good to know

Page Two (remarks 11-20)


How To Reach Neil
A Gentle Reminder, As Neil Becomes A Household Name
Literature to Read In Parallel To Sandman
Free Usenet
On Topic at AFN-G
Redundant Questions and Favourite Authors
What the Bible Really Says
Seeking Destruction
Where's Neil?


How To Reach Neil - common knowledge

Neil Gaiman
c/o Dreamhaven Books
912 West Lake St.
Minneapolis, MN 55408

A Gentle Reminder, As Neil Becomes A Household Name - Jinx

1) As Neil's latest gets more and more press and popularity, we'll be getting more and more people to the ng. Some won't understand our group dynamic, and some will be here simply to troll (which thankfully we have :eg: ways of dealing with), and some will be personal and nasty on purpose, and some will be thingies, fit in wonderfully and it will feel like they have always been here. Please just remember not everyone lurks before they post, and not everyone is here to be nice. I'm not saying all newbies are evil/stupid/perfect, just that not everyone fits around here or is always nice. As well as we do have a tendency to do some odd things, group gropes, tuesdays, those can all be taken oddly by someone new. 

2) This is something that has really come to my attention as of late. I'm sure we're all aware of the great usenet rule, that your words are your own. However in daily useage I'm not sure that I was truely aware of how much personal information that I've put out here, until it came back at me. When you let the entire world (in theory) know your ICQ number, or your blogger site, or even your homepage, some people feel that they "know" you, or can comment on things you didn't know you didn't want them to. This can be simply annoying, or downright dangerous, and I'm not saying change what you do, just be aware of it, and the possibility of it coming back to bite you in the ass.   I know we all *know* this, but thinking about it is something else entirely.

Jinxie who doesn't want to see the ng do anything but evolve

Literature To Read In Parallel to Sandman - Sascha & Reg

S: Thanks for all the interesting hints. For those of you who read this thread in the days to come, here is a little summary:

S: Authors: Dr. Ebenezer C. Brewer (esp. Dictionary of Phrase and Fable), Poe, Lovecraft, Theodore Sturgeon, Gene Wolfe, Diana Wynne-Jones, Hope Mirlees, Lord Dunsany.

S: Mythologies: Greek, Egyptian

reg: The only one I really want to suggest is Jonathan Carroll's "Bones of the Moon" if you can lay hands on a copy, to be read after you have finished "The Dolls House" arc of Sandman, just to see how a different author deals with a similar idea.

Free Usenet - Sheri & Bill2

S: They lost everything. Every single post.

B: This has been repeated ad nauseaum around here, but I'd highly recommend checking out news.cis.dfn.de. Free usenet account, so long as you don't want binaries groups. Good retention, too, some 1054 total posts right now.

On Topic at AFN-G - Jinx

On topic for this newsgroup is just about anything having to do with a fan of Neil Gaiman. We are used to having gaps of time where there is no new Neil work to discuss, and we're used to being polite to those who don't have U.S. immediate access to the new works. I personally think that Morgana said it best

"Well.... imho that's exactly why we keep posting to the news group. To keep the conversation going, whether we're on topic or not. To form friendships that have a basis in a shared mutual interest, the works of one Neil Gaiman. There's a finite amount of information about our beloved main topic, but in the interim, I'm visiting people's websites, talking to people off this page and generally having fun. This is what keeps me coming back for more. "Useful information" is always going to be cool, but while we're waiting, there's nothing wrong with getting to know each other. Isn't that what the internet is all about? Building other communities? I certainly hope so...I'd hate to think that this is nothing more than a waste of time. *grin*"

and that was on 8 Nov 1998.

Redundant Questions and Favourite Authors - Poppy Z. Brite & Jinx

PZB: This is one of the unavoidable dangers of getting asked the same goddamn questions over and over. Not only is it >impossible to come up with New and Fascinating Replies, but in a situation such as a book tour, they begin to have an unmistakably "canned" sound to them.

J: I've noticed this as well, along with the effort of Neil to make it sound like he hasn't said whatever it is a hundred times before. Does it suck Poppy? Not the repetitiveness of the answers as much as the same questions over and over? Do you ever wish for something out there to be asked of you, someone to ask if you had weird food cravings as you wrote? Or if you didn't change your socks for the entire writing process?

J: Jinxie, who hopes you take this with a grain of salt :)

PZB: I take almost everything with a grain of salt. I love salt. My favorite fairy tale is the one about the princess who gets banished for telling the King she loves him more than salt. No one else seems to remember this story, but it does exist. So does it suck getting asked the same questions ad nauseum? Well, it doesn't suck when people are interested enough in your work to ask you questions, but it is a bit awkward when you have to answer them for the hundredth time and try not to sound bored to death - especially when they're on the level of "Where do you get your ideas?" Most writers try to be patient - again, we're grateful for any attention at all - but most of us have a few questions we've lost all patience with. For me, the worst culprit is "Why do you write about gay characters?" I refuse to take this question seriously any more; I simply reply, "Why doesn't anyone ever ask heterosexual writers why they write about straight characters?"

