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Positions - 12.26.01
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Fetal Positions
Howdy, I'd like to ask for your permission to show five of your strips in my graduate class in Dante and Popular Culture (religion 850b) at Yale's Divinity School. In particular, I'd like to use the ones concerning the trip to the frozen banks of the Phlegethon. Carl Well, Carl, you of course have our permission. Who are we to stop graduate students at Yale from studying the adventures of a fetus breakdancing naked on the frozen rivers of the underworld? Isn't that what a university education is all about? And here's a letter about another university, namely Michigan State University. Regular readers are no doubt by now aware that Fetus-X was censored from the pages of MSU's student newspaper not so long ago. Well, this e-mail was sent to that newspaper, and cc'd to me:
Subject: letter to the editor I so rarely find anything entertaining in the State News, but your stance on the Catholic Diocese of Lansing canceling the homosexually themed play "Breaking the Code" finally found a way to make me laugh again. There is something absurdly humorous about finding anti-censorship articles in the same newspaper that chose to censor the wonderful comic strip Fetus-X last year. Let me see if I read your article correctly: "Censorship by any institution - public or private - is an injustice." Or does the State News only think it is an "injustice" when someone else does it? If the censorship by the Catholic Diocese is "immoral" "ignorance" and "embarrass[ing]," than censorship by the State News must be as well. Perhaps you should put a little more thought into your own practice of censorship before accusing anyone else of "tak[ing] a giant leap backward with a hypocritical decision." After all, who is being more hypocritical when they censor something - the Catholic Church, with its long history of burning books and burning heretics, or the press, the supposed protectors of free speech? A.B. Damn, A. Those are some damn fine points. So damn fine, in fact, that I can't say I was surpised when I couldn't find your letter anywhere on the State News letters archive. I'm sure your newspaper's failure to print your letter has done much to change your opinion that they are hypocrites who practice censorship. If that hasn't convinced you, I'm sure you'll be further swayed by this column I found by your newspaper's editor in chief. I quote: "The real fear - and what people like me are really fighting against when we shout out that "freedom of the press" battle cry - is that ideas and opinions running contrary to those of the majority will be squelched forever." You go, boy! Fight on, you with your courageous battle cry! And if Mr. Battle Cry would like to run some comics with "ideas and opinions running contrary to those of the majority" in his newspaper, comics which his newspaper attempted to have "squelched forever," then Mr. Battle Cry can contact me at i_now_realize_censorship_sucks@fetusx.com. And, A., if you're still disappointed with your university's lack of support for Fetus-X, maybe you should consider transferring into some of Carl's graduate courses at Yale. Next letter: Hey guys. Although I have already taken the time to go through your entire database of comics, diligently copying each to my harddrive, I was wondering if you could hook me up with a Big Printables pass. I have posted many a comic at school, only to have it soon ripped down. So I am now working on a publication for my school containing student political views and I would love to be able to run your comic. I currently go to school in Los Alamos, NM. It is the saddest town on the face of the earth. With the highest PhD per capita in any of the four corner states it is filled with antisocial scientist types who deserve to have their world rocked by your awesome comic. Everyone at my school seems to enjoy at least some of your comics, the only ones who have a problem with it are the faculty, but even then I notice some chuckle and leave it posted for a more strict member to remove. The other reason I was wanting for a Big Printables pass is that I have made a great Anti-Health Class pamphlet that I hand out to kids as they leave Middle School Health. It contains such things as just how bad drugs really are and how great sex really is, protected of course. In your description of reasons for giving a Big Printables pass you listed sex education pamphlet, which gave me the idea to put your comic in there as something about if protection fails or something. It would make a great addition. I recently made some Fetus-x buttons using photoshop and my button maker. I promise that if you give me a pass not only will I order 1 shitload of stickers from you guys, but along with my order will be a couple buttons. (I will probably do this anyway). Enough groveling. Alex Alex, great to hear from you. First, I hope you're making excellent use of those Fetus-X access codes I sent you. There's nothing that will beautify your school's campus more than a few million Fetus-X comics. Secondly, the other letter that you sent to the State News and cc'd me was