Frequently Asked Questions

Who the hell are you?
I'm Gremlin. Hi there.

How come there's no information on gremlins here?
That's kinda begging the question: there is, in fact, occasional information on gremlins here. However: this site really has nothing to do with gremlins, per se. If it's really an issue, here's what I can tell you about gremlins:
The concept of gremlins was, as far as anyone has been able to determine, initially created by Roald Dahl [Charlie (Willy Wonka) and the Chocolate Factory] during the second world war as an explanation [see also excuse and urban legend] of otherwise unexplainable mechanical failure in the RAF's fighterplanes. That Dahl thought them up as he was trying to get out of a burning Spitfire somehow led to the credibility.
Being an apocryphal legend explaining otherwise unexplanable events, the story of the gremlins was quickly bid upon by Disney [Herakles the Fullblooded Deity, Pocahantas the Young Adult Warrior Princess] and nearly turned into an animated film before Walt realised that the subject matter would probably short most kids out; the whole thing was shelved, though still technically owned by Disney.
Warner Brothers picked up on the gremlins by placing one into a Bugs Bunny fit--incidentally, the gremlin was the first and possibly only entity ever to beat Bugs onscreen.
A gremlin showed up in The Twilight Zone: Nightmare at Twenty Thousand Feet [starring William Shatner] on 11th October 1963; the story was remade twenty years later in the cinematic release, in which Shatner's character was replaced by John Lithgow. Incidentally, Shatner's appearance on Third Rock from the Sun echoed the mutual plotline: Shatner's character claimed, on meeting Lithgow's, that the plane he'd flown in on had been attacked by a creature on its wing; Lithgow's character, shocked, returned 'the same thing happened to me once'.
Probably the most notorious modern example of the gremlins was Warner Brothers' film in 1984. There was also the sequel in 1990, which was more of a parody of the original than a linear continuation.
Interestingly, it wasn't until the sequel had made it to video that Disney appeared to notice that they still held some sort of copyright on the term gremlin; rumour has it that AOHell/Time/Warner, who might otherwise want to make a third film, can't go any further with the project because Disney are in the way.
Whether gremlins are real creatures is of no particular importance to me. I doubt they are, since they have about as much supporting evidence as deities and dragons. That my name is Gremlin and I appear to exist is of no consequence; Varanus komodoensis are called Komodo dragons, but in no way serve to prove Dracos unlikeli to have been actual animals.

Can you tell me how to beat/instal/uninstal/cheat at GameX?
Not really. You're probably looking for the defunct Gremlin Interactive who used to have both gremlin.com and gremlin.co.uk. That they made videogames--which is something that we're starting to do--for Amigas--which is something which I use and talk about a lot--at gremlin.extension--which I also have--and shared a number of other search engine keywords is an odd coincidence. While I've been using Amigas since 1985, I'd never actually heard of Gremlin Games before discovering that they'd managed to buy gremlin.com just before I tried to buy it in 1996; when the Grempire went online on 4th January 1997, we got slammed by people asking about these games. I've never played a game by Gremlin Interactive, and I can't even think of anything they ever released. If you're really looking for codes and strategies, you might find something at CheatCodeCentral.

Why do you reply to things on the site in red?
For a number of reasons, not the least of which is why not. Also: various regulars who understand at least the basics of hypertext tend to reply in other colours [Hunter uses teal; Jurassosaurus uses green] and, when threads contain input from all of us, it's easier for those of you who aren't colourblind to work out who's saying what at any given time.
To answer the similar question [Do you reply in red because, in the bible, Yhvh/Y'shua/whomever always shows up in red too?], the answer is: no, but that would be a good reason as well. I created this site; it's a complex system; apparently that makes me a deity.

