Someone once said that there are a million diaries in Diaryland, which probably means the best one out there isn't being read. Guildenstern is probably that diary. I've known Thomas from a yahoo club before my Diaryland days. He' probably one of the most wittiest, and creative writers I've ever met. Alot of people don't (or won't) read his prose due to the fact that he has a default layout. I stand here to tell you that it is YOU who are the misfortunate one, not him, if you don't make him part of your complete breakfast. What he lacks in HTML skills, he more than makes up for in funny. So when I decided to bring back my interview series, I made sure to grab him quick. The follwing is one of the best I've done so far. Thanks completely to him. Enjoy.

Genghis Jon: What's a better pickup line in your� country? "I'm from Scotland, but you look like you're from HOTLAND!" or "Wanna play my bagpipes?"

Thomas: I much prefer "Hey, baby, how's about a mutually beneficial alliance between our hitherto perenially divided clans?" Bagpipe-playing is just a little too obvious- but Hotland? That's nice, Jon, that's real clever. I'd fall for that one.

Genghis Jon: Can you play the bagpipes?

Thomas: I'm flattered, Jon -maybe even a little curious- but you really should have stuck with the "Hotland" line. Now I just feel cheap and used.

Genghis Jon: The year the movie Braveheart came out, were halloween parties just filled with people dreesed like William Wallace?

Thomas: You know as well as I do that "Braveheart" was a documentary, not a movie, Jon- everyone in Scotland already DOES dress like William Wallace. At Halloween that year, all the parties were filled up with people dressed up as Ben Sanderson from 1995 Nicholas Cage vehicle "Leaving Las Vegas".

Genghis Jon: Why the hell can't you use your hands in soccer (football)?

Thomas: You can. We just taught you Americans the "no-handsy" version to confuse and irritate you. You're allowed to use your hands in golf, too- we were lying about that as well. One day you'll thank us for all this tough love, Jon.

Genghis Jon: Sonofabitch! Anyways, for all I know, Cher has never been to Scotland. What's your secret?

Thomas: Switch all the lights off and pretend you're not at home. Sooner or later she'll get bored and go to England instead. Scotland's current ascendency in the Union of the Kingdoms is purely down to Cher constantly tying up vital English resources in other areas, such as the arts and education. But we got quite a fright when Madonna took a fancy to Scotland for a bit. We originally thought her infatuation would just be a another phase in her "Poor Countries Outreach Programme"- but it looked for a while as if she was NEVER going to find some other country's culture to patronise and bastardise. The last we heard, she was prancing about the streets of Oslo with a viking helmet and pigtails like an extra from a Wagnerian opera.

Genghis Jon: Do you think we're the one's with the accent? Because that's not true. YOU'RE the one's with the accent pal.

Thomas: Sorry? I'm afraid that your inscrutable accent has obscured entirely any vestiges of meaning which might have originally been resident in your backward little "New" World dialect. Wretched colonists. We were right tolet you go your own way.

Genghis Jon: How does Scotland deal with it's left-handed population? Are they allowed to walk amongst the rest of you?

Thomas: Officially, Scotland doesn't have a left-handed population; but it'sreckoned that, at any given time, there are around 40,000 left-handers in the country. Most of them are waiting here for the documentation they need to receive admission to Denmark, currently the only EU member state which practices an open policy of non-discrimination against left-handers. Bear in mind, however, that 40,000 is about 1% of the nation's population -and that we right-handers are stuck with loads of old people and children on our side- and you'll understand why tensions are constantly running high. Particularly seeing as, for some inscrutable reason our scientists are as yet unable to explain, left-handers seem perfectly capable of not only loading, but firing right-handed guns.

Genghis Jon: "Beam me up, Scotty" Ha-hehehe. Ha. Hahaha. Hehehe. Ha.

Thomas: Heehee. Jokes are funny. I get jokes.

Genghis Jon: You're a pretty smart alec, but did you know that Nova Scotia means , "New Scotland"? Huh? Didya? Huh? Huh? Didya? Didya?

