Cerebus Archive Report #7
November 2005
Text taken from Yahoo!Group postings regarding Cerebus Policy / Archive matters and sent to Dave, whose responses are in bold.
11/02/05
Greetings Dave,
Here's part one of this past month & 1/2's worth of Policy Talk. Part one is almost exclusively about your Last Will and Testament letter. Hope you had a safe an enlightening Ramadan. I will be writing soon, I promise. I've gotten into my "overly busy" ruts.
-Jeff Tundis
Here we go....
Greetings,
Jeff…
Yes
a very safe, enlightening and edifying Ramadan.
“T’ank youse for
askeen’.”
I’m
going to have to divide this up into sections and it will probably
take me several weeks to answer all of the charges against me, but this
is what
happens when you actually introduce ideas into Marxist-feminist society. “Here we
go” indeed:
Jeff
T: I just received this from Dave via Gerhard. I ask that you
all please take this thread seriously, even though
I'm well aware of my exclusion from
described group (you'll see). The letter has also been uploaded to the
files section so you can see any
italics, etc. A new folder has been created called Policy (Documents
pertaining
to Cerebus Legacy Policy).
[Dave's letter: "Last Will and Testament and Powers of Attorney for Property and Personal Care"]
Jason:
I can assure you that it IS what he wants and believes. He
discussed this
with me on the way back up to Niagara Falls, and we hit on a lot of
points, and
basically, he doesn't care if it takes some time for a consensus to
emerge
among whatever number of people are discussing it - in a very
real sense, he will, at that point, be entering the
public domain. Actually - it is a very logical extension of many of the
themes
he has always emphasized.
Jeff T:
Dave:
That isn’t true. Jason
had
about the same amount of “access to Dave” as anyone
else has, which is the
Yahoo newsgroup. I
answer the five
questions a month for everyone who is interested in reading what I have
to say
on various subjects that the average Cerebus reader
is curious
about. The same
reason that I put
together Collected Letters and why I prefer to
correspond by mail rather
than talk on the phone or get e-mail capability.
Because Jason was putting together the
“Ye Bookes of Cerebus”
exhibit, we corresponded on that for most of the last year. But that was what we were
corresponding
about. We had some
conversations about
various other subjects when he was up here and when he picked me up in
Niagara
Falls and when he dropped me back there but most of those sorts of
conversations
are incidental to whatever the professional connection is. Ger and I, in the same
way, talk about
various personal things in passing but 99.9% of what we talk about is
Aardvark-Vanaheim.
Jeff
T: It would be helpful for someone who had time to really
talk to Dave about
it to help put this all in focus.
Dave:
See, this is the kind of thing that I
disagree with. The
idea that “really talking” is some
higher form of communication than what can be put down on paper (or,
here on
the Internet “on paper”).
The “power of
attorney” conundrum was the next thing on the agenda: the
next area where I had
to deal with the way the world is set up and re-route it in my own case
to keep
what I saw as a fundamental perversion from asserting its dominion over
my own
life at the behest of the Marxist-feminist courts.
I had become aware of the problem in the
course of finishing off
the shareholder agreement when Wilf explained to me the facts of life
about
“power of attorney”—that society, unless
specifically directed otherwise, would
impose my father on my legacy or some other family member. There were unpalatable
alternatives of
naming someone to step into my place.
Anyone I knew of who was capable of doing so
is doing their own thing
and already working a sixty-hour week (i.e. Peter Birkemoe at the
Beguiling). Being
the decision-maker over
Aardvark-Vanaheim is a full-time job touching on dozens of different
areas
simultaneously. It’s
an enormous maze
which weaves through the perverse net of society as constituted. As you can see from the
policy discussions
even the individual threads are difficult to explain, let alone to make
them
understood. Society
wants to be
society—it doesn’t want to be Dave Sim.
So for Dave Sim to stay Dave Sim he has to
take a number of intricate
routes in dozens of different areas to keep society from consuming him. As I say, this was the
next step in the
agenda and Jason had asked a very innocent question about what I was
going to
be working on next. There
are very few
innocent questions with Dave Sim, unfortunately, and I figured I might
as well
tell him rather than just saying I had some finishing touches to put on
the
Archive or something equally evasive.
As it has here, it opens a can of worms,
many cans of many worms, in
fact, which I was fully aware of and had been for about a year. It was going to be the
most difficult part
of the policy discussions and I knew that was the case when I
introduced the
policy discussions, but at that time doing the Archive was the next big
thing. If I
hadn’t been a week or two away from
putting the “power of attorney” conundrum down
“on paper” I wouldn’t have
mentioned it to Jason because I wouldn’t have wanted it to
leak out and touch
off a firestorm before I was ready to confront it head-on. When the time came, I knew
if would have the
same effect that all of these things do: Dave Sim is crazy. It is a subject the
comic-book field will
never tire of. But
the questions, in my
view, needed to be addressed in order to head off an
“endgame” to my life that
I had no chance of winning in a country controlled by totalitarian
Marxist-feminist courts.
_________________________
<< Some off topic discussion ensued, mostly about how you a attribute the "let's keep them alive when they're in a persistent vegetative state" attitude to atheist/marxist/feminists, when in this country it is the exact opposite - the Right Wing Religious Right are the ones responsible for that behaviour.>>
<<And of course, the expected "he's crazy" comments. Sorry.>>
______________________
Jason T: The conversation went in a number of directions. The last will and testament is, as far as I can tell, just the first "kick at the cat" in trying to define his wishes in legal terms.
Dave:
It’s basically trying to
cover as many bases as possible. The
big danger for me having invested all
the time and energy that I have in finishing Cerebus
and then having the
obligation to preserve it is to keep any “Dave Sim is
crazy” person from taking
over—which, given that that is a prevailing viewpoint
everywhere that Dave Sim
is known of is, to me, a clear and present danger. Someone who thinks
I’m crazy and has no idea
what I’ve been doing for three decades takes over with the
blessing of the
feminist courts, ruins the whole project and then concludes
“See, I told you
Dave Sim was crazy” much to the relief of everyone besides
myself.
Jason T: I would say that, in some ways, the idea of 'pulling the plug' in accordance with Dave's wishes, may be the easy part. The hard part is in moderating his treatment, if he is unable to do so himself. He is very much against being pumped full of medications that might hinder his cognitive abilities or make him perpetually dazed and confused. Sounds like that is about his worst nightmare.
Dave:
It’s not my worst nightmare, personally. Being lobotomized
chemically in this society
would really only make me like most other people, passively staring at
the
television for umpty-ump hours a day.
If you want to define normal behaviour in
North American society, that
would be it. But
accepting that personally
as the greatest likelihood is very different from accepting it professionally—that
while I was tranked into oblivion someone would be turning Cerebus into
something else than what I intended for it to be with everyone who had
been
interested in the project standing around and “abiding by the
family’s
wishes”. “The
family’s wishes” is the
trump card in feminist society. You
don’t have to make sense, you just have to shed a few
crocodile tears, mouth a
few platitudes about how much you respect what Dave has done and then
jump in
there and start dismantling it.
Arguably they would really think they were
doing the right thing, but
then that’s what the delusional feminist state is all about,
to me. You not only
destroy things you convince
yourself that you’re building them up.
“We really thought it was time to
reinvent Cerebus for a new
generation and we think Dave would approve of what we’ve
done” (now that Dave
is safely tranked into oblivion).
“Deconstructionist” is a
feminist term.
You can call me paranoid if you want, but
I’m the only person who is
willing to publicly say that I’m not a feminist who the
feminists can’t force
to resign or crawl before them (i.e. Lawrence Summers at Harvard). I have to take that
responsibility
seriously, in my view, given that I don’t believe in
coincidences. I
don’t think I “just happened” to be the
guy picked for this job.
A bridge to
sanity in a post-feminist world like any other bridge in that it can be
built,
but you have to get that first strand across the chasm and as far as I
can see
it that’s what my job is.
To get that
first strand across the chasm between the insane world of feminism and
a future
world that can return to making sense.
With absolutely no assistance and complete
resistance every step of the
way and from all sides. Fortunately
my
only interest is in what I perceive to be God’s intention
with me. “No
assistance and complete resistance” has
been my job description since issue 186 came out.
So be it.
God’s will be
done.
Jason T:
So, having future Yahoos! that are medical professionals offering
second,
third, or fourth opinons on things, and then putting them up as a poll
question
for everyone to vote on - well, that is about as public as treatment
could get.
And is, I think, what Dave is driving at. If there are two choices,
things are straightforward - yay or nay. It just
gets more complicated from there.
I also am not sure that there is a contradiction between needing people who understand Dave's wishes, and those who have faith in God. I think Dave is well aware that there will be a lot of conflicting thoughts, opinions, or emotions, if/when this becomes a 'real time' discussion. I mean, as I said to him in conversation, the most immediate conflict is between realizing that Dave wants to be let go of, and that the people making that decision will probably not want to let go. Maybe that's just me.
Dave:
Yes, that was part of our discussion but that’s further down
the
line stuff. I tend
to think of Cerebus
as really pretty straightforward but I can’t bypass the fact
that there are all
of these questions continually asked about it.
As I said to Jason, I don’t see
myself as having any value in the frames
of reference of a feminist society and I’m happy to check out
of this loony bin
at any time. However,
I think I have to
take it as a given that a lot of Cerebus readers are still going to
have
a lot of questions no matter how old and decrepit I get. Having sacrificed my life
to the book it
only seems sensible to factor that in.
If I’m only lucid and aware for
two hours a day I should spend those two
hours a day answering questions as best I can even though I would
probably
think the way I do now. I
just want to
check out. Jason
only half-jokingly
said that he could picture himself saying, “Dave, for the
last time—Sir Gerrik
what was the story behind him?”
Well,
there you go. I
don’t think of that as
being of any great importance, but if that’s what the Cerebus
readers think is
important and they’ve kept me alive all this time and
I’m only lucid for two
hours a day, well, put the spectacles on, re-read all of the Sir Gerrik
stuff
again and see if I can’t dredge something up from deep in
what’s left of my
memory.
Jason T:
So, yeah, the real issue is understanding Dave's wishes are paramount,
but part
of that is his being more comfortable with someone who believes and
would pray
for guidance, if need be, instead of deferring to the best guess of a
doctor.
Dave: More
that I have to give God a fighting chance ( “Please God, let
me win the lottery” “Jacob—meet me
halfway: buy a ticket.”)
in the cesspit of scientific vanity and
atheism that medical facilities are and given that virtually everyone
in there
is probably as easy target for The Adversary to inhabit (if my
experience in
hospitals is anything to go by) as it is for you to open the front door
to your
apartment. Oops. Ten times the legal
dosage. How did that
happen? It wouldn’t, to me, be a disingenuous question in the
“here and
now”
context. From what I can see, the
demonically-possessed have no idea that they’re
demonically-possessed.
How could they? They don’t believe demons exist and
so they have no
defense
against them, they haven’t prayed since they were six years
old and
they think
God is just some crazy myth like Thor or Poseidon. As it says in the
Koran,
“They have forgotten God and He has forgotten them.”
Matt D:
Okay, Jeff is out. Definitely.
I've called Dave.
We (those of us who aren't Jeff,) don't have to read the Bible and the Koran. We should, but we don't have to.
All anybody (except Jeff (and kudos and applause to Jeff for being honest and open on this (from me and Dave))) has to do is "declare themselves, publicly, here on the Internet to believe in the One God of Judaism, Christianity and Islam and to declare themselves not to be feminists" And mean it.
Do that (and send a copy to Wilf, his address should be in issue 300, if not send to Wilf care of A/V,) and you get what Dave says you get.
Me, I'm gonna read the Bible and Koran and if I agree with it, then I'm making my Declaration.
(I'm already not a feminist. Men is men, and women are women. Both have their pluses, but they are NOT equal.)
Dave is serious about this. I talked with him for over an hour. He supports anybody who wants to look further into the Bible or the Koran, but isn't saying you have to.
Well, I've had my say, and am looking forward to seeing if I believe that the three faiths have one God. And to re-reading the "begats".
Dave:
I thought it was very honest of Matt to concede that all of his
previous attempts foundered on the begats of the first major chronology
in
Genesis that starts with Adam and goes through to Noah and that he
sheepishly
realized this time out that it’s really barely a page. As he remembered it it
went on for fifteen
pages. That to me is The Adversary in action.
“You don’t want to read
all this crap—look it goes on for fifteen pages. Go play some video games
and do some bong
hits. Much more
worthwhile.” And they
go for it.
Dave also doesn't want to linger if he's supposed to go.
So, the conclusion he reached was to find people that he "doesn't trust the least." (my phrase not his.) In other words, people he trusts to a point.
Dave:
No, again—it’s
hard to communicate this to atheists.
I have to give God a fighting chance if it
isn’t my time to go and that requires people who believe in
Him and will go
where He steers them to go and say what He steers them to say. An atheist at a critical
juncture is just
going to find themselves making chit-chat in the cardiac unit when
I’m actually
in the next building in intensive care.
How did that happen?
That sort of stuff is
child’s play for the Adversary in a completely atheistic
environment. How
did that happen.
Matt: Look at it this way, Dave (if this all works, and it IS an if,) will be the first person to have all records of his treatment available in "real time" to anyone who is interested. So if he is getting incorrect treatment, we (the people who have agreed to accept his power of attorney) will get as many opinions as we can get.
It may not work, but if it was you, and you didn't trust anybody you know to make the right choices, what would you do?
Dave doesn't really know Ger (and legally Ger couldn't take the job even if he really wanted it (which I don't think he would.)). And there isn't anybody else. So, Dave decided to trust that God would provide.
I look at it this way. Dave has given me Cerebus. I've laughed, I've been entertained, and I've thought. The least I can do is read the rulebooks (Bible and Koran) and see if I think it's cricket. If I do, then what does it hurt to help a guy out? If I don't, I let Dave know where he and I part ways, wish him the best of luck, and hope and pray that everything works out all right.
In the end I'm out the price of the Bible and the Koran, big woop.
And if I agree, then I make my declaration and end my days knowing that I did my best for a guy who made me laugh, made me entertained, and made me think. And it'd be the one thing I could do to pay Dave back where he can't come back and "one up" me.
___________________
Dom: Well, I think Dave has the right to set whatever conditions he wants for those to whom he gives Power of Attorney, but this document continues many trends in Dave's thinking that I find irritating and disturbing.
Dave:
Core signs of demonic possession as far as I can see.
Sorry to interrupt.
Why is it that you never think that your
being irritated and disturbed doesn’t go
deeper—like to a soul-deep level—and
that what you are responding to is your own soul’s responses
to what I’m
writing: “He’s
right. If you
don’t do something to save your soul
you’re going straight into the Pit.” That the
irritation and disturbance you’re
experiencing is all the layers of atheism you’ve piled onto
your soul since you
were six so that it’s almost completely stifled. Why won’t you
consider that the irritation and disturbance issues
from the sound of your soul screaming its lungs out from under eight
tons of
accumulated Adversarial evasiveness and substitution.
“What’s that faint
irritating and disturbing sound I hear?”
“It’s nothing. Just ignore it.” “Oh,
okay.”
Dom: Despite his repeated assertions to be a rational, non-feeling person, I find it impossible to read this document without seeing all kinds of aggrievedness rear its head. Merely the first example: "If I'm hit by that bus that everyone keeps cheering for." ? Who keeps cheering for it? The Comics Journal? The intended audience of this document? Why does Dave feel such a compulsion, over and over again, to impute such motives--and so universally--to his audience?
Dave: Because that’s what I see. No one ever said, “What happens if Gerhard gets hit by a bus?” In purely psychological terms when the only conscious thought about the end of a 26-year project for the last 10 years of that project is “What happens if the guy gets hit by a bus,” I assume there’s a certain amount of wish-fulfillment involved however much the wishers don’t like to see themselves that way and even though they might not be the actual source of the sentiment: rather, they’re just demonically possessed and are unconsciously looking for something to stifle Dave permanently the way they’ve stifled their own souls. And for exactly that reason. “I find this irritating and disturbing.” Well, it’s only in a feminist society that “irritating and disturbing” are seen as core elements of inherent wrongness. I see no evidence of people seeing the fact that I am almost always “irritating and disturbing” to originate with themselves. Maybe you need to be irritated and disturbed in exactly the areas where I’m irritating and disturbing you.
Dom: And I am pretty sure that even in atheist Marxist-Feminist Canada, one can still construct a legal document or legal statement that you are NOT to be resuscitated or artificially kept alive in the event of incapacity or persistent vegetative state. Whether it would be honoured in any circumstances may be more of an open question, but a challenge would not be likely unless family member made it.
Well,
again, this is the snake eating its tail.
Yes.
I consider my family to be the diametric
opposite of everything that I
believe in BUT in Marxist-feminist society they will likely still be
given the
last decision no matter what kind of a document that I ask Wilf to put
together. That’s
a good example of
demonic possession right there. As
a
society we slavishly believe that family is the panacea for everything
which
means it’s only a matter of time before Marxist-feminism
devours everything in
its path. That’s my best guess.
You
can’t frame a document in a Marxist-feminist society that
doesn’t conform to
the totalitarian dictates of the Marxist-feminist courts.
Dom: Even mercy killing is largely tolerated or blinked at in Canada. Hell, Marxist-Feminist Canada has given no more than token punishments to suicide assisters, and in at least one case a pretty light sentence to a guy who "mercy" killed his daughter.
Dave:
Yes, exactly.
But I think that
reinforces my argument rather than refuting it.
When my grandfather was dying, my mother
said to the nurses that
they should just increase his morphine drip so that he can die
peacefully. I tried
to explain to her that she was “counseling
to commit homicide” which is an indictable offense just short
of homicide
itself and certainly higher than manslaughter. It involves
premeditation and
conspiracy. Everyone in the vicinity was pretty philosophical about it
as I
recall. “Oh,
don’t worry we get
counseled to commit homicide all the time.”
Just another example of why I think medical
facilities are, as Merlin
put it, “A kind of seventh day when reason rests”
and consequently I have to
install my own checks and balances where they—not only no
longer
exist but where I suspect they never have
existed. The doctor and the family know best.
Dom: "[T]he groundwork has already been—and is being—laid by Marxist-feminists to seize control of my intellectual property." Hunh? Is Dave serious here? He really thinks that there is a plot afoot to seize control of his personal intellectual property? Even if he's referring more generally to some sort of legislation, I have no idea what that would be, but on the face of it this sounds like sheer paranoia. If Dave did get his by a bus and get taken dazed and confused to a hospital, the odds that anyone working on him would have even the first idea who he is or would want to manipulate his treatment to seize control of his intellectual property is, frankly, pretty out there. Since in other contexts Dave ALSO complains about how universally ignored he is and how nobody is interested in what he's accomplished, this is just a fundamentally illogical, of not irrational position. In effect, Dave wants to get two grievances for the price of one: on the one hand everyone ignores me and nobody cares about my accomplishments as artist, evolutionary theorist, religious exegete, scientist, etc; but on the other hand nodoby can wait to wrest my intellectual property from me, thereby silencing me. W? T? F?
Dave:
It depends on which is the actual
reality and which is the
ostensible reality. You think that beneficent or neutral feminism is
the actual
reality and malignant feminism is the ostensible reality (that I have
manufactured
in my own mind). Again, I’m the only
person who is willing to speak out against feminism who the feminists
can’t
force to resign so I think it’s important for me to keep
pointing that out. Forcing people to resign for disagreeing
with you, to me, takes your argument out of the realm of beneficent or
neutral
feminism and into the category of malignant feminism. Again,
I think the evidence supports my point of view and not
yours. What I’m pointing out is that if
you repeat a thing often enough it becomes the reality for most
people. Virtually everyone in the comic-book field
agrees that I’m crazy even though probably only 2% of the
field has read my
work. To me, that’s laying the
groundwork for psychiatric incarceration which is a venerable tradition
for
Marxists. The challenge is to get me to sue someone for defamation or
libel so
that I can be tried and found insane in the feminist courts or to
gradually
allow the viewpoint to become universal by not addressing my arguments
but just
vilifying me personally (looking on the bright side, Margaret Thatcher
used to
say that she welcomed it when her opponents were reduced to maligning
her
personally because it made it obvious that they had no contrary
viewpoints to
offer with any basis in reality). I mean,
that’s an inescapable fact. Cerebus is
a 6,000 page story which, I submit, is an interesting fact in and of
itself
and, presumably, would be documented or reviewed intelligently in any
environment where stories and ideas were weighed on their own merit
rather than
on the totalitarian dictatorship of what is the right way to
think. I was only reviewed intelligently when I
appeared to be a secular Marxist-feminist.
As soon as I made it clear that I wasn’t a secular
Marxist-feminist, I
was universally declared crazy and my work was
ignored. The end of the book passed without
comment. To me it’s only rational to
ask questions about those things particularly in a world where any
deviation
from the feminist party line is grounds for dismissal in any
professional
environment. So the guy isn’t a
feminist. Why does he have to resign?
It seems to me a very basic question centering on a core human right of
freedom
of belief and freedom of expression. Net result of question: No
answer—just
that malign silence that says, “Keep it up and
you’ll find out why he had to
resign.” Duly noted. The threat is always
there with Marxists. If
you can’t support your own arguments threaten your
opponent. I keep a checklist of their venerable
techniques and try to minimize their chances to put them into
effect. I would rather work towards a viable form of
self-preservation than just sit here going, “I better not do
anything or say
anything or they’ll call me paranoid.”
They’re Marxist-feminists.
They’re going to call me paranoid no matter what I say unless
I agree to
capitulate and become a Marxist-feminist and abandon common sense and
the
weight of evidence which, viewed objectively, weighs heavily against
any
favourable opinion of Marxist-feminism not in the least because it is
so
heavy-handed in suppressing even trace elements of dissent.
Dom: "I would rather roll around in broken glass and iodine than to have my father within a country mile of either me or the Cerebus intellectual property." So, did Dave ever get around to reconciling his current view of his father with Cerebus's great sin of not getting home in time for his father's death?
Dave: Yes. The ultimate question, for
me, is, was and will be does “Honor
thy father and thy mother” extend to atheists?
My ultimate conclusion (that, so far as I
know, I am staking my soul on)
is that it doesn’t extend to atheists. Honoring atheists who are
undeserving of being honored, to me, is
the greater sin. Particularly
in the
universal combat zone that is North American society where family and
forced
capitulation to Marxist-feminism is being used as a cudgel to make men
toe the
feminist party line. As the only person willing to buck that
totalitarian
reality making my parents as human beings more important than their
avowed
atheism is just another form of capitulation.
Marxist-feminism or God?
I pick
God. My family or
God? I pick God.
Does picking God over my family make me
inhuman? The only
opinion on that that I care about is
God’s and I’ll find that out on Judgment Day.
God’s will be done.
Dom: "So, the best that I have been able to come up with is that anyone of the Yahoos who is willing—in the event of my incapacity—to declare themselves, publicly, here on the Internet to believe in the One God of Judaism, Christianity and Islam and to declare themselves not to be feminists (that is, to declare publicly that they don't believe men and women are equal and that—having followed my argument as thoroughly as you all have—they agree and agree to agree publicly that yes, the evidence supports Dave Sim, it doesn't support Oprah Winfrey, that the Fourteen Impossible Things to Believe Before Breakfast are indeed Impossible, not difficult or unlikely or improbable: Impossible) will be given co-jurisdiction of What's Left of Dave Sim and will be given one vote each in deciding what is to be done with him and with his intellectual property in the event that he has officially been declared to be Not All There but has not officially been declared legally dead."
Again, Dave has the absolute right to set whatever criteria he wishes.
Dave: We
don’t know if that’s true and I think the weight of
evidence
will prove to run contrary to that. I
know that hurts your feelings to think that society may have already
run past
the point where you are allowed any criteria besides Marxist-feminism
but I think it far more likely that as Wilf
researches the issue we will find that the only accepted criteria in
our society
is “family uber alles”. That is, family
is the cudgel which is used to keep everyone in the feminist camp or to
give
the feminist camp control of anyone who refuses to toe the line.
