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.
Texas Wives (Or: Go Back Where You Cows Came From) By Donna Barr
This came up when a group of us – mostly women – female commie book professionals were juggling bodies in three hotel rooms we’d held for San Diego Comicon.
And PUT its mind away and try to be sensible for once, will it? You people, I swear.
First of all, we HAVE to grab rooms ahead of time. We know damn well our colleagues will have desperate need for last minute crash space. Nobody can possibly know what their schedule is going to do come about June. And with SDCC being the biggest convention in the western hemisphere – two years ago we out-grew even the Republican Convention – and with Hollywood being in town, last-minute room reservations can pick up a Summer or Event Rack Rate of $700.00 plus. PLUS. So you can see why we end up needing to provide for the herd.
One of the colleagues we invited to share space asked if another colleague could get in on the deal. We said no problem. A rec from one of our colleagues is usually enough to get you in. If you trust ‘em, we trust ‘em. Seldom gone wrong on that one.
Then – the new guy told us that his wife had this problem…
His wife – that’s right, blame it on the little woman – insisted, or so he said, that he stay only with male colleagues. Oh, he still wanted to stay, and get the cheaper rates we offered, and take advantage of our having put the package together in the first place, but he wanted to make sure that there were no cuntnigger cooties in the room.
Or, as Dan said, when he heard about this: “I want you to put me up but I don’t trust you?” And: “This isn’t vacation bible school.”
Do I NEED to tell you this guy is from Texas? Where the wives are still scared of other women, and expected to be so? Where women are expected to be the enemies of other women? Need I say more than “Red State?”
We’re talking Cunt Toms here, folks.
Here’s a little announcement for the SeeTees out there: if a group of professionals are trying to juggle rooms for a convention, do NOT get snippy demanding that your husband stay only with men.
The professional women in the comics industry are not WHORES. I don’t care if you did get raised in Texas, not every woman walking around is a piece of ass panting after your testicle, you dirty-minded Jerry Springer twat, you.
And you husbands of SeeTees – if your wife doesn’t want you staying with WOMEN then do not come around hoping to get installed in one of our rooms for cheap. You will stay with whomever we can fit you in with, and not insult us by intimating that we are a bunch of hookers without a union (I have nothing against professional organized hookers, but that is not my JOB).
The women in this industry are like everybody else in it – overworked, business-oriented, and fixated on getting every single moment out of a convention that they can work, because a convention is fucking expensive, and no artists get paid anything, especially those poor driven monkeys (“The monkeys aren’t working!”) in animation (It’s not called “Workin’ For The Rat” for nothing). The intimation that we would touch a piece of meat that belonged to somebody else simply because he’s sharing a floor with us is fucking insulting.
It’s also insulting to her husband. Is their marriage so rocky she thinks he’ll jump the first exhausted colorist he stumbles over in the room? That any layout techie is fair game? Does she KNOW what “layout” means? Or was that the problem in the first place?
Many of my female colleagues – like me – are in our ‘50’s. Yeah, the age that women get called witches – when we’ve gotten heartily sick and tired of taking our lumps and swallowing our growing fury over the way we’ve been scammed and dicked with and screwed over all our lives. Remember literature classes and church, when Milton and Shakespeare and St. Paul told you what a piece of shit you were as a female? They can choke, if they weren’t already Dead White Men. But they must be rolling over in their graves, watching women NOT being burnt to death when we get to an age to open our mouths. Ha ha ha ha. I hope THEY’re doing the burning. They’re the ones believe in that crap, anyway.
(And ha ha ha on Papa Razzi trying to get more victims for the Catholic church. Without burning, beheading or boarding schools, how will they keep people from those – gasp! – independent spiritual paths, the ones that DON’T PAY THE PRIESTS? And we all know that religion is just about paying the priests and telling other people how to live their sex lives).
So tell wifey-poo that if we catch you putting hands on our younger female colleague when she’s trying to sleep, we’ll beat you to death with the Gideon’s Bible they put in the rooms (oh, and folks – do everybody a favor. Replace that thing with commie books. Give everybody something WORTH reading. Fling the holy books behind the schrank so their evil rays will not emanate out and give anybody nightmares).
The most party you’ll get with one of our room groups is at San Diego Comicon, when we all troop home hot and exhausted at the end of the southern California summer’s day and grab a box of Popsicles from Ralph’s Supermarket and spend a half-hour sucking trying to get our blood-pressure down. And the lemon and raspberry iced box is the only thing that’s going to get sucked in our rooms, thank you very much. If you and your wife have such a shaky relationship you can’t handle that, then stay in your own room and pay the higher rates.
And no, we are not going to tell you which one of our colleagues is gay, lesbian or transsexual. That’s none of your wife’s GD business. If the little woman (and I mean the space between her ears and the size of her heart) can’t handle the fact that you’re working in an industry where the women ARE going to be treated as equals, then maybe you’d better stay home, raise cows or any other animal on your level of civilization, and prepare your little girls for those (shudder) thinly-disguised pedophile beauty pageants you people do, like in Happy, Texas (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0162360/>http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0162360/).
As somebody near and dear pointed out, “we don’t know her history.” And N&D is right – I don’t need to know her history to know she is fucked up, and is trying to fuck with me. Why I should be the only one here ends up fucked I want to know.
And if your boss did send you to Sandy Eggo at the last GD minute, then ask him where the hell the room and the plane ticket got off to.
Maybe your wife SHOULD fear that you might get fucked at these conventions – because your boss just did you up the ass.
(And I’ll do a disclaimer right here: when Texans are good people, they are the BEST people. A Texan doesn’t do anything half-way. They’re either total ass-hats, or gentlemen and ladies in the best sense of the word. So if you know who you are – you know who you are.)
(P.S.: The young man who did end up staying with us was a perfect roommate. Laid-back, funny, and just a joy. Just like all the colleagues we’ve chosen to stay with us. HE’s welcome back any time. So there. Especially since he looks so cute in a towel…)
