Cerebus and Sim, or How To Speak With Lots of Parenthesis
I was gonna make a post about 300 and rant a bit, but other people have done so better than I could (see watermelontail or When Fangirls Attack). So, instead I'm gonna talk a little bit about a different 300.
Way back last Christmas (I think), Pablo got me a copy of the first Cerebus phonebook (the collections are LARGE). It sat as a bathroom reader for a while (which is not a negative connotation - my book of Lorca poetry lay right next to it). And then it kind of fell to the wayside.
Cerebus is- at its little aardvark heart - a parody. Cerebus himself is a clever yet focused and greedy Conan. He meets Elric ("Elrod" who speaks like Foghorn Leghorn) and Red Sonia ("Red Sophia"). He runs into Batman ("The Cockroach" - a delusional and wealthy merchant whose parents were murdered). I'm sure there's a dozen other references in the first book that have gone over my head, or I've just forgotten about.
So, right, what I'm saying is: it's parody. But, to be honest, I didn't really like it. I'm not a Conan fan, nay I'm not a fantasy novel fan. Everyone says that it gets really good come the second or third book. We'll see; there are some sixteen of the bastards. I"ll probably get ahold of it somehow (I'll either break down and buy it or nab the 3.6+ gig torrent).
Why am I bothering to talk about this? Well, my understanding is that Cerebus soon becomes Dave Sim's sounding board. Dave Sim is a troubled man. He's schizophrenic. He experimented with drugs. He found God. He got divorced. The four did not mix well.
He is also a raging mysogynist.
In the BLORGOSPHERE, Dave Sim has recently been getting a lot talk for some reason (seeing as how Cerebus, is at this point, 20 years old). Maybe it's his new blog, with its reprint of 14 Impossible Things to Believe Before Breakfast That Make You a Good Feminist or something else entirely. Whatever it was, it has got me to pick Cerebus up and read it again. I'm a little bit more than halfway through the first book (315 out of nearly 550). The turning point (I'm led to believe) comes during issue #186:
"Emotion, whatever the Female Void would have you believe, is not a more Exalted State than is Thought. In point of fact, I think Emotion is animalistic, serpent-brain stuff. Animals do not Think, but I am reasonably certain that they have Emotions. 'Eating this makes me Happy.' 'When my fur is all wet and I am cold, it makes me Sad." "Ooo! Puppies!' 'It makes me Excited to Chase the Ball!' Reason, as any husband can tell you, doesn't stand a chance in an argument with Emotion... this was the fundamental reason, I believe, that women were denied the vote for so long."
"The Male Light and the Female Void: Seminal Energy and Omnivorous Parasite."
"If you look at her and see anything besides emptiness, fear and emotional hunger, you are looking at the parts of yourself which have been consumed to that point."
You can read some more of that from here, if you're inclined. Let's leave Cerebus for a moment, and read part of Tangent, an essay Sim wrote:
No one wants to be a woman.
If, prior to our life on this earth, we were presented with the option of being male or female, a short description of the functions of the male versus the female genitalia (with emphasis on menstruation, menstrual cramps, PMS, labour pains, yeast infections, et al) would most certainly result in so vast a number of us choosing the male “equipment” (what, is this a trick question?) that it is difficult, if not impossible, to envision any woman being born into this world at all.
To me, it seems less a case of penis envy (Sigmund Freud having lived in altogether too chivalrous a time period for such “plain talk” as I offer here) than it is one of vagina abhorrence from the standpoint of the “would-be tenant” in contemplating a role as “owner-proprietor”. Alas, for reasons known only to our Creator, (almost exactly) half of us come out on the losing end of the coin toss. If things seem pretty “even steven” (leaving aside the fact that a penis, self-evidently, constitutes an anatomical “presence” and a vagina, self-evidently, an anatomical “absence”) over the course of the first ten or eleven years in the life of a boy and a girl there does, alas, “come the day . . . ”
This here, is the fantastic conclusion:
To me, the best available evidence in terms of gender, is that - in the two-gender human “race” between man and woman and their (respectively) “present” and “absent” genitalia, with the arrival of the “little friend” in the feminine camp and with no analogous “little friend” arriving in the masculine camp - men take the gold medal and women, alas, take the silver. It seems to me that women have the option of saying “we are the losers” or they can say, “we win the silver medal.” The glass is half-full or the glass is half-empty.
