To continue with this somewhat belated celebration, I shall, for one time only, answer some of the more interesting questions I've received from commenteers and e-mailers of late. But be warned: this shan't become a habit.
Dreary45 said...
When people ask my favourite colour, I always say you're my favourite Hugh.
Thank you. You may come to the picnic.
Flower said...
Do you ever consider the trail of human ruin your schoolboy provocations leave behind? To my mind, your desperate pursuit of infamy seems to stem from a deeply ingrained sense of insecurity pushing against an equally ingrained hunger for recognition. A hunger for recognition is, of course, the subtext of blogging, but you seem to aim higher and mightier, as if expecting distinction from outside the community — a Pulitzer, perhaps? Yet at the same time you seem highly self-conscious about coming across that way, and possibly even the notion itself, hence the knee-jerk callowness. What do you make of the argument that art is fundamentally an indulgence of its creator? Or that pretensions are prerequisites for all conscious art? Do you believe, as I do, that hyperselfconsciousness inhibits the creation of art?
Sometimes I look in the mirror and cry.
Petre said...
You're strange. But don't change.
I've nothing else to wear.
Jill Blomb said...
The strong erotic undercurrent in almost everything you write seems to me to be a manifestation of a repressed sexual condition. Are you impotent or just not getting any?
Neither, I'm just supremely liberated.
Kathryn said...
Does the word "apparently" carry any more weight than "allegedly"?
I think "allegedly" is the more skeptical of the two, so in terms of the speaker's belief, I'd say "apparently" would carry more weight, yes.
Big Boy said....
Best and worst post, stat.
Best: apologies, but I scrolled dutifully through the backlog (a rather dispiriting experience) and was unable to find a sole post that would warrant such a distinction. No false modesty—obviously I love myself deeply.
Worst: tough one. Certainly I'd include the worst offenders of the Everyone Has An Opinion series: everyone's pretentious; boo to you, God; art rots, photos shoul' be real, film oh film et al; and, especially, It Was So Much Better Way Back When. Sickening, embarrassing, ugly jejune sludge, the lot of it. The mid-2005 one on blogging was particularly rank. If I had to pick one, though, I'd still say the first of the only two topical posts I ever did (the second is nearly as bad). Utterly detestable stab at, I dunno—irony? The sort of thing you'd paste in a very sane suicide note by way of explanation. In fact, I'm going to go back on my word and delete the two fuckers right now. No principle can sustain their existence.
And they're gone.
Roderick Summer said...
Your self-indulgence astounds me. Do you ever stop talking about yourself?
I pray the day will come, but right now it's the only subject I'm sufficiently versed in. I disguise it well, no?
Roderick Summer said...
No.
Oh.
BarBRA said...
Why is it that all the females in your posts are either prostitutes or elusive one-dimensional objects?
What can I say? I write what I don't know.
Wilbert Peach said...
What keeps you going?
The frightening realisation that I still haven't mastered punctuation.