Piano Wire

“Francois, Francois c’mon, let go of my neck!”

Etienne’s plea for mercy was delivered with a giggle, muffled as it was. The stiff green collar of his parade uniform twisted and scrunched behind his head. Etienne’s hair was the sort of blonde colour that ought to have the purity of a wax crayon, but is darkened by a perennial soot-black undertone stretched across the scalp. The soot was inseparable from the blonde hair, but noticeably different. Even in Francois’ hand, the strands pulled to attention, the black blended into the yellow, but contrasted with it. Like titanium in beach sand, thought Francois.

“Francois, Francois this is getting old.” Etienne grunted between phrases. “Get your ape arms off me, man. Dammit, you’ve got piano wire on your arms!” Francois returned the jibe with a squeeze of his bicep and tug of the dirty blonde hair, bringing Etienne’s face into his ribs, and contorting the smaller man’s now throbbing ear a few degrees more.

“Now what’d you say about my mom?”
“Nothing! Nothing man. I’m sorry?”
“Sorry for nothing? That won’t do.”

Francois squeezed again, wringing the small man’s neck and forcing Etienne to twist his body to maintain the unbroken state of his vertebrae. His face was buried in Francois’ muscular and unnaturally hairy armpit. Captive, he noticed it wasn’t the density of Francois’ hair that was extraordinary so much as the thickness of each individual strand. Incredible. Like a bloody horse’s main. This situation called for dramatics.

“Hmmmmmpf!” Etienne gurgled from beneath the clamp of flesh, putting on his best suffocation voice.
“What’s that you midget devil?”

Etienne screamed something inaudible, and the sound wasn’t intended to form words. Etienne just felt a desire to regurgitate the salty mass of hair from his mouth. Like lifting a great weight, that sort of thing was better accomplished with a loud grunt. And disgust. This was disgusting. Francois released the smaller man from his salty grave.

“You bastard.” Etienne spat and wiped his mouth on his sleeve.
“Quit it, you’ve already gobbed in my armpit. I hate taking extra showers.”
“Extra showers? Start with your first one, and work from there.”

"Ah." Dammit. Francois wanted to say something but felt his diaphragm twist and contort, and no air would come out over his vocal chords for him to say what he felt in the pit of his stomach and the black behind his eyes, to cut Etienne in half with his wit. He buttoned his shirt and fixed the loose medals to his breast pocket. Etienne could really piss him off sometimes.

“Men! Fall in!” The Lieutenant’s heals clacked on the stone of the courtyard.

“Le Roux! What in the name of Proux’s mother are you doing?”

Again, that lead in his chest. He really ought to read a few Oscar Wilde books, thought Francois. He ignored the gleeful stare shot in his direction from under the eyebrows of now composed Etienne Le
Roux.

“I was fixing my collar, Sir”, Etienne barked in a clear tone across the barracks courtyard, the slight rasp of his voice was more evident in the echo from the grey sandstone walls.

“Le Roux..." Lieutenant took a few steps to consider his words carefully.

"You’re a complete cock-up. Twenty minutes from parade and you see fit to dress yourself. How many times have you been promoted, Caporal-Chef Le Roux?”
“Eight times, Sir.” Etienne protruded his chin.
“And how many times have you been demoted?” Etienne suppressed a smile.
“Five times, Sir.”
“I see you’re smiling, Le Roux. Are you happy that this son of a Poilu is of a higher rank than you, Le Roux?” The Lieutenant gesticulated in the direction of Francois as he spoke while keeping his eyes fixed on Etienne (whom he disliked as much as Francois, but for different reasons).
The Lieutenant mulled over how much he disliked people almost constantly, and he had reduced the problem to a simple formula over dinner the evening before. He explained to his wife, who had mastered the skill of hearing without listening, that if Etienne le Roux was a hair, and Francois Proux was a tortoise, then he did not like races very much at all.

Francois mentally preened his parade stance: straight back, chin thrust out, buttocks pulled tight. Conduct befitting a French “sergent”, apparently.