You claim to be an atheist, but admit that you can't be certain there are no gods!
Yeah. That's because I know a little about etymology. From the Greek: atheism is a theos and ism designates a belief system. There's a procedure in decrypting the English form back to its meaning. A means without; theos means deity. Theism means deital belief, and technically applies both to the instance of believing that deities exist, and to the instance of believing that deities don't exist. Atheism breaks down into a theism, meaning without deital beliefs.
Similarly, atheism is in no way a religion. It's a lack of religion. A religion contains an unprovable object of worship. Atheism, buddhism, satanism, taoism, and so on are not religions; at best, they're philosophies. To call atheism a religion is to call bald a colour of hair and to suggest that nonsmokers have a common brand of cigarettes.

You claim to have no beliefs, so you don't believe in yourself?
Nope. Not even a little bit. I accept that I exist, based on the results of repeatable testing. In fact, I often use deities as the control group in determining whether I exist: in the end, I can be proved to exist, but no change is seen in the control group--they remain undocumented. Incidentally, I have a mass of sixty-one kilogrammes and an atomic weight of twelve; what's the atomic weight of your deity?

How can you make fun of tragedies like Columbine and the World Trade Centre?
Way begging the question. Neither of those events were tragedies. A tragedy is the death of a single man who was known during his life for his accomplishments. The World Trade Centre could be called a great loss; Columbine could be called a statistical improbability.
To answer the question in essence: it's the result of apathy combined with a passing interest in remaining topical. I don't actually care about any of this. Particularly when I look at everything going on at once. A dozen brats died in a high school because a couple of morons had weapons; the only unusual thing about that, to date, was that it happened at a school frequented by the larvae of people making six figures a year. The same thing happened at Denver South a week or two earlier, and no one cared; Columbine was broadcast on Radio Free Antarctica merely because a bunch of spoiled, elitist offspring got capped, instead of a bunch of nameless, faceless, Corvetteless hoods who would never have amounted to anything in life because they were black and hispanic.
The World Trade Centre was just annoying. I don't care what the Duhmerican government knew before the event. I knew before the event. It was obvious: terrorists hijack aeroplanes; terrorists slam explosive vehicles into buildings to blow them, and themselves, up. It shouldn't take a genius to imagine the two events coinciding. That it apparently does take a genius leads me to assume that 'average intelligence' might be a slight overstatement.

You seem to think that everyone on Earth is an idiot. Based on what criteria?
The United States are arguably the most advanced, educated country on the planet. While England and Japan are certainly in the running, the US are globally considered to be the most informed of any nation. Whether that's actually the case is immaterial: if it's not the case, then the majority who assume that it is are wrong, leading to exactly the reason I consider most people to be functionally retarded.
The apotheosis of genius in Duhmerica [and, sadly, nearly worldwide] is Albert Einstein. the terms Einstein and genius have become generally interchangable.
When Einstein took an IQ test, he was already too old to effectively take the test which had been developed at the time. The test was designed to measure the intelligence of teenagers. For that, the results of the test were flawed: his score cannot be considered scientifically valid.
That aside, the score he actually got was fifteen points beneath genius.
Living on a planet in which Albert Einstein is globally considered the end-all be-all of intelligence, it's not difficult to assume that this is a planet of imbeciles.

So what's your IQ?
Enough. Enough that I've repeatedly tested off the scale. Enough that I'm not concerned with absolute numbers. Enough to know that I'm statistically unlikely to walk into a room containing anyone smarter than I am...which is actually kinda regrettable: I can get a lot more out of people who are smarter than I am; also, I'm not really that smart, as far as I'm concerned, which means that at least ninety-nine percent of the planet are truly morons.

You call yourself a novelist, but all you ever do is point out the shortcomings in others.
Beowulf was all about pointing out the shortcomings in Grendel. That's what writers do.

