Featured Writer Of The Month – April 2012

Rick Snee

This month’s Featured Writer is Rick Snee. Rick gave a great interview for this post, and he is truly one of the funniest guys we have come across.  We are very fortunate to have him post with HO.
 
1. Who is Rick Snee?
 
I’m just this guy, you know? I’m the only child of a retired U.S. Air Force Senior Master Sergeant and a florist who birthed me in Honolulu, Hawaii. I’ve lived in Washington, D.C.; San Antonio, Texas; Northern Virginia; and Huntsville, Alabama. I tried to enlist into any military branch that would have me right out of high school, but failed the physical. I eventually went to college at Radford University, where I got a BS in English and met my wife. I worked as a technical writer for five years, but was laid off, so now I’m looking for work in between my own writing. (Interested employers: did you know that I was the featured writer for HumorOutcasts.com in April 2012?)
 
 
2. What makes you want to write humor and who influences you?

I grew up the son of a funny man, so I made it my mission to crack up the old man and his friends. I was most often successful in unintentional ways. But, I took notes, laughing at a lot of jokes I didn’t get yet.

I was also hopelessly unathletic, nerdy, and a terrible dancer, so I used my catalog of filthy jokes to make friends in new schools. (Until high school, I had never attended a single school for more than two years.) These were very well received in Catholic school. I watched a lot of stand-up and idolized George Carlin. I also read a lot of Sunday comics — especially “Bloom County” and “Calvin and Hobbes” — and made it nearly into the final round of an elementary school spelling bee because of that week’s “Hi and Lois.” (The word “errand” eliminated a good chunk of the competition until I got it.)
 
I eventually got into writing humor with the intention of writing novels like Douglas Adams. I fell into writing a weekly humor column in my college newspaper after one of my drinking buddies, Bryan McBournie, graduated and have been writing posts for one web site or another ever since.
 
Otherwise, I exercise nearly every day, bowl in a couple of leagues, lord over a couple of pets and plants, compliment my wife when I’m horny, and make friends and enemies in bars.
I also watch a lot of movies and podcast with a couple of more recent drinking buddies about them on BlastShieldsDown.com.
  
 
 
3. What other interests, hobbies etc are you into?
 
Although it’s my profession, writing is also my biggest hobby. I write nearly every day, whether in short bursts on Twitter, posts on SeriouslyGuys.com, or to exorcise demons on my own web site. I’ve also been working on a few children’s books because I think kids get shoveled enough bullshit and their parents could use a break from the usual.
 
4. Do you have a day job?
 
At the moment, no. (Again, interested employers: writer of the entire month of April 2012, HumorOutcasts.com.)
 
 
5. What makes Rick Snee mad?
 
Willful ignorance. There is nothing more frustrating when someone says, “I don’t really read,” and then they go to great lengths to explain their position on anything, especially politics. If you read the outraged comments on basically any news story, they’re usually the most incoherent, mistyped screeds based only on a position of personal experience. I personally think it’s selfish to believe that your experience is the gold standard if you’ve never taken the chance to read about or travel to learn how other parts of the world (or your own country) do things.
This is probably why most of my characters are insulated buffoons, like Dr. Snee or when I write about women.
 
6. What are your favorite topics to write about?
 
Sex is probably my favorite topic because it’s pretty much the benchmark for everything we enjoy. The only things that are deemed “better than sex” are just about all dangerous, whether it’s bungie jumping or heroin, and just imagine if you tried them during sex? Even the other topics I write about usually involve sex somehow because everything people do is generally for sex. If it weren’t for the possibility of sex, I think most people wouldn’t even shower.
Although I’m not really that political anymore (when I first got the right to vote in 1999, I immediately joined the gang that I thought looked the meanest, the Republicans, and have become more steadily apolitical since), I end up writing about politics a lot because it’s easy. Most people are protective about airing their true beliefs, but politics — and another favorite topic, religion — allows us (myself included) to suddenly take a simple position on the most complicated topics that humanity has debated since the first fist-fight around a camp fire. So, how can I resist mocking our newfound resiliency?
 
7. What is your dream goal?
 
My dream goal is to be published and read. HumorOutcasts has helped me realize that dream, although I’m still aiming to kill a few trees before I’m done.
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