Jarett Kobek
Los Angeles, CA 90029
USA

Mr. Dave Sim
Aardvark Vanaheim, Inc
P.O. Box 1674
Station C
Kitchener, Ontario, Canada N2G 4R2

7 July 2007

Dear Dave,

Three points:

#1. A post in Neil Gaiman’s blog extends your offer a free, signed Cerebus comic to any and all who drop you a letter and I’m wondering if that offer’s still open? If so, can you please send me a comic? I’m not really concerned with which issue—but if you have any of the Sandman spoof left, why not? As to why I’d like an issue: I like free things & I also enjoy writing letters, and I like letters that bring me free things, especially signed comics by revered and reviled independent publishers and artists.

#2. Forgive me if this is an issue that’s been addressed, but: have you given any thought to publishing a volume of the 300 Cerebus covers? I’ve no idea if cost would make this logistically possible, but I’ve long thought that Cerebus, if nothing else, had the best covers of any pamphlet comic.

#3. Forgiveness please if this happens to be another issue that’s been addressed, but could you lose the Fifteen Things preface to your blog posts, or at the least vary it up a bit? My complaint isn’t content–it’s just that I find scrolling through with each post to be unusually irritating. This kills my ability to read your blog, which is a shame as I do enjoy your posts, and frankly, I’m one of this planet’s most important people.

Thanks for your time, I am,

Most Sincerely Yours,

Jarett Kobek

Jarett Kobek
Los Angeles, CA 90029

Mr. Dave Sim
Aardvark Vanaheim, Inc
P.O. Box 1674
Station C
Kitchener, Ontario, Canada N2G 4R2

July 19, 2007

Dear Dave,

You blog post of July 1st touches, in part, on your syncretic view of the Abrahamic religions. I was hoping that I could get clarification on a few of the ideas you mentioned, and maybe a sense of how you arrived at them.

Excuse my inevitable misinterpretations, but I gather that your beliefs are roughly as such: there is a Creator God, Who created not only the world, but also a (or a number of) Demiurges, one of whom was the Canaanite god Ba’al. Ba’al is more commonly known as YHWH, and you believe that YHWH was the entity responsible for the inspiration of the Torah, the New Testament, and the al-Qu’ran. This semi-reliable source, I would gather, accounts for the crap thrown in alongside the quality.

I hope that this summary is roughly accurate, as I’d like to ask you a few questions based on it. Obviously, with the identification of the Demiurge with YHWH, you have a direct antecedent in some of the Gnostic sects, but the conflation of YHWH with Ba’al is, as far as I know, unique to you. This brings up any number of questions: foremost, I think, is how you came to the idea that the two were one and the same? Secondly, does the literal existence of one pagan god imply the literal existence of others? Or is YHWH somehow a special case? Third, if YHWH is a special case, do you have any idea why? Fourth, and finally, I think, what exactly do you believe the nature of YHWH to be? Corporal being? Metaphysical entity? Something else entirely?

Thanks for your time. I am,

Most Sincerely Yours,

Jarett Kobek

UPDATE FIVE MINUTES LATER: Helloooo I just woke up and thought to my merry self, well, self, I’ll go ahead and post my favorite image from Achewood. But then I went and took a gander at my logs for this blog and something was clearly off– the size of the file was significantly huge for 12am Sunday morning. Well, what’s this I say? And then I go and check my email and some kind soul has alerted me to the fact that with yesterday’s post, I have raised the ire of Harlan Ellison.

To wit, from the man’s message board:

“HARLAN ELLISON
- Sunday, August 19 2007 10:14:13 Can someone please advise me what blog.kobek.com is, and why I should give even a speck of a fuck what they say about me?

Yr. Pal, Harlan”

So, the answer, then to Mr. Ellison: I’m nobody, although you did once rightly yell at me in USENET for acting like a jerk, and you totally should not care. Seriously. Engaging with me, or even acknowledging me, only cheapens your status as a writer and a professional. You’re a giant, I’m a gnat. On the real.

UPDATE, UPDATE DAY LATER: More.

Good God, will it ever end? Of course it’s my fault for perpetuating this by continuing to comment, but I checked the original post on Heidi McDonald’s The Beat and discovered yet more by Harlan Ellison. Quoted in its entirety:

HARLAN ELLISON Says:
08/19/07 at 1:01 pm

I was edified to learn that according to some wittling thng called blog.kobek.com posting just prior to this, that I “lost” my recent lawsuit.
Simple objective reading of the original suit filing, and what I was seeking, followed by simple objective reading of the final settlement, and what I got, might suggest that the great legal mind behind that kobeckoid pronouncement is, well, to be kind, predisposed — whatever the empirical evidence — to skew and slant and knock-cockeyed-to-produce-a-prejudged-result. Tsk-tsk. Even troglodytes should behave more honestly.