Sergent Francois Proux. It was a satisfaction for Francois to say the word, sergent. It wasn’t quite
“Marechal de France”, but it wasn’t rank and file either. Besides, it rolled off the tongue pleasantly.

“Sergent…”

“Fall back in, Le Roux. Proux, over here, now.”
“Yes, Sir!”
“Present your weapon. Good. Good. Open the breach. Fine. Remove the magazine. Red only. Good. Japrisot! Over here. Present your weapon. Excellent. Open the breach. Good. Red safety cartridge? Very good. Fall back into line. Clemence! Over here n…”

The Lieutenant continued down the line, inspecting the weapons of the soldiers with the factory foreman method. He spoke with a weary tone, as if every word had shoulders to shrug, and each phrase was capable of sighing.

When Etienne’s turn came, the blonde man noticed Francois was staring at him intently, or rather staring at his hands. Francois snapped out of his reverie only when Etienne thrust a pointed finger into his clenched fist. coupled with his hands, Etienne's expression conveyed the message to Francois.

“You’re a homo….”

Francois looked down and away, to the side. Etienne smirked.

“Good, fall back in, Le Roux.”
The Lieutenant turned to addressed the troops, and spoke in a tone slightly higher and more businesslike (if that was at all possible) than he had a few moments before. The troops recognised it
as the Lieutenant’s parade voice. A good deal of collective chin-thrusting, back-straightening and buttock-clenching was about to ensue.

“Listen carefully! All of you have heard that horse manure before. I don’t need to tell you what a Soldat of the French Army is, a man of honour and what-not. Frankly, the French Army doesn’t exist. Not how they think of it, anyway.”

The Lieutenant raised a leather-gloved finger and pointed toward the parade stands outside the courtyard walls.

“Point is, the men sitting on those stands rather enjoy their ideas, and I enjoy them too, because they feed me. And I feed you.”

The Lieutenant had the habit of clacking the steel heels of his boots against the flagstones of the courtyard whenever he addressed a matter besides discipline. This meant he was in a more amiable mood than normal.

“Let’s get this over with. You know the drill. One rifleman to fire three blank shots into the air upon exiting the courtyard. Thereafter, follow my commands.” The Lieutenant scanned the first line of soldiers in the column. “And wouldn’t you know it, Le Roux, today’s your lucky day to do duty to God and Country.”

“Excuse me, Sir?” No one knows what Etienne was about to say then.

“Shut up. Viva la France!” The Lieutenant spun to face the opposite direction almost as quickly as he’d answered Etienne, and then proceeded to clack his way forward. In perfect unison, the troops hailed the echo, “Viva la France!”

Upon Francois’ order the troops snapped a quarter turn to the right and blended more or less seamlessly into a column two men abreast. Two awkward-looking soldats collided, one dropped his rifle. Etienne stood a metre in front of the column as the designated rifleman. The Lieutenant clacked ten meters ahead. Francois commanded the rear of the column as the deputy officer.

“Forward march! Rifleman!”

It was then that Etienne half-turned his body, and turned his head a fraction more. Those who had served with Etienne Le Roux long enough knew exactly what the glimmer from the white of his eyes meant. In a few seconds, the left hand corner of his mouth would to grow a millimetre; it would turn slowly upward, excruciatingly subtle, but instantly noticeable.

The crack formed by the meeting of his lips and cheek would slide slowly upward, drawn like water skin up the side of a glass. His eyes were strained in their sockets; the chin raised a fraction upward and to the left. He gripped the rifle with soft hands, nursing it against his chest. Francois saw the entire scene in silhouette, the muzzle Etienne’s rifle grew from his mouth. Francois couldn’t agree more with his own musing. Etienne’s mouth was a gun.

Most would agree that Etienne had the theatre in his blood. Today his audience would all be
wearing uniforms. Perfectly composed, Etienne brought his right hand up in a smooth motion, slowly and deliberately, his thumb extended in an over-exaggerated thumbs-up that asked, “Are you
watching closely…?” The column held its collective breath. Even the clumsy ones made sure of pressing fragmentation grenades fast against their bodies – the sound of metal clinking against metal would break the magic.

