highly complex work more?

Define "work"... if I'm allowed time to indulge in what I consider to be my life's work, obviously I like it complex, because it distracts me from the thundering reality of mortality. However, if I'm doing a job just to stay alive, I want it to engage my brain as little as possible. I can be forced to rent out my body, but I'd prefer you didn't rent my mind. 

Unfortunately, unless you have a steel constitution, your body eventually gets too old and creaky to rent for most purposes, so then the fun begins.

 

4. Do your intellectual interests incline more toward aestheticism or toward scientific inquiry?

About 80-20 in favor of tall tales. Science may be interesting but it's also mostly bad news.

 

5. Which will happen first: the assassination of the Uruguyan president or the first major American political figure publicly acknowledging HBD?

 People love guns and hate math, so I'm guessing the former.

 

6. Would the world be improved if everybody had an IQ of 70 or lower?

 It depends on how you feel about things like food.

With our puny bodies, our slightly less puny brains are all the species has going for it. If you can't outwit the tiger, good night, nurse. Then again, there's the torment that is consciousness...

 Uh... actually, I wish I were living in a world where only MY IQ was 70, and everyone else was around 150. It would be terrific. I'd basically be a bipedal pet dog, and people would pet me and feed me and all I would ever have to do would be to fetch things and watch reruns of GIRLS.

 

  7. Which of the following epithets has been most frequently used against you: nutjob, asshole or douchebag? Which best describes you?

 I'm called a nutjob a lot by coworkers and casual acquaintences; I, however, am an asshole. I guess I successfully put up a smoke cloud of insanity to hide my seething hatred. Good job, me!

 

8. Can every even integer x be expressed in the form y + z, where both y and z are prime numbers?

People love guns and hate math, so I'm guessing COME OVER HERE AND ASK ME THAT.

 

9. After Comic Sans, what is your least favorite font?

Brush script. It makes me feel sick and angry at the same time.

 

10. What is the most politically incorrect belief you hold?

I suppose the most FUNDAMENTALLY politically incorrect belief that I hold is that human life is pointless, painfully meaningless, intrinsically unfair, and not worth the trouble—and anything else we think is self-protection, bless our little hearts. 

But that's a bit abstract. 

The most knee-jerk-reaction-causing politically incorrect belief I hold—i.e. people get mad at me when I say it—is that women who have had children are intrinsically sexually repulsive (for a minimum of five years thereafter, but most commonly, forever).   

As an equally offensive corollary, my completely unscientific collection of anecdotal evidence tells me that eight out of ten mothers have also been turned into terminal assholes by the endless selfish rationalizations that the mantra of "protecting my young!" programs them to spiral out into. 

In theory I'm a philanthropic antinatalist, but I find the presence of a mother and child to be deeply nauseating. That milky, drooly, overly intimate smell is enough to make me throw up things I ate last year. And people don't seem to like that about me. I've left street canvassers gaping in disgust in my wake after calmly informing them that I do not wish to donate to their cause because I hate children. Naturally, I have strong feelings about the current welfare system.

11. Do you hate Gerard Manley Hopkins like every single other fuckin’ person in the world? Except me, for some reason? Goddamnit, why the shit doesn’t anyone like Hopkins!? What the fuck is wrong with you people?!?!?!

 Who?

And now, eleven random things about me:

 1. I love the Wisconsin Dells, aka Redneck Riviera North. And not in a kitschy way. All the best times I had when I was a kid were on waterslides, and I'm almost maudlinly nostalgic about them.

2.  I lost several front teeth while doing WWF-style mudwrestling for money. It was a small league in Madison, WI, called the MWO, and it was made up almost entirely of restaurant workers. We wrote our own stories with our opponents beforehand, and always promised to follow the script, but there was a LOT of sudden, chemically influenced improv. My character's name was the Incognito Mosquito, complete with mask, wings, and a polyester costume that weighed about 40 pounds when it got drenched with mud. I know how to do a fake drop without hurting anyone, but I probably wouldn't try it now. I have good fakes now, but I'll always miss my real teeth.

3. I once helped steal a chair from a famous museum. It's still in Lisa Falour's living room. We brought it home on the subway in the middle of the night and no one even looked twice at us. That was the first night I ever tried sake.

4. Jesus, my life is kind of boring now. I'd say I need to drink more and do more drugs, but at my age, instead of having an epic adventure I'd probably just have a stroke.

5. If you hadn't noticed from reading this blog, I've written a bunch of books and some people think they're very funny. Go to Hopeless Books, Inc. or Nine-Banded Books for more details.

6. I'm currently working on a large volume of science fiction called LYFE. I've been working on it for years; in fact I had the idea more than ten years ago, but I decided I needed to write some sort of more point-and-shoot novels first for practice. People think of sci-fi as this candy, stupid, easy sort of genre, but to really do it well takes a lot more work and skill than just writing about the world that already exists. You have to do everything you do in a "real" book, and then throw in creating an entire world on top of it. 

7. The only video game I let myself play is Sid Meier's Civilization, but Jesus, I can waste an entire weekend pretending to be Julius Caesar if I let myself.

