You're going about your meaningless life when you are suddenly confronted by an evil gremlin covered in warts. "Bwahaha!" it cackles. Before you have a chance to react, there is a blinding flash of light and you are thrown to the ground. When you regain consciousness, you find yourself in a strange and frightening place.

You are torn between going north, asking Theresa about the shredding machine and taking the large ruby-coloured fish, as one always is in such situations, when a mighty voice from an unseen source booms, "Do not be afraid, for I will answer all your questions!" So naturally, the first thing you want to know is . . .

Where's the nearsest McDonalds?
Assuming you're on planet earth, no further than 12450 miles away.

So where am I?
Sitting (or standing, kneeling or lying if you're a bit strange) in front of a computer, probably logged on to the Internet, with your browser displaying this website, which belongs to an twentysommat British female geen named Zed.

What sort of site is this?
You might call it "a personal homepage". To be more accurate, an exercise in self-absorption. It has my writing (but not the "o i am so angestful / i melt in your scarred hands / i slip on rsers in your heart / and no one understands" variety), a journal (but not the "i saw corey today!!!! he is soooooo f***in hot and kewl!!!!!" variety) and some other stuff (but no quizilla results). Just look around and you'll get the idea.

How did you get your own domain? How much are you paying for it?
Filling in a form. It's how you acquire a lot of things these days.
Ah, you want to know where the form was? Doteasy. They charge you 25 US dollars (about £17) a year for the name, 20 megabytes of free space, e-mail forwarding, POP3 accounts and stoof.

What's "verbal voodoo" when it's at home?
Much the same as it is anywhere else: the act of writing a story and making it come true. It's also the title of a series of stories by yours truly. I use it as a domain name since it's more readily spellable than any other Zobo Creat word.

Will you host me? Please?
No, mostly because there isn't space.

Didn't your site used to be at verbalvoodoo.co.uk? And swansongs, before that? What are you playing at?
Well, I'm usually playing at one point-and-click adventure game or another, but I don't suppose that's what you're talking about, so I'll guess you want to know about domains. In January 1999, Twi, Flink and myself purchased swansongs.net. I had my site hosted there until May 2000, when I moved it to my own domain, verbalvoodoo.co.uk. However, that was a big dodgy pile of hemp which somone put in Bryn's smoke machine the following year, thus causing me to turn even more insane than usual, so I bought verbalvoodoo.org. (Ok, since you clearly don't believe it's possible to get high on a domain, what actually happened was that the company hosting verbalvoodoo.co.uk required me to not go without using their ISP for two 90-day periods. Since I was living in a hall of residence and lacked a dial up connection, this happened, and then I couldn't log into verbalvoodoo.co.uk and upload / modify any of the files there. But that wasn't anywhere near as interesting as the original story now, was it?)

So you have three domains?
No, swansongs reached the last note of its final melody and died, tragically, in late 2001, due to billing problems. This made a rather unique epitaph. verbalvoodoo.co.uk has also whithered and died since then.

Where did you get your other domains from?
swansongs came from addr.com. It was fairly funchie, but if you're prepared to pay that sort of price, I'd recommend phpwebhosting instead (though keep back ups of all your files). verbalvoodoo.co.uk came from freenetname who were free to use, but were no longer offering domains last time I checked.

I am a publisher. Can I publish your writing?
In all probability, yes. Please get in touch, although getting your mental health checked might be more advisable.

Why is your colour scheme so boring?
Because it'll never lose its appeal if it never had any in the first place.

Are you intending to change the layout anytime soon?
Never again! I know from experience it would take far too long. With a website this size, a design is for life, not just for Christmas.

Why don't you use CSS?
I was sorely tempted, but since it made this site look appalling on an Acorn, I resisted. I'll use it when I learn that Acorns understand CSS. (I'm thinking 2137.)

What's an Acorn?
Either the fruit of an oak tree (upon which all websites look rather out of place) or the type of computer I used up until 31 August 1999.

What do you use now?
Shampoo, styling mouse, soap, washing up liquid, AOLIM and a PC, constructed by a bloke called Dave in 1999.

I liked your old layout.
Well I didn't, so shan! In any case, the new one has psychedelic effects if you scroll up and down fast enough.

