Friday 7 October 2016

The Inner Brain "Reboot" Button

JEFF SEILER:
The first paragraph of this week’s letter seems, once again, to refer to an attempt to help market glamourpuss, back in 2008. The rest seems relatively self-explanatory. The last paragraph seems to have been one of the few times when Dave conceded to my love of baseball by using the metaphor.

8 August, 2008

Hi Jeff:

I’ve mailed a copy to SCENE with a cover note saying it is being send in support of Dominick’s review. You might get him to email them mid-week next week when, presumably, the copy will have arrived.

I’m really wondering if the people of Cerebus Yahoo-dom are actually that sensitive of if it’s more theatrical histrionics because of the weird structure. As Rick wrote in his last column, it’s more than a little weird that the person who most often agrees with me and is the most closely aligned with my own views is universally considered a troll at a website ostensibly dedicated to my work. Since I’m the bad guy, I can’t be the victim so there’s this knee-jerk reflex to hurl themselves to the floor and writhe around at the slightest provocation: “See? I’m the victim here -- that’s why I’m on the floor writhing around.” You don’t have to be too distanced from the situation to find that more than a little funny.

Oh, I know YOU knew what I meant about the “friend” thing. I was more just reading into the record again. You can never repeat the obvious too many times for folks like this because they’re very adept at just leaving a little time and distance whereupon whatever was was never actually said. If they’re like this now, you can just imagine what their heirs will be like in 2050 or 2080. Their eyes would not only glaze over, but as soon as you said “misogynist” it would hit their inner brain “reboot” button and delete everything you said before and after. “Controversial” has the same effect. “Controversial Dave Sim” = Auto Reboot. I’m sorry, what were you saying again?

Starting issue 5 on Monday. Either the ball is headed for the gap and I can score a couple of runs and keep going or it’s an easy catch just short of the warning track and issue 4 constitutes running the bases because, well, that’s what a pro ball player is expected to do.

Dave

6 comments:

Dominick Grace said...

As the Dominick mentioned above, I can report that the SCENE review did happen, just not written by me. To explain: SCENE is a weekly (or it was weekly then; I think it is bi-weekly now) news/arts/entertainment magazine published in Canada and distributed for free. It has a reviews section for books. I had a copy of Judenhass and offered them a review. They wanted to be sent a review copy in order to do a review. Dave sent one. Then they assigned someone else to do the review, even though I had already written (and, I believe, submitted one). The review they ran was a positive review, as I recall, just not mine....

Jeff Seiler said...

Thank you for the clarification, Dom.

Damian T. Lloyd, Esq. said...

I am removed enough from Dave's situation to find it more than a little funny that he believes his private correspondence constitutes a "reading into the record".

-- Damian

Unknown said...

Hi Damian: Well, you have a very strange sense of humour.

I knew my correspondence wasn't going to be private for very long, so it's definitely "reading into the record".

Dave Fisher has finished the 1990 correspondence -- the first COMPLETE year -- and is now doing 1989. The earliest -- but INCOMPLETE year -- so we know where BOX #1 starts and what BOX # starts 1990. Takes about three to four months per year so far. We'll be making them available in order on the Kickstarters.

Jeff Seiler said...

For the record, when Dave stopped responding to me in, reflection of the personal, "just between us guys" tone of earlier, he made a point of telling me that he was "just reading into the record", which (if you're not aware of where that phrase came from), refers to, I assume, Congresses around the world.

What one does, when one is so inclined (or directed) is, one reads aloud whatever one is allotted the time to say. Congress-persons (yeah, I wrote it!), all, are allotted a certain number of minutes, per Congress-person, per day (that they are in session), to say whatever the heck they want to. Look up all the crazy s*#t they say. Or, watch the movie, "Mr. Smith Goes To Washington".

"Reading it into the Record."

You can buy copies of it, presumably from your Congressional or Senatorial Representative.

And people say I'm not cynical enough.

Jeff Seiler said...

Okay--corrections: Erase the comma after "in" on line two.

Insert comma after "directed)", on line one of paragraph two.

I hate it when I have to proofread myself.

(SIGH...)