iNtErvieW WiTh mYsELf

“The human race is a race of cowards: and I am not only marching in that procession but carrying a banner.”
-- Mark Twain

I: I spoke with someone at the gym yesterday who she said she was unsure of what was going on in some of your interviews. She wanted to know if there were really people like Buster Hackaloogie, Toivo Beefeater, and Ed Gein. And further, if the interviewer was really you, or representative of your views?

RT: I guess you could call me an existential ironist. What this means is, for better or for worse, I find humor in everything. Sometimes the laughs are joyous, sometimes grim, and sometimes sad, but life is funny. We get up knowing we will eventually suffer and die, yet we find our merry way through the day. This is cool, and, because our demise is inevitable, should be embraced. Lenny Bruce, Bill Hicks, Mark Twain, Stephen Colbert, those South Park guys, these are my philosophical heroes. So it follows that my “Me” narrator adopts these hilarious personas as a way of poking fun at the human condition. One aspect of that condition is ignorance. Satire is a way of using ignorance to fight ignorance, sort of like a stupidity vaccine. As an aesthetic exercise in creative writing, constructing layers of representation--framing a conversation between a moderately intelligent right wing narrator and a totally moronic boob—is great fun. And while it may come as a shock to some of my readers insulated by living in the Ann Arbor, Zardoz bubble, yes, there really are people like this. Next question.

I: One of your girlfriends’ friends was offended that you compared her optical handicap to a Cyclops, do you see this as over the top, or pushing the envelope?

RT: The Cyclops entry, which is based on an actual near fatal collision we had, is, in my humble estimation, one of the funniest posts on the blog. One trick I’ve learned from Twain is to never place yourself above your own criticism. We’re all bozos on this bus, so why pretend otherwise. I’m not a show dog, but I don’t tailgate. She does look at the passenger rather than the road when she drives, ask Jimcee. I am a Samurai of the superficial. And yes, she does have ear-vision. So there, Kelly (get well soon).

I: One of your readers was appalled that you would post personal letters to and from Trainee T.. Their feeling is that you’ve breached privacy boundaries--and I hear you’re an expert on this--that should be inviolate.

RT: I think the correspondences I selected are particularly moving in what they say about love and relationship in trying times. My daughter was in prison boot camp while I was undergoing chemo for a cancer. Our outcomes were equally uncertain. Fall was rough. But this blog gave me a chance to share my sorrows and elations with others. It gave voice to my solitary hope and anguish. I think of it as free therapy. Sharing the isolation of Trainee T.s’ confinement, and my solitude of pain and joy, has been a great help.

I: What about those Nancy stories? Did you really write her dissertation?

RT: Every word of it. But first let me say that all of these blog-tales are firmly grounded in truth. Sometimes I conflate disparate real experiences into a single narrative thread, but what happened is based on real people, places, and events. No, the kids weren’t building al-Jazeera 9/11 modeling kits, and yes I chaperoned a middle-eastern group of kids to Cedar Point just days after 9/11, an interesting story, and one that becomes something more once you make it funny. The character who confronts Pickles is my brother, the invented niece is my daughter, and the guy that goes to jail is me, not Me. Indian Joe, in the cabin story, was an actual pedophile in Marquette around 1970, and the facts were accurate. Although French tells me it wasn’t a case of Pabst, but rather Phieffer G.I.Q.s.

I: Okay, but those Nancy stories often have a misogynistic, sexist tone. What’s the deal with that?

RT: I’m not sure of what to say here. Had you been a fly on the wall at our meetings, you might understand the low humor in my descriptions. What I wanted to convey, in as hilarious a way as possible, was the idea that someone who is functionally illiterate can secure a professorial position in higher education. All it takes is money. Of course, there is also a veiled indictment of a system that has become based on the model of a corporate cash cow. Because Nancy is a pseudonym for the person I actually helped, I took the liberty of giving her the Andrew Dice Clay treatment. All apologies.

I: What about the academic stuff, medical research, news reports, and other miscellaneous weirdness that appears?

RT: One of the positives of falling ill was the impetus it gave me to write, to start a blog. I have Brigitte to thank for this. She encouraged me to write as an outlet for my fears, uncertainties, frustrations, and opinions. But what started out as a form of personal catharsis, quickly took on a life of its own. In the beginning I hoped to share what I found out about cancer (lymphoma) with others that might benefit from the information. But as I picked up readers along the way, it became a stage: a place to show off my intellectual sophistication, wit, and general knowledge of the world, but above all else, a political forum where I could expose people like Rush Limbaugh and Ann Coulter, and champion those like Michael Moore and Jack Kevorkian. So, it really morphed into something different than a pathography (illness memoir). I think the appeal of the blog is its unpredictability. I’ve made a conscious effort to mix academic writing with satire with fiction with memoir with medical research, as a way of keeping the reader guessing, and hence coming back to see what the hell kind of craziness is coming next.

I: What do you see as the blog’s greatest weakness?

RT: I guess I would have to say the excerpts from my unfinished attempt to write a mass-market novel. I usually try to flag these posts with the “fiction” warning.

I: So, where are you going, and where have you been?

RT: Given that I’ve had 12,484 hits as of 2 minutes ago (The blog has been up for 9 months), I feel I have a duty to my readership. The more it’s read, the more obsessive I become about coming up with something interesting.

I: One final question, who is your readership?

RT: I get hits from all over the world. But I have a core readership of Yoopers and former Yoopers.

I: Thanks for speaking with me.

RT: It’s been my pleasure.