At his best his taunts are more a depiction of universal human absurdity than the ridiculing any individual person or thing. To me, a moment from his song “Note Boom” exemplifies this. In a voice that blends pretentious valley girl with art curator, he remarks: “I hear he [Busdriver] sucks live/only appeals to hipsters who dress like Russian spies/are painfully cool and have button-eyes.” Is he insulting his fans? Is he making fun of people who make fun of his fans? Is he making fun of himself? The answer pretty clearly seems to be all three.

“I’m just talking shit,” Farquhar said in defense, “I include myself in the barbs that I throw.” And this claim seems abundantly true. Farquhar seems to feel free to voice his self-recriminations, both on his records and in interviews. “It was one of those moments,” he said, beginning a description of a recent social faux-pas, certainly one of the more mild examples of his self-deprecation. “You know when you’re having a conversation and you act like you know something and then someone points out how ignorant you are and you feel kind of embarrassed. I had that happen recently with a friend of mine, Saul Williams. He was showing me his new record and he played his cover of that song ‘Sunday Bloody Sunday’ and I don’t know shit about U2 so I was like ‘Man, that sounds great! That sounds like something else!’ and he looked around like: ‘What?”

In an attempt to undermine Farquhar’s nay-saying reputation I asked him to name five people or things he loves. Would it be possible for a man who has built a career on talking rash in odd time signatures with surreal imagery to enumerate a few things that make life worth living? “I’m not good at this,” he said. “That’s my problem. I don’t have many favorites. I don’t herald much.” He mulled it over and began to describe a faux-Russian LOLcats website. I had to ask for an explanation of LOLcats. “Usually LOLcats are these cute pictures of kittens doing cute kitten things with misspelled captions like ‘Oo! I poo’ed on the floor!’ but the Russian one has this mock-Communist slant to it. So there’s a kitten playing with a ball of yarn with the caption ‘I will avenge your death a thousand times and lay your ashes in Lenin’s cold, dying hands.’ It’s so fucking funny. I really appreciate that.” He added ‘beat poets’ and ‘people’ to the list. “There’s this restaurant in Portland, Oregon called The Farm,” he said. “When I get up there on tour I always feel like I can take a deep breath and hang out. They’re kind of racist up there so I don’t know about that. When I walk in the door, they’re kind of like ‘Who are you here to see?’ and ‘I’m like I’m here to eat, bitch.’ But it’s all good. I like Shawn who works there.” Farquhar laughed and threw up his hands. “I can’t answer this question. I’m not good at it. There’s a lot of people I like and a lot of people I don’t like.”