Exclusive Evil: Birthday Yakfest 2024

The greatest holiday of all.

It’s my birthday! Let’s pretend that’s why I enjoy talking this much. I collected reader questions from the outlets that control our lives, and answered them here. I hope you enjoy it. 

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Build your perfect birthday cake: Cake type/shape/flavor, filling, frosting, decor, candle style. With or without ice cream? What flavor ice cream? Fork/spoon/or hands? And will you be sharing or not?

–Meg Oolders, (Writer of See Dot Smile, Stock Fiction and this joke)

First, a black sharpie. With it, I’d write “It’s your birthday” on my forearm, sealing the dysmorphic daemon that sets my usual agenda. If it keeps kicking, I’ll drown it in three shots of hydrolyzed protein cope, and tell myself the day, as a whole, is a macro perfection.

Then the ritual begins.

Oreo cheesecake calls me. I hear it the way serial killers hear the devil. In case I forget the flavor, I’ll need crushed Oreos on top. You have to be sure. After that, the rainbow-colored frosting we collectively call “birthday cake.” That might sound like a bit much. I encourage you to stop thinking like a mortal, and embrace the deity inside. That’s why my perfect shape’s a triangle. It’s an immense, pointless pain in the ass that tells me someone tried.

Skip the candles. My inner child is far from dead: my inner child wants cake. Candles are another step between me and cake. It took years of shock collar training for me to accept the song, or the other 364 days. Candles are a bridge too far.

I need a fork, and not for dignity. Speed. Power. Finesse. Science has given us the tools to eat cake faster, and I believe in progress. Leave the barbarian’s spoon behind, and embrace the sugar-shovel of the future.

I’d share. Not out of any inborn generosity, but a late-budding appreciation for powerhouse meals as bonding. I’ve never walked out of a Taiwanese chicken spot without a better friend. Oreo cake might end in marriage.

Then the ice cream begins. Butter cake ice cream. And I spend the next two lifetimes deadlifting.

What led you into writing? What books/authors inspired you as a kid?

–Chris (monsterbeard.bsky.social)

To keep this from becoming a Catch-22 fansite, I’ll talk about cyberpunk.

I’ve been a compulsive reader forever, but those books made me wonder “can I do this?” I have more Transmetropolitan and Snow Crash quotes burned into my brain from middle and high school than math. Which puts a hard cap on the sci in my sci-fi, but that’s a whole different question.

I liked the tone, the questions it (often) followed, the aesthetic, the idea of having a cyborg/any girlfriend, and the black guys with swords on the cover. It made the world feel bigger. When I grew up, I wanted to be Hiro Protagonist.

I have other influences, as you can see by what I do and what I have coming. But I’ll always remember the intensity of that period. Which really isn’t over, I just have four competing addictions. And yes, Cyberpunk 2077 hit my life like crack.

In short, that’s why “Post-Atomic Stress” is my longest work out.

How many pages would Everything (Un)Abridged have been?

–Dan (@skebo.bsky.social)

Add 2k words for every extra two weeks I get. I’m definitely someone with a “pencil’s down” problem, which may make an editor kill me one day. In this case, I stitched in “Free Panels” at the last possible moment that wouldn’t have broken a machine. At some point, you have to be done.

I do have a pipe dream of doing Everything Else when enough time’s changed for me to change notably as a writer. I think the contrast would add something amusing. Unfortunately, since Everything Abridged all I’ve done is buy a new hat. I’m typing at the same standing desk right now.

Best thing weebs have nearly ruined for you.

–Ingrid (@ingridblythe.bsky.social‬)

Since I’m mercifully immune to most community wars, I’d say conventions. Still fun, you’re just bound to encounter at least one peak of supreme human desperation, myopia, or sadness while you’re there. Such is life in the Otaku Box.

What’s your favorite breakfast?

-Tess (@totalmesstess)

Breakfast Food: I’ve joined New York’s bagel cult. Full stop. It’s bad. It represents more of my expenses than most things I need to live. I own a recipe book now.

Literal First Thing Eaten: I can steam salmon in mental corpse mode, and that goes a long way. Too many days start with salmon and rice for me to distinguish them anymore. Another way I’ve become a cartoon.

Has there been a piece of media too cursed to cover in a Hotdog article?

–Bret Ellefson, Artist and “The Best You” Author

Nothing by decree—the site’s mission statement (“cursed artifacts from the wrong dimension”) is an ideal guiding light, and I’d read two years of asylum archaeology before joining in. The trick, from my myopic and likely incorrect perspective, is that Extra Cursed™ material needs extra weirdness to live (the wrong dimension half). Patler’s rants about busing aren’t great fodder, but his white nationalist Superman cartoon has the right scent.

The other thing—again, my projection, rather than a rule—is that you have to come correct. E.g. be as funny as the topic is dire. I’ve tried to write about Sucker Punch forever, but I keep starting over. The botched sexual assault metaphor driving the film demands bars for a recap, and my Dorothy Parker energy isn’t quite there yet. Soon.

