1) Didn’t your mother teach you that it’s wrong to make fun of people?
2) Isn’t moral outrage passe?
3) What is your policy on correcting errors?
4) What is the real reason you have a Web site?
5) Are you some kind of freaky tree-hugging environmentalist?
6) Then, why is there an obvious pro-environmental streak in your writing?
7) Please, please, please tell me you don’t code your Web pages by hand.
8) Why do you code by hand?
9) The column you wrote on, uhh…oh, dear, I don’t know how to put this…women’s, err, you know, private parts – well, why did you write that?
10) That’s kind of mean, don’t you think?
11) What makes you laugh?
12) Is there anything you won’t make fun of?
13) No, really. Isn’t there any subject too serious, perhaps too tragic for you to make fun of?
14) What about your loved ones? Surely, you wouldn’t make fun of them?
15) What’s your favourite movie?
16) In one Frequently Unasked Questions file, you claim that you started Les Pages aux Folles in 1985, but, in another file, you state that it started in the 19th century. Which is it?
17) Hmm…wouldn’t it have been easier just to admit that you had made a mistake and let an error creep into a Frequently Unasked Questions file?
18) How do you determine how long to make your columns?
1) Didn’t your mother teach you that it’s wrong to make fun of people?
How can anything that feels so right be so wrong? It’s only wrong if you’re bad at it. If you’re good at it, you get a newspaper column. If you’re very good at it, you may be given guest host duties on a talk show. And, I’ll thank you to leave my mother out of this.
Outrage will be passe when human beings stop being outrageous.
3) What is your policy on correcting errors?
Don’t ask, don’t tell.
4) What is the real reason you have a Web site?
I want to be the first celebrity with a negative Q Factor.
5) Are you some kind of freaky tree-hugging environmentalist?
Are you kidding? I love nature…as long as I don’t actually have to live in it.
6) Then, why is there an obvious pro-environmental streak in your writing?
I can’t afford to pay for bottled oxygen.
7) Please, please, please tell me you don’t code your Web pages by hand.
I could tell you that, but then our relationship would be based on a lie.
Because it feels so good when I stop.
9) The column you wrote on, uhh…oh, dear, I don’t know how to put this…women’s, err, you know, private parts – well, why did you write that?
Just to watch you squirm.
10) That’s kind of mean, don’t you think?
Satire is not for the squeamish.
Lots of things. The idea that the media’s coverage of the Washington sniper was “responsible” because – even though it was almost entirely filled with unsubstantiated rumour – the media held back on certain pieces of real information for a couple of days because the police asked them to. Farmers injecting cow udders with foam for dairy shows to make them look like they’ll produce more milk. (Haven’t they heard of saline implants?) President George W. Bush talking off the cuff. Yes, the world truly is my playpen.
12) Is there anything you won’t make fun of?
Don Cherry. I don’t understand his popularity, but it scares me.
13) No, really. Isn’t there any subject too serious, perhaps too tragic for you to make fun of?
Madonna’s acting career.
14) What about your loved ones? Surely, you wouldn’t make fun of them?
If you love something, satirize it. If it still talks to you, it loves you. If it threatens you with a defamation suit, it never did.
15) What’s your favourite movie?
Oh, I’m sorry, but I’m not that kind of Web page.
16) In one Frequently Unasked Questions file, you claim that you started Les Pages aux Folles in 1985, but, in another file, you state that it started in the 19th century. Which is it?
Neither. Les Pages aux Folles was actually started by Theodore of Kacz, a Franciscan monk living in a monestary in southern Rumania, in 1237. In the five minutes of free time a day Fra Theodore had when he wasn’t praying, copying ancient manuscripts by hand or stomping grapes in the winery, he wrote short humourous vignettes. The first of these – which probably took six months to write – made fun of an unnamed Abbott’s large ears and fondness for donkeys. Historians believe that writing this material by poor candlelight late at night caused Fra Theodore’s eyesight to fail, allowing errors to creep into his copies of the bible. The phrase “Moab is my washpot,” for example, may actually have read, “Myrna, take out the water basin” before Fra Theodore transcribed it. In any case, his secret writings were copied by generations of monks who, let’s face it, weren’t overburdened with joy in their lives. In my travels through the Middle East in 1972, the franchise was sold to me by a freelance goatherd who claimed to be a descendent of Fra Theodore who had fallen on hard times. I know, I know. Still, stranger things have happened in the Middle East.
17) Hmm…wouldn’t it have been easier just to admit that you had made a mistake and let an error creep into a Frequently Unasked Questions file?
In comedy, contradictions are not bugs, they’re features.
18) How do you determine how long to make your columns?
I aim for an average length of 700 words. So, I simply write until I have filled my quota, and then