Dom: I do think it's unfortunate that he is willing to have faith only in someone who affirms that he (or she) thinks EXACTLY what Dave thinks. It sounds like he wants a disciple, not someone who will act in his best interests and in acordance with his wishes. Or, to put it another way, it's not enough to act in accordance with Dave's wishes, one must also actually share his beliefs.
Dave: Mm.
That’s not true. I
could cite any number of significant differences between Jeff Seiler
and
myself, Sandeep Atwal and myself, Billy Beach and myself both
theological
differences and notions of free will expression.
I’m not like any of
them and they’re not like me. But they do believe
in God and they are
willing to admit that feminism is a detriment to society. To
me, that
gives them a fighting chance
against the Adversary and his adherents (however inadvertent their
adherence)
if it comes down to crunch time.
Dom: "Let me say here that I think it will probably be a period of years before anyone who agrees with me will actually work up the gumption to declare so publicly" Now, that's just insulting. So, if you don't declare that you share Dave's views exactly, you are either a Marxist-Feminist athiest, or you're a coward? Insulting AND illogical.
Dave: No,
I think feminism is insulting and illogical and yes, I think
men who already know that and have allowed themselves to be intimidated
into
toeing the feminist party line are cowards.
Understandable cowards, for all of that. As we’ve
seen, the Marxist feminists aren’t playing games
here. They are actively ruining
people’s lives to maintain their core delusion using every
form of legal and
public coercion to destroy anyone in their way. If you so
much as raise as a remote possibility that women don’t
have the same aptitudes men you do have
the world crash in on your head as Lawrence Summers found out and as I
found
out. As I’ve told any number of guys
who are sheepish about their capitulation, I can understand
it. It’s the whole point of the “forced
resignation/public capitulation and crawling before
feminists” construct. If you’re off the
reservation they will do
everything they can to ruin your life, professionally and
personally. That’s a good way—in fact the
only way—that
you can maintain a universal societal construct with no basis in
reality. If the consequences experienced by the lone
dissenter are severe enough, dissent ceases to exist.
That’s how they do it in North Korea. That’s how
they did it in
Tianemen Square. That’s how they do it
wherever Marxism holds sway.
Dom: "This then intrudes on other areas which include the fact that medical care in Canada—as would come as no surprise to anyone with a brain in his head (i.e. non-Canadians)—is not-so-gradually slipping to Third Word levels because Canada is the only completely Marxist medical system remaining on the planet and certainly the onlyone in a G-8 country." So presumably all Canadians except Dave are brainless. And all non-Canadians DO have brains in their heads (the logical corollary of his statement here).
Dave: When
it comes to Marxist medicine, unfortunately, yes. Canadians
universally adhere to the view
that single payer government controlled medicine is the promised land
and any
deviation from that viewpoint is grounds for dismissal from the public
debate. Even though the Prime Minister
himself goes to a for-profit clinic (which is only allowed in Quebec
because of
Quebec’s Marxist-feminist stranglehold on the politics in
this country) he will
run in the next election on his vow to keep the public system entirely
public
and out of the hands of profiteers and no one in this
country—certainly not the
Conservative party—will even suggest that anything other than
exclusively
public medicine can be allowed in Canada. Even though it already exists
and the
Prime Minister is making use of it.
Yes, I would say that that means that Canadians don’t have a
brain in
their head. Where do you see “brain” in holding
self-contradicting and
illogical viewpoints?
Dom: "owing
to the
inherent secretiveness and ass-covering of those practicing
Marxist medicine, I am just as likely to be commended to the
not-so-tender mercies of Abdul the Butcher as I
am to someone who knows which way the sutures go in and come back out."
Unlike the selfless altruists who practice medicine for profit.
THEY'RE not secretive or ass-coverers. (Note: I am not saying that
for-profit
medicine is inherently bad, as Dave is saying about "Marxist"
medicine; I AM saying that the profit motive is hardly a disincentive
to
secetiveness or ass-covering, and that I'm reasonably sure there's
still a heck
of a lot of medical malpractice in all the non-Marxist medical
jurisdictions
that apparently proliferate everywhere except in Canada.)
Dave: Again,
they don’t proliferate in Canada but because they are only
allowed to exist in Quebec you are not allowed to say that they exist
in this
country. The
consequence game comes
into effect. Look
what happens to
anyone who suggests that a combination public/private system should be
adopted. You
don’t want that to happen
to you? Then stop
making waves. And
everyone in this country besides me
stops making waves.
Dom: "If I
can't get any volunteers in either category (and it wouldn't
surprise me that I can't) then at least I don't think I can be accused
of
indirectly committing suicide by my lack of
interest or faith in Marxist science." Why would anyone want to make
such
an accusation? And since Dave evidently holds the people who might do
so in
contempt anyway, what difference would it make if they DID make such an
accusation? Does Dave seem to be more concerned with how he APPEARS
here than
with the truth? And why in this specific instance is appearance so
important?
Dave: Sorry,
I was referring to God and to the God-fearing. I care about
the actuality of how my behaviour looks in the eyes of God. I do believe that suicide
is a sin. With the
different permutations being
developed by medical science—i.e. if I don’t want
to be kept alive as an
artificially maintained piece of meat, am I indirectly committing
suicide?—suicide is becoming a very nuanced noun. Just by saying I
don’t want to be kept alive artificially by a
machine, technically I may be committing suicide.
Relative to Judgment Day it isn’t
a matter of whether someone
would want to make such an accusation as I believe it will be that the
accusation will be irrefutably, inescapably there if, as the Koran puts
it, the
book of my life is put into my left hand instead of my right hand. There will be no place for
hair-splitting
nuance on Judgment Day I don’t think.
Paradise or the Fire.
Nor will
there be clever lawyers who can tie the rules up in knots and get me
off on a
technicality. If
the rule is “no
suicide” and I say I don’t want to be plugged into
a machine, it’s quite
possible that that will be it for me. You
either did right or you did wrong. It’s
very possible that it’s a core point in the argument with the
Adversary. No
matter how many ghoulish devices the
Adversary compels atheists to invent to keep deceased cadavers alive,
as a God-fearing
individual you are expected to stay at your post and remain alive for
decades
if necessary. I
think that’s the
underlying point of a lot of these things.
Let’s make things really
complicated for those who believe in God.
That’s the reality, to me. The ostensible reality is
“Let’s keep
everyone alive as long as we can and never stop to consider if
we’re supposed
to be doing that”. It’s
just part of
being born in this time period and trying to be a proper monotheist. Medicine is going to make
it progressively
more complicated. To
me, you make your
own call, realize that your soul is at stake and that something that is
completely out of your control—prolongation of human
existence by any means
necessary—is turning the fate of your soul into a coin toss.
Dom: "If you don't believe in God, the odds are that you believe very strongly in drugs." Others have already commented in the inherent logical flaw in this position, so I won't bother. Aaaaah. Fuck it. I keep hearing about how gracious and friendly Dave is in person, but he's one truculent, snarky curmudgeon in his prose.
Dave: I
don’t think that’s the case. I think
you’re projecting your own
nature onto me because of the soul-deep discomfort you experience when
you read
what I have to say. You want to bury me
as you’ve buried your own soul under metric tons of
Adversary. It’s a
natural response. I used to be the same way.
I’m opening a can of
worms with my “power of
attorney” choices that everyone prefers would remain
closed. If you
don’t want to be reminded that your
soul is very likely in extreme peril, then don’t read what I
have to
say. Distract yourself with music or videos or
games or chit-chat or whatever else you want to distract yourself
with. Your life—like everyone’s
life—is going by
very quickly and will be over before you know it. In the same
sense
that you can recall vividly your earliest
years, you are already on your deathbed.
You’re really going to have to cram a lot of distractions
into the
short
time you have left.
Dom: In case you're wondering, no I won't be declaring myself a Dave acolyte who believes the 14 Impossible Things are Impossible etc. in order to get the privilege of participating in his medical care. Frankly, even if I believed all Dave believes, including the 14 Impossible Things, I would not do so, especially in response to a call such as this. A failure of gumption, no doubt.
Dave: You
said it. I didn’t.
Hey,
I was only going to answer about half of this but then I found
out that there is no committee meetings scheduled at City Hall today. Which is a good thing
because I have to be
here for when some artwork has to be returned from the Harbourfront
Graphic
Novel exhibit (not announced as an appearance because it was during
Ramadan so
I wasn’t going to be there), I have to pick up my
dry-cleaning and I have to
get some printing done in advance of the Big Apple Con this weekend. Printing what? You’ll have to
be there Thursday night to find out.
I will note for those on this list who may question your ability to
carry out
Dave's main request given your statements during the Schiavo
controversy that
you were part of the very large group (much larger than most on the
other side
like to admit) who were NOT in favor of preserving life in any case at
any
cost, but who believed that there was some real question as to the
status of
her condition, not to mention her actual wishes had she been able to
make them.
The fact that in that particular case I think most of you were deluded
by
propaganda put out by her parents, who ARE in the "preserve life in any
case at any cost" camp, doesn't diminish the fact that you probably
would
be prepared to make the right decision if fully informed.
Dave: Assuming
that there is such a thing as “fully informed” in
these
situations. In my
view we’re always
making choices based on fragmentary information—not just in
the sense that we
didn’t know the actual state of Schiavo’s condition
or what her actual wishes would
have been, we also don’t have a definitive idea of how those
unknown variables
are rated by God (which in my case is the only Opinion I’m
genuinely interested
in or which I think is relevant).
The
same situation with the abortion debate.
When does the soul enter the fetus? seems a
core relevance which is a
complete unknown to all human beings.
If it enters in the second trimester then it
would seem reasonable to
allow abortion in the first trimester since it would arguably just be a
soulless piece of meat until the soul enters it.
It seems to me that it was only the widening
of the debate into
what I would see as infernal areas—“Is there even such
a thing as a
soul?”—which made Roe v. Wade possible.
If the soul doesn’t exist then,
sure, we’re all just pieces of breathing
meat expelled by our mothers and it should be up to the mother whether
she
wants a piece of breathing meat growing into mobile form within her or
whether
she wants the piece of meat extracted before it gets to the mobile
stage. Same as
incest. If
we’re just pieces of meat and you have 99.9% sure forms of
birth control why shouldn’t you be able to hump the piece of
meat that is your
sister or your mother as much as any other mobile piece of meat? No harm no foul, right? The only problem with
incest is procreation,
right? Likewise gene-splicing. If
we’re
just pieces of meat and it would amuse someone to merge her meat with
the meat
of her cat and produce a being that is half-human-meat/half-kitty-meat
then
what could possibly be wrong with that?
Steve: Every Christian and every Jew believes in the God of Islam. They
just
disagree on the status of Mohammad as a Prophet and whether or not SOME
of the
things Muslims believe about God are true. But with few exceptions on
the
fringes of all three religions, most people recognize that they all
believe in
the same God.
Dave: I’m
not sure if that’s true except in the most
“politically correct”
sense of the debate. I
hope it
ultimately proves to be true and is the meaning behind the Koran
exhorting
Muslims to continue to fight “on path of God until all the
religion be
God’s”—we all hook up somewhere up ahead
if we sincerely submit to God’s
will. Most
Christians and Jews—at least
until recently—believed that Muslims believed in a god called
Allah. Or that
Muslims were Mohammedans in the
Christian sense, worshippers of Muhammad.
I think there’s a certain amount
of lip service paid by ecumenical
Christians and Jews to the validity of Islam but it seems to me that
truly
ecumenical Christians and Jews—Mother Theresa as a good
example judging by her
funeral service—tend to be of the “more babies,
more bathwater” school of
theological debate. Let’s
include
Islam, and while we’re at it, let’s include
Hinduism and Native Indian beliefs
and goddess worship and Wicca. The
Lunatic All-Inclusive, in my view.
The
fact that Muslims believe that Jesus was not—as the Koran
explicitly states in
numerous suras—the son of God puts them beyond the pale of
most Christian
debate in the same way that Christian definitive belief that Jesus was
the
Meschiach puts them beyond the pale of most Jewish debate. There may be some
Christians who don’t
believe that Jesus was the son of God and there may be some Jews who
believe
that Jesus was the Meschiach. However, pretty much by definition,
Christians
believe that Jesus was the son of God and the Meschiach and Jews
believe that
Jesus wasn’t the son of God and the Meschiach is yet to
arrive.
Chris:
I have to disagree with you there. The theologians certainly do, but
the
layperson generally does not, in my experience. And even where there is
acknowledgement that they are all worshipping the same god, there is
almost
universally the belief that those other faiths are "doing it wrong".
In any case, my reading of Dave's request implies that in addition to
believing
in the one god of all three religions, you also have to accept the
validity of
the various methods of worship of that one god. This is where I believe
Rick
will fall down. If Muslims (not to mention people like Dave who follow
their
own path, or those who aren't Jews who don't accept Christ as their
saviour)
don't get into heaven in your view, you don't qualify, IMO.
Of course, given Dave's nigh-unto-liberal interpretation of the "not a
feminist" requirement, he may just require lip-service on this issue,
too.
Dave:
My own view is that monotheism is the key component
as defined within
the parameters of Judaism, Christianity and Islam.
No one accepts my view that the three sacred
texts document the
multi-millennia-long debate between God and YHWH as to who is whose
son—the
Chosen People (chosen both by God and YHWH) choose YHWH worship/the
Christians
are presented with “YHWH the son of God” in the
form of the Synoptic Jesus and “God
the son of YHWH” in the form of the Johannine Jesus and
conflate the two into
one Jesus the son of God/God and YHWH through Muhammad make their final
summation to the jury of humankind using what appears to be the royal
“we” but
which is actually a joint summation, alternating between one viewpoint
and the
other (“Have We not told you…?”). The
net effect has been that God has prevailed in all three religions. If you asked a devout Jew
or Christian or
Muslim to praise YHWH and curse God, they would think you were a
lunatic even
though I’m pretty sure that that’s still the
reality that YHWH is hoping
for. Likewise if
you asked a Muslim if
they thought “The Lord of the Worlds” is the
earth’s molten core, I think they
would be disinclined to subscribe to that view.
Returning to my original point, however, it
does put me in very
isolated (as in unique) territory believing that the debate is on-going
between
God and YHWH so it would be very unlikely that I would find someone who
would specifically
share my faith and so I have to take a “step down”
in the “power of attorney
for personal care” discussion if I want to find God-fearing
people who I think
will represent my best interests.
As
an example, Billy Beach is a devout Jehovah’s Witness. In his prayers he mentions
Jehovah by
name. I had no
problem participating in
those prayers at meal-time when I was visiting because I know that he
means
God. Again, if I
said to him, “After
you’re done praising Jehovah make sure that you curse the
name of God as the
false God and usurper of YHWH’s glory” I know he
would be appalled and refuse
to do so. Ergo, to
me, he’s a
monotheist.
Dan
P: If you do not trust the health care system (and Dave sure isn't the
only
one) then the idea of being subjected to it with anything less than
100% of
your facilities is not a pleasant one.
With the supposedly superior health care system in the U.S., I have
seen a
regular amount of incompentence displayed -- the most recent being my
wife's
grandfather who was almost given medication he didn't need. The process
was
stopped by a family member who was present who questioned the nurse
about to
administer the medicine. "I don't think he needs that."[Checking
paperwork] Flip, flip. "Oh, this isn't for him. Sorry." The
grandfather was not coherent enough to have caught that mistake on his
own.
I've also seen medications prescribed that conflict with patient's
allergies
(and yes, the allergy was in the hospital records), drugs prescribed
indiscriminately without any regard to price ("Take some of these, if
they
don't help come back and I'll prescribe something else.") and the
constant
loss of patient information (why do I fill out the same forms _every_
_time_ I
visit the doctor's office?!?).
His solution is certainly unique. :-) But I don't think it's crazy.
Dave:
It’s probably not particularly efficacious,
either—it’s more that, in
order to cross all the t’s and dot all the i’s of
my “end of life” legalisms
(which is what I set out to do) I had to come up with something that I
thought
would cover all eventualities to the extent that all eventualities
could be
covered. If God
wants me ravaged with
an incurable disease or my brain destroyed by misdiagnosed medicine
then that’s
what’s going to happen.
If, however,
it’s just the Adversary causing trouble, then there are a
certain number of
steps to assist in your own defense (which is what I’m trying
to do here) that
I think you’re kind of obligated to take rather than just
saying “Well, I’ll
just leave ‘power-of-attorney’ blank and count on
God to bail me out.” That’s
backing God into a corner, in my
view. Sorry, God,
too busy to cover my
own bases here—please toss me a miracle at the appropriate
moment, Sincerely,
Dave.
The
sort of things you document I think are pretty well universal in
hospitals and doctor’s offices.
These
guys get a lot of kickback money from the major drug companies to
prescribe
high-priced medication. And,
to be fair
to them, there’s no way that I can see for them know if
there’s any value to
the medication given the universal reality of the placebo effect. You give the medication to
a hypochondriac
who just wanted to have someone “feel their pain”
for thirty minutes and it’ll
clear right up. If
you give it to
someone who actually has a medical problem it could make things worse
or do
nothing. You might
as well just flip a
coin at that point or say “Take some of these and if they
don’t help, come back
and I’ll prescribe something else.”
Even in that case it might be a
hypochondriac whose self-pity has hit an
all-time high and you’ll have to prescribe three different
medications—three
different thirty-minute “I feel your pain”
sessions—before their mind will stop
making the pain up. Or
they might get
laid or win the lottery and suddenly they feel better.
Steroids have become very popular with the
medical profession for the exact reason that they make people feel
better in
the short term. Make
them feel like
Superman, in fact. The
same reason that
they used to give housewives speed: “mother’s
little helper”. Steroids
and speed are obviously (to me,
anyway, obviously) bad long-term solutions to anything and are very
difficult
to wean people off of. Doctors
don’t
seem to be unduly troubled by that when it comes to prescribing
steroids and
speed.
__________________________________________
Rick
S: You know, this sounds a lot like me. I
mean, I think I've been pretty public about all of the above for years.
Scary, hunh?
You were the first candidate who came to mind. ;)
Larry
H: And I thought you were excluded on a technicality for not giving
Islam equal
weight with Christianity, but upon re-reading Dave's request, I see
that's not
a condition. He doesn't say you can't be a husband or father either. I
say go for it.
Dave:
No, again, it’s a general
idea of monotheism as related in the Torah,
the Gospel and the Koran. I
don’t
believe that Jesus was God’s son but I believe in the same
God as the people
who believe that Jesus was God’s son.
The same as I believe in the same God as
Billy Beach even though he
calls Him Jehovah.
Billy
Beach is also a husband and a father.
Feminism makes it supremely difficult to be
a God-fearing husband
and father but nothing is impossible with God, including keeping
feminism at
bay either in a wife or a daughter as long as you realize that your
relationship with God dwarfs your relationship with your wife or
daughter in
importance.
Jeff S: Yes. I'm coming in late on this (or early, depending on for how
long
this drags out), but I have several thoughts to contribute.
First, believing in the God of the Bible, the Torah, and the Koran
means
primarily that one is monotheistic. If my memory serves, when Dave
wrote about
his conversion, he pointed out that when he came to the conclusion that
he
"needed religion" (my quotation marks--not his exact words), he knew
right off the bat that it would have to be a monotheistic religion. To
him, and
to me, that pretty much means the God of the Bible, the Torah, and the
Koran.
Secondly, and thusly, believing in the God of the Koran does not
necessarily
dictate that one must believe in all of the tenets of the Koran, just
as
believing in the God of the Bible does not mean that one has to buy
into
"Jesus is the son of God," or that the Acts of the Apostles, the
Pauline epistles, etc. were the true word of God. (See Dave's
discussion of
that, elsewhere.) Nor, that believing in the God of the Torah means
that one
must become a Hassidic Jew. It means, fundamentally, that you believe
in the
one God that the three
faiths all recognize as God.
Dave: Yes,
exactly. The Koran
assures us that our disagreements will be cleared up for us on Judgment
Day. Given the
limited range of
perception and understanding that we have in our
“meat-encased” existences (not
knowing when a soul enters a fetus as a good example of our intrinsic
ignorance
of core realities) it seems more sensible to work on developing faith
and what
we consider good orthopraxy than to expend a lot of time on subjects
the
accuracy of which are beyond our ability to determine.
Life’s tough enough and anything I
can put
off to Judgment Day because a human being is incapable of coming to a
conclusion
about it based on evidence, I’m more than glad to put off to
Judgment Day.
Jeff S:
Third, I agree that there is a lot of gray areas in defining whether
one
denounces feminism. I am a schoolteacher. Most teachers are women and
most male
and female teachers are feminists. I am most decidedly not a feminist,
in my
mind, and I believe, based on discussions in our respective letters,
that Dave
would at least lean towards concurring with me on that point.
Nevertheless, I
think that in Dave's mind, I lean precariously close to being a
feminist simply
by virtue of the fact that I work in a field that is very predominantly
littered with feminists.
Dave: Yes,
allowances have to be made although making allowances means that
as a society we are digging ourselves deeper into the feminist pit on a
daily
basis. At some
point either men have to
start drawing a line in the sand or we are apt to get beyond the point
of no
return where we can’t climb out of the feminist pit. It’s one of the
reasons I’m so vocally opposed to feminism because
happenstance has— thank God and God willing—put me
beyond reach of their
talons. That’s
where it has to start
and then move on to the fellows who will be putting their livelihoods
at risk
by openly dissenting from the feminist dictatorship.
Everyone has to decide for himself when the
time is right, as I
did in 1994.
Jeff S:
Fourth, I applaud you, Matt, for deciding to do your homework first. I
would
just suggest that, while reading the Bible and the Koran will be
inherently,
vastly rewarding to you personally, I'm not sure that it is absolutely
necessary prior to stating a belief in the God of the Bible, Torah, and
Koran.
I say that because of the above argument as to Who is denominated by
that
phrase. Technically, if you want the first and, I think, the most
definitive
designation, all you really have to do is read the Pentateuch. I can't
speak
for
Dave, and I don't know about what you two talked for an hour, but I'm
guessing
that he would lean towards agreeing with me on this point.
Dave: It’s
a tough call because I’m not exactly a theological guide and
I’m
unwilling to be cast in that role.
I
can tell you the areas of disagreement between Judaism, Christianity
and Islam
but I can’t tell you which number to put your money on. If Jesus was
God’s son and there was only
one Jesus and he was the Meshiach, it seems to me that Judaism and
Islam are
going to be of very little use to you and would, in that case, be
blasphemous
heresies. There
might be something in
the Book of Isaiah that would hit Matt like a ton of bricks and make
him See
The Light, so I’d be doing him a disservice by saying just
read the
Pentateuch. Matt’s
girlfriend, Paula
(hi, Paula!) is a borderline lapsed Catholic who is going to Mass only
because
Matt will go with her. If
Matt doesn’t
go, she’s going to stop going.
Something of a theological nut-cracker for
young Matthew. That
may be how God is setting about the
task or it could be the Adversary as well (“If attending
Catholic Mass for six
months doesn’t scare him away from God, I don’t
know what will”). Those
are Matt’s choices to make.
Submission to the will of God is all that I
counsel. After
that, God’s will be
done.
Jeff S:
Fifth, and going back to my third point, I have pointedly written to
Dave on
several occasions that I am decidedly anti-feminism for a variety of
reasons.
