SlapDashittery
Thursday, February 26, 2009
Rodger Jacobs made this look easy.
Now that I’m being asked the questions, by the self-deprecating and extremely polite Mr. David Metcalfe, I’m a mess of yellow-bellied pudding, vacillating wildly between the thoughtful responses and superficial drivel each question could seemingly provoke, which is less a product of the queries themselves and more the refracted way in which I overanalyze everything down to the slightest, most microscopic of details. I’ve also learned something very valuable while on this side of the grill: giving random questions to a confirmed narcissist with no real set time-limit is like showing a suicidal monkey how to tie a noose.
Just watch as I hang myself with these answers.
You're based in Canada, and Canadians get a bit of a bad time as being either a bit backward or liberal. What does being Canadian mean to you?
Not a whole lot, actually. To me, being Canadian is no different from being worried, well-hung or hungry – meaningless, at least in the context of life as a whole. I’m much more fascinated by the universality of human nature than I am in the arbitrary groups of people jammed together by nothing more than geographical happenstance. I can’t take credit for being Canadian anymore than I can for having a knockout set of peepers or fabulous hand/eye coordination, and though free healthcare is nothing to sneeze at, it’s kind of hard to enjoy being defined by the results of some birthplace-lottery.
Take these two sentences, for instance:
"Yes, I’m Canadian, and damn proud of it."
"Yes, I’m white, and damn proud of it."
Personally, I don’t see a whole lot of difference between the two, and, as a result, won’t be shouting either off of rooftops on Canada Day. I have friends who chide me for being unpatriotic, to which I disagree; patriotism is just a form of cheering for the home team, and on a microcosmic level, I am indeed cheering for the home team, in fact the ultimate "home team": me.
I’m home to me, and I’m a big fan.
You're a writer - is this something you feel compelled to do or is it a means to an end?
"Compelled" is a good term for it – I don’t feel right unless I’m writing, have been writing recently, or am about to write in the very near future. That doesn’t mean it’s constantly fun, or that I don’t sometimes want to throw my computer and everything not fastened down through the front window, but that there’s something missing in my day-to-day existence if I’m not writing.
I guess, in that sense, it is a means to an end for me: equilibrium.
An aside: I use the word "torturous" when describing the act of writing to those who ask, despite the immediate image that conjures of some pretentious little twat blowing smoke up his own ass, desperate to attach importance and majesty to what’s essentially just the typing of black words onto a white screen. However, I remain confident that, were I to spend as much time, say, bowling as I spend writing, bowling too would quickly become a torturous endeavour. I guess suffering is just in my blood.
[staples back of hand to forehead in grand show of despair]
In some of your recent blogs you mention that you're not often a part of conflict you haven't instigated or encouraged. Would you consider yourself an aggressive person and do you find it a healthy trait?
I would say I’m more contrarian than aggressive... then again, my self-image is so twisted by my inner funhouse-mirror that I can’t pretend there isn’t a steaming, putrid gulf between my ultra-biased opinion and the prevailing notion that I’m, in some ways, an irresponsible lunatic.
Here’s the thing: I have a real, everlasting problem with big-shots inflating their self-esteem at the expense of others, and an extra little pocket of fury tucked away and earmarked specifically for bullies. That said, I’ve tried to intellectually reconcile these spats of mine with the ambiguous ideal of serving some "greater good", but if the increasingly feeble justifications for my visceral responses to shitty behaviour are evidence of anything, it’s that logic is of no help to me in this regard; in fact, logic has been no friend of mine at all lately, which is a shame because we were so tight back in the day, like the twined fingers of a liar in church.
I recently wondered in my girlfriend’s direction about how the perception of me based solely on what I write here probably differs greatly from how I’m taken in real life, which is in moderate doses and with a basketball-sized grain of salt, and she rolled her eyes:
"Everyone gets it, Ryan – you’re super tough. Now help me put away the groceries."
