John: Good morning, Hank, it’s Question Tuesday, the day that I answer real questions from real nerdfighters. Let’s get right to it.

Questioner John: Would you rather have an elephant-sized puppy or a puppy-sized elephant?

Answer John: Well, of course I would rather have a puppy-sized elephant. I mean, I would rather have a puppy-sized elephant than a puppy-sized puppy. Imagine his little trunk and his little elephant roar! In fact, I’m gonna write a letter: “Dear Evolution, I have always believed in you, and I have always defended you, now make me a puppy-sized elephant! Your friend, John.”

QJ: Who would win American Gladiators, pirates or ninjas?

AJ: Ok, on the one hand, we have a bunch of alcoholic, peg-legged smokers with scurvy, and then on the other hand we have perfectly trained killing machines in excellent physical condition, so, ninjas.

QJ: Is Hank gonna write any more songs?

AJ: I don’t know. Hank, are you gonna write any more songs?

QJ: Who the eff is Hank?

AJ: Hank is a spherical mass of ice and rock visible from earth only with a telescope. Approximately one-fifth the size of the earth’s moon, Hank was considered the ninth planet in our solar system until recently, when it was announced that Hank is, in fact, just something orbiting out there in the distance.

QJ: What is the white book behind you with a person on it?

AJ: It’s the collected poems of Federico Garcia Lorca.

QJ: So, how often are you doing videos now? Once a week?

AJ: One of us will post at least one video per week, but on the other days there will be fascinating pictures and videos from other people in nerdfighteria at the Ning.

QJ: What’s the Ning?

AJ: I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again, link in the video info.

QJ: When will your next book-signing be?

AJ: It looks like I’m gonna be touring a lot when Paper Towns comes out in September. I’ll let you know.

QJ: What word do you hate saying and why?

AJ: I’m not very fond of the word “celebrity.” Like, I think the world would be a better place if the word “celebrity” and the idea behind it ceased to exist.

QJ: Would you rather be a Game-Boy, a Teletubby, Harry Potter, or George Lucas?

AJ: Well, you only named one thing that’s like an actual, living, non-imaginary human being, so obviously I’m gonna have to pick Harry Potter. I mean, Game-boys are inanimate, Teletubbies are imaginary, and everybody knows that Episodes one through three were written and directed by the robot who killed George Lucas and invaded his body.

QJ: What was the name of that Russian ska song in the happy dance video?

AJ: I swear to god I’m not making this up, it was called “Think, Who Is Your Friend?”

QJ: If you put the narrators from your two books together, mixed them in a big pot, and then boiled out some fiction, at the bottom of that pot, would you eventually have your adolescent self?

AJ: Kinda, but there are significant differences between myself and the narrators of my novels. Like, for instance, in high school, I wasn’t a very good student.

QJ: How’s your diet coming along?

AJ: Why are you bringing that up, when you know that it’s not going well, that hurts my feelings.

QJ: Are you still doing Weight Watchers?

AJ: Stop it, that’s mean!

QJ: Does writing about symbolism/other English stuff really help you become a writer? I mean, I know reading and writing is good, but is writing about the 19th century themes in Huck Finn all that great?

AJ: You’re not gonna like my answer, but yes, “English stuff” really does help you become a writer. And Huck Finn is actually an excellent example of this. There’s a moment in Huck Finn when Huck says of Tom, “He had a dream, and it shot him.” Now, that’s a good line without English stuff, but with English stuff, you’re able to look at that line in the context of the American Civil War and all of the other times in human history when we’ve had dreams that shot us. And by writing about that, you’re able to better see how good stories work, which is absolutely vital if you wanna write good stories of your own.

QJ: What’s your favorite type of pie?

AJ: Definitely the kind that helps us to calculate the circumference of circles. It’s so helpful! And plus I never get tired of it because it never repeats itself! Nerd jokes, nerd jokes, nerd jokes!

QJ: A guy’s washing windows on a high-rise office building when he slips and falls off a sixty-foot ladder onto the concrete sidewalk below. Incredibly, he doesn’t injure himself in any way. How is that possible?

AJ: He didn’t fall off the top of the ladder, he fell off one of the bottom rungs. Hey riddle, I hope you like typos, because you’ve just been pwned.

QJ: All-time favorite song?

AJ: New Partner by the Palace Brothers.

QJ: Cookie dough or cake batter?

AJ: Cookie dough.

QJ: Which disease would you most want to have?

AJ: Um, hyperawesometitis.

QJ: Who’s your favorite supermodel?

AJ: Frankly, they’re all tied for last place.

QJ: When will the movie of your book Looking for Alaska come out?

AJ: I don’t know. It’s not in my hands.

QJ: Where’d you buy your background bookcase?

AJ: At a small, family-owned neighborhood furniture store called Ikea.

QJ: What is the most useless piece of trivia you know?

AJ: Well, I know that the famous political philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau really, really liked mooning people. That’s pretty useless. I mean, both the knowledge and the mooning.

John: Hank, that’s all the questions I have time for. I’ll see you next week.