“Rifleman!?”

Etienne lowered his thumb, extended his index finger and pressed it against his lips just as deliberately as he had extended his thumb. The subtle smirk broke like a small lake wave against a shore, rippling across his face and revealing white teeth that were previously hidden.

The column stood fast in anticipation. Francois did not blink, his expression was completely vacant except for what a young soldat would later describe as a moment of sheer excitement. It is said that the tiniest gap appeared between his lips, and he drew a short, sharp breath inward.

The leather of Etienne’s leather boots squeaked and complained as it flexed against the flagstones. Etienne held his breath, bending his knees a fraction, contracting muscles and tightening sinews. Etienne was stalking.

“Rifleman!” The Lieutenant, God in his universe: the barracks, would never have considered turning back around to reissue an already plainly-given command. His words carried more weight than that. The column was still, Francois was silent. Etienne grinned like the Cheshire cat.

Etienne’s movements were beautiful though ominous-looking, and part of a joke. A lion stalking a stuffed toy under the big top. In one moment he was stiff like toffee, controlled and constant in
movement, and suddenly water and then toffee again. Now he lay flat against the flagstone, legs spread ridiculously wide for would-be balance. Troops suppressed giggles and agonisingly breathed laughter out. A single snort of the nose would spell an end to the fun. Everyone loves pantomime.

The same soldat would recount that at this moment, Sergent Francois Proux began to quiver. Small flecks of sweat beaded over his lip.

“Sergent?” Francois Proux appeared not to hear him, fixated on the scene ahead.

“RIFLEMAN!”

It was then that Etienne’s grin threatened to explode like a coil off his face a bound over the floor, unleashed. Grins and furtive glances were had all round. Expressions of glee and “Oh my gosh,” and elbows in the ribs. In the milliseconds before Etienne Le Roux pulled the trigger he drank it in, the warmth of an adoring audience. Francois thrilled in anticipation.

The shot rang out. The parade had begun. The Lieutenant spun around characteristically on his heals. He opened his mouth as if to speak but said nothing. He said nothing, but looked down to the messy hole ripped in his chest. Bewilderment splashed his expression when he noticed claret pumping nauseatingly from the wound. The smell of acid filled his nostrils. One of the troops had vomited. In front of him stood the column, all sharing his expression except for the junior with hands on knees, spitting bile. The Lieutenant thought Le Roux looked silly on the floor like that. He
could taste iron.

Etienne watched in disbelief as rich, oxygenated blood welled-up in the Lieutenant’s mouth and
oozed it’s way over the crest of his lip and down across his porcelain chin. He saw a single rib leering at him from the wound, shocking white in between so much red.

Not a sound could be heard but for the gargling of the Lieutenant and the retching of the soldat. Etienne spasmed in shock and dropped his rifle with a clang from his hands. He rolled onto his back, before drawing his legs upward and curling into the fetal position. He began to moan. Short animal moans to punctuate the rocking motion he was now engaged in.

Footsteps were heard from the rear of the column. Francois appeared next to the dying Lieutenant, now collapsed on the floor. He appeared to be suffocating. Francois was perfectly composed, his mood completely removed from the situation. It was mild, almost pleasant.

He breathed in, took a moment to admire the wind in the treetops that peered over the roof of the barracks, and the clouds ambling across the sky.

Francois spoke to his boots, in the same manner that one would speak to a baker who had sold out of a favourite cake. “Ah yes, what a pity.” A few of the soldats heard the remark, and looked at Francois Proux.

He cocked his head to one side, and politely countered their dazed gaze with, “It was such a lovely day for a parade, was it not?”

Then he looked down bashfully, “I'm rather fond of parades...”

As he was trailing off the soldats could find no words to speak, but felt strangely compelled to follow manners and look down at their boot laces, almost to the point of chuckling shyly in acknowledgment of a friendly and awkward social exchange that was forced upon them.