You've just come off a self enforced three month isolation period. How did you manage to do this? I can go so long without company but isn't it impossible to completely avoid people totally? I know that hermits manage it, but how do you manage to not interact with others for such a length of time? And more importantly did you find it helped you?
I’m a really lucky guy, not just in terms of circumstance but in psychological makeup as well. I expend a tremendous amount of energy, and all my emotions run off that same high-energy battery; as such, the problems frequently associated with solitude, such as loneliness and depression, become articulated as fits of irritation and annoyance... which, come to think of it, might also help explain the above answer, too.
I am mentally incapable of being "down" (apart from that one time I doubted myself, which sucked, so I knocked it off), so being alone is all upside for me. Then again, I am very, very fortunate to have a girlfriend as supportive as mine is; it’s pretty easy to be glib about loneliness when I’ve never been forced to concern myself with it.
As for whether or not it my forays into isolation "help", well, I think so; there are only so many days you can talk to yourself about the weather before you get down to the nitty-gritty, and I managed to get a huge amount of work done on the novel this past half-year. Unfortunately, in the same way that I know enough to know that I don’t know everything, I now realize that the totality of effort necessary to write a book is far greater than I had ever anticipated. What I gain in creativity from being alone I lose in perspective, but I, again, have the luxury of a girlfriend who acts not only as a powerful psychic-anchor, but who also buffers me from reality enough to allow me to live in the universe I’ve created in my head.
She also isn’t shy about calling me a nincompoop and smacking me around if I get that head of mine stuck a little too far up my own ass.
Are you a man of habit and ritual or just happy to go along with the flow of things?
We’re all creatures of habit, aren’t we? Other than drinking coffee, smoking, writing, eating, bathing, playing with my dogs, and hurling abuse at my computer, I don’t really stick to a set schedule. I’m also pretty amenable to allowing what’s going to happen to happen, right up until something gets stuck in my craw, which, if you’re unfamiliar with the sensation, hurts like hell.
I claim to only have one superstition - I always greet magpies for some reason. Would you claim to be superstitious, or do you find it all bunkum?
That’s hilarious – not just you greeting magpies, but that I was thinking about this just yesterday. I’m not above taking stock of the particular trinkets that happened to be lining my pockets after I’ve had a good day, or filling my cupboards with a specific soup or tea or snacky-treat that provided me inspiration over the previous week.
When the girlfriend and I took possession of our house last year, the keys arrived on a ring sporting an old-school keychain that showed Jesus floating above what I’m assuming were admirers. I immediately transferred all my other keys to this Christly-ring, but after dropping them one too many times, Jesus jumped ship, his plastic shell snapping from the keychain like a padlock confronted with bolt-cutters. Now, from time to time, I shove Jesus into my pocket, if for no other reason than to make certain that he isn’t influencing my life one way or the other, that my great days aren’t the result of some plastic-encased key-ring god’s pocket-machinations. It was harrowing; had plastic Jesus been bettering my life whilst nestled in beside my wallet, the entirety of my atheism would have been flushed down an ever-spiraling drainpipe of despair from which escape, though not impossible, looked as arduous a journey as my imagination would allow.
Shoes go on left-foot first, however... but that’s a given, isn’t it?
We've just had a week with snow, and the country practically stopped because of an inch of snowfall on the ground. I remember as a kid growing up in the country when we'd have drifts three feet high and just get on with things. Do you think that people are getting softer?
Indeed – I’m definitely complaining more. I think I can speak for the whole of North America when I say that we’re really, really good at taking things for granted. We, as a culture, excel at being fat... and not just "fat" in the literal sense, but also easily-contented and eagerly-complacent "fat".
My dad thought I was nuts after I got a couple of punctuation-marks tattooed on my arm, right up until we were out for dinner one night and a waitress asked about them. With my family looking on, I explained that the exclamation point was a reminder that having energy and being dynamic had yielded nothing but good in my life, and the ampersand was a warning against complacency: "And?" it asks, eternally mocking any sense I might have of completion, "what’s next?" Oh, he still thinks I’m a nutcase, but the smile on my dad’s face that night was priceless.
