Dustin Reade is tall and handsome and he lives in Port Angeles, where he plays music and looks for Bigfoot. He has published over 100 stories, five or six quite good, as well as the novella, GRAMBO, published as part of Eraserhead Press’s New Bizarro Authors Series. He can feel it when you google him.
DA
What are some of your most important aesthetic influences?
DR
Dead animals, mostly. I am fascinated with decay, the way things break down. Also, I suffer from a very mild form of synaesthesia, which creates strange musical tones whenever I see something I find beautiful/disturbing. The sounds for clear sky are nowhere near as complex, or haunting as the tones created at the sight of a possum on its back, fur missing, maggots roiling like boiling water in the eyeholes. It is my favorite tone, honestly. It has a depth to it. Death sounds like planets in space, like the bottom of the ocean.
DA
What’s your view on fracking, if done by elbow?
DR
You mean like slamming your elbow into the ground until there is a hole? I’m okay with that, I suppose. Natural gas is a tricky subject. I watched a movie a little while ago where this guy set his water on fire. No shit. Right there in his kitchen sink. He just turned it on and BOOM! It caught fire. It had to do with all these natural gas companies polluting the ground water or something. You couldn’t get deep enough to do that with your elbow, though. Not unless you had a lot of people doing it, like assembly line style, you know? One guy slams the spot until his elbow breaks, and then the next guy moves in. Repeat until you hit a gas pocket and the last guy explodes. It’s a good plan.
DA
Would you like this interviewtf more if it had another title, like “No, Sir-iously,” or “’Have you explained your pupils to the cloud?’ I asked my ex-mom. But she was without vigor, she just stayed very calm and revised myhermy strangeness over and over again”?
DR
I think all interviews should have really boring titles that give nothing away with regards to the subject matter. Things like, “How To Avoid Online Dating” or “The Ten Steps To Easy Money” or something like that. I hate when titles directly tie into the subject matter. Like, “IT”. You just know that book is going to be about something. Stephen King really dropped the title-ball on that one.
Now, I want to invent a game called, “Title Ball” where you write a bunch of crappy titles on a ball and throw it to someone and whatever title they get, they have to use it for their next story.
DA
You don’t have to be gay to find penises fascinating. The comedy „Superbad,“ for instance, features some funky dickophilia moments. What do you think about enhancing (or encocking) classic films the way you enhance (or encock) newsies? Oskar Schindler smoking a dickarette, for fuck’s sake?
DR
I have a saying that I like to use: “Vaginas look like flowers, penises like plants.”
I think that says quite a bit about me. And you, too. And Oskar Schindler. All of us, really.
But, all other things aside, I like the idea of more penises in movies. Even when it isn’t necessary at all to the story. Just a montage of cock. With modern technology we could even create a title sequence that creates an infinitely expanding wall of penises as far as the eye can see, with the titles themselves receding farther and farther into the background, showing us once again that titles don’t matter.
DA
What is the most (experimental) piece of art you’ve ever enjoyed?
DR
I really like those portraits of Donald Trump done in menstrual blood. I am also a HUGE fan of taxidermy. Dead animals, again.
DA
If 100 divided by 2 were 42, what would 3 times 1°1 be?
DR
I don’t know. I can’t make numbers mean anything in my head. They are formless, shapeless things, floating around in a sea of black full of translucent question marks.
DA
Who/what is the biggest dick in the universe? Whose asshole would it fit perfectly?
DR
Biggest Dick: John Edwards, and anyone else that tells people they know what happens when we die. Those people are charlatans in the worst way, like vultures that not only feed on carrion, but are made from it as well. I imagine they could somehow be made to be bent over and shove themselves up their own assholes.
DA
One TED talk a day keeps the _____________ away?
DR
Apocalypse.
DA
Which role will (or should) male genitalia play in the far future – dick-hacking, ass-splicing, bio-junk, interstellar engineering?
DR
We should harvest penises from the dead and grind them up into plant food. We could use the resultant powder to fertilize funeral grass, strengthen yeast cultures, soothe diaper rash, and so on.
Really, it has a million uses.
DA
„?“
DR
Da War Binindi, indeed, my friend.
What book was that where the guy tried to suddenly switch languages midway through, and it eventually became hieroglyphics and then devolved still further until it was a series of disconnected pictures? Did I dream that? Maybe I should write it.
DA
At which point does Bizarro become an unacceptable transgreßion?
DR
When it becomes all a writer does, using the same themes and ideas from previous books. The genre is still too young to really have that sort of problem, but it’s sort of how Hunter S. Thompson went from pumping out truly amazing stuff to suddenly writing like a guy TRYING to write like Hunter S. Thompson. At that point, the writing itself becomes an unacceptable transgression, a sort of unintentional betrayal of the reader and the craft. Writers of any genre should always work to expand the genre, reach further with tentative fingers into the unknown places and seeing if it fits.
As for subject matter, I could give a fuck. I don’t believe in bad words, or sacred cows. If someone gets offended, they probably needed to be offended, so to hell with their delicate sensibilities. Hopefully, they learn something.
A writer doesn’t owe a reader a safe journey. They only owe them a journey.
DA
Is it possible that music is totally overrated? Could one say the same about athlete’s dick?
DR
As a musician, I can tell you: Yes. Music is totally overrated. I don’t know enough about athlete genitalia to answer the second part, which I suppose indicates in some small way that no, athlete gonads are not overrated in the same way as is music.
DA
What would you rather have invented – the Ö or the 1?
DR
The umlaut, because when it’s placed over an O, it looks like a little man screaming.
DA
Why doesn’t the Canadian tech-metal band Martyr get the attention they deserve so much?
DR
Because music is overrated.
DA
How many spiders are needed to creep out one level-4 arachnophobe?
DR
42.
DA
What is your favorite ____________?
DR
Fracking Technique? Oh, I’d say elbow. See, what you do is get a bunch of guys in a row, and then one guy slams the spot until his elbow breaks, and then the next guy moves in. Repeat until you hit a gas pocket and the last guy explodes. It’s a good plan.
DA
Bonus question: What’s your take on the following 8 Nonsemes?
This is the story of a film director,
whose tactic was to shoot K.I.N.G.S.,
while having one mp3 per ear and one mp4 per eyeball.
Filming turned out to be eminently difficult.
The gray mattress
wakes up all excited,
r.e.d. t.h.i.r.s.t. on its forehead
,)
Selectrolab with damn good wiring.
Along comes a couple of weirdeformed chicks.
There was an X inside Y,
which pick-hacked your brain to pieces.
Witness employment
of your favorite erection.
Meanwhile: corpses accumulate like
children’s chores.
There is this crazy mutated hole.
It’s totally out of line.
It’s also out of date.
(^ ° ^)
DR
Works real nice, says I.
Also, it makes me want to answer in an unconventional way. Like: What’s your take on the following 8 Nonsemes? What’s your take on the following 8 Nonsemes? What’s your take on the following 8 Nonsemes? What’s your take on the following 8 Nonsemes?
And then post a picture of a man covered in bandages trying to eat a pair of crutches in a giant playpen.
DA
„!“
DR
Couldn’t have said it better myself.
Image source: (c) DR