But - whichever assessment seems to best reflect womankind's view of its unchangeable circumstance - gender interchangeability (looking as objectively as I can at the best available evidence) amounts to biological “social-climbing” on the part of women, just as the attempt to make homosexuality and heterosexuality interchangeable amounts to societal “social-climbing” on the part of homosexualists.
So, what I'm wondering is...has anyone read the whole 300 issue run of Cerebus? Most of it? What are your opinions on it?
Anyway, I'll leave you with this, from Tangents:
To me, taking it as a given that reason cannot prevail in any argument with emotion, there must come a point - with women and children - where verbal discipline has to be asserted, and if verbal discipline proves insufficient, that physical discipline be introduced. Women and children have soft, cushy buttocks which are, nonetheless, shot through with reasonably sensitive nerve endings.
I believe that those buttocks are there for a very specific purpose intended by their Creator.
There is no good reason that a man should not listen to misguided, fairy-tale vocalizations and unsound, emotion-based twaddle-and-nonsense for however long it amuses or interests him to do so or for however long seems to him politic and/or chivalrous (standards will vary).
However.
When the point does arrive when the amusement value has exhausted itself or good manners and chivalry have been stretched to their limit, “That's enough,” spoken firmly, distinctly and above a conversational tone - with women and children - should be sufficient. If it proves insufficient, measured blows to the buttocks - “measured,” to me, meaning blows which, cumulatively, leave no mark which endures longer than, say, an hour or two but which will make sitting down an uncomfortable proposition for a comparable length of time, blows which are an inescapable consequence of failing to heed the verbal “that's enough” seem the only sensible way to evenly balance the unfair advantage emotion has over reason. This, to me, falls well short of actual physical abuse but exists well within the upper registers of “attention-getting devices” for those women and children who have proven themselves to be of inadequate and/or unfocussed attentions.
Way back last Christmas (I think), Pablo got me a copy of the first Cerebus phonebook (the collections are LARGE). It sat as a bathroom reader for a while (which is not a negative connotation - my book of Lorca poetry lay right next to it). And then it kind of fell to the wayside.
Cerebus is- at its little aardvark heart - a parody. Cerebus himself is a clever yet focused and greedy Conan. He meets Elric ("Elrod" who speaks like Foghorn Leghorn) and Red Sonia ("Red Sophia"). He runs into Batman ("The Cockroach" - a delusional and wealthy merchant whose parents were murdered). I'm sure there's a dozen other references in the first book that have gone over my head, or I've just forgotten about.
So, right, what I'm saying is: it's parody. But, to be honest, I didn't really like it. I'm not a Conan fan, nay I'm not a fantasy novel fan. Everyone says that it gets really good come the second or third book. We'll see; there are some sixteen of the bastards. I"ll probably get ahold of it somehow (I'll either break down and buy it or nab the 3.6+ gig torrent).
Why am I bothering to talk about this? Well, my understanding is that Cerebus soon becomes Dave Sim's sounding board. Dave Sim is a troubled man. He's schizophrenic. He experimented with drugs. He found God. He got divorced. The four did not mix well.
He is also a raging mysogynist.
In the BLORGOSPHERE, Dave Sim has recently been getting a lot talk for some reason (seeing as how Cerebus, is at this point, 20 years old). Maybe it's his new blog, with its reprint of 14 Impossible Things to Believe Before Breakfast That Make You a Good Feminist or something else entirely. Whatever it was, it has got me to pick Cerebus up and read it again. I'm a little bit more than halfway through the first book (315 out of nearly 550). The turning point (I'm led to believe) comes during issue #186:
"Emotion, whatever the Female Void would have you believe, is not a more Exalted State than is Thought. In point of fact, I think Emotion is animalistic, serpent-brain stuff. Animals do not Think, but I am reasonably certain that they have Emotions. 'Eating this makes me Happy.' 'When my fur is all wet and I am cold, it makes me Sad." "Ooo! Puppies!' 'It makes me Excited to Chase the Ball!' Reason, as any husband can tell you, doesn't stand a chance in an argument with Emotion... this was the fundamental reason, I believe, that women were denied the vote for so long."