At the end of it all, when you're stood at the Pearly Gates and St Peter's going through your list of achievements, what's the one thing you'd kick off at not being mentioned?
I’ll be pissed if there isn’t a plaque commemorating the time I won a thanksgiving turkey in a free-throw shooting competition. I assume they’d overlook that, for some reason, and that would be a goddamned shame.
Other than your own, whose words would you like on your gravestone?
I'll have no such thing. I’m going to be cremated, poured into a loosely-tied bag, and thrown at somebody deserving of my beyond-the-grave scorn. It’ll be like taking a rosin-bag of spite in the face, and all will be well with the universe. I will also pen my own eulogy that will demand to be read verbatim, and it will be unbearably long, full of vulgar, excessive profanity, and hilarious. This will be accompanied by a soundtrack of my voice alternately screaming myself hoarse and laughing like a maniac. It will be the most fun ever had at a wake, and you’re all invited.
I’m working on the invitations now.
Now that I’m being asked the questions, by the self-deprecating and extremely polite Mr. David Metcalfe, I’m a mess of yellow-bellied pudding, vacillating wildly between the thoughtful responses and superficial drivel each question could seemingly provoke, which is less a product of the queries themselves and more the refracted way in which I overanalyze everything down to the slightest, most microscopic of details. I’ve also learned something very valuable while on this side of the grill: giving random questions to a confirmed narcissist with no real set time-limit is like showing a suicidal monkey how to tie a noose.
Just watch as I hang myself with these answers.
You're based in Canada, and Canadians get a bit of a bad time as being either a bit backward or liberal. What does being Canadian mean to you?
Not a whole lot, actually. To me, being Canadian is no different from being worried, well-hung or hungry – meaningless, at least in the context of life as a whole. I’m much more fascinated by the universality of human nature than I am in the arbitrary groups of people jammed together by nothing more than geographical happenstance. I can’t take credit for being Canadian anymore than I can for having a knockout set of peepers or fabulous hand/eye coordination, and though free healthcare is nothing to sneeze at, it’s kind of hard to enjoy being defined by the results of some birthplace-lottery.
Take these two sentences, for instance:
"Yes, I’m Canadian, and damn proud of it."
"Yes, I’m white, and damn proud of it."
Personally, I don’t see a whole lot of difference between the two, and, as a result, won’t be shouting either off of rooftops on Canada Day. I have friends who chide me for being unpatriotic, to which I disagree; patriotism is just a form of cheering for the home team, and on a microcosmic level, I am indeed cheering for the home team, in fact the ultimate "home team": me.
I’m home to me, and I’m a big fan.
You're a writer - is this something you feel compelled to do or is it a means to an end?
"Compelled" is a good term for it – I don’t feel right unless I’m writing, have been writing recently, or am about to write in the very near future. That doesn’t mean it’s constantly fun, or that I don’t sometimes want to throw my computer and everything not fastened down through the front window, but that there’s something missing in my day-to-day existence if I’m not writing.
I guess, in that sense, it is a means to an end for me: equilibrium.
An aside: I use the word "torturous" when describing the act of writing to those who ask, despite the immediate image that conjures of some pretentious little twat blowing smoke up his own ass, desperate to attach importance and majesty to what’s essentially just the typing of black words onto a white screen. However, I remain confident that, were I to spend as much time, say, bowling as I spend writing, bowling too would quickly become a torturous endeavour. I guess suffering is just in my blood.
[staples back of hand to forehead in grand show of despair]
In some of your recent blogs you mention that you're not often a part of conflict you haven't instigated or encouraged. Would you consider yourself an aggressive person and do you find it a healthy trait?
I would say I’m more contrarian than aggressive... then again, my self-image is so twisted by my inner funhouse-mirror that I can’t pretend there isn’t a steaming, putrid gulf between my ultra-biased opinion and the prevailing notion that I’m, in some ways, an irresponsible lunatic.