That said, I do have a HotDog weakness. One I’ve struggled to overcome, and one day hope to. In fact, I might tilt it soon. I cannot, for the life of me, cover decent comedies in this format. No matter how cursed the topic or circumstance. It feels less like commentary, and more like karaoke. I have drafts that sound like “and here, Chris Tucker is loud while Jackie Chan kicks ass damn it that’s the point what am I doing.”

I’ve seen other columnists do it well, which plays Lacrimosa my head at stadium volume. Along with getting beaten to Foreskin Man. I almost fell on my sword that morning.

Would you rather wear a fedora forever and never be able to take it off, or have every beverage you drink have some amount of urine in it

–Peter C.

You’ve brought our war to my place of power. Unwise.

My stance remains objectively correct: I will proudly wear anything without a swastika on it before privately humiliating myself every day. Water standards and kink are entirely separate topics. I’m standing firm. Like Captain America, I will plant myself by the tree of freedom, fedora held high, and tell the world to move.

1) What's the most absurd episode you can share with us from this "fashion magazine stint?"

–Amran Gowani (Author of Leverage and Field Research)

The interview. Pure madness. I even wrote an essay about it for an old anthology. Long story short, an aspiring Coco Chanel impersonator asked why I was on time, slammed the door shut, insulted her assistant for an hour, asked me to breakdance, and gave me the job. Five years after leaving, I learned to dress myself. Ten years after that, I learned about the color wheel. Life is a long improv skit.

She never quite got my name down, which makes slander feel safer. I may clean up the edges of the piece and put it out here. It’s a trip of a story, and I’ve always wanted to be sued during fashion week.

2) Who's the most famous person you've met? Did they impress or disappoint?

–Amran Gowani (Author of Leverage and Field Research)

When I was flipping my shit at Princeton, my faculty swordfights included a household name. I’ll finish that story when the book’s been out for a month or two, it’s a fun one.

About a decade ago, I drank with Salman Rushdie. His tequila powers were significantly stronger than mine, which is notable given my old habits. I don’t know what Shaolin monastery he trained his liver in, but it's my favorite defeat.

AOC was a year above me in high school, when I spammed incredibly confusing or immature stunts, jokes, and articles to a captive suburbanite audience. Not much has changed, except I’m way better at it now. In this case, I disappointed.

Back at the magazine, I met Machine Gun Kelly. He has a room temperature IQ, if you live in the freezer. Some people were disappointed in his half of the Eminem feud, but I was amazed he put a full sentence together. It was like watching my dog get points on Ken Jennings.

3) What's a novel you evangelize for but which isn't read widely?

–Amran Gowani (Author of Leverage and Field Research)

The world’s rediscovered Oreo, so Letters From Wendy’s still wins out. It’s a set of deranged messages written on the back of Wendy’s suggestion box cards. They depict a spiral from insanity to double insanity with the kind of humor and artistry I hope to reach before I die.

That book is at least five percent responsible for my format bending obsession. “The medium is the message” and all that, as applied to dick jokes.

(Read this in a James Lipton voice, please) What question do you keep hoping that people will ask you, but nobody ever does?

Marina Haulover

This actually popped up once when I was teaching undergrads, but I want to get it on the record.

“Hey Dennard, why aren’t my ideological enemies funny?”

Silly strawman! Let me educate you, as I have in my head a thousand times.

They’re not all unfunny. One of you has gone mad. Or both.

Most jokes (absurdism/slapstick/sadcore have their own rules) draw on letting audiences close small mental gaps themselves. That trick relies on sharing a little baseline reality. “Why did the chicken cross the road?” is a different sentence if you think chickens harvest children for adrenochrome.

You’re both information warfare casualties. Now you occupy different dimensions, so the jokes land differently. One of you might need therapy.

When are you coming to Boston?

Trevor Klee, (Writer of Trevor Klee’s Newsletter.)

Alright, I get it. I’ll scrape some pennies together.

Top five extreme metal bands, top five rap groups, and who would win in a fight

–Jeff Treppel (@jefftreppel.bsky.social)

I love it. This will lose me more metalheads than saying “I hate metal” would, which tells you the genre’s alive. With rap I’m a classic victim of the cult of the solo artist, so I’ll focus on eight-strings.

I’ve listened to more Blind Guardian than silence.. It is in my DNA. Nightfall in Middle Earth is the powerhouse of the cell, belting depressive Tolkien lyrics to fuel other functions.

And I’ve listened to more Strapping Young Lad than that. It might not be healthy that I’ve listened to more Strapping Young Lad than that, but let my therapist worry about that. When I find one. I’ll get around to it, after listening to Devin’s withdrawal breakdown on Alien again. I’ll fold the general Townsend discography into this entry to keep things interesting.