Sergent Proux remembered himself, and brought his head up. He exhaled stiffly, tensed his stomach muscles, protruded his chin, furrowed his brow and presented his chest in a full manner, as a means of marrying the resolve in his mind to the sight of his body, and expression.

“For God and Country, Francois.”

Sergent Francois Proux smooth the sleeves of his jacket, and skewed and then readjusted his cap. His fingers checked an inventory of brass buttons and ribbons, epaulets and ribbons. He addressed the wretched troops.

“I’ve assumed command as the deputy officer. You all saw what he did. This is the French Army. What you have just witnessed is treason. You three, get him against the wall.”

Etienne was incapable of moving, a Pompeii figure in the flesh. Two junior soldats took hold of his arms and moved him as close to the wall as his body position would allow. He was still moaning, still rocking back and forth.

“FIRE!”

Before the triggers were squeezed, Sergent Francois Proux was smiling softly, sweetly, distantly. The chaplains on the parade grounds could be heard from over the wall, blessing the gathered
crowd, the Army and the parade in a manner that was a curious mix of pious paternity and military efficiency. Someone else to Francois' left muttered a blasphemy, one of the firing squad.

And in his coat pocket his fingers amused themselves between eight small, red, blank rifle cartridges.

"Father Aurelio Was Not Inclined to Panic"

Father Aurelio was not a man predisposed to panic. In all moments, he was one to remember who he was: “Padre”. He had not fretted when Gonzalo had slipped small quantities of marijuana into the incense burners before mass, nor had his heart been overcome with dread when the pattern of confessions on the part of the town’s young men began to relate almost hourly to Rosa, the padre’s adopted daughter. Indeed, the Padre had remained quite calm, even as cool and undisturbed as the chapel wine cellar while his ankles, wrists and torso were strapped to an old chesterfield rocking chair. No matter that the chair was fixed tightly to four thousand brightly-coloured helium balloons at the anual parish fair, in the name of fun.

Even so, now drifting approximately three thousand, eight hundred and eighty-seven meters above the steeple of his humble parish, the Padre could no longer ignore the neat and uniform strip of sweat perched on his brow. From his seat the Padre was moved greatly by his realization of how small the earth below appeared. It reminded him very much of the view of his last dinner plate – a meal very graciously prepared and donated by Tengo, the baker. The peas (lightly boiled in salt water, deliciously plump and tender, the Padre noted) were the patches of shrub and thicket wedged stoically between ridges and hillocks of yellow mash potato. And the gravy leant earthy credibility to the entire image – delicately seasoned dirt though it was. Perhaps the pie might constitute an outcrop of coastal cliff if propped at the right angle…

“Yes,” thought the Padre, “if Tengo can prepare such a meal in forty-five minutes, how much greater was your creation in seven days, oh Lord.”

It was precisely at this moment that the Padre was struck by thought for the second time in as many minutes, although his latest realization was somewhat weightier than the previous one. There was no dish in Tengo’s kitchen, nor in any other that could compare to the sight beneath him. His imagination failing him, the only comfort Padre Aurelio could conjure was the thought of an infinitely deep, troublingly wide and particularly cool glass of water. And if the Padre’s imagination had not failed him, he might have thought the water to be a colour one guesses to be locked away under ice bergs, and on the surfaces of priceless Dutch canvasses.

From the top of the church bell tower where Gonzalo stood, the Padre was now invisible. The bright red helium balloons, even in their quantity, had been swallowed up in a haze of blue that made the sky indistinguishable from the sea. And this truth remained despite Gonzalo’s indifference to the scenario that was unfolding, illustrated by attempts to look down Rosa’s shirt from some twenty metres on high. “Nice.”

Padre Aurelio was looking in the opposite direction. Four thousand red helium balloons overwhelmed his aged eyeballs, so he closed them. “Holy Mother, it is me, Aurelio. I know that I am not easy to find underneath this mass of balloons, but surely you can see them? I am lost, Mother. Help me.”