also a damn fine one. I'm gonna wait a week or two here and give Mr. Battle Armor He-Man Battle Cry and his Masters of the Universe an opportunity to print your letter. Some times people get a little too busy "shout(ing) out that freedom of the press battle cry" to actually practice freedom of the press. Give them some time. If they don't print it, I will. And finally, yes, by all means send us those buttons. There's nothing cooler than homemade Fetus-X gear. And we'd love to see that publication you're working on as well. We'll throw some free Fetus-X gear your way. Why would I be giving out free Fetus-X crap? Because it's 3 in the morning and I'm high as a kite, man. But this ain't no street drug I'm on. I think I got a natural high contact buzz off that freedom of the press bullshit I was sniffin' earlier. Oh yeah, if anyone else wants to e-mail us and Castle Greyskull simlutaneously, simply send a message to dudes@fetusx.com, opinion@statenews.com. Now, remember last time when I was asking for translations of international Fetus-X sites? Well, consider ourselves hooked up: Hi, The text in that page (http://sozluk.sourtimes.org/show.asp?t=fetus+x) is in Turkish, but missing few Turkish only characters probably because the guy is using English keyboard, and the translation is like: "the band strip, which is once published in MSU's newspaper (http://www.statenews.com), which is prepared (enhancing the borders of the concept) by two smart and creative guys, which tells the adventures of a fetus in its jar, which criticizes the conservatists and the almost-uniform youth (check: fraternity, sorority) of USA, which stopped being published because it got lots of reaction from these conservatists (mostly because of the cartoons about jesus, which I think were high in quality), which is currently being published in the net (http://www.fetusx.com)." First thing to note: Turkish has a different order of words in a sentence; and second, the site where this is written is kind of a dictionary, which includes almost anything and everything. Have a nice day, K.K. Thanks for the translation, K. That is one of the best summaries of Fetus-X and its early history that I've seen. And, yes, discovering that Fetus-X has an entry in an online Turkish dictionary does indeed make our days nicer. OK, this next e-mail was also cc'd to me:
Date: Fri, 15 Feb 2002 08:20:52 -0800 (PST)
Run FetusX. http://www.fetusx.com/ If you don't in the print version, maybe on the cyber?
Have a great Friday. David, that is unfuckinbelievable. Simply e-mailing your newspaper and encouraging them to run Fetus-X is already going above and beyond the call of duty. But e-mailing like nine people there? That is a level of Fetus-X support that sets a damn fine example for other readers everywhere. And if any other Austin, TX area readers are reading this, well, you can see the e-mail addresses. Why not follow David's lead? And David, the only thing that would have made your e-mail cooler is if maybe 15 minutes later you had e-mailed someone like Scott McCloud to tell him how much you love Fetus-X. For those who don't know Scott McCloud, he wrote the book Reinventing Comics, and is considered by many to be the unofficial spokesperson for web comics.
Date: Fri, 15 Feb 2002 08:35:52 -0800 (PST)
Scott You must be busy. You're web site's getting a little dated. I'm glad, though, cause it probably means you've got a lot of work.
Best of luck always, Well, I'll be damned. I hope Scott McCloud digs those comics as much as you did, David. Thanks. Next. just wanted to say that if you guys are going to make new T-shirts, i think the My God vs. Your God would be perfect for it and i'd scrounge around for the $ to buy one. keep up the good work with fetus-x; your comic absolutely rocks. ...dara. Thanks dara. We've been getting quite a few requests for that one. We hope to have new shirts out later this spring; everybody should feel free to drop us a line at dudes@fetusx.com and let us know what fetus artwork you'd be proud to display on your chest. Dudes, that 02/02 comic. Absolutely fantastic. It's the kind of stuff that just makes you realise just why you guys will never get syndicated, and why you guys are destined to make a mark on the world of comics, like [Alan] Moore and [Garth] Ennis. I really dug that Siamese story too. Man, you guys kill. Respectfully, C.Y. What do you mean we'll never get syndicated?!? You just wait, dammit ... Oh, yeah, and thanks for the compliments. That is some high praise. Glad you liked the comics, and hope the stuff we've got coming keeps you enthralled as well. you're comic strip is terrible, horrible and repulsively disgusting. i fucking love it. it's so twisted and sick and quite frankly i can't get enough. i could die a very happy boy to see your comic strip run in a local paper in columbus ohio. alas, i can always get my fetus fix online, and quite frankly you people are fucking geniuses. G.F. We're with you, man. Today Columbus, tomorrow the world. Everybody still cool? Thanks, as always for the letters and support, and continue sending your thoughts, dreams and battle cries to dudes@fetusx.com.
Peace,
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