And, as some of you know from personal discussion with me, and others
may know
from having read some of my posts, I was celibate for over seven and a
half
years (coincidentally very nearly the same length of time as Dave, up
to that
point) when I foolishly had sex with a woman one time in late June. I
have
since returned to celibacy and, for a variety of reasons, don't see
that ending
anytime in the near future. I would lean toward whoever it was that
pointed out
that you have a girlfriend, Matt, but I would also concede your
(implied) point
that not being a feminist could simply mean recognizing that men and
women are,
by nature,
differentiated, thereby negating the central tenet of feminism that men
and
women are completely interchangeable. And, of course, you tell us that
Dave is
on board with you making the declaration whenever you feel ready to,
should you
come out the other ends of the Bible and the Koran believing in the one
God of
Abraham (sorry, should have put a spoiler warning on that one). Me? I
would say
you pretty much have to be unshackled from a woman in order best to fit
the
term "not a feminist," but that's just me.
Dave: Yes,
I would agree that the inclination and intent count for a
lot. At the same
time, Billy Beach is
definitely not a feminist and from what I saw from the week I was there
he’s a
very good husband and father. There
might be a world of difference between being “unshackled from
a woman” and
“unshackled from women”.
I tend to see
them as tending to go bad out of perverse resistance.
She can seem like a good wife and mother,
but if she’s watching Desperate
Housewives she could be ready to bolt at any point. A
woman’s right to
choose. I’m not sure how much egg that leaves on the
husband’s face in God’s
eyes but I tend to suspect “Quite a bit”.
If the vast majority of women ever start
behaving like “wives and
mothers” and potential “wives and
mothers” and stop using the escape hatch,
then it might be safe to go back in the pool but I don’t see
that happening
anytime soon. My
best guess in terms of
percentages is that maybe 5% of women are potentially wives and mothers
and 95%
are capable of changing their minds at any point without notice and
bolting. Those are
lousy odds when it comes to getting
“shackled” and I assume that God, at this point in
human history, is more in
the market for men who are willing to be vocally unshackled and
identify
feminism as a societal malaise (where its failings outweigh its
benefits in the
long term) than men who are willing to give their marriages 110% and
end up
standing there with egg on their faces.
Jeff S:
Sixth, I just got off the phone with Dave. I said, "I've read your
letter
to Wilf and I wanted to check with you before I posted that I believe
that I
can say that I fit the two categories, but I think you might agree from
the
things that we've written in our letters that I do fit the two
categories." He replied, "Yeah, yeah, I would have to say that you
pretty much do." And then he asked whether anyone else had posted that
they also do, and I said that to my knowledge there was Rick who had
not
*officially* done so but had implied that he did and there was Matt who
was
going to read the Bible and Koran first. He agreed with me
that the Pentateuch would pretty much do it, but also agreed
that it would be good, if Matt really wanted to be sure.
Dave: That’s
a bit of a distortion since it would suggest that I know what
“sure” is and that I could assure Matt that I know
what “sure” is which I
don’t. Again,
I can tell you what I see
as the major disagreements but I’m no more
“sure” than I would be saying that
you will always win at roulette if you bet “Red 17”
first. You may well
win every time you bet “Red 17”
first but that’s more likely to be an accident than anything
to do with my
being “sure”.
Jeff S:
So, here is my first, informal declaration. I believe in the God of the
Bible
and the Torah and the Koran AND I am, most decidedly, not a feminist. I
am
willing to take on the task delineated in Dave's letter to Wilf if, God
willing, I am not incapacitated myself when the time comes.
After I have sent my information to Dave's barrister, I will
post formally on the POLICY thread.
P.S. One of the last things Dave said to me on the phone after I told
him of
the gist of the posts thus far was, "Well if it's posted on the group
and
48 hours later a couple of people have come out in favor of it, that
just says
something about the nature of the society that we live in today." I had
to agree with that.
Dave: Yes,
that’s one of those things.
The Adversary can certainly see it as a
signal triumph that out of
however many thousand Cerebus readers only two or three are willing to
openly
declare on the two subjects. At
the
same time, I think that can have a negative effect from the
Adversary’s
viewpoint because it might wake some people up to what the percentages
are in
both categories. I
don’t think God
finds it unduly troubling. He’s
got
three guys to work with if the Adversary tries to take me out by
conventional
Marxist means. That’s
all I was trying
to do—was to make sure He would “have a dog in that
fight” without leaving it
entirely up to Him. If
there are six
guys by the year 2010, well so much the better.
All along with the Cerebus
experiment I’ve been the pathfinder and it’s a
responsibility I take
seriously. If
there’s a Dave Sim up
ahead who isn’t an innovator but who is necessary to God (and
dramatically more
necessary than Dave Sim was) then I see it as my job to plot a complete
life
trajectory, identify the pitfalls and if necessary end up dying because
I made
a wrong choice so that whoever he is knows not to make that choice when
he gets
to that juncture. I
learned a lot from
Elvis and John Lennon up to a point and then they both went off the
rails in my
view and let love supersede their obligation to the musicians that
would come
after them. If you
follow Elvis’
trajectory you end up face down in front of the toilet with your pants
around
your ankles and a pagan paperback open on the floor at 42. If you follow John
Lennon’s trajectory you
end up shot to death in front of your apartment building at 40.
If
you talk about these things while you’re still alive you
really
irritate people and you make them hate you and want to destroy you. To me, it’s more
important to serve as a
template for future people who want to attempt your course of action
than it is
to be vaguely admired by the general populace.
_______________________________________________________
Matt D: Reading the Bible and the Koran is just sorta hedge-betting to me. I'm pretty sure I'll agree and we'll be off to the races, but I really wanna be sure. Thank God I'm not the only one willing to do this (accept Dave's offer,) it'd scare the pants off me if I was the only one.
(Gee me and Jeff S. and (maybe) Rick, against the world!)
Dave: There
was a great cartoon by Vip (I think it was) in Playboy years
ago—massed legions of mounted heavily armed pike vanishing
out onto the
horizon. In the
bottom left corner, a
guy in a bearskin with a club standing next to two cripples with
pointed
sticks. Up above
them is the director
with the film crew behind him shouting through his megaphone
“Okay, Kirk,
sweetie—Let’s take it from your line
‘Come on! They can’t stop men who want to
free!’” I’ve
thought about that cartoon
a LOT since 1994.
________________________________________________
(on Terry Schiavo)
Jeff S: Due to what he sees as the atheistic "fear of death" (which I disagree with) and the marxist/feminist notion of undermining a man's wishes, or the will of God for that matter... It makes sense in that regard. It seems contrary to what we saw with the whole terry Schaivo drama, but what was motivating the politicians who supported keeping her alive? Who were they trying to satisfy?
Dave: Their
respective constituencies.
Politicians are usually trying to just get
in on the most popular
viewpoint and avoid the most unpopular viewpoint.
In the blue state/red state checkerboard
pattern of the modern
United States it would depend on the jurisdiction.
In San Francisco or Portland, pulling the
plug would be a
political no-brainer (er—in a manner of speaking) and a good
way to score
brownie points in the ranks of the electorate.
In Alabama or Mississippi, I would think
that supporting “life at all
costs” would be a way of picking up brownie points from the
electorate. Most
other places were probably just as
happy to see it disappear from the headlines before their politicians
were
forced to piss off half of their constituency by making a choice.
________________________________________________
(response to Rick Sharer)
Steve
B: Again, if I remembered your stance wrongly, I apologize. But I
thought
you were weighing in on the side of the parents in the Schiavo case.
And the
public perception, certainly the perception of most of those on the
"just
let her die" side of the fence, was that everyone siding with the
parents
was "keep her alive in perpetuity, no matter what,
because God is pro-Life." And the parents really were that way
– one of
them admitted under oath that if Terry HAD said to them that she would
have
wanted the plug pulled that they would not have honored her request,
and gave
the sacredness of human life as the reason.
But there were a lot of people on their side who were thoughtfully
concerned
that this woman *wasn't* a vegetable, and *hadn't* expressed a wish not
to be
kept that way, and while I think those people were wrong, I don't think
they
should be lumped in with those other folks. And just from what I know
of you,
I'm pretty sure that if you *were* on the side of the parents (again,
sorry if
I got that wrong), you'd be in the second group, not the first.
Dave: Obviously,
I tend to think in terms of the intellectual viewpoints
involved rather than, say, “the parents”.
If you ask me what I think is right, that
would be one answer, if you
ask me what the law says, that would be another answer.
In terms of “power of attorney for
personal
care” if the individual hasn’t got a notarized
written preference then the
decision falls to the “next of kin” and as far as I
know “spouse trumps family”
in that particular paper/rock/scissors game although in anything having
to do
with the courts the wanton and indiscriminate application of money is
ultimately going to be the deciding factor.
If the spouse wants to pull the plug because
that’s what the patient
would’ve wanted, but the parents are willing to mortgage
their house and cash
in all their securities to pay a high-priced legal firm to fight it,
the odds
are the parents are going to win whether they’re right in a
general sense or
right about the patient specifically.
___________________________________________________
Stanley L: Dave's explication, and to a lesser extent his solution, are so specific as to make a higher percentage of agreements statistically unlikely -- I don't think it is any surprise to him if people continue to collectively roll their eyes.
Dave: No,
I’ve pretty much accepted at this point that people
collectively
roll their eyes about me as a matter of course.
With all due respect, I think it’s
much easier to roll your eyes
than to have a coherent worldview that you’re capable of
defending.
Stanley L: One problem that I see is that, when considering the texture
of public opinion,
Dave requires complete capitulation to his ideas before he will even
begin to
consider a response as reasonable. I think the idea of making his
treatment
and/or the decision about his fate public information is brilliant. At
the same
time, I don't think the vast majority of doctors who are likely to be
treating
him are going to be influenced by his comic books or his essays, one
way or the
other. We know which "side" this puts me on, in terms of whether or
not Dave would see me as reasonable.
Dave: Well,
no. Actually that’s eminently reasonable.
I certainly haven’t heard back
from Wilf,
nor do I particularly expect to. It’s
just as likely he’s joined in the collective eye-rolling. Even if he’s
able to frame my “power of
attorney for personal care” as I’ve outlined it,
there’s no guarantee that the
courts would allow it or uphold it.
My
best guess is that they would take it out of my hands and put it in my
family’s
hands which is why I have to be so vehement in wanting my family
excluded. Any chink
in the armour and they’re going to
be in there like a dirty shirt. And,
in
the immediate crisis we’re speculating about, I agree. Doctors is doctors. They think
they’re God because most people
treat them that way, so I would assume in the lunatic asylum they work
in the
odds are they would just bypass Sandeep and demand a contact name for a
family
member. The
Doctor/Family Axis is
pretty much unassailable. I
don’t think
that’s right, but I certainly acknowledge that it’s
realistic. Wilf’s
a pretty imaginative guy. If
anyone is able to frame a supportable
document I would imagine he is.
Stanley L:
It must be nice to be so sure of yourself at all times. Fortunately for
the
rest of us, there are people like Dave Sim to let us know when we're
getting
off track.
Dave: All
part of the job description—and just think: I don’t
charge you a
penny for the services provided! All
this ethical societal aggravation is FREE FREE FREE!! Actually
I’m not sure of
myself. I make my
choices on a “going
forward” basis and I accept that I have to live with the
consequences if those
choices are wrong. That’s
why I
strongly recommend that no one take my word for anything. My soul is at stake on the
basis of my
choices. Your soul
is at stake on the
basis of your choices.
Jeff T: Or that it seems like a good idea to have
people that actually
share my beliefs make decisions for me when I can't? Decisions that I
may
actually agree with?
But whether or not the Doctor is influenced by Dave's comics or essays is irrelevant. Will the doctor, without outside influence, act in a way other than the Marxist Medical Association expects him/her to act? Will Dave's wishes be fulfilled in a way that Dave would agree with? Dave's looking for insurance against the Way Things Are, and he's not not going to get that from people that don't share his views. So yeah, the second half of your last paragraph is an unreasonable statement.
Let's
not turn this into an attack on Dave, OK? The guy asked
for help and/or input on a sensitive issue, not to be skewered *yet
again*. If
you're so set on proving him wrong, stop proving him right.
Dave:
It’s all right, Jeff. I
don’t
want to be like the Marxist-feminists and close off debate because
people
disagreeing with me is somehow “wounding”.
If I’m
“wounded” by honest reactions—which
I’m sincerely not—that says
far more about my own position than it does about people disagreeing
with
me. I
knew exactly the can of worms
that I was opening by bringing the “power of attorney for
personal care” to the
Yahoos on the basis that I did and I had a pretty good idea what the
reaction
was going to be. In
my experience doing
what you think is right can never factor in possible or likely
reactions as a
basis for decision-making (What will people think of me?). There’s right
and there’s wrong and most of
the time in our world doing what’s right entails severe
consequences and doing
what’s wrong is pretty much clear sailing.
I’ve done both and
that’s been my experience, anyway.
Rick S: Heh. Jeff, my friend, that is your best reply of all
time! :)
Jeff S: That's just another reminder, Jeff, of why I like you so much.
You have already
excluded yourself from this "project," yet you are a man of such
ability to reason, that you readily defend Dave's decision. I told Dave
on the
phone, when he asked about posts (this was around 4 p.m. on October 13,
2005), that he already had one detractor
(Chris), which he, of course, expected. Then I told him that I thought
his
letter was very well-reasoned and, really, the only thing he could do,
given
his circumstances.
It doesn't matter whether one agrees with him or not. It is his last
will and
testament. Respect it, or shut up.
Dave:
Or disrespect it and speak up—of course I’d prefer
that people
speaking up limit themselves to contributions that are useful to the
project at
hand: i.e. how to supersede the Way Society Does Things with what I
want
society to do in my own case. But
there’s no reason that someone couldn’t rationally
dispute the whole idea,
suspect my own motives and attempt to undermine my argument as being
inherently
detrimental to society in all sincerity—just as I do with
Marxist-feminism. If
you don’t want
your own viewpoints suppressed you can’t advocate the
suppression of other
viewpoints.
(more Terry Schiavo)
Jeff:
For the most part, yes, but even that was a dog and pony show
meant to distract from the political agenda of restructuring
congressional and
judicial powers. Reigning in renegade lower courts (in Florida no less!)
Remember, it wasn't just Republicans who voted to have the tube
re-inserted. It was 156, joined by 47 Democrats.
Who knows? Maybe this is even more of a reason to get the questions
about Powers of Attorney out of the way, so "good" people aren't
forced to make "bad" choices because there is no living will.
I agree there are glaring contradictions. I don't know the answer. I
think Dave is smart enough to figure it out eventually.But it's not my
decision, and it never will be.
Dave:
I think at the very least you should be aware if you are in the
catbird seat when it comes to “power of attorney for personal
care” and who is
in the catbird seat when it comes to your own “power of
attorney for personal
care”. Here’s
a good example: husband
says to his wife, “I don’t want to be kept alive
artificially. If
there’s any brain damage, I want you to
authorize pulling the plug.”
Wife: “I
don’t think I could do that.”
You’re
better off knowing. That
way you take
the decision out of your wife’s hands and put it in your
family’s hands or in
the hands of someone who is going to do what you want them to do by
putting it
down on paper legally and having it notorized.
If you’re a spouse or the next of
kin for anyone you should ask them
what they want to have done and make sure that they get it legally put
down on
paper if its at variance with the opinion of anyone else who might be a
party
to the decision-making. It’s
not
particularly relevant what you
come up with so long as you come
up with something and get it
framed in legal terms. Terry
Schiavo and her husband evidently had
the conversation but they didn’t get it put in writing and
notarized. It
would’ve saved them and America a lot of
aggravation if they had.
<< More in-fighting. "This group existed long before Dave" "Don't talk about him behind his back" "He's crazy" "No he's not">>
<<Etc, Etc>>
Dave:
Policy is a little different since I
get these print-outs. You’re
not talking behind my back except in
a time-delayed sense. I
accept that the
vast majority of people think I’m crazy.
That’s what I’m trying
to work around because it does potentially have
long-term repercussions in my life particularly as pertains to
“power of
attorney for personal care”.
I don’t
think saying I’m crazy is particularly helpful in any
discussion. I like
to think that if you think I’m crazy
that you would steer clear of my work and people who admire/enjoy my
work. I
don’t see what’s served in just endlessly
repeating that Dave Sim is crazy or collectively rolling your eyes no
matter
what Dave Sim says. On
the other hand,
it may provide a useful catharsis for its participants and
it’s pretty easy to
avoid when it comes to my own decision-making.
Am I crazy?
I decided some time
back that, no. I’m not crazy so I don’t see any
pressing need to revisit the
question as often as many others seem to see just such a pressing need.
Jeff:
All valid points, and food for thought. Thanks.
I still think he is (or was) actually *very* emotional/sensitive
Dave:
I’m pretty much able to hone in
on the core points of an argument and
determine for myself what I think is right and what I think is wrong. I’m pretty sure
that you can’t do that if
you’re *very* emotional/sensitive since those time periods in
my life when I
was the most emotional/sensitive were the ones where I made the worst
decisions.
Jeff: and has adopted an unemotional stance for self preservation.
Dave:
I can assure that un-emotionalism is
no more a “stance” with me than
emotionalism is a “stance” with you. In
both cases it’s a choice.
You think
(or, more likely, feel) that emotions need to be
factored into
decision-making and my own conclusion based on long, hard experience is
that
emotions are detrimental to decision-making.
I reserve my emotions for things like 9/11,
the earthquake in Kashmir,
the drowning of New Orleans where my own decision-making
doesn’t apply but
where I see the Hand of God Writ Large.
My Eid Mubarak card from Reflections on
Islam this year shows a ticking
clock and quotes Sura Jonah 10:49 “For every nation there is
an appointed
term. When their
term comes, they
cannot delay it for an hour or advance it.”
You know: Happy Eid-al-fitr everyone!
But it’s a very
Islamic approach
to address it directly. Kashmir
got hit
by this massive earthquake that killed tens of thousands in the first
few days
of Ramadan. What
else would you have to
say when Ramadan is over? This
is what
God wants us to be thinking about, obviously.
The big debate now is whether the earthquake
was a judgment on
Musharraf’s government in Pakistan for siding with the
Americans in the War on
Terror or on Kashmir as an al-Qaeda hotbed.
To me it seems kind of obvious.
The earthquake didn’t hit
Pakistan, it hit Kashmir. But,
again,
these are large issues which genuinely touch
my emotions. Having
the flu for three months didn’t touch
my emotions. Where
my own
decision-making applies or is central (as with “power of
attorney for personal
care”) I just keep the emotions at a remove from it because I
want to make the
right choice.
Jeff: Whatever the case may be, I don't want to belabor this *particular* subject with this kind of thing. If he's trying to trust a group of people more than usual, I don't want to slap his hand away.
Dave:
No, there again it appears to me that
you’re trying to make it into an
emotion-based construct—that I’m
“reaching out” to people and “trying to
trust
a group of people”. I’m
trying to make
the best possible decision that I can that will create the greatest
likelihood
of a positive outcome in the eyes of God.
Whether my society will allow me to do that
or not is the issue. Belief
in God and Disbelief in Feminism to
me are two cornerstones of sanity in our society and I would rather
that anyone
making decisions on my behalf be as demonstrably sane as possible
before I
create a situation where they are allowed to do so.
That’s not the same thing, in my
view, as reaching out to people
or trying to find people I can trust.
Jeff: There are better
subjects for
such Sim deconstruction, IMO. Certainly there's no defending "Men grow
from sperm, Women grow from eggs" unless it's some kind of clever
analogy
lost on the masses!
Dave:
On the contrary, I think if you analyze sperm nature and egg nature
you’ll find that a lot of masculine attributes can be linked
to the former and
feminine attributes to the latter.
The
deeper reading I did on the initial stages of the development of the
blastocyst
(and even earlier in the process) which I didn’t have room to
incorporate into
289/290 only confirmed those viewpoints for me.
Jeff: Maybe I'm just a little uneasy about this whole subject -
although
there's really no reason I should be. Ah well.....
Dave:
With all due respect, Jeff, I think your uneasiness is soul-deep. These discussions touch on
the secular
context that you inhabit as well as I do and that you need to make as
many hard
decisions as I do and get them put down in the form of a legal document
after
having a number of very uncomfortable discussions with the relevant
figures in
your own “power of attorney for personal care”
construct. The
construct exists even if you don’t take
an active role in shaping it. I
think
you have the disadvantage of not really having any belief system to
apply to
your decision-making. What
do you want
done if you’re incapacitated and why is that what you want to
have done? It’s
far easier discussing Terry S. as if
she’s some remote laboratory specimen and the only one who
will ever go through
it rather than considering that you could be the next Terry S.
Jeff: He also attributed the "Give Elian Gonzoles political asylum in order to keep him from is father" attitude to atheist/marxist/feminists. If you believe that was the sole reason, then yes.
Dave: I do think that the father should have control over a minor’s decision-making where that decision-making is at variance with the mother’s wishes which I think was the core issue in that story. As far as I know the father is a communist ideologue which I’m not. To me, the father controlling a minor’s decision-making supersedes all other considerations including what I or anyone else might think is in the minor’s best interests.Larry
H: Except that it was conservative Republicans (anti-Castro) who were
doing that,
not Democrats or lefties. And if conservative Republicans are
atheist/marxist/feminists too, then why does Dave consider them to be
"his
team"?
Dave: See above.
Jeff:
No idea. Does Dave still believe that about the Gonzalez
episode? Could it be that "bad seeds" within the Republican party did
this for said reasons (and also to contradict Clinton in every way
possible -
making him appear to be a Castro/Communist supporter)? And in calling
them
"his team" is it just that they most closely match
his ideas, if not perfectly?
Dave: See above.
Dave: If by “the sort of people” you mean people who believe in God and who aren’t feminists, yes, that’s exactly “the sort of people” I was hoping would agree. That’s why I made those the criteria.
Rick S: One thing Dave *is* sure of, is that he's screening out the people who *aren't* going to be saying "yes", and apparently that's much more important to him. Dave has been blasted for two things over the last decade: his stance on the Genders (to the point of being habitually labelled as a "misogynist"), and his newly found belief in God. Is it any wonder that he would require these two declarations from people he needs to trust?
Billy B: I've just got back from a few days away on business in Belfast, so I woke up at 4 this morning in Belfast, have been on a plane for 3 hours to Rome from which I drove across to the other side of Italy taking a further 3 1/2 hours. I'm now back in the office at work and have seen some of the postings on this matter. I will now proceed to print out this text from Dave and read it closely over the weekend hopefully coming to some kind of decision on what position to take, or what steps I need to take so as to clarify what all this entails. From what I've read in the group's replies to this post (I haven't read any of Dave's text yet directly) I would agree with Dave's one God position though I obviously do not think that all 3 monotheistic religions or their respective multitude of offshoot religions are serving their one God in the way He suggests. I would also agree with his anti-feminist stance, I am quite open in conversation when the topic comes up that I am not a feminist explaining why not, but Dave does see me as a married man to have capitulated to the feminist stance (I may wait until Dave's reply to my latest letter arrives before taking a official position about this, as I brought the subject up in it).
Dave:
As Billy would have discovered I
don’t see him as having capitulated
to feminism by marrying Francesca.
I
think it does put him in a potentially awkward context relative to his society
depending on how Francesca chooses to be.
At the same time, I’m reasonably
certain that Francesca is a devout
Jehovah’s Witness and that that serves to check her
conventionally rebellious
female nature which I think devout faith tends to do.
If, as a woman, you have eliminated God from
consideration or
reconfigured Him in your feminist image, then I think you will just go
through
life rebelling and, thus, making you a problem for any guy who makes
the
mistake of finding himself within your context.
I also don’t envy Billy when it
becomes apparent the level of
feminist indoctrination to which Emily and Kevin will be subject when
they get
into the later grades. That’s
my
biggest concern as an anti-feminist is that I would be legally kept
from
raising my children as anti-feminists because of the feminist
dictatorship (of
course my wife would have left long before that, but there’s
still the level of
responsibility—my son’s being turned into a little
girl and my daughter is
being trained to become a man and there’s nothing I can do
about it)
Billy:: I also do not agree
with those
who think that medicine is the solution to all problems, the only
medication I
use regularly is Ventolin for my Asthma, I also use other medication
when absolutly necessary, but I do always look for a non-medical
solution when
there is one. In any case I just wanted to let you all know that I have
seen
this Post and will be making some kind of decision about it as soon as
I've
established the position I should take.
