Inkwell: Authors and Artists

    
Puns aside, I still have no idea what colour halibuts are, except when
cooked... must do a web search when not running late for work.

Neil - what Mimi said about you being nice and us cheesey-fan-types.
Ditto and stuff.

Jen - That's okay, I can only afford *free* bookshelves. The trick is
to find people who are moving or redecorating (in my case, it was my
parents), and in need of getting rid of old shelves and desks and
things. Moving offices are also a good source of good
furniture-type-things (my last apartment looked a bit like it had been
acquired from an office supply store, but it was free).

And, I've finally updated my web page with all kinds of stupid and
silly things.

http://www.snafu.org/michelle/ for the main page.

http://www.snafu.org/michelle/dbmain.htm for the infamouse Devil Bunny
pages (which are always in progress)

http://www.snafu.org/michelle/gorey.htm for photos from the Gorey Ball
last month, which is what I really logged on to post about. I'll add a
playlist to that page once I put one together, Sheila. Sorry it's
taking so long.

-squeaks, who has had enough of html and self promotion today.
  

    

Thanks, Michelle and Jen, for offering to keep an eye out for me. :> I'll
get one someday- I'm just stubborn enough. I suppose I could try ebay, but
ebaying for books just seems weird.
^^^^^^^-- look! new word!
  

    

And slippage from Michelle- looking at your web site, I have to wonder- does
Devil Bunny need a ham?

(www.cheapass.com/ham.html , for those who don't get it...)
  

    
Mary - good to know I wasn't the only one who though "Rimmer" when
Esperanto was mentioned.  :-)  The episode Quarantine was just on
here... I always lose it when I see him in that dress.  And my uncle...
seems much more human now.  When the family gets together to play
cards there's almost always a reference to how bad at losing he was or
some such.  I'd like to head on down to Honduras at some point in the
future to visit his grave but the idea of travelling long distances
makes me nervous.

Mimi - I love it when you say there's a hidden message ahead because
that means I get to read something interesting (not that the other
posts here are uninteresting)... feel free to unhide them.  :-)

Michelle - I have a very guilty mind and so when people do nice things
like offer me free bookshelves... I give them money anyway.  I just
can't help it.  The Gorey Ball looks as though it must have been very
entertaining.  

Madman - I love hunting for books.  I'd love to own a used bookstore
when I grow up except that if anyone tried to buy anything I'd throw
them out.  Ebay has worked for me in the past and that's where my
roommate got their copy of Season of Mists.  There's a couple up there
right now that look like they'd be good to bid on.

Jen, who is posting to avoid homework 
  

    

Quarantine was a brilliant episode.

All right, I'll take a look at ebay. I just remembered that I have, in fact,
gotten books off of ebay in the past, so what the heck.

My next post will be hidden, as it contains spoilers for late Sandman
issues.
  

    
Three thumbs up on the Coen Bros. "Oh Brother, Where Art Thou."
(Or four, actually, if you count the friend who treated me
to the movie and had already seen it twice.)
I think I'm going to buy the soundtrack CD, soon, too.
  

    
        <madman>, I believe bibliofind.com and exlibris.com track down
specific editions of books if you ask them.
        And one more tale of Will Eisner, National Treasure: Was getting
something signed by him at WonderCon, leaving my own cheapass table
unattended for a few minutes to do so.  As he signs, I tell him his
work is one of the things that inspired me to write and publish my own
comics.  He gets interested (or does a good impression of it) and asks
me what I do.  I babble something about doing a science fiction comic
published online.  He says he's really interested in seeing online
comics and would I please give him the URL?  He grabs a free coaster
from a stack of them sitting nearby and hands me his autograph pen, so
I can write down the location of my site because he wants to see it.
  

    
Len - Thank you for providing the name of the Gorey inspired play, it
came back to me at around 7:00 am yesterday morning while I was in the
shower. It figures. 

Michelle - Lovely pictures from the ball!  You SF people are having
way more fun than us New Yorkers.  Outside of that new Rocky Horror
production I can't think of anything that won't cost me an ovary that's
worth going to see. 

Neil - Re heroes..you hit it right on the head, it all comes down to
good manners. 

The author who broke my heart may be a national treasure in terms of
his art, but I wouldn't spit on him to save his life if he was dying of
thirst. Still love those short stories though.
  

    
e-mail from Bill Williams

Madman--
Take a gander over at www.abebooks.com -- they have five copies of _SoM_,
four of which are apparently first printings, and one of which is,
unbelievably, $20. Very nice website for hunting down those hard-to-find
books you've been searching for forever.

Neil--
I went ahead and followed your suggestion to mention the Making Waves cruise
to the /. folks... my post is still in the queue, but hopefully they will
see it and like it enough to put it up there.

I also have space issues with all of my Sandman- and Neil-related material.
Including the aforementioned _SoM_ hardback, kindly inscribed and doodled in
by our most esteemed contributor. :)

--Bill
I have got no further than this:
every man has a right to utter what he thinks truth,
and every other man has a right to knock him down for it.
Samuel Johnson, 1780
  

    

Ya know, in a similar thread to the heroes discussion... a random anecdote.
It used to be that, I would hear something on the radio that I thought was
terribly unenjoyable, and someone would say, "hey, do you like Chris Isaac?"
and I'd say, "no, I hate Chris Isaac."

I can't bring myself to do that anymore. Now, at worst, it's "no, I hate
Chris Isaac's music." No longer will I say, "his music sucks," now I'll
try to say "I just don't enjoy his music." (Actually, there is music that
just sucks. But I have to consciously reach that decision first.)