PZB: As for what we wish to be asked, I liked Amy Tan's complaint as reported in the foreword to Stephen King's ON WRITING: "No one ever asks about the language." Musicians get to talk about their guitars; artists get asked what pens they use; many writers would love a chance to discuss The Adverb Dichotomy, Lots of Physical Description of Characters vs. None, and so forth.

What the Bible Really Says - Ninave, Loz & Cassie

N: Sigh.

N: <Ninave goes down stairs. Gets Bible. Goes back upstairs, does some reading to confirm what she's about to say. Gets out soap box.>

N: You know, I'd like to clear up a few things that people....and people who supposedly have read the Bible, keep saying. I mean, it just pisses me off that the people who are supposedly "The Experts" spread these "absolute truths", and make the Christians come off sounding like narrow minded jerks. Now please don't say, "Because that is so." because I'm one of the Christians, and I'd like to hope I haven't come off sounding like a jerk. :D My point, early: Nothing is absolute. Things are all due to interpretation, in the Bible more than anything.

N: Jesus is dead by the time Paul gets around to wriitng Romans, so He doesn't appear in the book, he's not quoted. Paul didn't go up to the Lord and say, "So, what's your position on gays? On this? On that?" In fact, it doesn't really say anything that you can interpret as "Homosexuality sucks" It does say things against sodomy....but I always thought, from readings in other places, about cultures around at the time, that it was speaking out against forced sodomy, not homosexual love. Now speaking from my standpoint, it doesn't make sense that God would make people in a way, and say, "OK, you can only love people of the opposite sex, but you're not geared that way, so suffer."

N: Again, it doesn't come right out and *say* it in the Book, where it does come out and say things against adultery, stealing and murder. (All things that are just good sense, anyway. Picking thingies at random - OK....Let's say I'm married to Loz. I go and screw around with Nightwalker behind Loz's back. Loz will pick a fight with 'Walker....and well, we can see the terrible things that'd happen, there.)

N: It doesn't say anything against magic, either. It says one line against witches, yes, but did you ever wonder if the interpretation is, of witch craft? Are they talking about those women that Neil mentioned in an interview, who were really scary, terrible people?

N: So, people stand there all smug and go, "It says it in the Bible." with out thinking about *What It Says In The Bible*. They don't read about the times the Bible was written in. They don't go, "Ok, I believe that my God is a God of love and mercy, so I have to apply what I read to this rule." No, they listen to centuries of priests and other religious leaders spin doctoring the nasty things Paul says about women (Mostly, shut up in church and keep your head covered.) (Never said by Jesus - Jesus really respected women.) and pulling things out of context to make their points and control their "flock". No wonder people hate Christians. I've been trying to make people read more, think more....be more open minded, and make their own decisions. My own "kind" (if you can call them a kind...I often looks at Christians and think, those ain't *my* people, are they?) often think me loopy, and the people I want to hang around with - you guys, I don't feel comfortable being :"I'm a Christian" because so many of you really don't like it.

N: OK. I'm shutting up. I'm also not going to re-read this stupid wandering dissertation, because if I do, I'll hit delete and not send. I may be making myself incredibly unpopular, and if so, I'll feel very sorry about it, but maybe a few of these things need to be said. Who knows?

L: I always wondered what right Paul has to be in the Bible, I guess it's because when the Christian doctrine was formalised a century or so (IIRC) after Jesus' death they decided that what the Bible really needed was some huge prescriptive tracts by a schizophrenic epileptic with severe relationship issues.

C: the pauline direction christianity has taken since almost the outset can be seen as a result of society's unwillingness to change. there are two main trajectories for xianity outlined in the new testament -- the markan trajectory, in which masters free their slaves and there's a whole lot of freeing everyone from oppression by everyone, creating something like paradise on earth while waiting for christ to show back up, and then there's the pauline trajectory, in which everyone holds on & tries to deal with the roles they're in, and christ will return in 30 minutes or less or he's free. so it could be said that the big problem with people like falwell and phelps is that christ's return is late, and no one listened to mark while he was planning for that eventuality.

C: for the record, i don't mean to offend the christians present. if it helps, i call the very solemn egyptian death god with whom i work most closely "snouty".

C: tangentially, it's rather frightening when your favorite writer pulls an insane bird-god straight from your experience without your permission.

Seeking Destruction - Reg & Lady Miss Tree

R: So when Delight seeks out her brother, she finds Change, but when Dream seeks him out, he finds Destruction.

LMT: Nicely put, sweetie. Another way of looking at it is that Delight was open to change, while Dream was not (I'd provide evidence of this, but my brain is broken).

LMT: Destruction is a little like The Tower in the Tarot. He represents irrevocable change, but it's how you approach it and deal with it that makes the difference in whether it destroys you or recreates you.

Where's Neil? - ingrid & tyg

i: So which is it? I always thought that he lived in Minnesota, but a few times I have read that he actually lives across the River in Wisconsin...

t: Neil lives in the Minneapolis-St. Paul metropolitan area. As with a number of cities (Portland OR, Charlotte, Boston, New York City, Philadelphia, Washington D.C., St. Louis, etc.), the metropolitan area can encompass parts of more than one state. Out of respect for his privacy, people who do know more precisely where he lives generally limit themselves to saying he lives in the MSP metro area.