Larry
H: Maybe it
bugs you just a *little* bit that no matter how close
you've gotten to Dave through recent correspondence, no matter
how
supportive you've demonstrated yourself to be, no matter how much hard
work you've done on his behalf here on the list...he still
equates
you with Hilary Clinton or Cindy Sheehan "in the final
analysis".I
certainly understand if that's the case. ;)
Dave:
Larry I really wish that if you are going to take this direct attack
approach on my politics that you leave the little
“winky-smiley” face off of
the end. As a
general rule, I tend to
find it a lazy literary device which allows people to be a little more
direct
than they want to be and then to take the edge off by putting those
idiotic
symbols in there ;). See
what I
mean? Just for the
record, no one gets
close to Dave. It
is (inexplicably) a
thing devoutly to be wished in some quarters but as I just finished
explaining
in a letter to Dan Parker, what I’m interested in are ideas. I was interested in the
13-page David Brin
piece that you sent me if only because you thought that his view of the
Iraqi
occupation reflects your own viewpoint more eloquently than you could
manage. There have
been other things you’ve
sent that were just tedious or, to me, irrelevant. In neither case did
I
respond to the name on the envelope apart from recognizing who it was
from. I respond
when I open the
envelope and see what the person has to say and what question they want
me to
answer. I try to
answer all questions
but if the answer to the question is “I just don’t
think that evidence supports
feminism as a positive force in society” then I’m
not apt to have a positive
response to the person’s letter.
If the
next letter allows me to commit to paper something I’ve been
mulling over for
the previous four weeks then I’m apt to have a positive
response to that
letter. But in
neither case does the
response “carry over”.
Oh, yay—a letter
from Dan Parker. I’ve
had letters from
Dan that were in both categories.
I
take them as they come.
>
Jeff
T: Not really, but only because I *expect* that. It just seems an odd
forum for such a request to me. But for someone with no family
connections, and
apparently very few friends, I suppose it makes sense. Of
course I'd be lying if I said I wasn't at least a *little* upset
about being "shut out" of this current policy-- but at the same time
I'm relieved that
this laid-back-and-jovial-on-the-outside-but-stressed-out-control-freak-on-the-inside
has one less thing to be responsible for because it's completely out of
my
control. It's Dave's choice, and that's fine with me! I will
continue to help where I can, to be a part of the community,
and be involved with Dave until he tells me to "Go On, Beat It, and
Scram" because I respect the man, his work... and of course -- I'm a
raving, drooling fanboy:)
Unknown: ...I told him of the gist of the posts thus far was,
"Well if it's posted on the group and 48 hours later a couple of people have come out in
favor of it, that
just says something about the nature of the society that we live in
today." I had to agree with that.
Unknown:
Did he think it said a good thing or a bad thing?
Unknown: Larry, I would guess, from his tone of voice that it would indicate the overall decline of society as we know it; or, at least, as he knows it.That's what I figured, but I need to specify further. What seemed to be indicative of a bad thing to him? The fact that a few people responded so quickly (indicating we're all geeks with no life off-line)? The fact that ONLY a few people responded so quickly? Thefact that people responded so SLOWLY?
Larry:
'Cause at the very least, he's mistaken about how quickly the responses
came.
It wasn't up for 48 hours before Matt made his pledge and you and Rick
chimed
in, was it? Less than a day, to my recollection. And if the post was up
for
longer than that before I actually read it, well, does Dave think all
of us are
here on line all the time? I'm asking a legitimate question here, not
presuming I know the answer. Just
what did Dave seem disappointed with?
Dave:
Obviously (?):
that out of thousands of potential
candidates only two or three were
willing to state publicly that they believe in God and that they think
feminism
is misguided. I
wasn’t disappointed.
I was certainly curious
as to how
many—if any—would volunteer.
Had I been
heart-stoppingly interested enough to be
“disappointed” with the result I could’ve
gone down to the library to check it on an hourly basis. It was more a matter of I
had set off the
bomb and now I had other things to get caught up on before I find out
what the
results of the bomb going off were.
Three responses actually surprised me with
the immediacy of it. It
certainly had the intellectual texture of
my having gotten that one thin strand across the chasm between feminist
society
and the sane society of the future.
Only it turned out to be several
strands—Rick, Jeff, Billy, Sandeep and
possibly Matt. The
immediacy now moves
to Wilf and whether he’s able to actually frame an agreement
in these terms
that will stand up in our Marxist courts.
That’s a great load off my
shoulders the same as finishing the Archive
was a great load off my shoulders.
Anytime I can get a load off my shoulders, I
tend to regard it as a
positive experience.
Mike
B: I would just like to take this opportunity to say that I am
a monotheist
and not a feminist. I don't know if my ideas of either aspect jibe with
what
Dave has in mind, nor am I sure I'd like the responsibility. So for
now, I'm
with Matt, still thinking about this.
Dom: What you're forgetting here is the third factor: IN ORDER
TO GET DAVE'S
POWER OF ATTORNEY. Members not declaring belief in one God or asserting
their
anti-feminism is not the sum total of the experience. Dave didn't just
ask how
many Yahoos believed in one God and were anti-feminists; he did so in a
context. Even with NO SUCH CONDITIONS, how many people in the usual
scheme of
things would really want to assume such responsibility Dave is
discussing here
in relation to someone else? Not very many, I'd guess, especially
someone else
they do not know personally. I wouldn't seek out that sort of authority
in
relation to anyone, and I hope I'm never in a position where I have to
assume
it. That so MANY Yahoos have so quickly come forward is impressive in a
way
entirely opposite to the tone of Dave's response.
Dave:
I think it’s more quiet confidence that I have in the
God-fearing. It’s
one of those things
that your God-fearing nature will respond to.
“This request is being directed at
me and I need to step up to the
plate.” And you step up to plate. Happens all the time.
Bryan: Of course there are many reasons why, but I don't see the point in enumerating my differences with his "Will and Paranoiament" as it seems I am brainless and on drugs (despite the fact that I have a brain and dont do drugs -- even alchohol which IS a drug and which Dave does) and not currently a dues paying member -- or a member paying even the scantest attention to the current "orders" and regulations proclimated by the Oprah society or the femi-marxist-homosexualist-transgendered and vomit tasting society that he THINKS I must belong to.
How could I not have a brain (even one that has scheduling properties in abundance -- or affinity with the blackberry crowd) AND be a member of all these Dave-imagined secret societies ??????
I kind of get the feeling that he has been diagnosed with a mental condition and/or brain tumor --- elstwise why all the morbid discussion about different phases of morbidity. Sad I think.
Dave:
No. I would never
have myself
diagnosed. This
whole process is just a
matter of finishing off all the implications attached to Cerebus
as a
creative work and myself as a human being.
As you can see from the discussion above, I
think that it’s each
person’s individual responsibility to cover all of these
bases and is,
therefore, my responsibility in my own case.
The same as I arranged and paid for my own
funeral. The only
alternative would be to leave it as
a responsibility for someone else who was only vaguely interested. I didn’t get all
those things done before
issue 300 because doing the book was a full-time job, but I consider
them my
job in the same way that I considered getting issue 300 done and out in
March
2004 to be my job.
Bryan: But, congratulations AND thanks to ANYONE able to pass the Dave test and volunteer for the position.
Bryan, who really thinks Dave should just make an iron clad will and testament -- living will -- or legal arrangement.
The only problem I see with that is the first sentence in a will (or all the wills that I have been exposed to) ..... "Being of sound mind and body...." which if he isnt, then he cant lie because God wouldnt want that -- and if he puts his whole life in God's hands -- why wouldn't God MAKE SURE that God got what God wanted out of Dave's entire Legacy?
Dave:
It’s quite possible that this discussion is a big part of
what God
wanted out of my legacy or “legacy”.
Guessing what it is that God wants and
expects of me is the core of my
life at this point. In the same sense that I knew I wasn’t
done with Cerebus
when I finished issue 300.
Collected
Letters struck me as the next natural thing, arranging my
own funeral and
then the Cerebus Archive after that, then staying current with the
mail, Following
Cerebus, attending City Hall meetings, praying five times a
day, fasting in
Ramadan. Everything
gets measured
against the “What does God want me to do?”
yardstick.
Bryan: He did devote everything to him/her. Heh
Jeff S: No, he doesn't (drink). He hasn't had anything alcoholic to drink for, I think, over a couple of years. I'm not sure of the timeline without looking back at my letters, but I know that he doesn't drink alcohol. Frankly, I was surprised that he still drinks caffeinated beverages.
Dave:
Actually, I picked Mountain Dew when I was watching the Diamondback
Tournament because I thought it didn’t
have caffeine in it. If
it did, it sure wasn’t very much because
I had been drinking very little caffeine at that point.
I use caffeine as a drug if I’m
falling
asleep and it’s important that I stay awake but I try to
limit it to that
because regular caffeine consumption just becomes a self-sustaining
thing: I need to
drink lots of coffee just to feel
normal. I
haven’t had any alcohol to
drink since January of 2003 and no coffee since before Ramadan.
<More in-fighting.>
Okay. Is it possible to ask if
people want their in-fighting (or what Jeff considers to be
in-fighting)
included in these print-outs? I
don’t
want anyone to feel like they’re being censored on my behalf.
Billy
B: I want to discuss some of these points to get your opinion
on them before
discussing them directly with Dave. Some of you have discussed this
matter with
Dave over the phone, so you might have already mentioned some of these
things
and have his thoughts on them. So please feel free to comment:
"If I didn't plug myself in—and I can't conceive of any
situation where I
would plug myself in—then I can't see "unplugging" me as
euthanasia"
Well the basic meaning of euthanasia is simply "a good death" so any
decision making that leads to "a good death" can be called
euthanasia, they call it "passive euthanasia" as opposed to actively
trying to achieve death in a terminal sickness situation, which is
called "active euthanasia". Having said that I am personally not
necessarily against "passive euthanasia", but I do see the following
view of Dave's as an exaggeration of the point:
"If I'm incapable of getting to a store on my own to buy food and
prepare
it and eat it
and wash the dishes afterwards then, in my view, I'm dead already so
everything
that happens outside of those parameters to keep me alive would be
contrary to
my personal preferences"
As far as I know, having discussed the matter with him while he was
visiting at
my place, Dave already doesn't do much in the way of
food preparation and dish washing at home in
the first place,
does that mean he is already dead?
Dave: I make salads or sandwiches, put toppings on crackers, open cans of food with the can opener. Since I only have one large plate, one small plate, one bowl and three glasses, I pretty much have to wash dishes after each meal.
Billy B: If he was incapacitated and had to ask someone else to bring food to him because for some reason he couldn't go out and buy it does that mean he is already dead?
Dave:
I don’t think I’m
capable of asking someone else to bring me
food. I ordered
chicken soup from Swiss
Chalet on a regular basis when I had the flu for three months earlier
this
year, but I still went out to the ATM to get money to do that when I
should
have been putting it on VISA which probably caused a relapse or two. I still went and answered
the door. If I was
absolutely infirm and confined to
my bed I think I would just take it as a sign to stop eating and let
nature
take its course.
Billy:
I think there is a big difference between being able to do the things
he
lists in the sentence quoted above, and not being able to eat and
digest food
without medical/technological assistance.
If Dave is in this situation:
"Let's say that I get hit by the bus and I'm just a little, you know,
confused for a couple of days or let's say that I get hit by the bus
and I'm
lapsing in and out of a coma."
Who decides whether the coma he is "lapsing in and out of" is
possibly turning into something more definitive or not, would Dave
approve of
assistance in being able to nourish himself in this circumstance?
Dave:
It would depend on whether I got hit
by the bus and got taken to a hospital
or if I got hit by the bus and managed to make it back here to my room. In the former instance I
think society would
dictate that I get “plugged in” if it was just a
matter of broken bones or
internal injuries healing so I would be kind of compelled to go along
with
it. If I unplugged
myself all I would
accomplish is getting strapped down good and tight so I
couldn’t do that again
and buying myself some extensive Marxist-feminist psychiatric treatment
when I
was pasted back together. If
I made it
back here I would probably just lie there and die as best I could
although I
would probably get taken to a hospital eventually just because Gerhard
would
face criminal liability for not turning me in, I think, and if I had
any
suppurating wounds I’d start to smell pretty bad by the time
he was coming in a
couple of Tuesdays later. He’ll
do what
he thinks is right and so will I.
Billy
B: I ask because the question arises, if Dave asks for assistance
during one
of the "lapsing in" moments, then this could be considered as
"plugging himself in".
"anyone of the Yahoos who is willing—in the event of my
incapacity—to
declare themselves, publicly, here on the Internet to believe in the
One God of
Judaism, Christianity and Islam"
I declare this publicly already on a regular basis, and am willing to
do so on
the internet.
"and to declare themselves not to be feminists (that is, to declare
publicly
that they don't believe men and women are equal and
that—having followed my
argument as thoroughly as you all have—they agree and agree
to agree publicly
that yes, the evidence supports Dave Sim, it doesn't support Oprah
Winfrey,
that the Fourteen Impossible Things to Believe Before Breakfast are
indeed
Impossible, not difficult or unlikely or improbable: Impossible)"
No problem on this either, but would Dave agree with me as I am
married?!?
"They would be required to register with you, Wilf, under their real
names
and with all pertinent contact information so that they can be notified
at the moment of
my entering into a state of incapacity either voluntarily (i.e. an
operation—very unlikely) or as the result of an accident or
"accident".
So should interested parties send their information to Wilf's fax
number at the
top of the message?
Dave:
Yes. Or you can send it in care of me
and I’ll forward it to Wilf.
Billy: Do you think my distance from where Dave is situated could be
viewed as a
reason to not go through with this? I know many North Americans live
very far
away from him too, but they are at least on the same continent. I
would, in the
case that I am one of a group of say 5 men that accept the
responsibility
entailed by this document, prefer to be in a position to jump on a
plane to
Dave's neck of the woods if needs be, so as to be able to ascertain the
facts
and communicate with the relative people face to face, rather than to
simply
vote on matters from a great distance. But considering the distance
that would
likely be impossible for me. Who would be conveying info on Dave's
condition to
the group? Gerhard? If Gerhard is also not around by that time?
Something makes
me think that at least one or more of the God fearing/non-feminist
group would
have to be there in proximity to Dave so as to manage things and to
confer with those others over
the internet who are not local to the events.
Dave:
As far as I can see it would be
Sandeep Atwal since he just lives over
in Waterloo. Sandeep
and his lap-top if
he’s got one so he could let the four others know
what’s going on. It
wouldn’t be Gerhard because he’s the sole
beneficiary of the will so he’s legally not able to make
decisions about my
medical treatment.
Billy: "I don't pray to God with any medical specificity in medical
situations—my
own or others—but certainly for those who ask God for
guidance and regularly receive
it through prayer, that is entirely up to them and they are welcome to
use that
as the basis of their decision in a formal vote. I would ask that they
pray to
God, rather than YHWH or Allah (unless their prayers are in Arabic) or
the
Synoptic Jesus or his mother, Mary or any of the other "gods" which
human beings are inclined to join with God"
Well Dave cannot tell me how to pray! I believe that
YHWH/Yahweh/Jehovah is
God's name, the term God is His title not His name. So even if I did
chose to
omit the name of God from such prayers, and chose to use only His
title, of
what value would that be? I would still be praying to Jehovah God
(YHWH) in my
inner self. Does Dave think we can trick God by using an alternative
wording in
our prayers?
Dave:
No, of course not.
But I’m
reasonably certain that your belief in God runs deeper than your belief
in
Jehovah and you just aren’t aware of it.
I certainly have no problem staking my life
on that gut instinct
response of mine.
Billy: "I would mandate that any and all parts of my treatment (or,
rather,
"treatment") be posted to the Yahoo discussion group on the
Internet."
Again who would be doing this conveying of information to the group?
Dave:
Again, Sandeep, but this is another
instance where there might be
legal roadblocks preventing that from happening.
Sandeep may have to paraphrase
what’s going on depending on what
Wilf finds out about ownership of my own medical condition in those
instances
(I don’t know how else to put it).
With
malpractice becoming ubiquitous it would surprise me that patients have
any
control over descriptions of their own medical conditions. I assume he would apply
appropriate time
constraints. If the
doctors are saying
they need a decision in 24 hours, he can leave it pretty open. If they need a decision in
an hour then you
go to a far more intense Cuban Missile Crisis level of discussion on a
roundtable basis. Sandeep
types his
view, Billy responds, Jeff responds to that, Rick responds to that and
its back
to Sandeep to sum it up or (if there’s time left on the
clock) to go around the
circle again. But,
in those situations
everyone has to accept that there’s no time for people to be
jawing just to see
their own thoughts on the computer screen.
If you have a helpful suggestion, make it. If you don’t
have anything to add, don’t add anything.
Probably leave the last ten minutes for
prayer, call for a recorded vote and then notify the doctors.
Billy: "Obviously, in my case, this requires both global outreach and
patience
over time to find even a handful of genuinely simpatico individuals"
The Italian word "simpatico" does not mean the same thing as its
English usage, only the latter type of meaning applies here because
"simpatico" in Italian means likeable or having attractive qualities,
pleasing. As quite usual in language development the English meaning of
this
Italian word has undergone a radical modification in meaning over a
relatively short
time. In any case I really want to be of any assistance possible to
Dave during
this eventuality and as I've said I would have no problem formally
declaring
myself of the God fearing/non feminist persuasion. So once having
pondered over
the points I have raised above, and having discussed them with Dave
directly I
will based on what Dave says go ahead with this.
Dave:
Sorry for the misapplication of
“simpatico”. I
was using it, Humpty-Dumpty like, in the sense it has come to
mean of ‘sympathetic but not in an emotional sense: aligned
with or in
alignment with”.
Dave:
That’s my best guess. I also
think that assisted living is an extreme result of being really, really
far off
of God’s chosen path for you.
Some
people really need to be flat on their backs for six months or a year
or two
years recovering to even have a chance of seeing their lives with great
enough
clarity to actually make a difference.
In my view, both of my parents went through
it and proved that in their
case it was a waste of time. Inside
of
24 hours after being released from hospital after triple bypass
surgery, my
father was forcing down a glass of red wine with dinner even though it
tasted
terrible to him. Inside of twelve hours of being released from hospital
after a
heart attack my mother was back smoking again.
That’s beyond perverse, to me.
They had no clearer a picture of who and
what they were when it was over than they did when their medical
emergencies
descended upon them. The
key thing to
me is to stick as closely as you can to God’s path so that he
doesn’t have to
hit you with something like that.
I
could be wrong—both about the nature of extreme medical
emergencies and my own
chance of experiencing one—in which case I have to plan for
it as if it’s going
to happen tomorrow. Which
is what I’m
trying to do here.
Jeff T: Isn't "plugging in" a reference to mechanical life support? If Dave is aware (and considered to be of sound mind by an observer and/or witness) and asks to be put on life-support-- I think that would be an overriding factor, legally speaking. Otherwise, he would be considered *not* of sound mind (lapsing) and such decisions would fall to those who he approves for such decisions in advance.
Dave:
It’s very possible that not
wanting to be put on life support could qualify
you as insane in a medical context.
Double jeopardy, in other words:
we’ll hook you up and then pump
you full of psychoactive drugs because
you don’t think the way we do and then we’ll start
working on making you think
the way we do. That’s
when the George
Orwell “fun” would really begin, I imagine.
Jeff T: That could be problematic as you have willingly entered into a state of merged permanence, a feminist construct.
If I were you, I'd pursue the idea until told otherwise by Dave. We're not talking about sitting at his bedside and holding his hand while he awaits death - we're talking about the quick and effective exchange of information, and decisions made by like minded individuals that Dave would approve of. He may be a Luddite, but at this point, Dave appears to at least respect the ability of the internet to serve that function effectively -- in conjunction with telephone communications, etc.
Dave:
Yes, exactly.
Even if it ends
up not being needed in my own case, I think more people should use the
Internet
and its cybernetic reach when it comes to making medical decisions and
fighting
for control over the decision to disseminate diagnostic assessments and
prescriptions
widely enough so as to catch malpractice earlier in the game. Remember half of all
doctors graduated in
the bottom half of their class. And
I
don’t think the incident Dan cited is an exception. “Oops this
isn’t for him.”
How often does that happen where the family
second-guesses
themselves. “These
people are medical
professionals and who am I to question what they’re
doing?” That would be a
good hair-splitting argument for the Adversary to adopt. “He saw the
medication, he thought it didn’t
seem right but he didn’t say anything.
J’accuse.
I charge him with murder by the sin of
omission.”
Jeff T: Who would be conveying the info? That probably has to be worked
out with the legal representation. Functions to be put into effect at
the onset
of illness, legal reps contacting approved guardians, etc. To be worked
out in
the future, I assume.
I am in no way qualified to attempt an answer to the rest of your
questions.
Matt D:
I think Dave was exaggerating. Obviously, if
Dave broke his leg and couldn't get out, he wouldn't be dead.
This is where those of us who take Dave up on the offer have to start playing the "Yeah, but"/"What if...?" game. Where we ask Dave to cover his wishes in case of any number of situations arrising. As Dave doesn't like discussing the hypothetical, this may be hard.
"Better go get Koshie." You'd have to ask Dave. When I talked to him, and I mentioned that my girlfriend is in the healthcare field, and could therefore help inform my opinion, Dave didn't say that having a girlfriend disqualifed me.
I suggest that once the group starts making their declarations that we should all trade contact info so if and when the time comes, Gerhard or whoever can put up the signal and then we can figure out who can get there soonest.
Once one of us is onsite, I would assume that they can inform everybody through the group so there is a "Melmoth-esqe" record of what's going on.
Thanks Billy.
Larry H: This is why Dave wants people who believe in God, and who tend to pray to Him for guidance. He doesn't so much want you to quibble over the minutae of individual scenarios as he wants to be assured you get the gist of what he's after and will use your own best judgement to fill in the gaps, and that where your own best judgement is insufficient to the task, you'll pray to God for clarification or resolve.
Given his personal belief system, that does make a lot of sense.
I don't think Dave is asking that you all agree to live exactly as he would. He wants people who consider themselves to be on his team. If you said that you had to ask your girlfriend/wife if it's ok with her that you manage Dave's estate, I think you'd get the gong pretty quickly, but just having one isn't going to disqualify you in and of itself. 'Course, I don't think Dave imagines anyone's wife or girlfriend putting up with a self-declared anti-feminist for very long, so he probably thinks you're going to have to Make. A. Choice. real soon.
I
think what Dave is getting at is that he'd *prefer* that the folks in
question pray to the one God of monotheism, not just to the god that
they think
"rules" over all of the other gods. Remember, Dave seems to think
that the Jews of the prophetic time were tricked into praying to
YooHWHoo when
they really intended to pray to God, and he considers them to be on the
good team.
- Larry Hart
Sandeep: Well,
I'm a little late to the party. I just finished reading Dave's
letter and have only skimmed a couple of the posts. I guess therelevant
part
is:
"...declare themselves, publicly, here on the Internet to believe in
the
One God of Judaism, Christianity and Islam and to declare themselves
not to be
feminists (that is, to declare publicly that they don't believe men and
women
are equal and that—having followed my argument as thoroughly
as you all
have—they agree and agree to agree
publicly that yes, the evidence supports Dave Sim, it doesn't support
Oprah
Winfrey, that the Fourteen Impossible Things to Believe Before
Breakfast are
indeed Impossible, not difficult or unlikely or improbable:
Impossible)..."
Okay. I, Sandeep S. Atwal publicly declare that I believe in God. I
believe in
the One God of Judaism, Christianity and Islam. I publicly declare that
no, I
am not a feminist. I am an anti-feminist. I do not believe that men and
women
are equal. I believe that women are self-evidently inferior to men.