The most obvious point of Ellison’s post is that I was reading with Unobjective Eyes to join, I guess, the International Conspiracy against the Great Writer. In a way, I almost understand this– I certainly linked to, and did not hide, the fact that the man had some choice words for me in the distant past, but c’mon, really? Does this putdown from days of yore color my thoughts so deeply that I’m signing up for the Great War?

Hardly. As much as Ellison’s big dog persona is obnoxious, I hold a great fondness for the pleasure his stories brought me, and I still find a few of his books to be pretty great. Gentlemen Junkie, in particular, remains a favorite. My interest in this lawsuit has always been Ellison’s approach to this matter, which I consider a case study in how not to deal with your enemies, especially in these here days of the Internet.

Reading the settlement, we can safely say that, technically, yes, Ellison did not lose. That’s because the case was, you know, settled. Neither party admitting wrong-doing. Technically, neither side lost.

My original post was intended as a corrective to much of the commentary that I had seen on the message boards at The Comics Journal, which I felt looked at the settlement in the wrong way entirely. Obviously, yes, redacting passages from a book isn’t the greatest outcome for anyone except the Plaintiff, but on the other hand, should this matter be considered as zero sum game?

In my opinion, emphatically not. Harlan Ellison can justify why he filed suit & why he felt that he needed to do so, and he was certainly within his rights to file, but I felt then, and feel now, that in the grander scheme, Ellison lost at the exact moment when he filed papers. Because honestly, and I’ve said this before– who in the hell wants to read a history of Fantagraphics as written by itself?

Ellison’s suit took passages from a book that had an audience, at most, of two or three thousand people, and turned it into a cause celebre. The words of his Most Hated Enemy, Gary Groth, a man considered by many to be, at the least, smarmy and self-satisfied, were broadcast to an audience far wider than the number of people who would have read them in their original context. Furthermore, the suit enshrined the Offending Passages in legal filings that were made immediately available throughout the Internet and even on Ellison’s own website. No matter the outcome of the case, Ellison had ensured that these Offending Passages would never, ever disappear.

And, as I made clear in my first post, I feel like the settlement made things worse. The most striking aspect is that Groth gets to post a 500 word essay on Ellison’s website. I presume that earlier aspects of the settlement prohibit Groth from an ad hominem attack– but so long as he doesn’t call Ellison a jerk, or a big mean bastard, it seems that he’s free to say whatever the heck he wants. Ellison has agreed, legally, that he can’t respond, and that he can’t sue Groth or Fantagraphics about what is said in the rebuttal.

If the intention of the lawsuit was to make Groth shut up, how exactly is it winning to not only give Groth the last word, but also be legally obligated to provide him the forum in which to say it? The terms of the settlement– 30 days, 500 words, etc.– reflect what I called a Print Mentality; this was a crap term to describe the idea that such limits mean zero in a medium where nothing ever goes away. Groth’s rebuttal will appear on Ellison’s site & then be copied and distributed around the Internet. And because of the terms of the settlement, that’s it. It’s the last word on the matter. And it’s never going away.

In the bigger picture, I do not understand what Ellison was thinking. Was the Great War irritating? Sure. Were there really a lot of people paying attention? No. When I read the Offending Passages in Ellison’s filing, I groaned. Here was a 40-something-year old man getting his kicks out of badmouthing Ellison in a little book being published by the same 40-something-year old man, dedicated entirely to the history of this 40-something-year old man’s own company. Talk about putting the vanity in vanity publishing.

If we assume that the balance of power always tilts towards the party with the least interest, then in this situation, Ellison was the one with far greater power. His silence could only have ennobled him. But by filing this suit, he shifted the power to Groth– yes, I’m sure Fantagraphics took a big hit on this financially, but where else? Has Groth’s reputation suffered? Has Fantagraphics? Or does this only enhance the company’s carefully cultivated Rebel Image?

Meanwhile, Ellison, a man that frequently touts his credentials as a staunch defender of Free Speech and the First Amendment, has been cast in the role of the guy who couldn’t take the heat so he sued to have words removed from a book. I’m not saying that this is a fair or unfair assessment– but it is a general perception. He’s the guy who got the passages deleted from a book. And he’s an author.

Equally baffling is Ellison’s eager willingness to now repeat the same mistake by engaging with, well, me. First, on general principle, I don’t feel that I’ve been unfair to Ellison in this matter– if anything, I’ve only had a sympathy for seeing someone get caught (as I have in the past) in a serious misunderstanding of how information works in a world where anyone, and everyone, is constantly blogging and spouting off about nothing, and where nothing ever goes away.

Secondly, of the two of us, who has more to gain by a back-and-forth? The sheer amount of traffic this nonsense has driven to this website has literally dwarfed the traffic of all its previous days combined. All Ellison gets out of this is the ability to protest, really protest, that he’s happy with the terms of the settlement. He probably is, but when the lady doth protest too much on the Internet, it reads ironically.