8. I seem to have forgotten a lot of my Latin, and I'm in the process of reviewing it. At first I was all grumble grumble grumble, stupid nature of the brain, but then I realized that if I'm not going to be graded or take a test, studying Latin grammar has an extremely soothing effect on said brain. Ahhhhhh.

9. But I'd still rather have a prescription for Xanax, goddamn it. Everyone in my family is insane, so it's my birthright. GIVE ME MY BIRTHRIGHT!

10. If you come up behind me and say my name suddenly, I'll jump out of my chair and scream nearly every time. It's a completely involuntary brainfart. I've actually had coworkers who found this hilarious, and would do it on purpose just to watch me short-circuit. Come to think of it, this is probably a product of sound-touch synesthesia. (See question #1 in Elijah's questions above.) You might as well punch me as say my name. Ah, the dark side of ASMR.

11. Did I mention that everyone in my family is insane? My great-grandparents' kitchen linoleum was permanently warped due to their habit of flinging beer and water at each other when they got pissed. Sounds relatively ordinary, till you throw in the detail that the fights could go on indefinitely because the rest of the family would pick a side and set up OPPOSING SUPPLY LINES TO THE WELL TO GET MORE WATER. They probably took bets, too. Anyway, many, many such stories—too many for all of them to be apocryphal—have led me to believe that I have no hope of being right in the head, so fuck it. As Popeye said, I yam what I yam.

  

And now the moment you've all been waiting for: my own nominees for this incredibly prestigious award are:

Karl of Say No to Life, 

 for his article on happy atheists,

Andy Nowicki

Mostly for his books and the Alternative Right site, since he doesn't write on this personal blog that often, but what's on there is worth reading,

Chip of Nine-Banded Books and the Hoover Hog,

for relentlessly championing crazy ideas

and also

jackasses such as myself,

Ben Arzate, for having a nihilist's top ten, introducing me to the works of Sam Pink, and writing about weird/neglected/bitter writing in general,

despite his blog's URL/name, which is even harder to remember than mine is,

Frank Marcopolos, for his mellifluous reading voice

and dedication to fiction past, present, and future, 

Karl Wenclas,

for insanely refusing to ever give up,

and finally,

Mr. Misanthrope 

(this should be amusing).


Apologies to any deserving soul whom I forgot. There are probably plenty, but like I said in a previous post, the nature of my job is currently causing my memory to short out. Or maybe I'm just getting senile. Just look at my blogroll and read the damn blogs. (Several of which, by the by, did not qualify for this award by dint of having more than 1,000 followers.)

 

AND here are the questions I have for the aforementioned victims:

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1. Why are you still alive?

2. Why are you still trying to write a blog?

3. Just who do you think you are, anyway?

4. What do you think about when you have insomnia? Just give us the five most persistent topics if the answer is "Holy shit, everything."

5. In order from least awful to most dreaded, which are your ten least favorite ways you could die?

6. Do you believe in God? If so, how can you tolerate His apparent indifference, even hostility, to your happiness and well-being? If not, how can you tolerate the void of your meaningless universe?

7. Go back to question 7. Imagine that you believed the opposite of what you do, and then answer the second half of the question accordingly ("Well, if I did believe in God, I would soothe myself with fantasies of putting His eyes out with a dildo." "Well, if I didn't believe in God, I think I have the sort of constitution that could hold up to a lot of smack.")

8. Are there any really amazing new bands you think I should know about?

9. Is painting a dead art? How about the novel?

10. Come up with a worldview which is completely rational, based on evidence rather than wishful thinking, but which is also not a nuisance to one's mental health. You have 200 words.

 11. What does it mean to you to be one of seven billion human beings? You may want to have some whiskey on hand for this one. (Assuming you haven't been shitfaced since #5.)

For the sake of your own publicity, should any of my nominees choose to accept this great honor instead of just resenting me for what may amount to a chain letter (like I said, I'm none too familiar with this award, but you can't have missed the chain-lettery aspect of the bugger), PLEASE POST A LINK TO YOUR ACCEPTANCE POST IN THE COMMENTS SECTION BELOW. Thank you. 

Now, for anyone playing along at home, here are the official rules (have you ever heard of an award with rules? This is the point where, if I were Kanye West, I'd do more coke and start throwing Grammys at people):

RULES:

If you have been nominated for The Liebster Award AND YOU CHOOSE TO ACCEPT IT, write a blog post about the Liebster award in which you:
1. thank the person who nominated you, and post a link to their blog on your blog.
2. display the award on your blog — by including it in your post and/or displaying it using a “widget” or a “gadget”. (Note that the best way to do this is to save the image to your own computer and then upload it to your blog post.)
3. answer 11 questions about yourself, which will be provided to you by the person who nominated you.
4. provide 11 random facts about yourself.
5. nominate 5 – 11 blogs that you feel deserve the award, who have a less than 1000 followers. (Note that you can always ask the blog owner this since not all blogs display a widget that lets the readers know this information!)
6. create a new list of questions for the blogger to answer.
7. list these rules in your post (You can copy and paste from here.) Once you have written and published it, you then have to:
8. Inform the people/blogs that you nominated that they have been nominated for the Liebster award and provide a link for them to your post so that they can learn about it (they might not have ever heard of it!)