Yes, I
agree that the evidence clearly supports Dave Sim's position,
specifically the
arguments he makes in Reads and Tangent.
I guess that's reasonably clear. I will submit the above in a letter to
Dave's
lawyer, Wilf. I think this would have been an interesting question even
if it
were not related to any gruesome getting-hit-by-a-bus issue. I think
actually
dealing with any medical decisions (many, many years down the road, I'm
sure)
will be a complete and total hassle, for the reasons Dave describes,
but I
certainly wouldn't have any problem helping out Dave. I think it's nice
he
approached the group with this.
<This post, of course, lead to an extended debate on feminism.>
Lenny: Never too late to join the part, Sandy! LEt me take a stab at it too:
I , Leonard B. Cooper, publicly, here on the Internet do believe in the One God of Judaism, Christianity and Islam and do declare myself not to be feminist as Dave Sim, creator of Cerebus has defined the term. That is, I don't believe men and women are equal, because equal would pretty much mean they are exact replicas of each other. I don't believe ANYONE is equal to anyone else. They're not equal, they're not interchanagable, they're not the same. We are all individuals. I do, however, believe that men and women are entitled to equal protection under the laws of humanity and that they should have equal opportunity to succeed or fail. But equal? No. I also do NOT believe that women are "inferior" to men (or vice versa).
Moreover, having followed Dave's argument as thoroughly as I have, I agree and agree to agree publicly that yes, the evidence supports Dave Sim, it doesn't support Oprah Winfrey, that the Fourteen Impossible Things to Believe Before Breakfast are indeed Impossible, not difficult or unlikely or improbable: Impossible. That is,
It is impossible that a mother who works a full-time job and delegates to strangers the nursing of her children eight hours a day, five days a week does just as good a job as a mother who hand-rears her children full time (although I ALSO believe it is impossible that a father who works a full-time job and delegates to strangers the nursing of his children eight hours a day, five days a week does just as good a job as a father who hand-rears his children full time).
It is impossible that it makes great sense for the government to pay 10 to 15,000 dollars a year to fund a daycare space for a child so its mother - who pays perhaps 2,000 dollars in taxes - can be a contributing member of society (although I also believe that it is impossible that it makes great sense for the government to pay 10 to 15,000 dollars a year to fund a daycare space for a child so its father - who pays perhaps 2,000 dollars in taxes - can be a contributing member of society.
It is impossible that a woman's doctor has more of a valid claim to participate in the decision to abort a fetus than does the father of that fetus (although I also believe that it is impossible that a man has a more valid claim to participate in the decision to abort a fetus than does the mother of that fetus).
It is impossible that so long as a woman makes a decision after consulting with her doctor, she is incapable of making an unethical choice (although I also believe that it is generally not unethical for a woman for a woman to make a choice concerning her own body to the extent that it does not end another "life," a term subject to some debate).
It is impossible that a car with two steering wheels, two gas pedals and two brakes drives more efficiently than a car with one steering wheel, one gas pedal and one brake which is why marriage should always be an equal partnership (although I also believe that a marriage should strive to be an equal partnership in terms of reflecting the desires of both of its participants) (of whatever gender or genders the couple may be).
It is impossible that it is absolutely necessary for women to be allowed to join or participate fully in any gathering place for men, just as it is absolutely necessary that there be "women only" environments from which men are excluded (although I also believe that it is impossible that it is absolutely necessary for men to be allowed to join or participate fully in any gathering place for women, just as it is absolutely necessary that there be "men only" environments from which women are excluded.
It is impossible that because it involves taking jobs away from men and giving them to women, affirmative action makes for a fairer and more just society (although I also believe that affirmative action can lead to a fairer and more just society because it compensates certain segments of our society for handicaps that they endure due to societal inequity that is no fault their own).
It is impossible that it is important to have lower physical standards for women firepersons and women policepersons so that, one day, half of all firepersons and policepersons will be women, thus more effectively protecting the safety of the public (although I also believe . . . well, actually, I think this one stands OK all on its own!).
Dave:
You do realize in that case
that this is not the way that society is presently structured and that
I’m the
only person who has specifically been willing to say this out loud and
not back
down from it?
It is impossible that affirmative action at colleges and universities needs to be maintained now that more women than men are being enrolled, in order to keep from giving men an unfair advantage academically (although I also believe that affirmative action can still lead to a fairer and more just society because it compensates certain segments of our society for handicaps that they endure due to societal inequity that is no fault their own).
It is impossible that having ensured that there is no environment for men where women don't belong (see no.6) it is important to have zero tolerance of any expression or action which any woman might regard as sexist to ensure greater freedom for everyone (although I also do believe that sexism should, generally, continue to be fought in all of its insidious, and sometimes very subtle, incarnations).
It is impossible that only in a society which maintains a level of 95% of alimony and child support being paid by men to women can men and women be considered as equals (although I also believe that alimony is not a bad idea, per se, but that it should be allotted on a gender blind basis, giving prime regard to the economic realities of the marriage).
It is impossible that an airline stewardess who earned $20,000 a year at the time that she married a baseball player earning $6 million a year is entitled, in the event of a divorce, to $3 million for each year of the marriage and probably more (although I admit "impossible" seems a big word here, but I will say, uncategorically, that to the extent that it is impossible that an airline stewardess who earned $20,000 a year at the time that she married a baseball player earning $6 million a year is entitled, in the event of a divorce, to $3 million for each year of the marriage and probably more, it is ALSO impossible that an airline steward who earned $20,000 a year at the time that he married a woman earning $6 million a year is entitled, in the event of a divorce, to $3 million for each year of the marriage and probably more) (does that do it? If not, I'll go with, yes, it's impossible).
It is impossible that a man's opinions on how to rear and/or raise a child are invalid because he is not the child's mother. However, his financial obligation is greater because no woman gets pregnant by herself (although, I also believe . . . oh wait . . . see parenthetical to #8, above).
It is impossible that disagreeing with any of these statements makes you anti-woman and/or a misogynist (diito, b/c I ain't no anti-woman misogynist!).
Ummm..I'm only seeing 14, not 16, in the TCJ scan of this essay at http://tinyurl.com/cjdj2 . Am I missing something? Can anyone help me out here on the last 2?
And all that aside, so am I in??
Dave: I
think if you were to agree that, overall, women are going to come in
second to men in virtually all areas and disciplines and
professions—that is,
that there are always going to be women who can compete successfully
against
men but that those women are the exceptions and not the rule and that
it isn’t
a matter of giving women more time to compete so that somewhere up
ahead we
will have a society where every area of society is divided 50-50 with
female
cops and female soldiers doing the same jobs as male cops and male
soldiers. I mean,
this is the ground that Lawrence
Summers of Harvard ventured onto to his eternal regret and at a
$50-million
cost to the Harvard budget (the programmatic penance he paid in
choosing to
finance Marxist revisionism to make the male-female statistics in all
areas at
Harvard achieve numerical parity by hook or by crook).
Let me put it this way, the top nuclear
physicist in the world right now may very well be a woman. I certainly
wouldn’t rule it out. The
ballsiest politician of the 1980s turned
out to be a woman: Margaret Thatcher.
I’m not saying that women are
incapable of achieving in very competitive
fields. But the
question that Lawrence
Summers was addressing was a general one. Why are
fewer women generally
proving to be less capable of achieving in the
higher maths and
sciences? Why do
women generally drop
out of engineering at a higher rate than men?
Why do women generally settle
for mid-level positions in a given
discipline or profession instead of keeping pace with their male
counterparts
through the education process, into the apprenticeship stage and then
into the
highest levels of competition? I
think
the evidence supports an answer which suggests that that’s
because women are
disinclined to compete at the higher levels of virtually all
disciplines and
professions. Even
women doctors are
working less hours than their male counterparts.
Why? I
think the evidence
supports an answer which suggests that it is because women are
disinclined to
practice medicine in the same way that men do—as an obsessive
and all-consuming
interest. Women
doctors are working
fewer hours and fewer days a week and are booking more time for
children,
family and relationships. In
a truly
competitive field full of over-achievers, that attitude is not going to
take
you to the top—not because of prejudice but because obsessive
and all-consuming
interest in a subject is the necessary commodity to come out on top. Take it from someone who
did 300 issues of a
comic book. I think
the wrong message
to take out of that is that men could learn something from the women in
those
decisions (i.e. men should back off and book more time for children,
family and
relationships). With
a doctor shortage
that is getting worse and worse we’re going to be better
off—as a society, I
mean, I don’t believe in doctors,
personally—we’re going to be better off with
more doctors for whom medicine is an obsessive and all-consuming
interest. Put
another way, each place in a medical
classroom that you give to a woman is going to end up getting you, as a
society, half to three-quarters of a doctor, whereas each place you
give to a
man is going to give you a full to one-and-a-half doctors.
I think one of those
fatuous jargon terms for the disabled—the
“differently abled”—can be used to apply
to women more successfully. Women
are
“differently abled”.
They are less
likely to have what it takes in a competitive field than are the men,
but they
are very well suited to being wives and mothers if they
choose to be. Even
the UN is only pushing for 20%
female representation in the world’s
legislatures.
Why? Why not set
your goal at 50%? Because they are hard-pressed coming up with 20% of
women who
are interested in running even if the places are reserved for them and
they,
consequently, have a much higher chance of winning than the men do. To reiterate: it is only
masculine women who
are pushing for nonsensical levels of numerical parity and attempting
to create
the illusion that this represents a female consensus of some kind. I really don’t
think that it does.
And I think it does a
fundamental disservice to the Margaret Thatcher of Nuclear Physics to
be
force-feeding women into the system in greater numbers than their
levels of
interest and aptitude would otherwise dictate and lowering standards so
they
can stick at it longer with less effort.
In a competitive field, you’re
just going to look at her and say she got
her position through preferential selection, quotas.
I think all employment and
selection standards should be universal.
If a recruit can’t carry a 60 kg.
pack on a ten-mile march he doesn’t
make the cut. If a
female recruit can’t
do it, she shouldn’t make the cut either.
If she can, I’m the last person
that would block her from signing up and
the first person to applaud her making the grade.
See, I think if you keep
hedging your bets on these things you just perpetuate an unfair system
than
gives unfair advantage to one gender over the other and only hurts the
women
who are actually able to compete.
______________________________________________
Larry
H: Second to me, you're probably the *least* likely to qualify.
LOSER! ;)
Lenny: Actually..not really. If his
will is consistent with his posted message,
then anyone posting on the site a message in the form described would
have a
colorable legal position that they have the right to vote on Dave's
health care
in the event of his disability. Even if Dave were to say "no..he's not
in", if his will says what he's said it says, Dave's opinion would just
be
something that a trier of fact (such as a jury or judge) would weigh
(assuming
there was a challenge to the poster's right) in coming to a conclusion
Dave:
Mm, it’s not my will.
It’s my “power of
attorney for personal care” declaration.
You can have one without the other. The latter is just to
indicate who makes the
calls for me if I can’t make them for myself.
On the subject of a “trier of
fact” that’s what we’re trying to
establish ahead of time: the legality of what
I’m trying to do because
obviously there won’t be time to go to a judge or a jury in a
medical
emergency. I need to have the document framed as I envision it and then
I’m
going to need to get some legal opinions to shore it up that can be,
say,
downloaded from the Internet and presented to any doctor on-duty at any
hospital that I’m brought to in an unconscious state. The Doctor/Family Axis is
too firmly entrenched—and the idea of voting
on medical treatment on the Internet is, at present, too
far-fetched—to think
they’re just going to take Sandeep’s word for it. Doctors are very used to
the idea that what they say goes and
what they say is “Who is the next-of-kin?”
That’s the only thing
they’ll want to know from Sandeep.
I mean, they’re going to know
Sandeep isn’t
next-of-kin right away (unless my mother had a Sikh milkman on the side
when I
was growing up). I would assume that they would call the police to
force him to
divulge a name. If
he just gives up the
name voluntarily then he’ll disappear off of their radar
screens. How to
keep them from doing that, legally,
in the form of a document that would be deemed to be binding in an
Ontario
court is the challenge that Wilf faces.
I’d say the odds
are about
80-20 or 90-10 against such a document being possible to frame in a
Marxist-feminist society. We’ll
see. There’s
still always the 20 or the
10.
Lenny: No...not playing a game. As I said, I'm sincere in the beliefs I espouse, and welcome the discussion. But I note that, at a minimum, this illustrates potential problems in Dave's legal plan concerning his healthcare proxy.
Dave:
Actually, I think the tack that might be necessary is getting a
malpractice suit written up where all you have to do is fill in the
name of the
on-duty physician if he doesn’t do things the way I want them
done. Violation of
my human rights to determine
who holds my “power of attorney for personal
care”—that kind of thing.
Any court document accusing you of violating
human rights is going to get attention in a Marxist-feminist society. Sandeep would have it
handy and show it to
anyone who tried to cut him out of the loop or who tried to contact my
family.
John
L: And I'd say if someone around here is going to point those problems
out,
L nny's the guy. I think he's the only regular poster that's actually a
lawyer,
right?
Dave confirmed that he would likely not wish to enter into an
arrangement where
he had to ask someone else to purchase food for him at a store,
therefore that
part of his wishes were not an exaggeration on his part. I expressed my
own
view that I would not agree with the extent of this part of his wishes
though I
could agree in many cases to what is called passive euthanasia. Our
agreeing to
disagree on that was not seen by either of us as being an obstacle to
being
able to proceed with my declaration, so here it is:
I, William Antonio Beach hereby publicly declare that I believe in the
One True
God, Whom I believe is the same One God that sincere Jews, Christians
and
Muslims aim to worship, the same One God written about in what all
three
monotheistic groups consider Holy Scripture, this despite the fact that
I
myself as a Christian and specifically one of Jehovah's Witnesses do
not hold
the Koran to be Inspired of God and that I regularly use the name YHWH
/ Yahweh
/ Jehovah in my worship which the Bible states is the name God has
chosen for
Himself.
I also publicly declare that I do not consider myself to be a feminist,
men and
women are not interchangeable, as complete interchangeability between
the
genders is the end goal of feminism this renders their entire position
ridiculous. I am therefore an anti-feminist. I agree that the evidence
clearly
supports Dave Sim's position as expressed in his published essay
entitled
Tangent, which contains a list of Fourteen Impossible Things to Believe
Before
Breakfast, my view is that this is indeed a list of Impossible things.
OK so having got the public declaration part over with, I will now
proceed to
copy and paste this message onto a word document and together with my
contact
details fax them to Wilfred Jenkins 519.741.0781.
Dave: Thanks,
Billy. Much appreciated.
Billy: It's
that "perhaps" that should move you to clear this up at
the source.
If you are serious about this (which you have claimed you are, and I
can only
assume that this is the truth) and not just trying to find the
loopholes in
Dave's written request so as to generate interesting discussion, then I
think
you should discuss these questions with Dave directly. The Yahoo's
opinions on
what Dave is asking are just that, opinions, whereas Dave's opinions on
this
matter are the only comments that can clearly define the intention. If
you
really want to be of assistance to Dave if he be incapacitated, then
you should
be interested enough in what he wants to at least ask him about exactly
what he
intended when he put forth those 2 requirements. I doubt writing a
letter or
making a phone call asking for clarification and expressing your own
opinions
would be such a grievous task for someone presenting themselves for
such a
serious responsibility.
I know that communication with Dave is not required in his message, but
isn't
it worth making sure that Dave would agree with your declaration,
though I do
personally think that he probably will as he hasn't tried to limit
anyone who
has made a sincere declaration
so far.
Have you already sent your declaration and contact details to Wilf? I
suppose
the answer to this question is the real meter by which you can measure
how
serious your declaration was.
Ryan made contact with the some group members lately, concerning the call for the "pledge" that was issued by you. I told him that I could not support his decision to get involved (even though he seems to match your criteria - a view shared by others in the group) but that there was nothing to stop him from contacting you directly. He said he understood, and thought it a bad idea - not wanting to increase any feelings of paranoia by having a "confessed nut job" on the case.
Dave: I
don’t have any feelings of paranoia that I’m aware
of. I think all of
my viewpoints which I’ve
attached to my “power of attorney for personal
care” observations are an
accurate reading of the situation in which I find myself. The situation, I would
agree, is not an
enviable one for anyone to be either contemplating or experiencing. The difference in my case
is that I’m using
what levers and mechanisms of control I have at my disposal to attempt
to
minimize the threat posed to me by the structure of my society. I don’t think
that’s paranoia, I think
that’s common sense. The
only
alternative to me is to just let my society take the actions that I
know it’s
likely to take and then sit there saying, “Oh, poor me.
However did this
happen? Please, God save me!”
I’m not
capable of playing ignorant like that, I’m afraid.
Unknown: He then went to another member, had his pledge posted in absentia, and made some irritating comments which led to a further falling out between us - putting in doubt his re-instatement that we had promised to review after one year of no contact. (A caveat he violated on several occasions). The reason I include this debate is for the sake of an open dialogue. No secrets. No shunned family member kept hidden in the basement. Well, we keep him in the basement, but you can talk to him any time you like!
Dave: It’s
an interesting problem.
Essentially, it seems to me that the
Internet tends to want to have it
both ways. It’s public when public works in its favour and
private when private
works in its favour. Well,
it’s
both. It is the
ultimate public forum which
is mostly participated in in private.
Consequently I think you have to look at
public/private issues from
“both sides now”.
You have to, if
possible, keep it pure publicly and keep it pure privately. I think if everyone puts
the “ignore”
mechanism on (if I read that right, you can basically set your own
reception so
that it won’t accept Ryan’s postings) that protects
the private aspect. You
don’t have to let anything into your
home/computer or computer/home that you don’t want to. That
is going to rub a
lot of liberal fur the wrong way because it smacks of censorship which
is a
self-revelation that liberals are not keen on to say the least. But eliminating
Ryan’s postings does mean
that Ryan’s postings aren’t available to anyone who
wants them—which there’s no
way to determine if there are because you’ve got many more
lurkers than you
have participants—and that, whether you like it or not, is
censorship. If
lurkers have the same right to read
undoctored content that participants do without themselves
participating: that
is, anything they’re interested in (and I assume that the
Internet would agree
that they do have that right) then you’re trampling on lurker
rights by
removing Ryan purely as part of a participant consensus.
Billy B: Actually
I
wasn't looking into the group when "He Whose Name We Do Not Mention"
was banned (was it during August when I was away from work moving
home?) but if he has counted himself in on the
"God-fearing/anti-feminist decision making if Dave is incapacitated
group" then how can he participate if he's banned? What's the point of
having conceded to convey his recent public declaration to the group if
he is
banned from participating himself directly due to ridiculous
behaviour? I
normally wouldn't want to interfere in these cases, but if he is banned
from
the group due to having behaved in a destructive way, then he should be
banned
from volunteering, as according to Dave's document if I remember
correctly
volunteers are to be Cerebus Yahoo Group members etc. etc... (and he is
not a
group member)
Dave: As it
stands
now, that’s a very salient point.
It
perhaps shouldn’t be a
salient point but according to what I had
brought forward, yes it is addressed only to the Yahoos. In this particular
situation, I’m not really
looking for people who are going to have a lot of time to hash things
over if
there’s a medical emergency depending on the extent of the
emergency and the
need for timely decision-making. Emergency
surgery after a car accident can often be a matter of We can
do this or we can do that and the person holding “power of
attorney” has to
decide (see earlier reference to Cuban Missile Crisis level of
intensity
decision-making). When
my dad was in
for his bypass surgery someone in the next bed had been waiting for a
heart
donor for a transplant for months.
Heart just came available but the doctor has to
know within the hour if
its “go” or “no-go”. That’s an extreme
example but that might be what Sandeep is presenting to the other
volunteers. “There’s
a 40% survival
rate within the first two hours and it drops from there to 10% after 24
hours. ‘Go’
or ‘no-go’?” From
my standpoint if Ryan was willing to
put himself in that kind of a nut-cracker and he believes in God and he
isn’t a
feminist, hey, the more the merrier.
If
he’s going to gum up the lines of communication with a
five-page rant when a
decision has to be made then obviously he wouldn’t be a good
fit. I think the
other guys are all pretty clear
thinkers so I’d be happy to leave it up to them to screen
Ryan out (or anyone
else who suddenly wants to cut and run or go ballistic under the
pressure) if
it became obvious that he was venting when it was time to think. 4-0 vote to off-load
someone who can’t take
the heat and then you just screen Ryan (or whomever) out and get back
to the
discussion within whatever time frame is left.
With that many guys I think I’m safe
in saying that they’ll be able to
restrict themselves to the issues at hand, to make a contribution if
they have
a contribution to make and to just sit tight and wait for the vote if
everyone
else is saying what they would’ve said.
Matt D: Good point Billy. This is something I wonder about too. Is Ryan gone, or is he "gone"? And what is/will be Dave's reaction to finding out that we've made Ryan into Dave's self image. (IE: Dave believes that you are either with the Marxist-Feminists, or you are voted off the island.) I mean, Ryan deserved what he got. He had/has some serious issues that need to be ironed out and this isn't the forum for that. But, by kicking him out, do we still have the right to say he can't participate in Dave's Will? That's why I leave it up to Dave.
All considerations to Lenny's argument aside, it IS Dave's Will, and he should have at least some say in who he allows to be his advocates.
Larry
H: Whoa, Tex!
Let's not forget that he was not banned for any sort of expression. He
was
banned because he insisted on making the board unreadable. It was a
choice of
banning ryan or abandoning ship altogether.
It was more like we made him into the image *of* a Marxist-Feminist
(i.e., all
you can do is capitulate or leave) than an image of Dave. 'Course, I
know what you mean, Matt, but it's crucial to keep the actual story
elements straight.
Dave: I
think the problem you might get into there, Larry, is deciding when
and how the board becomes unreadable.
Your idea of what is unreadable may be
someone else’s idea of eminently
readable. I think
in this case the fact
that the board was created as a forum on Cerebus (at
least ostensibly)
would mean that there’s no reason that you can’t
set very wide guidelines. You
already have the Off-Topic designation which
I assume would protect Ryan as well only now you’re choosing
to say “only up to
a point”—only so far “off
topic” and only in a specific volume of material and
no further. It
seems to me that it
would be very democratic or at least more democratic if you had a general
vote to establish what those outer boundaries are and to
block someone for
transgressing those agreed-upon boundaries rather than just letting the
Triune
Gatekeepers decide that this is what needs to be done.
But, in the present circumstance, I think
voting him off for an entire year might have been a little harsh. If readability is the
issue, then I think
you have to say that someone who has proven unable to stay on-topic and
is just
carpet-bombing the board with largely irrelevant opinions might have
their
space confined in a combination public/ private response to the crisis
they’ve
created. The
consensus is that Ryan
just doesn’t “get” what this environment
is about or he does but he wants to
violate that in a fit of pique. I
think
a more crisis-centered, crisis-based response would be: We’re
willing to run a
post of yours per day as long as it isn’t longer than three
pages and you can
include a link to anywhere else if you want to write more than that. If anyone’s
interested they can hit the
“link” button and read the other 45 pages you wrote. Likewise if you can keep
yourself to discussing Cerebus,
you can post whatever you want. But
definitely the death threats, the blank messages and all that
stuff—no, that is
beyond the pale. There
is a private
element. All of
these people are united
by an interest in Cerebus.
They
want to keep the focus on Cerebus.
Anyone
can join but it is hoped that people will understand the overarching
intention
of what Mark Simpson created and abide by it.
Margaret:
From Dave's Last Will and Testament document:
So, the best that I have been able to come up with is that **anyone of the Yahoos** who is willing—in the event of my incapacity—to declare themselves, publicly, here on the Internet to believe in the One God of Judaism, Christianity and Islam and to declare themselves not to be feminists (that is, to declare publicly that they don't believe men and women are equal and that—having followed my argument as thoroughly as you all have—they agree and agree to agree publicly that yes, the evidence supports Dave Sim, it doesn't support Oprah Winfrey, that the Fourteen Impossible Things to Believe Before Breakfast are indeed Impossible, not difficult or unlikely or improbable: Impossible)
The stars ** are mine to point out what Dave himself stated. If he
wants to
change it, fine, it is his will. Just pointing out what he said is all.
