* fangirl SQUEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE * Sorry about that, Anonymous. I am such a fangirl of you and your work that it’s just so exciting to know that you’re following me too.

Normally at this point in a conversation I’d pick apart your message and highlight any grammatical errors, but it’s hard to do that when everything is in capital letters. (Capitalisation is a big issue for me and you’ve managed to avoid my scrutiny by capitalising everything — congratulations!)

I’m new to the this whole “interwebs” thing so feel free to correct me if I’m wrong on my next point.

When someone types in all capital letters, it means they’re yelling, right? And when someone adds an exclamation point to the end of a sentence, it means the sentence is being exclaimed, correct? And when someone adds two exclamation points to a sentence, it means that the sentence is being delivered with such fervent excitement that it is safe to assume spittle is flying and veins are popping out of the speaker’s face. 

Your sentence, “YOUR POETRY IS DEPLORABLE”, is not only written in all capital letters, it contains two exclamation points! This means that it must be triply important that your point is driven home.

“Deplorable” has two generally accepted meanings and it is debatable whether those meanings are mutually reinforcing or mutually exclusive. I’m not sure which of the meanings you were referring to so I’ll detail my responses to either definition.

DEPLORABLE (adj)

1. Deserving strong condemnation
   In order for something to deserve any condemnation, it would have to be known what is actually being condemned. What you’re saying, Anonymous, is that my poetry strongly deserves to be read (so it can be condemned). Thank you, Anonymous. It is very flattering for you to yell (yell in triplicate, in fact) that my poetry should be read … that you say it should then be condemned is of little interest to me given that I ask little more than it be read.
2. Shockingly bad in quality
   Unfortunately I don’t control the Tumblr stylesheets and Tumblr can’t guarantee that its website will look acceptable across all browsers and all computing platforms. If you have viewed my poetry and the quality of the viewing was so bad as to be shocking, I can only recommend that you take a look from another computer or increase the resolution of your display. Also, printing the poetry out and reading it on paper might be easier on your eyes.

The remainder of your message is still in all capital letters but as it does not get any exclamation points, I feel that it is the least important part of what you were trying to say.

“IT MUST BE NICE TO HAVE FRIENDS WHO ARE EDITORS.”

Anonymous, I cannot agree more. Having friends is nice, in fact, restricting the description to “nice” is underselling the beauty of friends. Having friends is awesome.

I have friends who are editors, doctors, lawyers, bludging from the government, janitors, and so on. I have friends on Tumblr and I think you’re undervaluing the power of friends by saying that it’s only nice to have friends who are editors. If the only friends you value are friends who are editors, you are missing out on a lot of friends who aren’t. The funny thing about my friends is that sometimes, they become editors after I am friends with them! Can you believe that? And you know what? They’re no more a friend after becoming an editor than they were beforehand.

You should be happy with the friends you have, Anonymous, and not ignore them just because they’re not editors.

Again, big fan of yours, I hope we will communicate again soon.

Much love and fangirl flailing,

Luke

I am a little disappointed that I don’t get the option of not being killed in the first place. I am also disappointed that you would ignore my last will and testament which states:

“If my life is cut short [pre-emptive pun for anonymous intended] by an anonymous Tumblr messenger, please ensure that my body is not chopped into little pieces and placed inside either of my shoes.”

First things first:

If you’re going to chop my body up into little pieces — and let’s face it, I’ll be powerless to stop you because I’ll be dead — I would ask that you do it before rigor mortis sets in so my blood can be collected and bottled to feed my ever growing collection of vampiric pets. Vampy, my vampire bat, needs 100ml in the morning and a warm 100ml every evening. Edward, my actual vampire, doesn’t need to drink much blood, you just need to make sure he has bed to sit at the end of, gazing longingly at the sleeping occupant. But I digress; care of my creatures is all detailed in the “Goodbye World (Feat. Rakuli)” music video, to be released when I die.

So, I have been brutally murdered — I assume with some kind of inflatable pool toy — and chopped into pieces, and now I need to decide whether those pieces be placed in my left or right shoe.

Thank you for realising that I have big shoes to fill and that I would not need to be spread across a pair … You know what they say about guys with big shoes right? Yeah, they’re probably smuggling smack in the toes.

As I have mentioned before, I have taken to growing cactii out of shoes and it just so happens that they’re all left shoes. So, by process of elimination, you can place the mutilated pieces of my body in my right shoe when I die.

Ok. I will avoid pointing out the irony that comes from a message asking me to “‘splain” myself when that message clearly needs a little explaining of its own. Oh, oops. I guess I just pointed it out. Well, take that! You just had irony pointed out to you. I will give you a moment to recover. … One moment later … Hello anonymous! I would love to know where you found my codename. Given that it is now public knowledge, I will decode it for everyone. Luke: Under Cover Yeti Yes, I am a yeti. For some people this won’t come as a surprise as they would know well my tendency to lurk in the snow scaring passing Tibetans, but for most this may seem a strange revelation. I can’t remember exactly when I became a yeti but it would have been over a decade ago now. Contrary to popular belief, becoming a yeti takes devotion and motivation; yetis aren’t just born. I spent the best part of a year on a high protein diet to accelerate hair growth and then bleaching that hair white with dangerous chemicals. Eventually I earned my big bare feet (the badge of yetidome) and hung out in the mountains for few years leaving big footprints and getting caught out of focus and just out of shot on tourist cameras right across the Himalayas. It was a lonely existence and there was no pay, no accolades and no rewards. Eventually I started to question my career path and decided to head back to the real world where people were allowed to see me. There’s a saying amongst us yetis though: “once a yeti, always a yeti”. So I am still a yeti, I’ve just covered my identity for a while. You can still see trace of it when photos are taken of me; I have red eyes, look out of focus and generally just look uncomfortable in front of a lens. I hope this ‘splanation suffices anon, I am LUCY — Luke: Under Cover Yeti.

I’ve had a few strange things appear in my ask box, I’m sure most people get similar acts of randomness but I’ll detail one that I have deemed the craziest.

I remember it was a hazy morning and although it was well after 10am, it felt much earlier as the low lying cloud was filtering out a lot of the light coming into my room. (That entire sentence is completely irrelevant.) I had recently awoken and after a bleary-eyed wait while my computer booted, I logged into Tumblr.

There it was, that soul-lifting little red notification next to the messages icon. The strange thing about this particular notification was that it didn’t say “1” or “2” or “10” or any numeric character, this notification had a small icon on it — it appeared to be a footprint. I naturally assumed that Tumblr was misbehaving and clicked through to my ask box.

My inbox loaded and I expected to see a message from one of my followers or an anonymous user declaring their love for me seething with unbridled hatred but I found neither. There was a shoe. Just a shoe.

It was a nondescript, size nine, male running shoe. It was not new, in fact, the smell was enough to suggest that it was nearing the end of its lifetime. The branding on the shoe was as close to Nike as trademark laws allow (which is to say that it kind of looked like the “swoosh” if you squinted at it from 50 metres away) and the laces were still tied. There was no notes attached and no sign of an owner.

I am not Prince Charming and had no burning desire to meet a Cinderella with such large feet and foul foot odour so I decided not to track down the shoe’s previous occupant.

As a big believer in recycling, I would have happily worn this shoe for the remainder of its lifetime if it was my size. (That’s size eleven for the next person who wants to leave footwear in my ask.) Because I couldn’t wear the shoe, I simply filled it with soil.

The shoe is currently sitting on my balcony supporting a miniature cactus.

So yeah, that would be the craziest thing ever left in my ask but it turned out okay because now I grow a cactus out of it.