matt welch reads far more than i do

and rarely does anything like this. but when you read his answers you understand why he jumped in. for some reason he picked me to take this quiz even though he knows that i read far more blogs than pages on paper. but i’ll do my best.

You’re stuck inside Fahrenheit 451, which book do you want to be?

like matt i have no idea what this question is asking. but if i had to be a book i would be the bible. it’s crazed and full of variety. it’s easilly the most well-written book of all despite being written by lots of people over various periods of time. the stories are insane the people are believable and even when you think you know whats going to happen next someone does something totally bizarre like listen to the talking snake instead of God, and thats just page five.

Have you ever had a crush on a fictional character?

even though Roberta in Lynda Barry’s “Cruddy” is 14, shes pretty amazing. she’s good with a knife, likes to make out, does acid on her rooftop and puts up with her father calling her son. the whole time i was thinking, i wonder what she would be like when she grows up. maybe lynda will make a sequel.

The last book you bought is:

Charles Bukowski “You Get So Alone at Times That It Just Makes Sense” for Bunny McIntosh for her birthday a few weeks back which is ironic because i dont think bunny has ever been alone in her life. this is a great collection of poems and short stories. it was one of the first bukowski books i ever really got into because the poems are short and easy to dive into and the stories are sexy and sad.

The last book you read:

“The Most Fucked Up Person Alive Tells All” by HC

this is a book that i first saw on the web long before blogs. whoever HC was put the whole thing on web pages for free and dared you to print it out and read it or just read it on your screen. it was such an outrageous story that i never forgot it and when i was bored one day i put the title into an ebay search engine and there it was.

this is the prologue:

I was born to hijack space shuttles and blackmail cities and start world neurolic wars. And be kicked out of rooms and institutions and off planets and out of solar systems.

I was born to be the kind of person that intercepts a satellite feed and superimpsses flashing titles like “Disingenuous Slimeball” “Mass Murderer” or “Dickhead” over its images of celebrities and world leaders.

And I was even born to be elected President of the Cosmos — on a platform of “Fuck the Economy! Fuck the People! Fuck the Police!”

Or else I wasn’t born this way at all, and something must have happened in life itself, to make it this way.

thats how you start a fucking book.

What are you currently reading?

“The Insider’s Guide To Getting an Agent” by Lori Perkins because i’d secretly like to be a published author someday and everyone who has done it says it starts with getting a good agent.

Five books you would take to a deserted island.

  • “White Oleander” by Janet Finch because she writes so colorfully and richly that it makes you forgive the stars for making it an oprah book club novel.
  • “Hammer of the Gods” by Steven Davis. there will never be another band like led zeppelin and i dont know how this guy got the access that he got to be able to tell the stories that are told in there but it’s an amazing and just biography of a miracle of a rock group.
  • “Ham on Rye” Charles Bukowski. everything bukowski wrote was mostly-autobiographical but very little was about his horrific childhood of boils and beatings and sex and sin. this novel describes much of his earliest years in the matter-of-fact style that has become legendary. and although tragic and sometimes unbelievable, it is also suprisingly funny at the strangest moments.
  • “Vurt” by Jeff Noon. ive read this book three times and bought it for every person who i know who has done acid more than twice and liked it. it’s a sci fi techno surreal pychedelic love story set in the future in london. nothing that i ever thought i would be interested in and not at all what you expect from a first novel because noon has complete control of his story throughout the entirety of tale.
  • “Anna Karenina” by Leo Tolstoy. nobody writes characters better or their dialogue. no man has written better women and as many. in heaven there are volumes of new tolstoys where he rewrites the entire tom robbins catalogue. anna karenina is tolstoy showing off via a soap opera history lesson character study. the sole reason to go to college is so that one day you’re assigned to read this and you do and then get to talk about it with people who cant believe how much better tolstoy was than anyone who dared call themselves his peer.

    Who are you going to pass this stick to (3 persons) and why?

    sk smith because shes been educated in the best schools in america and despite that has great taste. [update: sk has obliged us!]

    mc brown because he’s always ahead of the game

    and amy langfield because shes always right.

  • if i wasnt religious

    id do so much different. i woulda gone to a strip club tonight. i woulda kissed that roller girl last week. i woulda gotten tattooed in austin. i woulda probably be diseased ridden and probably even dead by now. with a smile on my face.

    crazy thing is i had such a great day today even though it started with me thinking i was gonna have another day off and do my laundry and upload pics from home, but i found out i was expected at work so i went to work and uploaded pictures there. some weird things happened along the way to right now which is 150am but nothing got me down.

    in fact i talked on the phone and ate chinese and danced around my apartment which is something i dont do enough.

    a long time ago danielle and i worked together at e entertainment television and every day we would go to lunch together and every morning she would march down to my desk and model her latest outfit and i would pretend like i wasnt aroused and sometimes i really was busy so she would pick up one of my many magazines and flip through them saying omg with each turn of the page.

    even though we were both in our own personal personnel hells we had each other and that kept us sane and kept me believing in the Lord because without her i woulda done something real dumb there probably, who knows what. but people do dumb things all the time.

    something dumb i did the other day was watch episode two of the sopranos without knowing that i had missed episode one. so basart im sorry but i talked about the sopranos thinking that it had been around for a week but it had only been around only a few days.

    i learned of my error because of my phone call with danielle and i looked at my tivo and they werent planning on rerunning that first episode anytime soon but thanks to peer to peer sharing i downloaded that shit and watched it on my computer, on this computer that i now type to you, and all i have to say is fuck.

    im an old man but young enough to aspire to do something as good as write or direct or create something as perfect as that episode. theres a reason they waited so long to get back into the groove. theres a reason some people dont rush things and take their time and get the shit right, and its because those people are pros. i aspire to be a pro at something one day.

    i told two girls today that i wanted to get it on with them. one of them i was sorta kidding cuz shes the wrong sign but the other i wasnt kidding at all, and i think she felt a little sad for rejecting me, but baby you shouldnt feel sad. just like the little tadpole looking sperm keeps swimming around that egg bashing his head against the wall, the man keeps working that angle trying to get up that skirt.

    and whats funny is sometimes the man isnt trying at all to get up a skirt but the skirt keeps thinking hes working an angle. and what i have to say to those women are, trust me, you’ll know when im working it.

    over the last few days being home here in LA i havent had my car. i was loaning it to jeanine, my first college girlfriend. so tonight after work i drove around hollywood blvd and sunset to make sure everything was still in place. fortunately it was. if i havent mentioned before basart sold me his old car and after investing a few dollars on it it now runs like a top and its clean as fuck.

    and im a lucky man.

    and i feel good.

    and im gonna have to stop listening to the devil now that we’re in the month of aries because the angels who also whisper sweet nothings are feeling unloved.

    and hot chick who wouldnt let me do what i begged for the other day: that offer has an expiration date, so either oblige or apologize. because you might be too young to realize you fucked up the other day but you fucked up the other day and sometimes you dont get a second chance to dance.

    simpleton + xTx + floorpie + sour duck + shane