To Conform Is To Lose Your Soul

Names Generate Meaning In A Short Amount Of Space — They Provoke Thoughts, Questions. That's Something I Like Doing. Of Course, You Have To Be Careful. Sometimes It Can Alienate The Reader, It Can Be Another Level Of Mediation, To Make A Character Carry The Great Burden Of A Metaphoric Name. The Character Can Be A Device Before He Or She Becomes A Person, And That Can Be A Bad Thing For A Writer Who Wants To Offer Up A Kind Of Emotional Proximity In The Work. It's A Constant Struggle, The Desire To Be Playful And The Desire To Communicate On Some Very Stark Emotional Level.

After I Left College I Thought, Very Naively, That Either You Became Someone Interesting - An Artist - Or You Went Into Academia. If You Ended Up In An Office You Were Dull And Lacking. And I Ended Up In An Office.

That's One Of The Things About Comedy - I Think It Works Best When It's Contextualized, As Opposed To Kind Of An Island Of Cleverness.

Between The Time I First Started Working In Advertising In 1998 And Now, The Word Brand Has Replaced Identity. We Are No Longer Individuals So Much As We Are Brands. We're Individual Brands. Individuals Are Basically Left To Define Their Individuality By Staying Off The Internet, Which In And Of Itself Can Be A Brand, The Opting-out Brand.

The Office Is A Romantic Enabler Because You're Always Around The Person You Have A Crush On. There's No Escape From, And Maybe No Desire To Escape From, Those Pressure-cooker Conditions. And There's An Automatic Series Of Things You Have To Talk About All The Time.