“Gonzalo! Staring at fresh fruit won’t get it into your mouth, now get in the car!” Although Gonzalo had noted the urgency with which Tengo had delivered the command, the fat baker’s face deflated any verbal message that came from it. A distended vein burrowed between Tengo’s skull and his forehead, which distracted slightly from his crimson face, and purple, puckered, bee stung lips. All of which shone fantastically in the sunlight. Indeed, for all the interest he was paying the urgent, stumpy little man, Gonzalo himself might as well have been the cheerful, indifferent sun shining down from on high. “Gonzalo!” The baker’s excessive girth gave him a heart condition, which left him short of breath when stressed, and in turn led to a chronically shiny face which glowed any colour of the rainbow, dependent on his mood. Today he was red.

“Gonzalo, por favor, we need the help of all the men, and we need to leave right now.”

“I’m busy.”

“Gonzalo, the Padre is out of sight, he’s tied to thousands of floating balloons. See? The wind is blowing offshore!”

“Continue?” Gonzalo had his eyes closed in an effort to ignore the troubling reflection, and to sleep. Only the raised eyebrows expressed consciousness.

“Tu perro. Do us all a favour and slip off that tower, you waste of breath. And please, at least try no to fail at suicide. Rosa, in the car.”

Gonzalo turned his body toward the pair and perched his chin on his hands. “Rosa, you’re leaving with that lumpy toad?” He turned his eyes to Tengo. ‘And you baker? Are you trying to inflate yourself into a red helium balloon? Maybe if you meditate you’ll float.”

“Gonzalo…Gonzalo, Gonzalo. I am going to look for my father. That is what I am doing. What are you doing Gonzalo?”

“I was staring at your breasts until I was interrupted. Just a question?”

“Rosa, let’s go.” Tengo’s small chest was heaving at a fairly substantial rate, and his left eye was now bloodshot.

“What Gonzalo?”

“Why even bother looking for him? Come sit up here with me, we’ll drink to the old crone’s exit. At least he was original.”

“Gonzalo, smoke anther one.”

“You’re so pretty when you get angry.” He rolled onto his back and peered into the sun. “Father Icarus! That’s what we’ll call him!”

Rosa made a mental note to kick Gonzalo repeatedly in the groin the moment he was close enough for her short legs to reach. Tengo started the ignition of the old Mercedes and the vehicle jumped back to life. Vibrations rattled along the length of the vehicle, appearing to Rosa like twitchy flanks of a black mechanical race horse. Raindrops seeping through decades old holes in Tengo’s garage roof had stained the chrome handles to a pewter finish. She took a moment to familiarize herself with the machine, running her hands along the length of the trimmings, extending fingers over sharp corners, greasing the hard, waxy paint. Rosa fancied a drive along the coastal roads in so impressive a vehicle. And if she found her father in the process, so much the better. If she did not, well, so much the better.

Tengo wound down the window, “Rosa, for the sake of your father. Please.”

Half-tempted to ask, “He’s not here now, can’t I just enjoy this?” Rosa lingered, but for Tengo’s sake, she climbed into the car, and put on the face of a searchman. Sincerity, concern, vigour, desperation, hope, belief, and when appropriate, hysteria. Tengo’s small round foot leveled up and the clutch clunked out in stages, jerking the racehorse forward in spells of two metres at a time.

“Wait, wait mamacita, stop. How about I help you find him for a…reward?” Gonzalo had slunk down from the tower in as nonchalant a manner as possible, he spoke with suave laziness, cat-like.

Brown gravel ground out into the air between the wheels and the dirt road.

“Hang on a second, I’m your man for the job!”

Gonzalo sprinted alongside the Mercedes, slapping the windows and the doors with the stiffened palm of his hand. Rosa ignored him. Flat palms turned to fists, and from inside of the vehicle it sounded as if a battery of miniature cannon were firing gem squash into their flank. Gonzalo stumbled, half laughing. He pushed his hips forward with all his might, straining against dozens of tendons and chords that fought to overbalance in the path of least resistance. “Please! Stop, I’ll come with you, it’ll be a laugh!”

