Aadvarks
I got home yesterday to find an air mail envelope from Canada. It was my personalised, signed copy of Cerebus - mothers&daughters 14. There was also this letter from Dave Sim (pdf) which said (after a little OCR and editing):
17 September 04
Dear Neilies and Neilettes:
Thank you for your recent inquiry. With the fourteen that came in today, we are now at 1,328 inquiries.I’m still working on Phase II, the “good things for the CBLDF” that Neil mentioned earlier on. Without giving it away, I tried talking about it with Peter Birkemoe at the Beguiling in Toronto to see if he was willing to post Phase II on his “Art Auction” website for ten days or so before the Fiddler’s Green Sandman convention in November. He said, sure, but he suggested doing the auction after the Fiddler’s Green Sandman convention so that everyone had a look at it at the convention before they bid on it. That was a very interesting idea and completely threw me off. I could see the validity in both ideas—-the auction culminating Friday night at Fiddler’s Green both live and on eBay (in this digital camera age
someone or many someones could even post pictures of Neil LIVE with Phase II while the auction is coming to an end) and the auction debuting at Fiddler’s Green on Friday night and closing ten days later on eBay–and had no idea which was the better idea which (unfortunately for the curious among you) postponed what I hoped would be an announcement by the end of this week (which seems somehow to have turned out to be today and how that happened when yesterday was Monday is beyond me) as I tried to figure out what was the better idea. And then, today, I realized!I still haven’t got a clue.
So. I’m going to ask Neil (if he’s at home and reading these faxes in real time) to throw the question out both for general discussion and his own opinion and I’ll be happy to go along with whatever Neildom Assembled or Neil Our Benevolent Majority of One Vote decide, because as I said, I won’t be able to be there. So it really doesn’t matter to me whether the auction closes when I’m not there or debuts when I’m not there.
I’ll also be getting Gerhard to e-mail Neil the Strange History of Phase II to post on his On-Line Journal. Unless, of course, it’s against the law to “guest blog” in someone else’s On-Line Journal, in which I’ll just have to call and read it to each of the 1,328 of you over the phone. So I’m hoping that guest-blogging isn’t a crime because that could get a little expensive, especially all those calls to Finland.
Sincerely,
Dave Sim
I also decided last night to take a look at what is on my pile of books to read … pile. There are 16 including the one I just started (Susanna Clark - Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell) and discounting a few that I’m pretty certain I won’t ever get around to reading anyway! Anyone care to suggest which I read after I get through the 800 pages of English Fantasy?
There is, in no particular order:
China Mieville - The Scar
China Mieville - Iron Council
Philip Pullman - The Gas-fitters Ball
M. John Harrison - Light
Raymond E. Feist - Magician
Bill Bryson - Made in America
Bill bryson - Notes From a Small Island
Dan Brown - Deception Point
Vladimir Nabokov - Lolita
Rob Grant - Colony
Grant Morrison & Dave McKean - Arkham Asylum
Neil Gaiman - Adventures in the Dream Trade
Douglas Adams - The Long Dark Teatime of the Soul
Lawrence Lessig - The Future of Ideas
Various - The Bible