Didn't you used to have more stuff on your website?
Yes, but I felt the quality of a lot of the writing was too low for me to want to keep it online, since it was representative of me and my abilities in a way I didn't like. Also the journal required some censorting. I'll maybe edit and re-upload some of it in the future.

Have you no links page, woman?
Nope! See, the thing is, I just don't go to any websites these days, apart from my livejournal friends page, and it seems a bit evil to link loads of websites that I never look at.
Ok, there's a couple of other places I check now and again. Off the top of my head, they are: my deadjournal friends page, a secret page that I'm not telling you about oh wahahaha, The Hunger Site and its friends (not convinced this does any good, but it can't hurt, right?), dozing.org, strangepursuit.net, Katherine F's diary and University Of Kent Rock Society Website.

Can I e-mail you?
Probably, providing you have access to a mailbox of some description. zed@verbalvoodoo.org would be the address to aim the messages at. Just don't expect a reply any time before the fourth millennium.

Didn't you used to call yourself "Zobocop"? And "CZ"?
Yes, I was Zobocop between 1996 and early 1998, and "CZ" between early 1998 and early 1999.

Why do you call yourself "Zed", your brother "Noj" and your friends "Smill", "Soppygit" and "Ibid"?
Believe it or not, we actually call each other by those names in "real life". "Zed" is an abbreviation for my initials CZ (pronounced "See Zed", since I'm British), bestowed upon me by Twi. I have no idea where "Noj" ("Jon" backwards) came from, although I suspect my parents might be responsible. "Smill" is short for "Smillurrr", Will's bastardisation of Camilla, which is her real name. "Soppygit" was invented by Soppygit herself, because she is a soppy git. "Ibid" came about because she has a jumper with frogs on, and we changed the obvious nickname of "Ribbit" to "Ibid" since this was a common word in Soppygit's Law notes.

Is Bryn male? But he's got a girl's name!
Not by British standards. There is a male opera singer who used to be a rugby player called Bryn Terfel. We also believe one of the male DJs at my local rock club is called Bryn. And there's someone called Bryn Thomas who goes to UKC and someone called Bryn Colton who took one of the photos that appears in Ian Dury's biography, but I'm not sure of their genders yet. As you can see, I spend an infeasibly large proportion of my time tracking down people called Bryn.

Are Soppygit and Ibid the same people as En and Ell of The Weird Sisters Website? What about Louise and Juanita of the guestbook?
Soppygit, En and Juanita are all the same person, as are Ibid, Ell and Louise. I refer to them as "Soppygit and Ibid" rather than "En and Ell" as the latter two prove hard to distinguish between. (As words, anyway; as people, they could never be mistaken.)

You have a fondness for black PVC clothing and bands I've never heard of, but your poems rhyme and you have a partially white background! Areyougothornot?
Who cares? I like the gothic look, but I tend to dress in a rather trashier cheesier manner, taking elements from the punk, metal, greebo, cyber, artistique, corporate, hippie and Totally Mad looks as I please. I like goth music, but I'm into a lot of other stuff too. And although I enyoj some writing, films and computer games dubbed "gothic", I don't feel "dark-souled" at all, which is reflected in my writing. As for the partially white background, I would have used white-text-on-black, but a lot of people struggle to read that.

Are you going out or have you gone out with Will, Chris, AevilSteve, Bryn or all of the above?
Will: Certainly Not. The Zed and Will myth has been around for several years now, but has never been anything more than a standing joke. Chris: No, although Acts Of Dodginess did, ashamedly, occur. AevilSteve: Not Under Any Circumstances, although he seemed to think otherwise for a while. Bryn: Yes, between January 2001 and October 2002.

Are you related to Douglas Adams?
Not to the best of my knowledge. My family tree is quite lacking in members of the Adams family, which is probably a Good Thing (tm), since from what I've heard, they're creepy and they're spooky. However! It is entirely possible that the man in question changed his surname. After all, who would want to share a surname with the Warneses, famous for . . . absolutely nothing (with the except of Jennifer Warnes, a singer), when you can pretend to be related to Bryan Adams (musician to have spent most consecutive weeks at no. 1 in the UK chart), Scott Adams (writer of v. funchie text adventure games, as well as the mind behind Dilbert) and Adam Adams (some bloke with a rather unfortunate name)?

Ok. Thanks for your help.
Nay trublem, Kenneth.

Trublem? Kenneth?
See Zobo Creat.