He fell. Gravel wrested the skin from his forearms, chin and palms. The ground surged up and drove into his sternum. Gonzalo cried out in pain, and also as a result of having his high abruptly ended, and thus being exposed to human embarrassment. “Please come back.” Rosa and Tengo wouldn’t have heard his sobbing even if they had cared. The car was a hundred meters away behind what looked like a wall of magicians dust. Gonzalo was winded, left behind, and wallowed in sublime rejection and uselessness. “Dammit.” He got up, and stole a horse.

“Tengo, should I take the wheel?” The car was snaking precariously along the St Jorges coastal road, with a sheer drop of some fifty metres to the waves below. Rosa had been a willing occupant of the car, and had even played the part of concerned search party member well enough to settle the nerves of a palpitating Tengo, but she was not prepared to lose her life in the process, which at this stage was threatened by the fretful baker’s driving. “No, no thank you, child. This is a man’s vehicle.” Rosa balked. “Tengo you old bastard, I will not let you kill me.” Tengo turned his attention away from the search for his friend and toward the insolent girl in the seat next to him. “If you please, your father’s life is at stake. At least feign concern.”
“I am concerned, Tengo. But you can’t search for someone when you’re – RED!”
“Red? I can’t help how I look, senorita!”
“No! Red, Tengo! Over there!” High up in the air, fluttering in and out of a mushrooming cloud anvil, was a prayerful but as yet unpanicked Padre Aurelio.

Gonzalo too, on his horse, had caught sight of the Padre. However Gonzalo was more concerned with the black Mercedes to his right, and the reward a town hero might garner from grateful town maidens. Gonzalo halted the horse a good fifty metres in front of the vehicle, attempting the grandest hero’s entrance possible.

“AURELIO!” Tengo bellowed, began to laugh uncontrollably and then did something that he might have thought unexpected for that moment. He died. Tengo’s heart arrested its motion, went into spasm and failed. The baker croaked loudly before his body slumped at the wheel.

Later, the town cryer would recount the event. That Tengo the baker was dead prior to impact, that Gonzalo was crushed beneath the body of the horse and the black car’s bonnet, and that Rosa had been struck by a flailing hoof in the head. What the town cryer would never be able to tell, however, was that Padre Aurelio, floating high above, beneath the anvil of a storm cloud, had heard the shouts of his friend’s voice below on the pie of the coastal outcrop. And before he disappeared forever, he had comfort.

Interview - Maddox: Author, jerky connoisseur and cult icon.

After ten years of (self – proclaimed) literary genius and a New York Times bestseller, web author and cult - icon George Ouzounian (AKA Maddox) is still finding time to be as offensive as ever. Simon Hartley tracked him down for an interview, and survived.

The Best Page in the Universe is a vent for your frustration, but you started it while employed as a computer programmer. At what point did you realise you could pursue writing seriously?

I quit my job in 2004, but I'm not sure I still take writing seriously enough. After all, I wrote a New York Times bestselling book in which one of the chapters is titled "Boners." I'm sure the english language has seen better days.

Would you say Maddox as a persona limited to your writing?

For the most part, because you can only be an annoying asshole in real life for so long before someone punches you in the face. It's a part of my character I sometimes try to suppress. It's that cynical voice who wants to argue about the injustice of having to pay $3 extra because the guy taking your ticket stub in the parking lot was incompetent and made you wait longer than you had to. We all have that voice; there's a little Maddox inside all of us.

My fans are often surprised when I treat them genuinely. They expect me to rip off their heads and shit down their necks, but I think many of the people I meet are pretty fragile and couldn't handle the abuse anyway.

Fair enough. Pop/consumer culture has always had its share of critics, yourself included, but the majority end up sounding contrived. What do you do that keeps you fresh?

