Who
is... Donna Barr? Donna
Barr has been drawing since 1954, writing since 1962, published since 1986,
and publishing since 1996.
She has a Bachelors' Degree in German, and
is a veteran of the United States Army (1970-1973).
Readers worldwide
follower her THE DESERT PEACH, STINZ, BOSOM ENEMIES, HADER
AND THE COLONEL, among others.
She is recognized by her peers as
a pioneer in the field of drawn books and their use in new technologies of distribution
and reproduction. She is a contributor to the world's largest webcomics site,
moderntales.com, and its affiliate
sites.
She achieved her lifetime career goal in 2004 when her life's
work -- past, present and future -- has been accepted as part of the San Diego
State University's Library's Special Collection, and will be available to students
and professors for research, and to the public for exhibits.
She can
be emailed at barr at stinz dot com (remove spam barriers). She answers. Keep
the sentences short.
(You anal-stimulation people go away. Not THAT kind of plug. GEEZE.).
Coming 1 July from Diamond: Permanent Party. My prose novel about my time in the army, and why I am the way I am. $13.99. Shoving it through mainstream bookstores, too, if they’ll take it, or at least their websites. So be on the lookout….(and if you think THIS column is full of swear words…).
Okay. Comments on Benedict 16, and what kinda Pope he’s likely to be. And since Ratzi was in the Hitler Youth and there’s a big argument about whether that’s still valid…
I've studied the Third Reich for a long time. Yes, deciding not to be in the Hitler Youth in Germany then would be like admitting you're a homosexual in a baseball team in a Red State today. Yes, in either case, it could get you killed. It's just safer to join or keep your mouth shut. When you're 14, you're just a kid, and you try to protect yourself. Reasonable. Understandable.
But -- Ratzinger is no longer a child. And it's what he's doing now that counts.
We know that it's bad to do bad things to Jews. Ratzinger admits it and works against it.
However, he thinks its perfectly all right to do bad things to homosexuals.
It's SAFE to say treating Jews is bad. It's NOT safe to say treating Homosexuals is bad.
Looks like Ratzi is taking the safe way out again... Do you think he will ever grow up?
Okay.
On to the Commie Book stuff.
Italics Boy two episodes ago (Tickle That Thang) said that it was “illegal to share email” or some such crap, and that he was “keeping copies,” and that he was going to tell my publisher. He also said I couldn’t argue my way out of a paper sack.
Somebody is obviously part-timing as Basement Boy, so let me (in a very friendly spirit because by the end of this article I’m going to get REAL friendly) let him and the rest of you Tiny Clique Lads in on some clues:
1. Email is not privileged or proprietary information. Neither is any snail mail you send ANYBODY. Neither is your idiot forum. You say something to somebody on the internet, you better damn-well remember they got a Forward Button – and a lot of us have email lists and blogs. And short tempers. To quote Tom Hanks: “SO PLAY NICE.”
2. ALL your email gets saved. It’s in the Sent Mail or some such box. It’s saved me – Desperately Deleting Girl – too many times for words. So we’re ALL saving email. Italics Boy, you are not special. (I’m having too much fun making up these Superhero names… is that part of the charm? Am I finally buying a clue?)
3. Exactly what sort of relationship do these people think we have with our publishers? You already know that Silver Bullets will let me make any kind of fool of myself, right here where you all can see it! As for my books – I AM MY PUBLISHER, BWA HA HA! All-powerful Empire IN MY OWN HEAD.
4. Why do these people always threaten to sue you? I mean, is there a freak fan and minor-reviewer law firm on retainer out there? Whiner, Fatboy, Scramble and Pithell? If so, why waste time on paying your lawyer? I’m as big a whore as anybody who ever went to Harvard. Send me a $100,000 check (NOT FROM YOUR PARENTS’ ACCOUNT) and I’ll never mention anything you ever say ever again. Total oblivion, and cheaper than your imaginary lawsuits. Your basement will be sacred, I assure you.
5. I don’t argue. I don’t deal in religions, or philosophies, or other forms of fairy stories to keep myself warm at night. I like biology and geology and reading reference books. I never had the ½-semester of debate that makes these people think you can argue about anything, and make it apply. The only philosophy I ever had was Prepositional Calculus, and I got out of the finals by proving – in 62 moves – that Hubert Humphrey is a hat (and now I find out you can prove that Winston Churchill is a carrot). A Little Knowledge, as they say. Neither you nor I can change things by winning or losing an argument, so I don’t do it. If you can’t deal – if life outside the gameboys and the gamer shops is too much for you – just find the nearest set of inviting stairs and dive right in.