So it
would seem being a member of this group is a "prereq" so to speak.
Dave:
I’m hoping that he will find it gratifying that someone would
say
that. And I think
that’s true. He
is a “Yahoo” and I think the good faith
exists to try and find a way to accommodate him but there needs to be
reciprocal good faith on his side to understand what behaviour it is
that the
group in general is objecting to and to understand that those private
considerations have to be abided by everyone.
If it was just a public environment,
there’s no reason that he can’t do
exactly what he wants when he wants but it’s also a private
environment. At
that point, I think it’s just a matter of
having the widest possible parameters that the group in toto can
countenance
and establishing that everyone has to stay within them, even though no
one—besides
Ryan—has come within a country mile of violating them. Some people are just like
that. No matter how
far out on the property you
put the fence they’re going to be out there leaning against
it and wondering how
to push it out a little further.
Rick S: And since there was no community vote to expel him, and was
done by a small
minority (of mods), I really don't think Dave wants to put this power
into the
hands of THREE people, none of whom meet his Two Conditions!
Having said that, I'll repeat that there are other more serious issues
that
would preclude ryan from "getting the job" than whether or not he is
currently allowed to post on the list.
Margaret: True
enough. If he wants, if he hasn't already, he can go ahead and write
Dave and plead his case. He has every right to do that.
Dave:
Yes, definitely. I
don’t know
if I’ve ever heard from him.
He might
have absolutely no interest in me and is only drawn to the group itself
for one
reason or another.
Billy
B: Following my message below, Ryan sent me an email. He seems to be
going
through a good period at the moment and is writing very sensibly,
though I know
we've seen that happen before. He says that Jeff T. had mentioned that
he might
have been readmitted on the group perhaps a year after his banning but
it seems
that isn't going to happen any more. What's going on? I'm all for
giving people
another chance (especially after a year's banning which could be viewed
by some
as punishment enough), is there a reason why he was misled into
believing he
was going to be allowed back to the group and now changing the cards in
the
deck?
Dave: I’m
moved to wonder why intelligent people would allow something into
their own home that can be “flame-bombed” but
I’m definitely in the
“minority-of-one” spot on that, so let’s
leave it alone. I
think you have to just base it on
behaviour. You set
the boundaries of
what you’re allowed to do on the newsgroup and you stick to
that. Again, I
think limiting his posting space
for a period of a year while still allowing a link to whatever else he
has to
say seems sensible. You’re
not
excluding him entirely but you are excluding him mostly
for what
you consider “just cause”.
All you’re
doing is limiting his ability to “flame-bomb” you
while still allowing access
to his opinions for anyone who is interested.
If he can’t stick to his pledge
then everyone uses their “ignore Ryan”
buttons. And as for
contacting individual
members, I think you have provide a list of people who will permit him
to
contact them and a list who forbid him to contact them.
He gets two warnings and then it becomes a
server matter if he tries to contact the latter.
And then a police matter if he still
won’t stay within the limits
everyone else has agreed to.
Larry H: And since he did what he did as an attack upon the group with
malice
aforethought and with the specific intent of *provoking* a ban, at the
very
least he's forfeited the right to decide when "enough has been
enough." When the aforementioned year is up, then he can maybe ask
whether
we intend to live up to what was promised.
Dave: I
think maybe the year is the problem.
Had you asked, I would have suggested
progressively longer
periods of being banned (i.e. banned for a week, then banned for two
weeks,
then banned for three weeks…in other words getting banned
for a year would come
later in the procedure after he had already experienced getting banned
for a
month, two months, three months) each time there was an infraction of
clearly
stated rules agreed on by the entire group. The “Total
Dick” rule works better
if it has a consensus behind it. If
at
any point 25% (or 50% or 75%) of the membership has a TD next to
Ryan’s name he
gets banned and for successively longer periods of time each time
there’s an
infraction.
Larry H: (still upset over the need for banning in the first place)
Dave: I
know, Larry, these things just kick you right where you live and
breathe as a liberal, don’t they?
I’m not
being facetious. It
needs to be taken
into account in an environment that is both public and private. If you don’t
want him banned, you should
have access to anything he wants posted to the group, just as the group
should
be able to turn him off if the group consensus (arrived at
democratically) is
that they don’t want to have him in their homes.
Bryan: But what if he is provoked into a firestorm by someone on this list who doesnt fear the banning. Why cant the ignore feature be used by those who dont want to read his musings. I dont like the banning thing either, and I am sure the moderators could get together and make a decision on this.
If they voted to ban him and instituted the punishment (at the behest of/for the secure continuance of the group as a whole) shouldnt they be in charge of probation, parole or continued imprisonment/exile?
Bryan -- not that I miss him, it is just the free speech thing. There have been many insults and angry words issued in e-mails on here and I cant remember any that were just involving one person. Even Ryans. Is his "insult" meter set on a different level, i.e. -- should he be held to a level of acceptable behavior that noone else is called to be?
Bryan: I dont think anything else is going on. Other than the fact that it bothered some members that he would be excluded from membership to the "Dave -death - watch" thing ... which most most people think he would qualify as a member for.
I read the list for many reasons. I would go away if my interests changed or my pressence was unwanted. That is just me.
The benefits I get from reading here far outweigh the inane ramblings of the self evidently (and self imposed) persecution complex "look at me" few.
I dont care for the banning thing is all. I am not mad at the moderators -- I understand what they did and why they did it. I was just saying if it was up to the moderators to place the ban in effect then they should be the ones to remove it. Where it affects Dave's wishes (and in this one event it does) maybe he should make such a decision -- or the moderators should inform Dave.
I wasnt starting a "Free Ryan Dunne" campaign (music and lyrics by Pink Floyd and seemingly innocent video produced by George Lucas and the Light Sabres episode IV retcon edition) or anything.
I just think it was sad for the moderators to be placed in such a position to have to make. Another reason I have no interest joining Dave's new club or why if elected (to moderator) I wouldnt serve.
That isn't what I am here for.
No offense meant towards your (or any other persons opinion).
Bryan -- and after all --
Ryan's
behavior may have meritted the "special case" consideration and
expungement from the rolls. If he is let back is he to be held to a
different
level of accountability in "firestorm/bomb" content -- one that he
sees others abuse with impunity? And even if he doesnt start it?
Dave: Mm. I don’t
think (yikes this type is
huge!) that it’s fair to set different standards for anyone
which is why I
think you need to establish a consensus on the behaviours indulged in
by Ryan
Dunne since his are the only behaviours that have made you think action
needed
to be taken. If you
don’t have a
consensus on the behaviours and appropriate punishments for the
behaviours then
I think the Ryan Dunne-averse need to put their ignore buttons on him
and leave
everyone else (i.e. Larry Hart) to deal with his content in their own
way.
Rick S: It wasn't the *content*, it was the *quantity* of *spam*. Sure, you could set him on ignore, but many people scoping out the list would never do that, and they'd be long gone before anyone would even know they were here.
Dave:
Well, that’s a good point.
You
could maybe include a “Note to New Members” that
says “___% of the group has
their ignore buttons on a guy named Ryan Dunne and we recommend that
new
members do the same if they want to just read material about Cerebus—but
check him out first and see for yourself.” And just have a
running total on the
___%
Bryan: not that I miss him, it is just the free speech thing.
There have
been many insults and angry words issued in e-mails on here and I cant
remember
any that were just involving one person. Even Ryans. Is his "insult"
meter set on a different level, i.e. -- should he be held to a level of
acceptable behavior that noone else is called to be?
Larry H: Were you looking in when he provoked the ban? It wasn't for content. It was because for two or three days straight, he flooded the list with posts and polls meant only to make the list wholly unreadable.
Bryan: But what if he is provoked into a firestorm by someone
on this list who
doesnt fear the banning.
Larry H: I have faith in our moderators and in our membership advising
them (myself
included in the latter) to deal with such a case should it ever become
more
than a hypothetical.
"What if the list is allowed to become the all-ryan-tantrum forum
again?" is not just hypothetical. It's a demonstrably real possibility.
It's a demonstrable expression of good will on the part of the rest of
us not
to consider it the *expected* one.
Bryan: Why cant the ignore feature be used by those who dont
want to read his
musings.
Larry H: For the regulars, that's a possibility. Do you want to give up
on newbies being
able to come aboard here, though? I don't.
Bryan: I dont like the banning thing either, and I am sure the
moderators could
get together and make a decision on this. If they
voted to ban him and instituted the punishment
Larry H: Not "punishment". Self-defense. The point isn't "How much can
we
make ryan suffer?", but "How can we keep the board as a going
concern?" I have no personal agenda toward making ryan feel bad, and if
the protection of the list could be accomplished by any other
means, I'd be all for that.
Dave:
Well, I hope you’ll consider the above-mentioned suggestions
in that
case 1) consensus on unacceptable behaviour 2) consensus on progressive
levels
of punishment for those behaviours—starting with space
limitations on access 3)
declaration of members who don’t want to hear from Ryan
personally and will
call the cops if they do 4) prominently posted warning for newbies
about Ryan
with the current percentage of Ignore Ryan members
Bryan: (at the behest of/for the secure continuance of the
group
as a whole) shouldnt they be in charge of probation, parole or
continued
imprisonment/exile?
Larry H: What makes you think anything other is going on?
Dave: I
think Larry’s is a good case to be made here.
He is a liberal purist who, I suspect, would
prefer to put up with a load of Ryan crap in order to adhere to his own
principles of freedom-of-speech. Which
I think you have to respect and take into account whatever your
personal view
or whatever the consensus view. If
you
ban Ryan, you make Larry complicitous and duplicitous in banning free
speech
which means he is now participating in a group whose free-speech
choices he
personally deplores and that wasn’t the case before the
action was taken and
Larry, himself, didn’t do anything wrong to have the context
change on him. If
you adopt my recommendations virtually
everyone else could have their ignore Ryan buttons on and Larry could
still be
receiving everything Ryan was allowed to say and linking to whatever he
wasn’t
allowed to post, so everyone would be technically getting their own way.
Rick
S: Here's a thought...do you think ryan would ever
spam-snail-mail Dave? Heh.
Dave:
I’ll let you know if he does.
Spam-snail-mail costs a lot of money and
takes a lot of time.
Bryan: If they cant discern what they want to read and what they want to ignore their list of "lists" they belong to must be very short and restricted to posters without oposing viewpoints. So fuck em.
I still want to know, if/when he gets to come back is his annoyance meter going to be set on a different level than anyone elses.
I mean, if he did his crime and served his time -- does he get to be just as much of an annoyance as some people find me to be? Or you? Or is his level "self-evidently" (Dave Sim TM) different?
Lenny: No one's been misleading anyone. We told Ryan that we would reconsider his membership if he took a year off from the Group. He HASN'T taken a year off. He's attempted on several occasions to get back into the Group using aliases. And on top of that, each of the moderators has received NUMEROUS e-mails from him about this matter.
With respect to the latest episode, Ryan contacted Jeff looking for information on the "pledge." Jeff informed Ryan that he could not personally support his involvement due to his mental/medical condition - although there was *nothing* that could stop Ryan from contacting Dave directly. Ryan said he understood, and that contacting Dave was probably a bad idea anyway, as having a confessed "nut job" as a supported would be bad for Dave's paranoia. Ryan then went to Rick Sharer to post a "pledge" on the group, which he did, including Ryan's remark about being banned by the Feminist/Atheist Axis. Jeff posted a negative response to this, to which Ryan replied via repeated emails to Jeff, despite being asked to stop emailing him. This included 15 blank e-mail messages to Jeff (does this behavior sound familiar? Just check the site around the time of the initial ban). So this all has basically convinced the three of us that the original 1 year ban was and is appropriate.
But even despite the e-mails, the continued harrassment, and despite the attempt to circumvent the ban by using aliases (which really, when you think of it, shouldn't that be enough for a lifetime ban right there?), we've continually told him that a consecutive year of silence (during which he will presumably be attempting to work out his problems) will earn him a chance for reconsideration.
Dave:
Again, with folks like this “a consecutive year of
silence” is usually
too much to be hoped for. I
think
limitations on off-topic subjects in general might be a good idea but
particularly in this case. If
you want
to talk about Cerebus you have as much room as you
want. If you go
off-topic you have one page to
make your point and get back on-topic or you can continue your thought
somewhere else in cyberspace where anyone who is interested can link to
it. If you have to
get 85 pages out of
your system, you get them out of your system elsewhere—not on
the newsgroup and
not e-mailed to any member—and when you’re ready to
talk about Cerebus
again, you can post to the newsgroup.
It might be that Ryan is just an
extreme incarnation of a problem
that is already endemic to the newsgroup—how interesting is
it to someone who
comes to it looking for Cerebus content? If the top 25 most recent
posts are all off-topic then I think
there might be a real concern for “newbies” and a
reason that potential
participants might not choose to participate.
The one time I scrolled through the subject
headings, I asked Gerhard if
there was some way to highlight the 5 Questions a Month since I assume
that
would be of primary interest for someone checking out a Cerebus
website
without having to scroll through the last two weeks of postings to find
it. I mean,
I’m the ultimate “newbie”
since I’ve not only not participated in any of this and this
is the first that
I’ve seen of it. I
had assumed that the
5 Questions would be a icon—you can hit it and read all of
the questions and
answers and then move on from there to the general discussions. Ger was under the
impression that that
wasn’t possible—that the newsgroup is basically
like one long tissue roll with
each chronological posting being the next segment.
He usually knows what he’s talking
about so I just accepted that
and figured I was the weird one not wanting to scroll through dozens of
pages
of off topic material to find something on Cerebus.
I’m really not trying to be offensive here, but it did strike me that you might be experiencing through Ryan what the newbies you hope to attract (that I think we all hope to attract) are experiencing when they try to read the postings as constituted. “What does any of this have to do with Cerebus?” I have no experience on the Internet so I don’t have any suggestions to make apart from finding some way to keep the off-topic material segregated from the Cerebus material. Would that have worked with Ryan? If his postings were segregated from the Cerebus material and from the general discourse would it really matter if he had 98 pages on the latest Star Wars film? That’s why I tend to think that a limit on “off topic” material as part of the core thread might be the better solution. As soon as you get up over a page, put it on your own website and link to it or just switch to e-mail for the interested parties. I think what happens if you don’t have parameters is that you start to violate the public aspect if you become privately indiscriminate (I’m a Cerebus Yahoo so anything I write is of interest to other Cerebus Yahoos). What we want this to be is a welcoming environment for people who are interested in Cerebus and people who have (particularly) just read all or part of it and can’t find any place where it’s being discussed. At least, that’s how I understand the public aspect of it. At the same time it is a private club with definite core members and there is no way that that should be violated either. There should definitely be a core place where it is taken as a core given that I’m a Cerebus Yahoo so anything I write is of interest to other Cerebus Yahoos. I think, however, that you need to make sure the private club isn’t in the way of the public intention and that the public intention isn’t in the way of the private club. If it can’t be done, it can’t be done. But, speaking as a complete Internet technophobe, Luddite, you name it that does seem to be the core of the Internet conundrum—how do you balance a totally public and totally private environment so that both interests are served.
Lenny: Seeing as how his last contact was..oh..earlier this week, the earliest that year is going happen no is late October 2006.
Billy B: Thanks for the explanation Lenny, it sounds reasonable to me. I hope Ryan can sort himself out and respect this agreement.Unknown 1: It wasn't the *content*, it was the *quantity* of *spam*.
Unknown 2: Some people view pompous overbearing religiousity to be spam.
Dave:
Yes, exactly. If I
wasn’t the
subject of this group I’d probably have been banned years ago!
Rick S: True, but the keyword was *quantity*. Again, it was approaching
a
denial-of-service Type of situation, not a content/free-speech problem.
Unknown 2: If they cant discern what they want to read and what they
want to ignore
their list of "lists" they belong to must be very short and
restricted to posters without oposing viewpoints. So fuck em.
Rick S: Having an opinion of "so fuck 'em" is perfectly
legitimate...fortunately, the majority of members (and mods) *do* care
about
seeing new members (Cerebus fans) here, and they acted accordingly.
Unknown 2: I still want to know, if/when he gets to come back
is
his annoyance meter going to be set on a different level than
anyone elses.
Rick S: Content Annoyance can be ignored. Flooding the List With Spam
Annoyance will be
dealt with in the same manner, I'm sure.
Unknown 2: I mean, if he did his crime and served his time -- does he
get to be just
as much of an annoyance as some people find me to be? Or you? Or is his
level
"self-evidently" (Dave Sim TM) different?
Rick S: Great questions, really. Unfortunately, I really don't give a
fuck what the
answers are right now.
Bryan:
If they cant discern what they want to read and what
they want to ignore their list of
"lists" they belong to must be very short and restricted to posters
without oposing viewpoints. So fuck em.
Larry H: No, Bryan. You're missing the point.
It was never about content (viewpoints). Ryan was not banned for
posting about
Star Wars back in May, even though some people who found it annoying
suggested
it. I would never have considered banning him then, and I doubt any of
the
current moderators would have either. I didn't even want him banned
back when
he whaled all over Donna, even though a part of my emotional self
kinda-sorta
wanted him to go away then, but I came out then *against* banning
because no
one here wants this to be a place where any viewpoints are shut down.
What finally got him banned was when he flooded the board with posts
and polls
(and as I've just been reminded, also flooded people's private e-mail
boxes)
for the express purpose of making this board unreadable. From what I
understand
he told some people privately that he was determined to *force* a
banning. That
is, he intended to escalate the damage to this list until he was
banned. That's
analogous to someone who shoots at a cop in order to force the cop to
kill him.
Bryan:
I still want to know, if/when he gets to come back is his annoyance
meter
going to be set on a different level than anyone elses.
Larry H: Of course it is, but again, not because of viewpoint. It's
because he's already
apologized, promised not to do it again, thanked everyone for their
kindness,
promised to stay away voluntarily for six months, and then come back
worse than
ever. What could possibly change now that would make any but the
squishiest of
liberals have an expectation of anything different?
And all that notwithstanding, I'd still be willing to lift the ban and
let him
prove that expectation wrong.
Dave:
That’s why I would recommend incremental
punishments. You’re
giving him the
benefit of the doubt each time out but increasing the penalty each time
that he
violates the rules that everyone else is abiding by.
I don’t know how old he is but a
year is a different length of
time to a teenager than it is to us old fogies.
A year?
If I don’t pay
close attention a year goes by in a couple of weeks these days. To someone in his late
twenties or early
thirties a year is, like, forEVER, man.
Bryan: I mean, if he did his crime and served his time -- does he get
to be just
as much of an annoyance as some people find me to be? Or you? Or is his
level
"self-evidently" (Dave Sim TM) different?
Dave:
I think his level is “self-evidently” different
because
he’s the only one who has brought anyone close to suggesting
a ban in an
environment largely composed of First Amendment purists. You have to really provoke
an FA purist to
get him or her to go along with banning anything and anyone. So the issue becomes how
far out can you
erect the barrier so that the only way to violate it is to
intentionally be a
Total Dick?
Larry H: Different in the sense that freedom of speech doesn't give you
the right to
ring my telephone at all hours of the night to express your opinion to
me, or
to express it on the street outside with a sound truck blasting at
thousands of
decibels.
Dave:
Yes, exactly.
And I think that’s why you have to
target what the specific annoyance
is: You
don’t want to scare away
newbies, you don’t want the list made unreadable, you
don’t want individual
members to be cybernetically harassed and you don’t want to
take away anyone’s
freedom-of-speech. If
it’s the volume
of material that he was flooding the board with then you limit how much
material
anyone can post to the board, you limit “off-topic”
posting lengths, you warn
everyone about the guy at the “front door” when
they first arrive at the site,
you use your own ignore button if you can’t stand him anymore
and you continue
to read him and link to whatever else he has to say—strictly
on principle—if
you’re a First Amendment absolutist.
Jeff: And here's part two - concerns the miscellany.
Matt D: Okay, Color is priority one right? Here's my quick list, add as needed (and correct me when I'm wrong too.):Covers to the regular series, 300+ pages. Since some covers were wraparound, that means they'll take up two pages. Right?
Swords covers X pages. I don't know how many swords volumes there were, or if they had wrap around covers.
Epic color stories, 17 pages
Animated Cerebus Portfolio, (assuming it's reprinted one plate per page) 45 pages
Spawn #10, 22 pages. Erik Larsen has made it sound like if it's gonna get reprinted, it's getting reprinted at Image. And I think he would twist Todd McFarlane's arm if he had to. But, since Todd ISN'T reprinting the story in the new Spawn collection, Todd and Erik might have already discussed this.
Dave:
Or they might not have and I would really doubt that anyone could
twist Todd’s arm if Todd didn’t want his arm
twisted as he may not want it
twisted in this case.
Matt: If that nice man, Peter Laird, graciously agrees to it, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles #8, 45 pages. (Is that just the Cerebus stuff, or is that the whole story? If the non-Cerebus turtles stuff is cut out, how many pages do we lose?)
Dave: I think you’d lose too many pages for what would be a selling feature of the book: The Turtles are still far better known than Cerebus could ever hope to be and Turtles #8 was a major on-ramp for a lot of people who might get attracted to the book just for the sentimental attachment of having that story in a collected form. I think you either reprint all of it or none of it.
Matt: “Breaking Up Is Hard To Do” from Anything Goes #3, 3 pages. (Think we can get the Neal Adams cover in there? If not, there should be a footnote on this story mentioning the cover.) (Also along those lines, what about the cover to Cerebus Jam?)
Dave: I think an
exception should be
made for the Adams, Windsor-Smith and Sienkiewicz covers for obvious
reasons if
they’re willing to have them included.
I’d be inclined to run the story
in the b&w volume since I drew it
for black and white and the colour was added by someone at
Fantagraphics.
Matt: Matt's projected page count (assuming everything can get reprinted) : 389. Not including the back half of wraparound covers, or the swords covers.
Since Dave suggests that the Six Deadly Sins should have a high quality reproduction, should it be included in the Color volume even though it is black and white?
Dave: We might as well throw it in and see if it looks out of place at the decision-making stage.
Matt: And should the Swords intros be included here with the Swords covers?
Dave: I would suggest no. I think the Swords intros should go into a collected essays volume somewhere way up ahead. You don’t waste art-book paper stock on text pieces.
Matt: And is there any other non-story miscellany that needs to be accounted for? Example: the first fifth prints.
(Is 500 pages too big for a coffee table sized volume?)
Dave:
Spoiler warning;
that’s where
we end up is in the ballpark of 450 pages.
I think we have to start there and get
Erik’s feedback on what we cut.
On the one hand, when it comes to judgment
calls you have Ger and I who did them so all they really are to us is
things
that never turned out as right as they could have and we’re
kind of glad
they’re 1) buried in back-issue bins across North America,
they should stay
there and rot and 2) originals we can sell when we’re old a
decrepit and have
nothing else of value to sell and (on the other hand) guys like L nny
who want
EVERYTHING. I would
suspect Erik Larsen
might be on the 50-yard line between those two positions which would
seem to me
to be a voice worth listening to.
Lenny: With respect to the stories, Jeff T created a full Miscellany table in the DATABASE section of our site, and I added page counts to each item. I haven't matched up your calculations with what's there, but according to the totals at the end of the table, we have:
B&W-28 stories/270 p.
Color- 8 stories/84 p.
What's not included in the table, so it's good you brought this up, are:
300 cerebus covers (plus some extras for wraparounds - I have no idea how many this covers)
6 Swords covers
6 Misc covers (TMNT 8, Spawn 10, Cerebus 3D, Cerebus Jam, Cerebus 0, Cerebus World Tour)
(I don't know if Miami Mice, Nucleus, CBG 977, Celebrate Diversity Catalog, Anything Goes 3, Bacchus 1, Normalman 10, Awakening Comics 2 have Cerebus related covers that we would want to include also - anyone know?).