Here’s the thing: I have a real, everlasting problem with big-shots inflating their self-esteem at the expense of others, and an extra little pocket of fury tucked away and earmarked specifically for bullies. That said, I’ve tried to intellectually reconcile these spats of mine with the ambiguous ideal of serving some "greater good", but if the increasingly feeble justifications for my visceral responses to shitty behaviour are evidence of anything, it’s that logic is of no help to me in this regard; in fact, logic has been no friend of mine at all lately, which is a shame because we were so tight back in the day, like the twined fingers of a liar in church.
I recently wondered in my girlfriend’s direction about how the perception of me based solely on what I write here probably differs greatly from how I’m taken in real life, which is in moderate doses and with a basketball-sized grain of salt, and she rolled her eyes:
"Everyone gets it, Ryan – you’re super tough. Now help me put away the groceries."
You've just come off a self enforced three month isolation period. How did you manage to do this? I can go so long without company but isn't it impossible to completely avoid people totally? I know that hermits manage it, but how do you manage to not interact with others for such a length of time? And more importantly did you find it helped you?
I’m a really lucky guy, not just in terms of circumstance but in psychological makeup as well. I expend a tremendous amount of energy, and all my emotions run off that same high-energy battery; as such, the problems frequently associated with solitude, such as loneliness and depression, become articulated as fits of irritation and annoyance... which, come to think of it, might also help explain the above answer, too.
I am mentally incapable of being "down" (apart from that one time I doubted myself, which sucked, so I knocked it off), so being alone is all upside for me. Then again, I am very, very fortunate to have a girlfriend as supportive as mine is; it’s pretty easy to be glib about loneliness when I’ve never been forced to concern myself with it.
As for whether or not it my forays into isolation "help", well, I think so; there are only so many days you can talk to yourself about the weather before you get down to the nitty-gritty, and I managed to get a huge amount of work done on the novel this past half-year. Unfortunately, in the same way that I know enough to know that I don’t know everything, I now realize that the totality of effort necessary to write a book is far greater than I had ever anticipated. What I gain in creativity from being alone I lose in perspective, but I, again, have the luxury of a girlfriend who acts not only as a powerful psychic-anchor, but who also buffers me from reality enough to allow me to live in the universe I’ve created in my head.
She also isn’t shy about calling me a nincompoop and smacking me around if I get that head of mine stuck a little too far up my own ass.
Are you a man of habit and ritual or just happy to go along with the flow of things?
We’re all creatures of habit, aren’t we? Other than drinking coffee, smoking, writing, eating, bathing, playing with my dogs, and hurling abuse at my computer, I don’t really stick to a set schedule. I’m also pretty amenable to allowing what’s going to happen to happen, right up until something gets stuck in my craw, which, if you’re unfamiliar with the sensation, hurts like hell.
I claim to only have one superstition - I always greet magpies for some reason. Would you claim to be superstitious, or do you find it all bunkum?
That’s hilarious – not just you greeting magpies, but that I was thinking about this just yesterday. I’m not above taking stock of the particular trinkets that happened to be lining my pockets after I’ve had a good day, or filling my cupboards with a specific soup or tea or snacky-treat that provided me inspiration over the previous week.
When the girlfriend and I took possession of our house last year, the keys arrived on a ring sporting an old-school keychain that showed Jesus floating above what I’m assuming were admirers. I immediately transferred all my other keys to this Christly-ring, but after dropping them one too many times, Jesus jumped ship, his plastic shell snapping from the keychain like a padlock confronted with bolt-cutters. Now, from time to time, I shove Jesus into my pocket, if for no other reason than to make certain that he isn’t influencing my life one way or the other, that my great days aren’t the result of some plastic-encased key-ring god’s pocket-machinations. It was harrowing; had plastic Jesus been bettering my life whilst nestled in beside my wallet, the entirety of my atheism would have been flushed down an ever-spiraling drainpipe of despair from which escape, though not impossible, looked as arduous a journey as my imagination would allow.