Okay.
Now I am definitely in a friendlier mood, and I’m going to spread some really good clues here. Bear with me. You will like this. I promise.
More and more girls, when faced with crap from some guy, are just snapping, “Deal with it.” So maybe you all better get ahead of the curve and play like the Navajo guys. It’s a matriarchy, people – taking care of each other, blood relatives and chosen relatives, and not worrying about stuff is, in the long run, the way to Walk In Beauty (can you tell I just read ALL of the Tony Hillerman www.tonyhillermanbooks.com series? So this is the Cheap-ASS White Man’s version of the Navajo Way. I’m just quoting the bits I like).
And it’s a biological matriarchy. Guys, STOP worrying so badly about what your Purpose In Life is. According to biology, you’re a parasitic breeder. You’re the result of parasitism that became symbiosis – like most of life. Our bodies are still going through this process. None of us is US – we’re all more colonies than individual. As we all agreed at the panel Parasite Sex at Norwescon, we shouldn’t be saying “I,” we should all be saying “We.” This does not horrify me. The thought that I’m a Finder-style City (www.lightspeedpress.com) instead of Fortress Self is about as fascinating and scary as the day I realized I had a skeleton (eek!) inside me. My own boogie-man! My own Alien Nation! We are Legion. We are ALL Borg.
So the guys have got to get together in their own heads how to deal with the Mother’s Clan being the one that counts. And the good news is, it has so many advantages.
First of all, since we all know who the mother is, there will be no more (shudder) “illegitimate” children. Look, any system that can even THINK about any child being on this planet without the rights of any other child is sick, nasty and WRONG. So dumping the patriarchy for no other reason than to dump that nasty concept is reason enough. Iceland is ahead of us on this one already.
Patriarchy. Fatherland. You wanna live in a “fatherland?” Really?
Women are not going to enslave you. You all know the Mommy Syndrome: males, when alone, can cook, clean, sew, care for kids, anything and everything – but all of a sudden when a female shows up he goes completely helpless. He can’t check out of a hotel, he can’t use his credit card. If there’s a woman around, he starts playing five-year-old. I don’t know why. Guys just DO. Women are too busy making systems work to put a collar around YOUR neck. If she’s in charge, you’ll have more time to be decorative – which is what you’re supposed to be doing anyway. It’s YOUR job to be pretty – not ours. Why the hell else do you think your hair is shinier and your eyelashes are longer? Women put on makeup just trying to be as pretty as YOU. We’re the bees, you’re the drones – you strut around and make lovely, and since we’re human, we’re not going to throw you out of the hive to starve. WE don’t use food as cash or hierarchical awards. We use it as nourishment. And we SHARE. Haven’t you ever been to one of our pot-lucks?
Hey, you people who do business with female clerks -- more times than not, they’re getting the work done. Reality makes any business that really wants to succeed into a bunch of Feminists. Banks in India will not give loans to men in villages any more, and Western farms prefer that the girls run the combines – because you KNOW what the guys end up doing with the combines. That’s a drag-race I don’t want to be in front of. Girls have been accused of having overly focused and nit-picking minds – who the hell would YOU rather have in charge of multi-ton farm machinery, the village seed bank or your comics shipments?
I’m going to give youse guys a clue now to make your relationship with all women a lot better. Yes, I’m going to tell you HOW TO GET A DATE. These are just the simplest damn rules – and you already saw them expressed in that movie The Bourne Identity:
a. Listen to us talk. b. Play with our hair. c. Be warm (both ways).
I mean… is this easy? Dan the Man – my husband and army buddy – were totally oh joy schnockered on the Seattle Ferry, once, and my hair got hot and I took it down, and was trying dopily to brush it, and Dan took the brush and spent the trip drunkenly and happily smoothing my hair. SOOOO nice. And you know it’s better than dancing with a girl to get her into the sack.
Oh, you didn’t know? You don’t need diamonds…. You just need a nice firm hairbrush (well, yes, you can use it for THAT later – but make sure the hair gets brushed for about an hour first. She will be PUTTY.)
Of course, there is the other thing you can always offer a girl, because we all have that – ahem – little tickle for a certain thing…
Get a nice box. Inside, in the prettiest bed of satin or silk, place a very nice long red or black ribbon – or a heavy black leather strap with a big ol’ shiney brass buckle. Or chained leather cuffs. Or a really big pair of purple plastic handcuffs. Present it to her with a soft smile and wait for her to open it.