Third, and finally, doesn’t this reinforce the perception of being unable to brook criticism? After all, Ellison put this lawsuit in the public sphere. Did he not expect people to comment and have differing opinions on it? Did he not prepare himself that some of these opinions might be unfavorable and not to his liking? Does he feel like his status as defender of free speech is enhanced by referring, in an obscene manner, to an innocuous piece of commentary by a self-professed gnat?

So at last we come to what I hope will be my final words on this matter, and I direct them entirely to Ellison himself: Honestly. Stop. I understand why you think what you’re doing is the right approach, but it doesn’t help.

UPDATE 9/7: More.

Yet again Heidi McDonald’s inimitable The Beat has another post about the Ellison -vs- Fantagraphics lawsuit & fued. As my few readers no doubt recall, between homoerotic paeans to the Egg King, Arafat Kazi, and being quoted in the Chronicle of Higher Education, one of this blog’s highlights has been my inadvertent provocation of Harlan Ellison’s mighty wrauth. My comments had the big dog protesting, really protesting! that he was satisfied with the outcome of the mutually agreed upon settlement. And also not giving a fuck about me and my opinion. (And proving this by posting in multiple public forums to give the world a head’s up that AYO, homeboy’s sick of using TECHNOLOGY and he don’t give a fuck!)

Both of my posts on the topic were centered on the strangest aspect of the settlement– Ellison agreeing to host, for 30 days, a 500 word rebuttal by Gary Groth on Ellison’s webpage. Unlike much of the rest of the settlement, which was nebulous in terms of victors, this struck me as an actual loss. If the purpose of the lawsuit was to stop Fantagraphics from its potentially libelous speech on the subject of Harlan Ellison, in what way is this accomplished by letting Fantagraphics’ co-owner & figurehead put up a rebuttal on the very topic & hosted entirely on the website of, uh, Harlan Ellison?

I recommend that everyone go through the back links and look at the terms of the settlement– it’s clear that the rebuttal must, on one level, deal with the accusation that Groth molests kids, but otherwise the wording was remarkably open ended. From my Uninformed Opinionated Blogger reading of it, I think Groth had free reign to say whatever the hell he wanted, and that Ellison had agreed not only to publish it, but also not sue over its contents. This felt incredibly strange: because in the world of the internet, 500 words for 30 days means 500 words forever. Like I said. A loss.

Well, jeez, never in my wildest dreams did I think Harlan Ellison would not give a fuck enough about my opinion to take it to heart & not comply with the settlement. Which, according to the above post on the The Beat, is exactly what’s happened: while Ellison was battling the dread Blogosphere and its Uninformed Opinions & other Terrible Crimes, Groth sent in his rebuttal. Ellison has since refused to post it on his website. As this blog kept getting hits from people looking for the settlement, I’ve known something was up but I hadn’t been paying that much attention– some weeks you have better things to do. (Only some!)

It goes without saying that Ellison’s decision is a terrible one. All along I’ve found this spectacle entirely regrettable. Whatever one thinks of Ellison as a man, it’s indisputable that he’s written some truly wonderful work. I’ve enjoyed much of it– as it happens, I’m typing this in a room with many of my own personal copies of his books. In my ideal world where everyone acts their age & knows when they’ve won at life, this is the time when Ellison would be enjoying the fruits of his many labors. The man is a Grand Master! Instead, his time seems increasingly wasted on fighting Wikipedia and suing Fantagraphics over vanity publishing.

Outside of the tiny cadre of Peter David and other die hard fans, Ellison has only enhanced Fantagraphics’ reputation while tarring himself as an opponent of Free Speech and the 1st Amendment right to sass your betters. Since filing suit, Ellison’s actions have only reinforced this perception, right or wrong. Yelling every chance he gets before the settlement, picking fights with nothing bloggers (yours truly included!) after the settlement, and then not abiding by the terms of the settlement: these are not the actions of a man looking to maintain his reputation and standing.

I have no god damned clue what they are. But I know what they ain’t.

Live & Direct from the external hard drive, that arcane & eldritch repository of years past: a letter to my landlords of 2003, writ in Anger. There’s many stylistic things that I’d change if this was being written today, but I like how much it holds up– and how raving mad I sound.

Common Good? Their ward? Wrong doing and apathy?

It would seem that in my lunacy I had confused my landlord with Batman.

–

Jarett Kobek
10 Barnes St, Apt #5
Providence, RI 02906

[Landlord Name & Address Redacted]

August 11, 2003

RE: Parking at 10-12 Barnes St.