Shoes go on left-foot first, however... but that’s a given, isn’t it?
We've just had a week with snow, and the country practically stopped because of an inch of snowfall on the ground. I remember as a kid growing up in the country when we'd have drifts three feet high and just get on with things. Do you think that people are getting softer?
Indeed – I’m definitely complaining more. I think I can speak for the whole of North America when I say that we’re really, really good at taking things for granted. We, as a culture, excel at being fat... and not just "fat" in the literal sense, but also easily-contented and eagerly-complacent "fat".
My dad thought I was nuts after I got a couple of punctuation-marks tattooed on my arm, right up until we were out for dinner one night and a waitress asked about them. With my family looking on, I explained that the exclamation point was a reminder that having energy and being dynamic had yielded nothing but good in my life, and the ampersand was a warning against complacency: "And?" it asks, eternally mocking any sense I might have of completion, "what’s next?" Oh, he still thinks I’m a nutcase, but the smile on my dad’s face that night was priceless.At the end of it all, when you're stood at the Pearly Gates and St Peter's going through your list of achievements, what's the one thing you'd kick off at not being mentioned?
I’ll be pissed if there isn’t a plaque commemorating the time I won a thanksgiving turkey in a free-throw shooting competition. I assume they’d overlook that, for some reason, and that would be a goddamned shame.
Other than your own, whose words would you like on your gravestone?
I'll have no such thing. I’m going to be cremated, poured into a loosely-tied bag, and thrown at somebody deserving of my beyond-the-grave scorn. It’ll be like taking a rosin-bag of spite in the face, and all will be well with the universe. I will also pen my own eulogy that will demand to be read verbatim, and it will be unbearably long, full of vulgar, excessive profanity, and hilarious. This will be accompanied by a soundtrack of my voice alternately screaming myself hoarse and laughing like a maniac. It will be the most fun ever had at a wake, and you’re all invited.
I’m working on the invitations now.
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9 Comments:
Cheers Ryan, those answers were vastly superior to my inane quastions.
I am hiring you and Dave to write my eulogy should I be unable to complete it myself for some reason.
So much for your yellow-bellied pudding idea - I loved this interview.
Great interview! You go ahead and write the eulogy. I'm sure your girlfriend will read it, and I'm sure everyone at your wake will sit still and listen.
I want to be dipped in nitrogen and dropped from the Eiffel Tower, and I'm going to have a list of people I want someone to trick into standing at the bottom. There isn't anything wrong with that, right?
fuck that - I'M reading your eulogy!
nice job, ry - barely a mark on that handsome, manly neck of yours...
Really inspired me to take issue with something, anything, just do something, something, anything, quit reveling in my own contentment...
hahah cool interview... your final comments of flinging your dusty self at someone is quite unusual...ahem. And i hope they celebrate the turkey winning, I mean, its these small things that count! Why don't you write your eulogy soon so we can all start practising...
I'd like to think of you, from the beyond, as a kind of glove-slap to the world. You know?
Not surprisingly, I think this is my favorite interview so far.
Dave: Oh, shucks - you're truly the most self-deprecating gentleman I've met on these interwebs. Thank you for the interview, sir.
Mongoliangirl: If you don't mind offending people from beyond the grave, I am your man. If you need help with yours, let me know.
Angel: Nothing wrong with that at all - in fact, that's a very solid idea. I might steal it if I can't convince someone to throw my remains at some as-of-yet-undetermined asshole.
JMH: I love contentment; that's why I have the tattoo.
SSG: I am working on it, I promise. Maybe I'll post it here when it's done. Ooh, yes - that is the Fuck Mountain of narcissism, isn't it? Perfect.
Gypsy: I'm glad I'm not the only one who thinks me wreaking havoc after I'm dead is funny. Phew - I thought I was starting to go a little strange...
I'm gonna go ahead and take responsibility for writing your eulogy. Just do me a favor, and die before I do.
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