"The Male Light and the Female Void: Seminal Energy and Omnivorous Parasite."
"If you look at her and see anything besides emptiness, fear and emotional hunger, you are looking at the parts of yourself which have been consumed to that point."
You can read some more of that from here, if you're inclined. Let's leave Cerebus for a moment, and read part of Tangent, an essay Sim wrote:
No one wants to be a woman.
If, prior to our life on this earth, we were presented with the option of being male or female, a short description of the functions of the male versus the female genitalia (with emphasis on menstruation, menstrual cramps, PMS, labour pains, yeast infections, et al) would most certainly result in so vast a number of us choosing the male “equipment” (what, is this a trick question?) that it is difficult, if not impossible, to envision any woman being born into this world at all.
To me, it seems less a case of penis envy (Sigmund Freud having lived in altogether too chivalrous a time period for such “plain talk” as I offer here) than it is one of vagina abhorrence from the standpoint of the “would-be tenant” in contemplating a role as “owner-proprietor”. Alas, for reasons known only to our Creator, (almost exactly) half of us come out on the losing end of the coin toss. If things seem pretty “even steven” (leaving aside the fact that a penis, self-evidently, constitutes an anatomical “presence” and a vagina, self-evidently, an anatomical “absence”) over the course of the first ten or eleven years in the life of a boy and a girl there does, alas, “come the day . . . ”
This here, is the fantastic conclusion:
To me, the best available evidence in terms of gender, is that - in the two-gender human “race” between man and woman and their (respectively) “present” and “absent” genitalia, with the arrival of the “little friend” in the feminine camp and with no analogous “little friend” arriving in the masculine camp - men take the gold medal and women, alas, take the silver. It seems to me that women have the option of saying “we are the losers” or they can say, “we win the silver medal.” The glass is half-full or the glass is half-empty.
But - whichever assessment seems to best reflect womankind's view of its unchangeable circumstance - gender interchangeability (looking as objectively as I can at the best available evidence) amounts to biological “social-climbing” on the part of women, just as the attempt to make homosexuality and heterosexuality interchangeable amounts to societal “social-climbing” on the part of homosexualists.
So, what I'm wondering is...has anyone read the whole 300 issue run of Cerebus? Most of it? What are your opinions on it?
Anyway, I'll leave you with this, from Tangents:
To me, taking it as a given that reason cannot prevail in any argument with emotion, there must come a point - with women and children - where verbal discipline has to be asserted, and if verbal discipline proves insufficient, that physical discipline be introduced. Women and children have soft, cushy buttocks which are, nonetheless, shot through with reasonably sensitive nerve endings.
I believe that those buttocks are there for a very specific purpose intended by their Creator.
There is no good reason that a man should not listen to misguided, fairy-tale vocalizations and unsound, emotion-based twaddle-and-nonsense for however long it amuses or interests him to do so or for however long seems to him politic and/or chivalrous (standards will vary).
However.
When the point does arrive when the amusement value has exhausted itself or good manners and chivalry have been stretched to their limit, “That's enough,” spoken firmly, distinctly and above a conversational tone - with women and children - should be sufficient. If it proves insufficient, measured blows to the buttocks - “measured,” to me, meaning blows which, cumulatively, leave no mark which endures longer than, say, an hour or two but which will make sitting down an uncomfortable proposition for a comparable length of time, blows which are an inescapable consequence of failing to heed the verbal “that's enough” seem the only sensible way to evenly balance the unfair advantage emotion has over reason. This, to me, falls well short of actual physical abuse but exists well within the upper registers of “attention-getting devices” for those women and children who have proven themselves to be of inadequate and/or unfocussed attentions.