You obviously can't stand the system. How would you change it?
The first thing I'd have to do is to get involved in it. And since that's not something I'm likely to do, the rest of my plans would never really amount to anything.
I'll give you a hint though: one thing I'd do is stop whimpering about things like the World Trade Centre and Columbine being a senseless and preventable loss of life, and start dumping all available funding and manpower into things like StemCell Research. Right now today, we have the technical ability to abolish death. At the current rate of progress, we should have safe, affordable immortality by 2025 or so.
So that's something I'd change: stop complaining about people killing each other and start working on a better defence. And if you're really worried about offending your deity by taking over its job, consider this: you can't even prove your deity to exist; but six billion very real people could all notice that you're the only thing standing between them and eternal life. You decide which is more likely to hurt you.

I went to Borders/Barnes&Noble/B.Dalton/WaldenBooks/WalMart and looked for News of the Stoopid but they didn't have it. Where do I get this thing?
Anyone can write a book. Getting a book published is somewhat more difficult. And getting the book distributed is roughly impossible. I got the first two done without much effort; the distribution issue is the current problem. It seems to be 'solved' only until I stop screaming at people and get off the phone.
Initially, the problem was that the distributor contractually agreed to distribute the book before noticing that the book wasn't very nice. That they'd read it exhaustively enough to ask whether a few things were typos is kinda odd. The distributor agreed to release the book to all of these stores, and then didn't because they were convinced that they'd get sued for being associated with it at all.
Meanwhile, because everything was set up to have them distribute it, I can't get rid of them and set up a contract with a different distributor. So we're waiting on the current distributor to get round to actually distributing it.
Because the distributor is failing to distribute the book, I have the legal ability to sue them for several million bucks for preventing sales; however, suing the distributor wouldn't really work, since they haven't quite got the assets to cover the kind of money they're preventing me from getting; it would just force them into bankruptcy.
At that point, I'd have the option of finding a new distributor, I suppose; but only if I could find one who wasn't debilitatingly concerned about getting sued either by some random reader or, at that point, by me.
Incidentally, you can get News of the Stoopid [NotS] at amazon.com; there's a direct link near the top of this page on the right.

I got a copy of NotS. Is there any way I can get it signed?
I don't fully understand why people want books signed. People who have had books signed--by anyone--seem to use the signature as evidence of something which isn't quite true. 'Look: I have a signed copy of The Stand! King signed it for me!'. Good for you; get back to me the next time he invites you to dinner.
I think it might have something to do with the whole Kevin Bacon thing. People want to somehow eliminate a number of steps separating themselves from various celebrities. Whether I'm a celebrity is something I haven't really worked out yet. I know a number of celebrities personally, but I talk to them because we're friends, regardless how many people on Earth have heard of anyone in the group.
Anyway: while I don't see any real point to autographs, I'm okay with them. Logistically speaking, of course, nothing's easy; amazon.com haven't really got booksignings, and most stores IRL can't get NotS in stock [see above]. I guess if you got a copy somehow, you could send it to: Gremlin; POBox 441755; Aurora, Colorado 80044-1755 along with various details, like who exactly you are; it might also help to include a few stamps for return shipping, since I never seem to have any on hand.

Do you really know SlipKnot?
Yeah. Corey and I have known each other since 1989, and have been pretty good friends since 1992; Jim showed up a couple of years after that when he signed on to play guitar in Stone Sour; Joey was this guy working at Sinclair; Crahan was the guy who owned and ran the Safari; Paul was this guy who showed up a lot; Craig was pretty much what he still is--quiet and brooding. In 1997 or so, Corey's Stone Sour lost to Crahan's SlipKnot at a Battle of the Bands; since Stone Sour were beginning to die out anyway [Joel the Drummer was getting tired of the scene], Corey replaced Andy [who objected to SlipKnot's unchristian motif] and pulled Jim in on guitar; Shawn--Stone Sour's bassist--became the stage manager.
Incidentally, Corey and I were both in News of the Stoopid [NotS]; Corey was in Rollerball with LL Cool J, who was in Charlie's Angels with Bill Murray, who was in Wild Things with: Kevin Bacon. So, there you go >:)

Do people really ask these questions?
Yeah; although I sometimes reword them to make more sense.