The Zeke FAQ

by Zeke (natch)

I'm Colin "Zeke" Hayman. Don't you read history?

Q: Was that a Trek reference? It was stupid.

Yeah, I get that a lot. Anyway, to answer your original question --

Q: Now just a minute! I ask the questions around here, do you understand?

Fine, I'm sorry. Ask your stupid questions.

Q: The only stupid question is the one that isn't --

And cut that out.

Q: Ahem. Where do you live?

Waterloo, Canada. Or as I like to call it, "Ottawa, Canada." Wait....

Q: And what do you do?

I'm a first-year Pure Mathematics Master's student at the University of Waterloo.

Q: Who majors in parodies, apparently.

No, that's my minor.

Q: Whatever. How old are you?

Between 18 and 25.

Q: You don't know your own age?

I don't want to update that answer every year.

Q: Ahh. Time for the site-related questions, then. What made you think of Five-Minute Voyager? Was it peyote?

No. Once, when my Grade 10 English class was studying Twelfth Night, I saw something called "Five-Minute Twelfth Night" on the teacher's desk. I only got to read the first two scenes before she pulled it away (refusing to tell me where the heck it had come from), but they were funny enough to make me think there was real potential in that idea. The notion sort of sank into my mind for a while, re-emerging three years later in the summer of 2000. Voyager's sixth season had just ended, and I and the folks at Deltachat were looking for amusements to kill the time; on a lark, I decided to try this five-minute thing on "Caretaker." It was well-received, so I did "Unimatrix Zero I," and things just snowballed from there.

Q: No peyote at all?

Sorry.

Q: So you spent the first year doing Voyager and then started on Enterprise when it premiered?

That's right.

Q: What about Andromeda?

Christian at SlipstreamWeb asked me to do that for publication at his site, and I agreed, not foreseeing just how big a commitment two simultaneous series would be.

Q: And VVS8?

I approached them. I missed having new Voyager episodes as a regular source of material, and thought a cross-promotion would help us both, not to mention keeping 5MV busy in the summer. Thinkey (executive producer at the time) and I worked out that deal.

Q: Do you actually like any of these shows? Your parodies are vicious.

Actually, I like all of those shows. (And VVS8 isn't a show, dipstick.) One of my strongest beliefs is that it's not healthy to take something so seriously you can't laugh about it. Writing these parodies is one way I make sure I'm not doing that. The policy also broadens their appeal -- I hear from like-minded fans as often as I hear from bashers.

Q: Don't call me a dipstick.

I'm sorry, that wasn't phrased in the form of a question.

Q: What about the other parts of the site? This Just In?

That was my idea, and while I was already a fan of The Onion back then, the similarity didn't occur to me until much later. I think TJI came to me mainly because I'd gotten accustomed to writing news articles after my stint as editor-in-chief of the Lisgarwrite, my high school newspaper.

Q: The top ten lists?

I was tired of seeing the same ones over and over at Trek sites. I decided to try a few with concepts far enough "out there" that they wouldn't have been thought of; hence the Girlfriend lists.

Q: You've got a real ego problem, you know that?

Yes.

Q: What do you plan to do about it?

Who do you think you are, my dad?

Q: All right, back to the program. What was your involvement with VVSP?

I was a staff writer; I did a certain amount of beta-editing and rewriting, and I was informally in charge of the Borg arc. I wrote five episodes and contributed heavily to a sixth. You can find my episodes at VVSP or here at 5MV in Features.

Q: How about the Trek Nation and SlipstreamWeb?

I'm contracted to write fivers for Enterprise (and was for Andromeda) as the new episodes come out. That's why I don't take submissions for ENT.

Q: What's with you and pie?

I don't see how that's pie. Er, relepie. Er, relevant. Relevant pie.

Q: What programs do you use in creating the site?

I do the HTML in NoteTab and make the graphics in Ultimate Paint; to perform the updates, I use SmartFTP. I browse in Opera and chat via Trillian.

Q: I didn't ask what you chatted with.

Hey, that's an important part of running the site. I stay in touch with my readers and discuss site business with the staff.

Q: Okay, enough about you. Let's talk about me.

What's to talk about?

Q: My, um... personality?

You don't have one. You're not a character, you're a question dispenser.

Q: I resent that!

Bully for you. I decide when you exist and when you don't. In fact, if I so decide, I can make you vanish right....

Q: NO! DON'T!

....now.

(Silence)

And now, pie.

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All material © 2002, Colin Hayman.