It was a good lesson in dissociating the artist from the art. I use the
examples above because I met Chris Isaac once, briefly, and he was just
incredibly nice and witty (and was one of the most perfect looking human
beings I've ever seen). And so the next time I heard "I Wanna Fall In
Love" on the radio, I started to say "oh, I hate this guy," and realized,
no I didn't. He was actually pretty cool.

Of course, it works the other way, too, and there are bands I've stopped
listening to because I can't get past the fact that they are big
jerks. Though I confess that I've been lucky in that most instances of
that, for me, are from anecdotes not personal experience. 


By the by, you'll note I lied above- my next post was not a hidden one with
a question. I decided the question wasn't really worthwhile. I'll still ask
the other question later, though. Really.
  

    

And thank you, <castle> and <streak>, for your suggestions. I'm looking into
them now.
  

    

...And, after a brief agonizing decision between getting a signed copy of
not, I opted with "not" but a more secure purchase method and ordered a copy
from abebooks.com. Thanks again, everyone who chipped in with suggestions
and encouragement.
  

    

Don't thank me, thank Bill Williams!
  

    
madman - Devil Bunny *is* a ham. 

re:GoreyBall - Glad you liked the photos. The girls (and guys) did an
AMAZING job on the decorations there. I only managed to get a few shots
of them because it was too dark to get the rest. There was a kick-ass
skeleton of what looked very Wobbly-like, hanging in the back room that
just wouldn't take to film. And all the dead faeries hanging from the
ceiling just added to the charm. And yes, it was fun (until the fight
any way - some people have to ruin it for everyone). Next year's should
prove even better. I think Rosin Coven is coming back for it. 

-squeaks, who will now go crawl into a hole (a.k.a. 'bed') until the
flu goes away and *stays* away this time.
  

    
Will next year's Gorey ball be in the Bay Area? I know the Bay Area
Costumer's Guild (which I keep forgetting to join!) has done Gorey balls,
but it sounds like you're talking about something different.
  

    
Esperanto?  Oh dear.  People who can actually speak Esperanto are
scary in that Amway sales lady kind of way.  They just cannot
understand that a) your not interested and b) neither is the rest of
the world.  
  

    
Michelle - you must have had a fabulous time!
  

    
cranky - different thing. This was the First Annual one at the Cat
Club in SF. Basically just a regular club night, only we plugged the
theme a lot. Once the band was thru playing in both rooms and people
started winding down, it turned back into a rock n'
roll/goth-industrial club until closing. Next year it will get more
publicity (if I have anything to say about it) so more people will show
up in costume. 

Amanda - most definitely!

squeaks, who has had much rest, and is almost ready to continue her
html-ing.
  

    
You garrulous bunch. (A good thing.) I am going to go and hide for a
week and finish the book totally -- there's a lot of writing that has
to happen in chapter 18 to make it work as it should. I'm not sure that
the country I shall be in will have easy phone connections. So either
I'll post a lot next week or not at all...
  

    
Will be interested in seeing what you come up with, if I get a chance to....

Also hope the Christmas cards finally got there.
  

    
Michelle--  The Gorey photos look amazing... To second Rocky, it
always seems that my friends in SF throw better parties than the ones
out here.  Do Rosin Coven have any CDs out?

Amanda--  Ok, yes there is something odd about Esperantists.  But...
there's also something kind of adorable.  I went to a meeting of the NY
Esperanto Society to do some research for a piece I was writing.
Esperantists of all ages were there-- the very old, the young, families
with small children raised bilingual in English and Esperanto. They
were having a party to celebrate the birthday of Dr. Ludwig Zamenhof,
the inventor of Esperanto.  They sang Esperanto songs and told jokes in
Esperanto, and had dinner in a Latin American restaurant called, what
else?, Esperanto.  They seemed so happy as they conversed in their
unnatural tongue... it was infectious.
Which is to say, don't think Amway... think a secular-humanist version
of Southern Baptists.  Just as weird, but maybe less sinister.

Neil-- Bona vojago!
  

    
Neil - good luck with the writing and the hiding.

Jen.
  

    
Re: way back #1610 art-artist dissociation 

*prepares to feel that 'pretentious like silly art-talk feeling'
creeping in* 

For a time, I was opposed to the concept that the artist could be
considered within the art.  This obviously wasn't a very
well-considered view; It was a direct reaction of growing tired of
seeing people having to defensive about their creations....if I was
writing about a homicidal prostitute, it didn't mean I was a homicidal
prostitute, nor do I think prostitutes are homicidal or vice versa, it
simply meant the character happened to be.  It wasn't until I had
regular exposure to artists producing art before I would began to
realize that I was drawing the lines too sharply, confusing the
allowance of independence with absolute dissociation.  I actually know
some visual artist that are almost offended at the thought of
completely impersonal art.  Sometimes, probably most prominent in
abstract expressionism, it is the artist that brings to the art
whatever meaning we may think it needs to validate itself.  I really
didn't believe in my own creations until I consciously allowed bits of
myself into my writing.  

*Sigh*  I could so keep going.  This is why Dadaism appeals to me:
Everything is, nothing is, fish.

------

Neil, I completely agree with you on Will Eisner.  He ought to win
pulitzers, have statues erected, whatever it takes to get those 'people
who don't read comics' to check him out.  He's definitely on my list
of 'people to meet'.
  

    
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