So
this raises the color volume to 396. Should the covers be in the same
volume as the Color MV? I'm not sure if they should. First, because it
makes it
a REALLY big (which means REALLY expensive) book. The stories alone
would be 84
pages - and perhaps be able to be priced more reasonably.
Dave asked if we'd prefer the b&w MV to match the color MV in
terms of
size. I'm personally inclined to see it as Vol. 17, and match the first
16
volumes.
Dave:
That’s certainly a lot easier and something we can do
ourselves at A-V
in the next two or three years on the same basis we did the other books. That format we have
experience with.
Lenny: Also, I wonder if it's possible to reprint the color stuff in b&w and make it readible? Is that such a crazy idea? That would up the page count from 270 to 354 (or 307 if you omitted the animated portfolio and its nontraditional shape). That's a pretty normal sized phonebook. I'm not suggesting this as a replacement to printing the color stuff in an oversized color edition, as Dave suggests, but in addition to it. That way, ALL the Miscellany stories will be in one place and in the same format as the 16 books comprising the Novel proper. (of course optimally, a mixed b&w/color volume would be best - but my understanding is that it's just not economically feasible to do it that way).
Dave: See below.Greg
S: Just puttin in my 2 cents as it is the time. Additional things I'd
like to see in a color volume.
1. Any colour A/V promotional posters. (e.g. The first half/football
uniform poster, the Cerebus' hand holding a beer poster, etc.
2. A reprint or approximate recreation of the colour first fifth
portfolio.
3. I would like to see all 300 colour covers included somehow.
Practically speaking, it may be necessary to go with Dave's suggestion
of most being printed four/six to a page (or something like that) with
only limited exceptions being printed at full page size.
I'll add more if I think of it.
Jeff T: Hey, I just had a thought. How about lenticular pages? Or a set of inserts in the back? You know, where you turn the picture and the frames play out. I've seen trading cards with an amazing number of frames packed in there, and still very thin. Remember the Alex Ross Superman and Batman covers a while back?
Unknown:
Not including the back half of wraparound covers, or the swords
covers.
Jeff T: I would rather see a separate cover collection, like McKean did
with Sandman.
Unknown:
Since Dave suggests that the Six Deadly Sins should have a high
quality reproduction, should it be included in the Color
volume even
though it is black and white?
Jeff T: Well, he originally did shoot that down, but for physical
impossibility
reasons of binding color stock to black & white stock, not
"iron
fisted, dictatorial rule" reasons. Tiny misunderstanding:
"There is no way that you could bind the texture of paper required to
reproduce colour accurately with the white newsprint of the trade
paperbacks
and not have it look really, really strange or increase the binding
problems
unnecessarily."
Jeff T: But, if he's going to print these separately as special coffee
table type books (which is great, IMO) I think the b&w
portfolio should
should be in the b&w miscellany.
Dave: A coffee table b&w MV would be apt
to be more problematic and hinge on
whether or not the first volume sold well enough to justify it. And, of course, the moment
any coffee-table
book gets done that will start people advocating to have all 16 volumes
done
the same way. We
can minimize it (I
hope) but it’s just human nature to keep pushing for more and
more even when
the resources are already getting stretched to the breaking point. Any Cerebus book as far as
we know is going
to take two to three years to recoup its investment and turn a profit
that then
needs to be plowed back into printing.
I suspect that a hardcover just amplifies
that process—it eats up more
resources and takes longer to recoup the investment and show a profit:
possibly
four or five years. That’s
a long time
to have a lot of money tied up.
Unknown: And is there any other non-story miscellany that needs to be
accounted
for?
Jeff T: All covered in the miscellany database.
-Jeff
Matt D: I don't know if Miami Mice, Nucleus, CBG 977, Celebrate Diversity Catalog, Anything Goes 3, Bacchus 1, Normalman 10, Awakening Comics 2 have Cerebus related covers that we would want to include also - anyone know?).
Matt
D: I don't know if Miami Mice,
Jeff T: No.
Matt D: Nucleus,
Jeff T: No.
Matt D: CBG 977,
Jeff T: Yes, it's the same as the "Aardvark and Flames" print.
Matt D: Celebrate Diversity Catalog,
Jeff T: Cerebus is on there, but it's just some lame clip-art.
Matt D: Anything Goes 3,
Jeff T: Neal Adams, baby! Oh yeah!
Matt D: Bacchus 1
Jeff T: No.
Matt D: Normalman 10,
Jeff T: No Cerebus on the cover, but it is a direct parody of
the cover designs for issues 33-35.
Dave:
Yes, I think it should be included for
that reason, as should John
Kovalic’s Dork Tower cover that parodies
Cerebus 26.
Jeff T: There is a small illustration of Cerebus on the bottom of the
cover.
Matt D: have Cerebus related covers that we would want to
include also - anyone know?).
Jeff T: You do, now!
Lenny: Also, I wonder if it's possible
to reprint the color stuff in b&w and
make it readible? Is that such a crazy idea?
Jeff T: Please no.
Jeff Quoting Dave: "There's a very good reason to make sure we do this right. Too many members of the core audience are going to feel compelled to buy the books, so we better get it right the first time or all we're going to hear is what a rip-off it was and all the stuff that was missing and so on."
No,
no, below further.
An interesting question. I certainly think it should be under $100. But probably would really really really prefer it to be under $50. I don't know that I'd necessarily prefer it to be coffebook size with thick glossy paper - but it sounds like that's where he's leaning. But I'd think regular size with paper the quality of, say, the original Epic in which those Cerebus stories were printed would be fine with me - and that would keep things below $50. Is there a big enough fan base to support a deluxe oversized color book?
In any event, do we really need an oversized Spawn 10? This is why I think, perhaps, that the covers/extras (which may or may not include the Animated Portfolio) should be in a different color book than the stories - which I believe are around 84 pages. An 84 page color book could be reasonably priced - perhaps at the same price as the phonebook? $20-30? And save the coffetable book for the poster-like color Cerebus elements.
Of course, alternatively, you could include the B&W Sins in the Color volume, and that solves that problem.
I would say this should be true to the extent that something is open to multiple interpretations. But to the extent that there are clear errors (and I am not saying there are), then I'd think they should be supplanted. It seems to me, from my recollection of reviewing the Timeline (which I haven't done in a while), he makes certain assumptions that are simply not supported by the text. OTOH, the vast bulk of it IS supported by the text. I'd like to pull the timeline apart in terms of differentiating between these two classes of information. so the "official" timeline would have all the information that's supported by the text, and the "annotations" would try to fill in the gaps/present different theories. I'd also prefer it if every item in the "official" timeline has a citation to the text to back it up - thereby proving its place in the "official timeline" and also being an aid to readers who want to jump into the text from the timeline.
Dave:
I think that sounds like a good
approach.
Lenny: I agree 100%. Jeff, did you send Dave a copy of your Miscellany database with the Policy stuff? If not, perhaps you can include it in your next mailing to Gerhard. AFAIK, that's the definitive list on the subject (although, perhaps we should add the covers/portfolios to the chart as another section? ex. we should figure out how many pages the covers to i1-300 take up (when you factor in wraparounds).
I think the Miscellany Database chart is current set up to reflect total page count. Does anyone know how the page counts listed would change if Dave were only to include the pages as he describes above. For example, I think someone mentioned the Miami Mice appearance is only 2 pages - so it's listed on the chart as having a page count of either 25 or 2. It sounds like Dave is looking to print just the 2.
Dave:
Yes, no offense against Mark Bode but
I don’t think Miami Mice is
going to be quite the drawing card that Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles or
Spawn
are going to be.
Lenny: So that decreases the B&W MV from 270 to 247. Are there other examples among the 28 b&w Cerebus stories of this?
Well..I'd say at a minimum, a single page (or even a footnote dropped on the first page of the comic story) would be nice to place each story in the proper point in time w.r.t. the 300 issue/16 volume story proper. I mean even something like the page before "Exodus" saying "Exodus (appeared in Cerebus 51, June 1984, occurs between High Society and Church and State I)." Slightly more difficult with the non-canonical stories, but a general statement might be nice - along the lines of "The Girl Next Door (appeared in Epic 30, June 1985, occurs prior to Cerebus Vol. 1, when Cerebus is around five years old)."
Dave:
Good reason to get the
“timeline re-read” up and running in 2006 and
make note of all that stuff! “According
to Alexx” and dissenting opinions.
Lenny: OK...let's definitely get Dave a copy of the Database by next month. If people can, take a look at it for possible corrections. Depending on Erik's timeframe, perhaps March 2006, when we're currently scheduled to do the Miscellany Reread, would be a good time to try to finalize it. Alternatively, if he'd like/need it quicker, we could move the Miscellany Reread up earlier.
Personally, the minimum information I would like is where/when the item originally appeared. Then to the extent that it can be placed at some point in the chronological Cerebus timeline, that would be nice. After that, I'd surely welcome any anecdotes Dave had in terms of the creation of the story/what his thoughts were in creating it - which is pretty much what we got in the Swords intros.
Dave:
For a colour volume, I think they
would have to be endnotes printed
very, very small so they could be informative but not in the way and
not using
up glossy high grade stock on type as I said earlier.
Lenny: So I'd say the Swords intros are the perfect model for what I personally would like to see in terms of annotations.
Dave:
Too lengthy.
If you do one for
one of them you have to do it for all of them.
They’d be more in the form of
extended footnotes.
Lenny: Hey..cross references to every time Dave mentioned the story would be superb- but beyond what I'd expect. But I get his point about wanting it to be the story and not Dave Sim on the story (even though I love when he tells us his thoughts about the creation of the story). There are 28 b&w stories. I'd think 1-2 pages of intro taking up 28-56 pages of the volume wouldn't be too intrusive, would it?
Dave:
Great.
When you have the 56
pages all written let me know and I’ll have a look. Just kidding. It would
depend on what I had to say about the material in the b&w
volume.
Lenny: Has anyone TRIED to compile a chronological list of every Dave Sim interview ever published? Is this on Margaret's site with some links to the actual interviews? Are we talking 100 interviews? 500?
Dave:
It’s quite a pile in the
Archive and that’s just the unpublished
interviews, one of which is like 130 pages long and typed by Karen who
had no
idea of any of the comic book names and references and so had to spell
them
phonetically. Fifty
years after I’m
dead would be a good time to work on that one.
One comic book fan and one Egyptologist.
Lenny: yeah yeah yeah..I get the point. But at a minimum, an INDEX would be nice. I'd like to know what's out there. That wouldn't cause a hernia - and from a future scholarly value point, would be invaluable, right? I'm thinking new DATABASE table!
I have zero problem with reusing the intros that have already been done. In fact, in terms of completism, I'd prefer it! (although it would also be nice to see Dave's thoughts on revisiting such things, too).
Dave:
That’s getting dangerously
close to the “Introduction to the 1983
introduction” stage which is seriously bent, in my view. Dave’s view on
revisiting such things? “Dave
would rather not, thank you.”
Lenny: As I said, it's currently B&W-28 stories/247 p.; Color- 8 stories/84 p. - this doesn't include the covers. So would a 331p combined color/b&w book be possible? And if you take out the 45 pages of the Animated Portfolio, it’s a 286 p. combined book.
I admire his position here. It really IS kinda cool that we're being solicited to give our opinions on all of this.
Dave: Well, I’m glad you’re enjoying it. I also hope to give you a bit of an education on the hard realities of publishing a book about a marginalized title like Cerebus as we go along. It’s honorable work for the most part but it does tend to have irritating elements to it. At least this way if the book comes out you won’t be asking “But, why didn’t you…?” You’ll know why I didn’t.Lenny: I certainly wouldn't object to it being there - but since it's just a collection of posters, as opposed to a story (is that right?), then I wouldn't mind so much if it were left out. I mean why should that be in there and not other poster type stuff that Dave has done (there are other things, aren't there?). How about ads for the book (like the Lord Julius one which appeared in the monthly)? Are there other types of things that aren't stories that might be included?
So perhaps we should add a non-story miscellany to that database? Or create another database?
Dave: I think you should probably start a separate non-story miscellany list to the database because 1) I think you’re going to end up with a LOT of stuff once you start branching out like that 2) it’s already difficult enough to get a clear snapshot of the two MVs or combined MVs without adding another potential MV at this point and 3) I think by the time you’re down to ads and things like that you are becoming vulnerable to a charge of exploitation, scraping the bottom of the barrel, etc. This again is the problem with letting L nny lead the charge. He wants everything and that’s really “over the edge” relative to the market as constituted. I think if we can get to the point where the two MVs exist and the book of covers and then you have to see if that pretty much satisfies everyone or if a lot of people start clambering for a collected Letters Page and Non-story Miscellany. I don’t think they will. In fact I would guess that we would be eating MVs and a book of covers for a number of years just to satisfy Erik Larsen, L nny and a few others who wanted a copy. I could be wrong but that’s what I picture. We haven’t even begun to try to find the proper balance between page count and price, yet, let alone trying to determine what is the a-list material and what is the b-list material. I think this stage is the ‘what does everything in a big pile look like?’ and work backward from there.I
will allow of the possibility that I might be dramatically
underrating the commercial potential and that it will turn out that
Cerebus’
time has come at last and Erik will be falling all over himself to put
out two
more volumes next year because it’s just a license to print
money. That
doesn’t tend to be the case with Cerebus
but I think printing the best material in the first volume then allows
for the
possibility of a second volume being a success because it would have a
lot of
first rate stuff that didn’t make it into the first volume.
Jeff
T: I think that's a good idea. OK, here's a list of *just* the
posters and prints, courtesy of Margaret's site:
Posters:
1977 to 1999: This is a 17" x 22" color promotion poster for the
biweekly series. The poster states "It began December 1977, It begins
again December 1988, Don't Wait until December 1999".
30 Years of Cerebus: A promo poster for the Biweekly series. Dave and
Gerhard
Poster: Late 1980's, measures approx 17 x 22 inches and features a
color photo
of Dave Sim and Gerhard. A promotional poster for Cerebus.
Cerebus Four More Years: Done injunction with the Four More Years
advertising
contest.
Cerebus Alberta Bound Tour: 11 by 17 inches, made in 1993 to promote a
tour Sim
was doing of some stores in Alberta, Canada.
Cerebus The Barbarian: For the CBLDF reprints the cover of The True
North #1
(benefit book).
Aardvark Berserk: "A four color poster, 500 copies signed and numbered
by
Dave Sim" from Cerebus #3. 17 3/4 by 11 1/2 inches. 1000 regular
non-signed.
Third Quarter Poster: Comes in regular and signed editions. Biweekly
Poster:
This poster came out to support the Church and State Biweekly Reprints
in 1991.
It is 15 1/2 by 22 inches and came folded. It has the covers from
issues #51 to
54.
Cerebus: The First American Tour 1982: color poster
Cerebus: Like No Other Comic: color poster, 1983 Reprints Cerebus #53
cover. 20
by 15 inches, reproduces the color artwork for the wraparound cover for
issue
#53 without the logo but red text that says "Like No Other Comic"
Also published without the text, when it is sometimes referred to as
the
Countess Michelle poster.
Cerebus Sold Here!: B&W, 1980
Cerebus The First Half: Color, 1991
Cerebus UK Tour: For the UK Tour in 1986. Color.
Aardvarks Over the U.K.: Tour poster for the UK Tour '93
High Society Promo Poster: A poster of the art to the High Society
phonebook
without the text.
Biweekly Promo Poster #1: This is a promo poster for the Biweekly
reprints, it
has the art to Biweekly issues #1-4. It measures 17 by 22 inches and is
in full
color. Came out in 1988 with the release of the Biweekly Reprints.
Independent's Day 1996: Made for Dave & Ger's October 1996 stop
in
Nottingham
Southern Dutchess News promo: 1986. about 11x16 inches. Shows the TMNT
and
Cerebus. Art by Eastman & Laird.
Prints:
'95 Sprits of Independence Print: A promotional print for '95 Spirits
of
Independence Tour Stop in Columbus, OH. Features Pope's THB heroine HR
Watson
and everyone's favorite earth pig Cerebus.
'95 Sprits of Independence Print #2: Done exclusively for Hero
Illustrated in
1995, this print features art by Sim, Gerhard, Steve Bissett's Tyrant,
Conley,
Paul Pope, and Pat Joseph. Dated 3-25-95 and 3-26-95.
The Bacchus 4000 Birthday Bash: Art by Eddie Campbell, Dave Sim, and
Pete
Mullins to benefit the CBLDF, 18 X 12 ½" B&W print.
Cerebus as Spawn: A 7 by 10 inche promo print made in 1992 to promote
Cerebus' in
Spawn #10. I think you might still be able to get it at the Comic Book
Legal
Defense Fund site. Also was published in Spawn #4 as a pin-up.
Cerebus and Bone: With the Cerebus logo being over shadowed by the Bone
logo.
1993; 8.5" by 11.5" Any info on where and why it came out would be
appreciated. Here is another look at it.
Dave:
It was done to promote Jeff’s and my joint appearance at the
two
Silver Snail comic shops in Toronto that year and as something to put
autographs and sketches on for people who had never heard of either or
both of
us and who weren’t prepared to spend $2.25 or $2.95 on a
comic book by someone
they had never heard of just to get it autographed.
Same theory as the Trade Show prints.
Jeff T quoting the Cerebus Checklist: Cerebus #35 Promo Flyer:
Promotional flyer for issue #35, 1982 or 1983.
8.5" x 11"
Church & State II Cover: An uncut "phonebook" cover of Cerebus
Church & State Vol.II, signed by both Dave Sim and Gerhard. It
was released
back in 1997 in a limited run of only 50.
Drinking Buddies: From the CBLDF, A print with Cerebus and Elf,
B&W.
Dress for Success Jam '93: Unknown who these characters are or the
artist Dave
did the print with. If you know, please let me know. It looks like
Cerebus is
saying "Sorry kid...Cerebus is drinking on YOUR tab as well..."
Dave:
Same theory as above: Dressed
for Success was a
black & white digest comic from the early 1990s, done by Chris
Howard and
Jeff Wasson of Toronto’s Egesta Comics.
There’s a good photo of Chris at
the Columbus Spirits stop in the back
of Cerebus 194
Jeff T quoting the Cerebus Checklist:
Faces Of Death: 1994, jam piece. 19" x 25". Here is a close up of
Dave's Cerebus panel.
Heroes World Retailer Con Print: A jam print with characters from
Collen Doran,
James Owen, Jeff Smith and Sim. It was made for the Heroes World
Retailer
Conference in 1993. Approximate size is 11 X 14.
Heroes World Trade Show Print: 8.5" x 11.5"; for the con at the
"Parsippany Hilton, May 1993" Cerebus is singing "It's! Up! To!
YOU! Paarsippany PAARSIPPANYYY" Print is actually BW but the scan is
darker.
Cerebus Hepcats Jam: 1992, Drawn for the Capital City Trade Show. By
Dave Sim,
Gerhard and Martin Wagner. Measures 11" X 17". BW
Lithograph No.1: Neil Gaiman: By Dave Sim and Neil Gaiman. From
Dave'sThe Long,
Strange History of Phase II: "(NOTE – not actually a
Lithograph.
Lithograph No.1:Neil Gaiman is the title) Only 50 copies of the piece
have been
produced of which Neil Gaiman and Dave Sim have signed and numbered
only 2:
"#1/50" and "#2/50" and both have written the year,
'2004'" Dave and Neil will continue to sign and date one each year and
auction it off with the proceeds going to the Comic Book Legal Defense
Fund.
Mid Ohio Con Print: A print for the Mid-Ohio Con held in 1987. This one
is
framed and matted. It has the print, which looks like a big jam done by
lots of
artist at the con and a certificate of authenticity.
Ozcon 5: A print of Bacchus and Cerebus together for the Ozcon 5 comic
convention held in 1996. There was also a limited edition print for the
same
convention.
PetuniaCon 1984: A rare print given out to the few attendees of the one
and
only Cerebus Convention. Petunia Con 1984 was held in Oakland
California. The
print features 6 Silhouettes of the different phases of Cerebus,
warrior, prime
minister, barbarian, politician etc. It is signed in silver ink by Dave
Sim and
measures 10 X 17 black and white and printed in Canada. Here is another
view of
it.
Promo 78: 1978, measures approx 8 1/2 x 11 inches. Drawn by Dave to
hand out at
the Torontocon in Febuary 1978. B&W. Here is a larger picture.
Read Minds: From the Words and Pictures Museum in Northhampton, Mass.
this sold
this 17" X 33" full color, signed in silver ink by Dave Sim art print
to celebrate their exhibition of all the original art from the Cerebus
novel
MINDS.
Small Press Print: From the Small Press Con in 1992, same as the cover
for
issue #977 of the Comic Buyer's Guide (see original Cerebus stories
list).
Spirits of Independence: A print for the Kitchener stop of the tour.
Spirits of
National Unity 1996: A print for the tour of the same name, features
two
Cerebus with hockey jerseys on. 8 1/2 by 11 1/2. Color.
Dave: The Spirits
of National Unity print was for the Montreal stop, not
Kitchener
Jeff T quoting the Cerebus Checklist:
Very Vicky Print: Features Very Vicky and Cerebus. A limited edition of
150 was
signed by Sim & Gerhard.
Jeff T: Between me and Margaret, we've probably got most, if not all of
them - in case Dave is missing any :) Well, yeah. If the Six deadly
Sins, and the Animated
Cerebus are to be included, absolutely the First Fifth should be in
there, too! I'm still for the separate cover collection
volume. If
that happened, do you think it would be best to include reduced sized
images of
the posters/promos in the color miscellany to make it "meatier," or
the cover collection? As L nny mentioned, putting it all together is
going to make for a massive, and expensive, volume. Keeping
the price reasonable would help make the separate products easier to
sell,
no?
Dave:
David Banks has done a prototype of the 300 covers volume using laser
scans, hand-stitched, etc. The
reproduction is not very good but it makes a handy reference book for
the
studio. It costs
him $77 to do each
one. He could farm
it out for better
reproduction but that’s going to cost $540 each. These are the sorts of
ballparks that we’re talking about.
We have four times as many covers as Sandman
and about one tenth the readership.
So,
just to be realistic here I think we have to anticipate that whatever
volume
Image agrees to do (if they agree to do one) is apt to be the
one-and-only if
we can’t interest anyone besides the core audience (which I
doubt that we can)
and it is apt to be expensive for that reason.
See above for “tying up money over
five years instead of two years” So I
would strongly suggest that what you need to think about is: what is
the one
volume that we want if we can only have one volume?
We’ve already gone from a colour
volume to a colour and
black-and-white volume to a colour, black-and-white volume, non-story
miscellany and cover volume. I
repeat:
this isn’t Sandman, this isn’t
Watchmen. If
Image is doing fine right now they could probably afford
to take a flyer on a single volume and make their money back over a
year or two
or three or however long it takes to sell a reasonable sized print run
that
would keep the cost per copy down just so Erik could have a copy and
because it
would look cool on the Image schedule.
Obviously they would be hoping to have a
modest hit. We sold
about 2,000 copies each of the last
few trades right out of the gate and that was part of the story that we
were
selling which these won’t be and that was a $30 item which
these won’t be. It’s
not just a matter of cutting the page
count to keep it to $50 or less.
You have to print a lot of copies of a
hardcover with colour printing
and glossy paper to keep the cost per unit down.
David Banks cover volume is $77 at cost. To sell it through Diamond
would require
marking it up to $160 just to break even and trust me everyone would
say “This
sucks. They’re
just colour
photocopies.” That’s
a lot of money to
shell out to have everyone just say “This sucks.”
Lenny:
Also, I wonder if it's possible to reprint the color stuff in
b&w and make it readable?
