- Welcome. Take a seat.
- Thank you.
- Did you have a pleasant commute?
- Yes. I crawled on my knees and elbows maintaining the requisite equidistance.
- Please state your full name.
- Woop-Woop Llama Strange; Occasionally Venerable Head of the Windmill Demolition Department; Patron Saint of Lost Causes and Awkward Pauses; Friend to All Woodland Creatures Excepting That Most Vile of Avian Specimens, the Cuckoo; Preservationist of the Emporia of Eccentricities, the Bazaars of the Bizarre, and the Galleries of Grotesqueries. Llama Strange, for short.
- What is your greatest strength?
- Frogs.
- What is your greatest weakness?
- Dogs.
- What about sharks?
- Sharks get a bad rap. Granted, their endless rows of teeth and blank, lifeless eyes are not exactly inviting. But their only way of making contact is to bite chunks out of things. Then there's all that thrashing and screaming and blood, and nobody wants to be their friend after that. So, they just drag everything down to the bottom of the ocean as grim mementos of their failure to communicate. Due to the nature of the shark's environment, the following fact goes largely unnoticed: not a minute goes by that a shark doesn't cry.
- Describe your proudest professional achievement.
- In my previous workplace, I once noticed one of our Tarqans turning its gaze towards the sun. As you know, this spells certain doom for all beings that breathe. I distracted it with a well-timed filing request and saved the day.
- Would you consider yourself a team player?
- I have led many a team to noteworthy ruin.
- Are your interpersonal relationships varied and fulfilling?
- All these stupid – no, worse than stupid – unimaginative people. Just look at them! The drooling drones. Too busy to notice that they’ve locked themselves in cages of bone and steel, too distracted by screaming lights and bright sounds to realise that all they do is walk in circles, too addicted to their holographic realities to feel the blood draining from their bodies, too doped up and messed up and flabbergasted and feeble-minded and trapped and hysterical and terrified and paranoid and flaccid and shrivelled and pathetic, too late to stop what’s coming. They’re all going to drown in their filth, leaving nothing but ruins and misery in their wake.
Despite all that, I am filled with an overwhelming love of humanity. I will save you from yourselves.
- What is your favourite source of sustenance?
- Bread.
Understand: not the slight sludge supermarkets sell. The kind of bread – full and warm and soft and fresh and fragrant – that requires a proper bread knife. The kind of bread that sings when sliced and swoons when swallowed. The kind of bread that you can use as a pillow while it whispers in your ear that everything is going to be all right; that the world will still be here tomorrow; that your love will never grow stale.
- Describe a simple team-building exercise.
- Rock, paper, supernova, scissors. Supernova obliterates everything, but if both players simultaneously use it, they figuratively dematerialise and are barred from ever replaying the game. Tense, yet rewarding. The supernova sign involves both hands and vocalised sound effects. For added topicality, substitute supernova with a weapon of mass destruction of your choosing.
- Describe your activities on a day of leisure.
- I follow a sudden urge to spend hours in a diner scribbling in a tattered notebook while watching passers-by float through street lights. I want to drink cup after cup of jet-black coffee and transcribe secrets sliding through the steam. Before I know it, doubt takes hold of me. You see, I don't drink coffee. My handwriting is appalling. Passers-by don't float. They stomp; screaming children in tow. As I look without, the diner looks within. Now it knows, and I can't leave.
I can't leave.
- Why were you born?
- It said it’s for the common good. It said it will change things for the better. I’ve waited so patiently. I’ve observed my inner workings and the movements of the stars. Nothing’s changed. Everything is still and quiet. It promised. I can’t sleep. At night, its eyes are on me and its breath stains my windows. I often get up and make my way through the dark to find something – anything – to hold. There’s nothing there but empty air. My arms are stretched out ahead of me like bare branches and I begin to feel that I won’t be able to make my way back. I can’t hear my footsteps any more. I keep my eyes tightly closed to conjure forms out of slices of midnight. I picture grinding gravel under my feet. I hear laughter through my gritting teeth. Will I vanish if I stop? Don’t stop. I’m enveloped in the frantic dreams of flightless insects. I’ve waited so patiently. Almost there.
- Where do you see yourself in five years?
- I'll be walking through an empty car park when I'll decide to hurl my body through space like a fleshy comet. I'll break the barrier of sound before colliding with a solid object. The force of impact will result in the radical restructuring of my molecules. My spinning collarbone will drastically reduce the life expectancy of a nearby fake-tanned estate agent. The nearest wall will be permanently emblazoned with my spine. My teeth will turn to rattling rain. My finger bones will be scattered across the globe and become sites of a long and arduous pilgrimage for my loved ones. The rest of my body will remain unaccounted for and provide inspiration for tragicomic mystery novels.
- Do you foresee becoming proficient at the spinning headstands and hypnotic suggestion that this post requires?
- Certainly.
- Yellow spandex cherry pie?
- Yellow. Spandex. Cherry. Pie.
- Thanks for your time.