What my writing has is something that all great writing has: truth. Whether it's a joke, a blog entry, satire, or even a press release, without that kernel of truth, there is nothing there to bond your words to the readers' psyche. I'm refreshing to read not only because I'm the greatest author of the 21st century, but also because I'm honest with my reader.

Over 70 million people have visited your site, and you highlighted in a particular post that you receive many more hits than major corporates, who spend millions on advertising. As a satirist of such companies and all their promulgation of branding, would you feel hesitant at the prospect of becoming a brand yourself?

Zefrank defines a brand as an "emotional aftertaste conjured up by a series of experiences." So anything you have an emotional experience with is a brand. The example he uses is the brand "grandma" being a much stronger brand than the more general brand of "old people." The experience people have with my brand is one that I have completely monopolized through a combined feeling of terror, fear, despair, annoyance, self-aggrandizement, humility (on the part of my reader), and dick jokes. It's a savory blend of raunch and smarts, like a trail with nuts and chocolate, but satire instead of nuts and chocolate.

The very nature of your work ensures you'll offend people. Have you ever received a very real threat or is it mostly pasty teenagers and soccer moms who send you hate mail?

I receive threats all the time from pussies on online forums. My theory is that the odds of someone seeing something that offended them from my site, then seeing me in public, and still remembering what they were pissed off about is very unlikely. Most people know that there's some serious tongue on cheek action going on in my writing. No hate mail from soccer moms yet. Yes, that's an invitation. Make it real.

How key is the satisfaction of "I rest my case" to the continuation of your website?

Not sure I understand the question.

Right. How difficult was it to publish your book, "The Alphabet of Manliness", given that your satire and parodies could be mistaken for bigotry?

The difficulty never comes from having to make a tough choice about content that may offend people, but rather, from the pressure of putting out a good product. If my name is on something, I want it to kick ass. I've never been one to hold punches or to be afraid of someone's reaction to a piece I wrote. As for bigotry, the strict definition is "a prejudiced person who is intolerant of any opinions differing from his own." I think most people are bigots. It's the bigots who have shitty opinions that cause problems in this world. Though to my credit, I'm not intolerant of any opinions differing from my own. Just most of them.

…And given that your book could polarise its readers, how has it been received?

Fairly well. The only real criticism I received about the book was that it was too awesome. I am my own toughest critic.

You state that you owe a debt of gratitude to Robert Hamburger, author of Real Ultimate Power. Would you say that a book of that nature paved the way for your particular style of satire?

No, I think our styles are quite different. Hamburger is a very funny writer, but we often write about different things. He's good at creating a fictional narrative for characters he's created, and somehow telling a story in a way that we can all relate to. I think the similarities can be drawn in that we both have a very over-the-top style, but our subject matter couldn't be more different. Where he paved the way for myself and other authors is in demonstrating that a web author cut from our fabric can not only publish a book, but be successful at it too. His success paved the way for many people. Plus he's a really solid guy in person. Coolest 12-year-old I know.

Your fan base is incredibly large. When you write something, do you consider the social implications of your work?

Yes, to some extent. I've gotten to the point where I can do some real damage with my voice; I can ruin people's lives, and you have to be very careful not to abuse that power. I think the last person who sent me hate mail got flooded with so much mail from people who read my site, that he lost his job (and that was after only 30 minutes). It's not my intention to ruin anyone's life because of my Web site, so sometimes I'll let people think they've won when they send me hate mail, when in fact I'm doing them a favour by not responding.

How much value would you place on a society's ability to mock itself?

It's important. Right up there with universal health care.

Blogging has exploded onto the web scene in the past two years, particularly in South Africa. How much credit would you give yourself and others like you for the phenomenon?

I give myself all the credit. Let's face it, most websites suck out there, and although I don't consider my site a blog, it's ultimately the main and only reason people still create blogs today.

Do you still get the same satisfaction from The Best Page in the Universe as you originally did?

Just as much, if not more so. If I didn't enjoy my website, I'd discontinue it.

maddox@xmission.com
http://www.thebestpageintheuniverse.com/

© Simon Hartley 2007