Describe your latest project.
You know how when you're reading a grammar book and the writer is talking about being naked looking just like Pamela Anderson? Yeah, it's like that. Or when the author talks about the time she wrote William Safire's number on the men's room wall of the HotStudz nightclub in West Hollywood? It's like that, too. Or when the writer is trying to make a point about the subjunctive mood so she tells a humiliating childhood story about dressing up as Batgirl and telling people, "Call me Batty"? Yup, it's just another one of those stuffy, cookie-cutter grammar books. Seen one, seen 'em all.

But seriously. In writing Grammar Snobs Are Great Big Meanies my goal was threefold. First, I wanted to help people who don't know where to turn with their language questions: Why do you say, "This is she," instead of, "This is her," on the phone? Why is it that you'd say, "He is at the park," but "is" changes to "be" when you say, "It is imperative that he be at the park"? When does punctuation go inside quotation marks? Do you lay or lie on the beach and which of these two activities will get you arrested? Why does the New York Times write "1980's" but the Los Angeles Times write "1980s"? I try to answer the questions people really need answers to (including the myth about ending sentences with prepositions).

Second, I wanted to serve this information in the context of a book people would actually read. There are plenty of language books on the market that start with a basic explanation of subject and predicate, etc. They have great information, but no one ever reads them past page 5. My solution was to compile a bunch of essays, anecdotes and rants to be read for their own sakes. The grammar lessons are slipped in on the side.

Third, and most of all, I wanted to jackslap every grammar meanie who ever made someone feel small. Especially those who pretend to know more than they do. These people have done a disservice to language learning and that's why I go rough on them (too rough to justify, really, but it's all for a good cause.)

If someone were to write your biography, what would be the title?
When Will Jesus Bring the Razor Blades?

If you could choose any story to live in, what story would that be? Why?
You can search every great work of literature and never come up with an answer better than the Harry Potter series. Think about it, you'd get to fly on a broom, ride a hippogriff, eat chocolate frogs, live in dorms with your friends, zap your enemies with a wand, travel through time, talk to paintings, hang out with ghosts, and save humanity once every twelve months or so. Tell me that doesn't rock. Of course, this is a safer answer for a female. It would suck to be Harry. But I'd trade my life for Hermione's any day, "mudblood" business and all.

Offer a favorite sentence or passage from another writer.
Kurt Vonnegut changed my life in a few sentences. I don't remember the exact wording but I believe it was in Slaughterhouse Five that Vonnegut wrote about an alien who came to visit planet Earth. The alien reported back to his superiors that Americans were the most miserable people in the galaxy because they're told constantly that getting rich is the easiest thing in the world to do when in fact it's next to impossible. They blame themselves and hate themselves for failing at what's supposed to be the easiest thing in the world.

If that won't help an unemployed Gen X college grad realize the '80s were a big lie, nothing will.

What is your idea of absolute happiness?
Being underwater, eyes open, fresh lungful of air, in the clearest, bluest tropical ocean imaginable, able to fantasize for just a moment that it's possible to stay there forever.

Why do you write?
Because I feel an impulse to write. There is no other reason to. Writers spend a lot of time asking each other, "How do you discipline yourself to write? How do you force yourself to sit down and just do it?" And my answer to them is a loud and resounding: Don't. My policy is that I never have to write another word again as long as I live. Period. And that's why I'm about to start another paragraph.

If you want to know where the impulse comes from, well, that's another question. In my case, it's neuroses plain and simple. A desire to be heard and to be understood. A need for attention. I don't think this is universal among writers. Lots just love the written word and want to steep in it all day every day. Bully for them. Me, I need to feel like I have a voice.

Name the best Simpsons episode of all time, and explain why it's the best.
In the Simpsons mock VH1 special titled "Behind the Laughter," a melodramatic narrator tells the rags-to-riches story of the Kentucky family (that's right, I said Kentucky) called the Simpsons. It's freakin' hilarious. At one point, Marge gives an interview, recalling Homer's repeated claims that he could make a more realistic show than the ones on TV. Marge says, "So I told him: Do it. Either (bleep) or get off the pot." And the announcer says, "And (bleep) he did."

I once had the thrill of interviewing Dan Castellaneta, the voice of Homer, by phone and I asked him the same question. He couldn't narrow it down to one, but his favorites included the episode in which Lisa tricks Homer and Bart into believing they have leprosy. In it, Homer is skiing and he loses control. He tries to recall the ski instructor's words, but the memory is blocked out by the image of Ned Flanders' butt in a skin-tight ski suit. In Homer's mind, Flanders' voice echoes, "It feels like I'm wearing nothing at all!... Nothing at all!... Nothing at all!" and his fanny wiggles suggestively. Homer yells, "Stupid sexy Flanders!"

Those brilliant Simpsons moments aside, I must say that my all-time favorite Simpsons episode is the one I wrote that's sitting in a dusty drawer in my room, never to see the light of day (unless, of course, fate beckons Matt Groening to surf to Powells.com).

What do you dislike most?
Our culture has become addicted to pretending to believe things we don't really believe. In other words, lying to ourselves. Truth is putty in our hands. We refuse to accept any truth that doesn't serve our world view. We just say it isn't so.

As a result, the three little words we're most terrified to say are: "I don't know." For example, if you ask people, "Do you believe in life after death?" they'll actually answer you. As if they're qualified to an opinion on the subject.

Writers are better liars than other people: true or false? Why, or not?
If I said "false," why would you believe me?