If Strapping Young Lad is too maladjusted, I suggest Nevermore. They have lots of songs that are, technically, about hope. It doesn’t have to be an endorsement to count, right? Nevermore taps relatable thoughts about hope.

I’m a Meshuggah guy. You know a Meshuggah guy. We talk about Warhammer and trains a lot, while blinking in 5/18 time. We write 2000 word articles about anime in one day. Be patient with Meshuggah guys, we appreciate it.

One spot left on my ark…I’d love to show off my wasted years in the trenches. I’m all the way down the hole of men yelling about winter in the woods. But I’d be lying to myself and you if I didn’t say Mastodon. I don’t know how many times I’ve played Crack the Skye. I don’t know how many plastic bottles are in the ocean. But they’re both growing. Speaking of which, Gojira’s the sixth seat.

As for the Kumite? The Mastodon guys have the most “goes outside” and “instigates barfights” energy about them. Conditioning and aggression are half the battle, so I’ll give it to them.

Which fashion trend from your past (any age is fair game) are you most embarrassed to have taken part in?

–Meg Oolders, (Writer of See Dot Smile, Stock Fiction and this joke)

In high school I’d wear any t-shirt with a joke on it. Any t-shirt. Which is fine, but that included the infamous “Game Over” anti-wedding t-shirt. A glittering neon sign that said “date anyone else.” I don’t recommend it.

I have a question since I've been listening to Weeaboo Hell: if you were forced at gunpoint to write a piece of fanfiction, what property would you exploit and what's your one-sentence teaser summary?

–Amber Marshall (Author of Apertures and Amber Marshall Writes)

This likely won’t surprise you: Fallout, then Fallout, and finally Fallout. The logline: The French Revolution in a Vault. The series has a fantastic relationship with history, and to me this angle writes itself.

Why don’t I just do it? My ego wants someone, anyone to pay me first.

The runner-up: Bioshock. One-Sentence Pitch: The Good, Bad, and the Ugly in a rapidly flooding skyscraper. One underworld plasmid junkie, one well-heeled plasmid junkie, and our doomed-feeling hero.

With that one, I might just do it.

Wait, you mentioned Weeaboo Hell, so I should throw in an anime. Gundam, no contest. If you love my civil war Catch-22 this year, or my cyberpunk Catch-22 last year, you’d love my space opera Catch-22.

I might quietly file the serial numbers off…

You're an educated man, a thing most* of us aspire to. What part of it are we real, real wrong about? What's even better than we think? 

*A handful of coastal elites

–Richard III  (@Mr_Richard on Twitter)

A two parter! I’ll further split my thoughts between MFAs, the general Ivy League, and knowing stuff. Specificity’s useful.

For context, I did my undergrad nonsense at Princeton, and MFA nonsense at Columbia. I’d make a stock joke about bygone diversity rules, but I was a cyborg in high school. If I could access that state of constant terror now, I’d have six books out.

Don’t hit art school for practical ROI. Thanks to assorted heroic myths and workshop horror stories, many enter MFAs with high hopes for attention and low hopes for skill development. I got the exact opposite results. I left art kindergarten a far sharper writer, and as anonymous as the day I was born. Think of your time there as a training montage, not American Idol. You’ll have a much saner time. And make more honest connections, if you’re into that.

The MFA feels a bit like theater camp, albeit older and with less gin. You’re surrounded by people with the same niche goal for a short, intense time. It can be fruitful, or the start of your personal Count of Monte Cristo vendetta, or a series of dating train wrecks. I tried all three, and found that memorable. It’s also an immense waste of money if you don’t pick a sanely priced program or summon a scholarship from the rift. But that’s a whole other set of policy questions.

Both schools have an unearned reputation as a little culty, and that’s not right. They are extremely culty. It’s Heaven’s Gate with homework. If Princeton’s president sent out a letter asking alumni for fingers, they’d get some with wedding rings still attached. That’s nice if you’re looking for religion, but I found it…abrasive. We’ve been over that. Columbia’s the (semi) hip version.

Outside of the cult, the brand name is bigger than anything they teach you. The same way I’ve felt race close doors and stop conversations, those logos put me in rooms I’m still not qualified for. That’s one reason educational representation is the first thing thoughtful reformers try. And one reason I mail Clarence Thomas an Uncle Ruckus bobblehead every week.

As for education itself, it’s nice having something the machine can’t take (they can replace it effortlessly, just not take it). An underrated benefit is speed under duress. Pushing boulders uphill taught me to think faster and embrace deadline frenzy. Which is good, because I spend most of my time ducking headlines.

How are you such an awesome writer? Practice?

–Tommy (A Real One)

The faith of a few good people. And insomnia. Stay golden.

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I hope you enjoyed the annual love-in. If you prefer craft, I have a fancy book out and another fancy book coming. Enjoy the holiday.