Dear Sir or Madam,

Per our many conversations, you are by now no doubt aware that for some time there has been a series of ongoing and flagrant violations of stated building rules regarding the number of cars that may be parked per unit. As we have discussed on several occasions, and as was assured during the process of lease signing, there is a space available for one car per unit and one car only.

I have no desire to police this situation, nor am I unreasonable enough to believe this rule should not be subject to a certain amount of flexibility. Certainly there are occasions and one-time situations which may take place without any real trespass, but when violations occur with a repeated and daily frequency, it’s hard to miss the emerging pattern of abuse, and even harder to deny the progression of circumstance from merely annoying to utterly intolerable. You’ll recall that my complaints have come not in relation to certain and very specific units parking two vehicles each and every night.

I now find that this situation has further escalated. On the night of August 9th, 2003, the tenants of 10 Barnes Apt #3 have parked not only the car (a tan Saturn with Canada Registration # [REDACTED]) and truck (a grey Toyota with New York State Registration # [REDACTED]) with which they routinely flout the rules regarding parking, but also a third card (silver Honda Civic, New York Registration # [REDACTED].)

Allowing this behavior to continue would constitute sheer madness.

Surely, as Landlord of this residence, you have a familiarity with the limited number of available parking spaces and are able to easily imagine the basic antisocial nature of this transgression. When the number of cars being parked by any single unit is three, the situation becomes not merely the breaking of a soft rule, but a brutal attack on the Common Good. I would like to believe that your organization recognizes its inherent responsibility and duty towards the protection of that Common Good, and understands that all of its tenants should not suffer needlessly because of wrong-doing and apathy. Your actions, however, have only reflected your apparent disinterest in the protection of that which is your ward, and it seems as though you would rather let the well-being of All be trampled and destroyed by the Few who have no sense of human decency, nor no natural regard for others, let alone any respect for stated regulations.

Clearly, as several apartments within the building remain vacant, the impact of these violations is minimized. Equally clear is the reality that the building is near two colleges, and that school soon will be in session. When these empty units are occupied, these matters will enter a state of crisis.

I write to you now not with the desire to shame any person, nor merely to complain, but with the hopes that you will recognize this letter for exactly what it is: a chance to correct a bad situation before it becomes considerably worse. Our conversation in June left me believing that assigned parking was an impending reality. Instead, it has proven to be a fanciful possibility that might some day come to fruition. While I am sympathetic and understand that certain elements are no doubt working in such a way as to avoid daytime detection, surely as protector of the Common Good, you can recognize the multiple ways in which this situation may be redressed without resorting to nighttime surveillance.

I am enclosing an informal letter delivered to the tenants in Apt #3, 10 Barnes.

I look forward to your immediate and efficacious response. I am,

Sincerely yours,

Jarett Kobek

cc: tenants 10 Barnes #3

enclosure

–

What a dick!

The Thoughtography of Ted Serios was a phenomena of the 1960s– as credulous a decade as this country has ever seen– and it produced an excellent work of Fortean literature, The World of Ted Serios: “Thoughtographic” Studies of an Extraordinary Mind by Jules Eisenbud, M.D. The good doctor tells the whole story– of witnessing Serios, in drunken rampages, projecting his thought-images onto Polaroid film.

And though Serios has been semi-convincingly debunked, I recommend the book– it’s reasonably well written, and it reeks of the subjectivity that paranormal investigation engenders, an in the moment loss of perspective which leads to dodgy but compelling narratives. It contains an enormous number of reproductions of Serios’s Thoughtographs. Whatever their value as psychic manifestations, they often are visually stunning. This is a Serios image of the Denver Hilton (he had been trying to produce the Chicago Hilton):

When I was traversing the archives, I discovered a letter that I had written to Serios in May of 2006. I had read this article by Calvin Campbell and thought, okay, sure, why not? In those days, of course, I still had a desire to Meet Interesting People– but that’s since been slaked in ways unimaginable. Serios never wrote me back–  it turns out that he died about half a year later. Too bad.

–

Jarett Kobek
Brooklyn, NY 11211

Ted Serios
[address redacted]

25 May 2006

Dear Mr. Serios,

Please forgive the intrusion of my letter—-I was hoping to inquire as to whether or not you are the same Ted Serios of Thoughtography? I saw some of your photographs on display in the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s exhibit on occult photography and was fascinated by them—so I endeavoured to read Mr. Eisenbud’s wonderful book on the subject of your Thoughtography experiments. Upon finishing the last page, I felt that I must try and find the man capable of producing such phenomenal and radical images with only the powers of his mind.

I should like to ask you very many questions on the topic and hope that you should be inclined to answer them. Before I begin my course, however, I would like to receive confirmation that you are indeed the same Ted Serios! Otherwise I could be sending very strange letters to an unsuspecting individual!

Many, many thanks in advance. I am,

Most Truly Yours,

Jarett Kobek