Thomas: I told you already, I don't understand your primitive "New World-ese". Who gave YOU the right to go about making up new words, anyway? Her Royal Majesty Queen Elizabeth the II has been overly gracious in allowing you so-called "Americans" to borrow HER language- goodness only knows in what limp, ragged and thoroughly unusable state it will be by the time you see fit to return it.

Genghis Jon: Mr. Cadbury refers to himself as "sinister." As in Sinistrality, which webster describes as "1. The quality or state of being sinistral. 2. Preference for using the left hand" How well DO you know this Cadbury fellow?

Thomas: I don't want to get anyone into trouble, but let's just say that I suspect Mr. Cadbury bats from the other side of the plate- IF you know what I mean.

Genghis Jon: Choose one. Evil space aliens, or left-handed people?

Thomas: Evil space aliens. Evil is only relative- left-handedness is absolute. Bloody southpaws- their insufferable habit of introducing elements of unorthodoxy and unpredictability to otherwise routine sporting events must be eradicated entirely if man is EVER to break out of this evolutionary rut.

Genghis Jon: Anything else you'd like to say, great man that you are?

Thomas: I still don't get why no-one ever suspected Angela Lansbury of all the murders in "Murder, She Wrote". They were dropping like flies everywhere she went.

Genghis Jon: Would I fit in in Scotland?

Thomas: Yes and no, After initial suspicions of witchcraft, and fearful, whispered rumours that the mechanical, talking device strapped to your wrist was an infernal repository for all the souls you'd stolen from dying men, Scottish attitudes would quickly be softened by your militant propaganda campaign, presidential policy, and mass distribution of miniature American flags. It wouldn't much matter whether you fit in with Scotland, once Scotland started fitting in with YOU. "God bless that Genghis Jon!" the old men would weep from gummy eyes as you cut a swath through the peasantry of Glasgow on the crest of a Star-Spangled wave of pomp and ceremony.

Genghis Jon: Is anybody so good at the bagpipes that they refer to him as "The Jimi Hendrix of the bagpipes"?

Thomas: Not many people know that "The Jimi Hendrix of the bagpipes" was, in fact, Jimi Hendrix himself. The people who say he died of asphyxiation are right, but not in the way they think.

Genghis Jon: What pisses you off???

Thomas: Multiple question marks!!!!! WHAT'S THE POINT IN THAT?! I KNOW it's a

QUESTION! YOU DON'T NEED TO DO THAT! I UNDERSTAND! Just kidding. Lots of things piss me off. Like holding open the door of a shop for an old woman, then being stuck there for half-an-hour as every fucker marches on through like you're the bloody porter, or something. And people who assume that, because you're in your twenties and standing in a store not doing anything, you must work there. People who tell you how "wacky" their friends are! Forward-senders! Passive-aggression! Auhtoritarianism! William Burroughs! SHAMELESS SELF-PROMOTION! EMPTY-HEADED PLATITUDES AND CLICH�S! THE MAWKISH SLAVE-MORALITY OF CONTEMPORARY CINEMA! AND PEOPLE WITH UNFEASIBLY LARGE UMBRELLAS!!!! But we still like you, Jon. Natch.

Genghis Jon: You threatened to start a review page of your own. What happened to that?

Thomas: Oh, the usual. Thomas vs. Laziness in the World Series of GETTIN' IT ON! YOU know how it is, Jon- you could personally march into Baghdad and put Saddam in a fairly wicked ankle-lock until he wept, if it wasn't for the fact that you can't be bothered. We'd probably have colonised space by now if you and I -and Jonas, for that matter- weren't such hideous procrastinators.No, the review page might still happen, sometime in the future. Come to think of it, Jonas's (Cord)non-updating makes the rest of us look like lazy fucks with nothing better to do than make updates in Diaryland. Jon, I urge you to threaten him with an ass-kicking if he doesn't get his finger out.

What a nice fellow. I tell you, a world were he doesn't get lots of hits, ain't a world I want to bring my kids up in. Actually, I don't want to bring up my kids at all. That's why I keep moving. But let's say I did want to bring up all my bastard chillren'. I'd want it in a world where Thomas was regarded as "Mr. Real Cool Writer Guy." Is that too much to ask? Huh? Is it?

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