Lenny: How bad would it be? I'm really just suggesting perhaps ADDING 39 (or 84) pages to the B&W book. I'm not saying those pages shouldn't be in the Color book - but it would make the B&W Miscellany book complete by including b&w pages of the color stories. Would it really look so bad? (I mean do the color covers that appear in, say, the b&w Marvel Essentials look so crappy?).
Dave: Mm. Maybe not, but they were all drawn in black-and-white and then had colour added later. Most of the colour is so bad that printing them in black-and-white is an improvement. Most of what would be in the colour volume would be either painted colour or something that was rendered in colour.Just
from “ear to the ground” stuff, the selling feature
is the colour
stories from Epic. That’s
what
everyone mentions. But there it’s hard to tell if
there’s an actual enthusiasm
for them or if they’ve just developed a mystique because very
few people have
seen them. There’s
a lot of that with
the DC Archives series. “Wow!
The first
ten Spectre stories from More Fun.
Geez.
These actually suck pretty bad for 75 bucks.”
Lenny: While I would LOVE to buy a book that had all of these, I don't see this as necessary for inclusion in a color volume which collects the color Cerebus stories. So my current leaning would be to either figure out a way to get the color stories in the same volume as the b&w volume, or have just the color stories (which is 84 pages WITH the Animated Portfolio, or 39 pages without it) as their own volume.
I'd think so, too. So I think the Covers should be their own thing. At 300+ pages, it's clearly enough to make it it's own.
So I can envision the following collections:
1) B&W Miscellany Volume (247p)
2) Color Miscellany Volume (84p)
3) Color Covers Volume (around 315 pages or so)
4) Color Prints & Posters (around 50 pages - 39+First 5th+6 Deadly Sins)
Item 4 may be more pages if there were double page spreads to it. If you took the Animated Portfolio out of Item 2, that would make Item 4 close to 100 pages, leaving Item 2 at 39 pages to be added to Item 1, or printed alone.
Dave: Double-page spreads are easier to say than to do. If you’re talking about fold-out pages that’s a very specialized form of printing that is going to add a lot of expense. As is getting two-page spreads to match up without losing detail into the binding or having a swatch of white space between the two halves. If you’re doing the Sistine Chapel ceiling and a print run of 75,000 copies and charging $120 a copy that gives you wiggle room to do things like that. We’re on a much lower plateau of sales potential. They’ll eventually all sell but with a publisher like Image how long they take to sell is going to be more of an issue. For us, it’s a matter of how many years’ worth of books we just printed up. If you look in the printing history of the trades they usually last between two and three years on 6,000 copies or (the last few years) 4,000 copies. Except the Cerebus and High Society trades which just keep booting along on their 6,000 copy print runs. We sold 1,000 Collected Letters and had one re-order for 100 copies. So there are the two extremes of our success rates. Which one is the colour MV going to be? Which one is the covers one going to be? High Society or Collected Letters? With a printing bill that will probably top $50,000 it’s no small question.Lenny: They haven't been mentioned - but are these covers to stories? Or just magazines which have Cerebus on the cover and articles on Cerebus inside? In any event, I'd love to see these in either a Covers volume, or a Miscellaneous Color Items (ex. prints & posters) volume.
Of course the odds of ever seeing something like this do seem pretty slim.
Dave: That’s why I’m hoping that we can stick to a more sensible program of what seems the most likely to be successful in the market on its own terms and not “if I could make a wish right now and have it come true” volumes. We are talking about real money here and we’re talking about tens of thousands of dollars. If you guess the wrong book and I talk Erik into publishing it and it’s a dog then the odds are you aren’t going to see any of the other books in the next ten years or maybe even in your lifetimes.Jeff:
Hey, guys--I hate to throw a wrench in the works, but what about the
ads
that Dave occasionally ran on the back covers or inside back covers
that
featured Cerebus (usually promoting a tour like Spirits of Independence
or the
World Tour where he's holding the earth, Atlas-like)? If they were back
covers,
would you have to include those in
a covers collection?
Chris W: Is it really needed? I would honestly prefer to keep
things as basic as
possible (of course I'm barely participating in this discussion, so the
hell
with what I think). I don't think we'd need more than a thick Comics
Journal-sized book, at least in terms of size. Like TCJ #200 or
something. I
know Dave said if we (we?) were going to do a color thing, do it right,
but it
doesn't have to be so ultra-fancy, does it? Somewhere or
other, he
mentioned the timeline ("Latter Days"
annotations, around the "Reads Journal"/Rabbi issues) that the
timeline was almost exactly correct, the only problems being in minor
details
that Sim had never clarified enough to get into the timeline. Of course
that timeline includes things like "Last time Prince Keef was
straight" and the Palnan Fire Safety act of 1405.
Jason
P: I apologize if these have been mentioned, but The
True North, The True North II, and Images
of Omaha have color Cerebus covers
Jeff: As does:
1987 Amazing Heroes Preview Special: #4, cover with Groo the Wanderer.
Dork Tower #9: A Cerebus cover by Sim. No other Cerebus content. From
Dork
Storm Press, August 2000.
Lethargic Comics #14: Features a cover featuring Cerebus, Cerebus drawn
by Sim.
And an issue of Overstreet or Wizard, Cerebus in a movie theater as
usher? I
forget which issue?
Dave:
Overstreet Fan No. 7 December 1995
Jeff:
And that's only the Sim ones.
Matt D: Re:
Covers. I'm assuming here that Erik Larsen and Bob Chapman are footing
the bill
(at least in part) for the color volume. So one volume of Cerebus in
color
might be the goal. If so, then I see the collection being:
Covers to 1-300
Covers to oneshots
Covers to Swords (possibly with the swords intros)
Color story stuff
Color miscellaneous stuff (Animated portfolio, posters, ads, basically any color Cerebus stuff Dave (or us) thinks should be in there.)
Black and White stuff that needs high quality printing.
And then the black and white volume would be printed like the phonebooks.
And my lists are "everything" thinking. Like: here's everything that could be collected, what shouldn't be? And we cut out what should be cut out.
Dave:
That’s a very tough call because your core market are
completists. I’d
certainly be willing
to leave it up to Erik to pick since Image are the ones footing the
bill. “Here’s
how many pages I think it should be
and here’s the stuff I think has the best chance of finding a
market.” That
was why I started with the Epic
stories, the Animated Portfolio and selected covers. I think the Gerhard photo
covers are great,
but they are all wraparounds and I don’t think the market is
prepared to shell
out for 35 photo-covers that take up 70 pages.
If you leave out a bunch of covers people
will complain that it isn’t
complete. If you
include every cover
they’ll complain because x number of covers suck for whatever
reason. Welcome to
the direct market.
Matt D: And then we make a list of all the possibilities to pass onto Dave and Erik Larsen and they decide what is the most cost effective. If a cover collection is gonna cost sixty bucks for just the covers to issues 1-300, is that a good idea?
Dave:
I think you’d be lucky to get it done for sixty bucks. It’s very easy
to get fished in on these things
because a certain number of people are enthusiastic and they really
have no
awareness of the difference between Sandman numbers
and Cerebus numbers
and what that difference does to your price point.
Matt D: How much would it cost to add the 100 or less pages of color story? The color story (including the animated portfolio,) is 84 pages. That's about the page count for the Guide To Self Publishing.
Dave:
The Guide to Self-Publishing was on newsprint and it was
saddle-stitched
(staples). That’s
why it was $2.25.
Matt D: Even if you printed it as a square bound volume it's still pretty thin. Granted, it'll probably cost around fifteen bucks, but it's still pretty thin.
Dave:
$15 if it’s Sandman and
DC is printing a
gazillion of them. Colour
printing that
would match the printing of the actual covers (which is what the
reproduction
would be measured against) is expensive.
Matt D: I just looked at my copy of Supreme: The Story of The Year, it's around 362 pages. And I think it sold in hardcover for around thirty bucks. Now the Color Volume is gonna have a bigger page size, but I think it might still be do-able for fifty bucks or a little less. With the most expensive phone book being $35 is $50 too much?
Should we e-mail Erik Larsen and ask what size he's thinking of?
Dave:
I think at this point it might be worth it to make up jpegs or digital
files of everything that’s possible to include in the colour
volume and send
that to him to see what he thinks.
Worst case scenario: you print all of it and
it comes out to 381 pages
all high cost glossy pages. If
he says
sure, okay, then you’ve got the colour volume of your dreams
and we’ll all just
have to work to sell the market on the idea.
Or he says, I think you’ve only
got 200 pages of top quality material
here, then I think we have to consider that.
How’s American Flagg selling
for them, I suspect will be a big
question since it would be in the same pricey volume category. How are their other
hardcovers selling? If
they printed 15,000 and sold 900 and
haven’t had any reorders then the bloom is going to be off
the hardcover rose
when it comes to taking a chance on Cerebus or
anything else. But
I do think that colour scans of
every possible colour piece that could be included sent to Erik on a
disk would
probably help move this project forward if that’s at all
possible.
Matt: Okay, a quick argument in favor of "everything" thinking. Sin City just came out on DVD. THe only extra is a behind the scenes documentary. They're planning on doing a "special edition" with a whole lot of bells and whistles. Now, if you've already bought the first DVD, why buy the second?
or,
Why buy the first if the second is a superior product? I'm thinking we might be at three volumes now:
Black and White.
Color. (Story and extras)
Covers.
Does this sound good to anybody?
Matt
Lenny: SO that would make it:
1) B&W Miscellany Volume (247p)
2) Color Miscellany (including Posters & Prints) Volume (84p+50p = 134p)
3) Color Covers Volume (around 315 pages or so)
The page count on 2 doesn't include a few other items people have posted about which I suspect would bring it closer to 150 or so. OK..I'm in! :^)
Dave:
I think the best shot, as I said above, is to send Erik all the colour
material—450 pages or whatever it is—and have him
look at it as a publisher who
has a pretty good idea of the market.
Even Wrightson: A Look Back didn’t
include everything and
that book was huge.
It’s
incomplete Wrightson, but it’s the most complete Wrightson
book ever
attempted. I think
that might be what
we’re looking at here: more colour Cerebus material than has
ever been
reprinted elsewhere. Not
complete but
complete enough that the core audience has to have one and the larger
market
can be drawn in by the better material.
I don’t own Wrightson: A
Look Back but if I did I would be buying
it for the sake of maybe two dozen of the hundreds of pieces that are
in there.
Jeff:
We're gonna' have to bump that up (the time line review).
Make it separate from the re-read. Sent it (the database), he added
corrections, I added
stuff. Unless there are conflicts with the timeline, that project is
pretty much done
(waiting on the TMNT story classification).
Swords #1 has two covers (1st and 2nd print are
different), #5 is the wrap around BWS cover, and the back cover of #6
was
printed on the supplement.
(lenticular
pages) Like "flip cards" when you
were a kid. The picture had these little ridges? And when you turned
the card
surface, the picture changes? Ringing any bells? There are much more
advanced
versions of these now.
I
hear what you're saying. Where does it end? I think, if
Dave was to include images of posters and such, it should be a very
limited,
selective group of official, high quality images (like the First Half,
Four
More Years, etc)
I
posted a list off Margaret's website already. We could
certainly make another database, but before we start pulling out hair
and
arguing about what's in and what's out, let's see if Dave's even
interested in
the idea after reading this. There's a lot to do in the interim.
(color to b&w?)
Some
of the painted work would come out looking like mud, IMO.
Plus, Dave seems intent on reproducing stuff as accurately as possible
(and
admirably so) and this seems like 2 giant steps in the opposite
direction.
Lenny: You're probably correct. Although, I will say that if the color project falls apart, I would definitely prefer a muddy in places b&w version of the color stories vs. nothing.
Jeff:
I would say, in the prints/posters volume, which I still think
should be in a nice, oversized coffee table book. I mean, this is
basically an
art book, and that's the best format for such a thing. And if Dave
wants to
make some pages group less "impressive"
covers together, that would save a lot of space. I, personally, would
like to
see every cover get equal respect - but the idea is out there.
Dave:
I think that might be an area where we’re forced to
compromise with
the market forces. If
you treat the
photo covers the same as the painted covers or the early covers the
same as the
primo covers I think you’re going to get resistance from
people flipping
through it in the store depending on the price point.
That’s an area where I’d
like to get Erik’s honest reaction or a
mock-up of what he thinks the “best shot” finished
book should look like. We
can negotiate to get other things put
back in, but with someone whose finger is far more on the pulse of the
market
than my own when it comes to what will sell you’re going to
have a more
successful book erring closer to his view than your own ideal
pie-in-the-sky
view. IMHO.
(What
is that? Computerspeak
for “I am a Ho’?) ;)
Jeff:
I would say, leave the little quickie ads out. But a nice, full
color piece like the "'95 World Tour" shirt? Yeah, that's a good one!
Swords 6 was messed up when it was produced (missing the last
issue), and a single issue supplement was made to fix the problem. It
had the
same front cover, and a cool back cover. Cerebus seen through the eye
of Sump
Thing.
were there?
Lenny: Well..I'd like full pages/equal treatment of MOSt of the covers...but to be honest...I could live with inferior treatment..or perhaps even omission (although, as a completist, I guess I'd want them all in there)...of the photocovers of Going Home. I cretainly don't need a 2 page spread for the wraparound covers there.Jeff:
Hey, I like those covers!
Gerhard: They were vacation photos if I remember right.
Dave: And my Dad took a number of them between issues 251 and 286 that I incorporated into the cover with a Cerebus drawing. It was one of my last shots at “Honor thy father…” hoping that it might improve his behavior and that somewhere up ahead we could do signed prints of them. Pipe dream.
Matt: Anybody else remember Dave writing in the back of Going Home or Form & Void that there was gonna be a collection of those covers?
(Preferred format for a cover collection: Oversized pages with regular sized covers and commentary from Dave and Ger at the bottom.)
Jeff
S: Actually,
most of the early photo covers were from shots taken by
Gerhard,
but most of the Going Home photos were from (I assume, vacation) photos
taken by Dave's Dad, Ken Sim.
Mike
B: I realize I'm about a week late on this discussion, but my
router died
and I was offline until today.
Since there was some talk of including in one of these volumes the
Cerebus Zero
and Jam covers, etc., I just wanted to mention the Guys Party Pack
cover and
all the Following Cerebus covers.
Also, someone mentioned a Cerebus sighting and I ran into one recently:
I was
flipping through a compilation of the old Dragon Magazine comic "What's
New?" and I came across an episode on the topic of Lycanthropy
(werewolves) in which other types of 'were' creatures are mentioned,
including
the Cerebanthropy (were-aardvark) which is pictured as Cerebus.
Currently available in the "What's New?"
collection vol. 1 (penultimate page, fwiw). This would have first been
printed
(in the magazine) in '83 when Cerebus was still 'cool' (to the rest of
the
world, that is).
Jeff
T: Thanks for the heads up. Just ordered one from: StuidoFoglio
Man, it's been a while since I read Dragon Magazine. I
gotta' get back to role playing games one of
these days:)
I left Mark listed as a moderator out of respect. Margaret, Lenny and I
are all
owners now, not just moderators. The group is as secure as it can be:)
On the Phase II!! ;^P
Mark B: good job , Jeff. and leave Mark as a moderator was a very thoughtful touch.
Rick S: I'm crying really hard, but they're tears of happiness. :) Congrats!Matt D:
From the Bill Of Right's site http://albert.nickerson.tripod.com/creatorsbillofrightssim10.html
Dave on the color volume:
That
was when I realized that the colour volume—which neither Ger
nor I
are especially interested in doing through
Aardvark-Vanaheim—would make a good
test case, a good way to see what it's like to actually trust a
publisher
because for the first time the whole 6,000 page enchilada isn't what's
at
stake. It's all outside stuff I'm not really inclined to deal with
anyway so
it's as close as Ger and I can come to a situation of "found money".
Unless you and Bob Chapman are prepared to do the book, the book is
never going
to exist as far as I can see. Once it does exist, it can be translated
without
having to tie up ten to fifteen years of a person's life. So, yes, we
are
definitely interested in moving ahead with it.
That doesn't mean that I'm not interested in covering all the bases.
For
example, would Image have any problem with our getting the paperwork
from
Diamond on the initial order—the TRU Report—the
final orders, any order
increases and any reorders on the colour volume? Anything they e-mail
to Image,
they fax to Aardvark-Vanaheim? Also is it possible to limit sales of
the book
just to the direct market? I realize that Diamond just has a brokerage
arrangement with Image. Does that mean Image can limit who Diamond
sells to? It
would be kind of a trade-off since we wouldn't be able to sell to FM or
Cold
Cut on a book published by Image because of your Diamond exclusive. We
won't
squawk about that if you guys limit the sales to comic-book stores
only.
Likewise do you have any problem with us getting copies of the printing
bills
on the book, just to make sure that all the numbers add up? For most
publishers
that would be a real problem area in the NONE OF YOUR BUSINESS
category. Is
that the case with Image?
Dave: I assume Erik is still mulling this over
and was probably spooked when I
printed the proposed Vertigo contract to Al Nickerson’s
website. I might,
in fact, have queered the whole
Image deal by doing so. It
still seemed
to me the right thing to do.
Oddly
enough Bob Chapman at Graphitti just called me today to find out
what was going on with the book. I guess he got a call from Larry
Marder which
prompted him to call me. As I'm picturing it right now, Bob's been
attached to
the project since the early 90s, at least, so it seems only right to
make him
part of the deal and—unless you have any
objections—it seems to me that he
would fit doing what he does best: the prestige limited hardcover
edition. He
has his own price points and page counts and package in mind, I'm sure.
So it
seems to me that if Image was willing to do the mass trade paperback
version it
would be a matter of getting what you picture together with what Bob
pictures
until they're one package. I don't really have a preference when it
comes to
the package because I don't picture myself doing a lot of the work and
I don't
have any experience with those kinds of grades of paper, stitched
binding and
so on. You tell me what makes the most sense. This many pages, this
cover
price, this print-run. About all that Ger and I can provide in the way
of
guidance is that for most of the Cerebus trade paperbacks, if we print
6,000
copies those will last two or three years depending on how the market
is going.
Four years if it's really in the doldrums.
As an example, if you want to do all 300 covers using a combination of
what we
have originals for, negatives for, colour proofs for, and CGC file
copies for,
well, that sounds like quite a headache to me. But as long as the
captions just
read "issue 120 March 1989" it isn't going to be my headache, so I'm
all in favour of it. I'll write an introduction for each section of the
book—the covers, the Epic stories (Bob has negatives for
everything except
"A Friendly Reminder"), the Animated Cerebus, assorted colour pieces,
Spawn 10 if Todd is willing, Turtles 8 from the First Comics colour
version if
Peter is willing—and provide all the raw materials that we
have here and you
and Bob are going to make a book. Or Bob is going to make a book that
you and
he are going to publish. Or you're going to make a book that you and
Bob are
going to publish. If you aren't going to do all 300 covers, then you
have to
decide which covers you want to do. If there's something I really have
to
participate in, I'll be glad to participate, but I think Bob made the
very good
point that because you're already a fan of the material, it does make
things a
lot easier. The fact that you really just want a copy of the book for
yourself
means that you're going to make sure that it's the book a Cerebus fan
would
want to own to the extent that that's possible—which probably
means as complete
as possible. I told Bob about you doing all of the heavy lifting on
American
Flagg, and told him that I might have made a mistake in suggesting too
early
that you learn how to delegate. First give the Cerebus colour volume
the same
care you did the Flagg book—after that you can delegate.
So, maybe we should work out our suggestions, and e-mail Erik Larsen?
Jeff T: As far as content, etc? I thought we were waiting on Dave to iron out a few details, but if he's going to have as little to do with it as possible - we should put together a proposal? Perhaps give it to Dave to give to Erik Larsen. I never really thought about the colored version of the Turtles story. Some of the gray painting mixed with Letra Tone looks like mud.Matt D: This is what I'm saying, yes.
Dave:
Pete Laird took all of the duotone shading out of Turtles No.1
for reprinting which I assume is a far more arduous task than just
putting
Cerebus’ tone back in with no gray painting overtop of it. That’s if Pete
is inclined to do so.
Lenny: Well here's a start based on the chart Jeff posted on our site 8 stories for 84 pages:
"Selling Insurance" (Epic 30) - 2p
"The Girl Next Door",(Epic 30) - 3p
"A Friendly Reminder", (Epic 28) - 3p
"His First Fifth", (Epic 26) - 9p
"Crossing Over", (Spawn 10) - 22p
"A Well-Equipped Bar", "16"
"His First Sword", "17"
"Add One Mummified Bat", "12"
39+45=84
This assumes 1 page per Animated Portfolio plate.
On top if this, I think there are 2 classes of items:
1) Cerebus Color Covers.
a) Issues 1-300. How many are there (if you exclude the photo covers)? Around 275 or so? Can we get a definitive count? Personally, I'd think the 300 cover (including the photos) should be their own book.
b) Other magazines/volumes (Swords of Cerebus, Following Cerebus, Cerebus Companion, what else?) Can we get a definitive listing?
2) Various posters and related items. Can we get an exhaustive list of these items? I think a few lists of these were posted on the site by various people the last time we discussed this issue (Jeff? Margaret? Matt, maybe?).
Ideally, I propose that we create a new database chart to cover these 2 categories of color Cerebus work. Then we'll have identified the universe of Color Cerebus items from which to choose to create a color volume.
e
L nn
Dave:
As I indicated, I think you might be past the database stage and into
the jpegs on disk stage if we’re going to pitch the whole
works directly at
Erik. He’s
an artist so he will make a
better assessment of visuals in visual form than he will of a list of
visuals
that he can’t see.
Margaret: I'm not sure who posted the list (I think it was Jeff), but from my website here is a list of Cerebus posters and then prints:
I
would like to see the First Fifth prints in
color in the book if we are going to include posters and whatnot.
"The
First Fifth:
Issued to celebrate the "first fifth" (75
issues) of Cerebus being completed. There were two different issues of
the
plates. You could buy them seperately or together. Either the signed
and hand
colored version (limited to 30 each) or the b&w non-signed
version"
I'm just listing all of the above, not making the suggestion that it
should all
be included.
Dave:
I do think they should all be included on a disk that is sent to
Erik. We can work
on winnowing it down
from there depending on what he says.
Lenny: OK...looks like an extra 19 pages (assuming no double page spreads) to take the total to 103. That covers #2, above. We still should figure out 1a & 1b.
Matt D: 1) Cerebus Color Covers. a) Issues 1-300. How many are there (if you exclude the photo covers)?Jeff T: Well, that's still up for debate, no? If the photo covers are included, it's 298.
Matt D: Around 275 or so? Can we get a definitive count? Personally, I'd think the 300 cover (including the photos) should be their own book.
Jeff T: I still think so, too.
Dave:
In that case, as I said earlier, I think you have to make up your
minds which you want more—a colour volume with some/many/a
lot of the covers
and other colour material or a complete book of the covers, bearing in
mind
that if it flops on the market you won’t see the other one
anytime soon.
Matt D: b) Other magazines/volumes (Swords of Cerebus, Following Cerebus, Cerebus Companion, what else?) Can we get a definitive listing?
Jeff T: Cerebus 0 & 0 Gold, Cerebus Jam (should this be included? Sienkiewicz rights?), Cerebus Companion 1 & 2, Cerebus Guide To Self Publishing, Cerebus World Tour Book 1995, Following Cerebus 1-5, Swords Of Cerebus 1-6 (5&6 front & back) & 1 (2nd print) -- we should probably stop at everything with "Cerebus" in the title, excluding the fanzines 1,11,12,13 (which are black and white) and Free Cerebus (which is a reprint collage - although, I would have no objection to including it. I just don't think it's needed.)
So that's 21 images.
Dave:
It should be quite a disk when Erik gets it, that’s all
I can say. I think
you should include
these discussions as well since I doubt he’s had the time to
keep current with
them.