Exclusive Interview
I’m terrible about replying to email. Unlike Mischa, it’s definitely not because I’m too cool to talk to people. Mostly it’s because I’m disorganized. Also, and I know this excuse gets trotted out a lot, it’s because I’m busy. Time I spend writing email is time I spend not drawing, or programming, or spending time with my lovely wife, or watching Macross on DVD.
Because of this, when I don’t hear back from an email that I’ve sent myself I don’t generally worry about it. I just assume that the person on the other side of the intertube is like me: flaky, overworked, and doing something else. There are exceptions, though. If I made a faux pas in my opening email and don’t receive a reply I’ll worry about it. This worry will build up in my mind like a time bomb. It’s all because my brain is haunted by the ghost of Mark Evanier.
“But Joe”, I hear you thinking, because all teachers have the power of mind reading, “Mark Evanier isn’t dead yet, and even if he was he’d have better things to do than haunt your crappy brain”. Let me tell you a story. Back in the early 90s when Usenet was king and the world wide web was a burrowing mammal, I was a fresh sparkly-eyed math student who communicated in leet and thought that random humor was the highest achievement of western civilization.
One day I was having a friendly discussion with some people on one of the rec.arts.comics boards. By “friendly discussion” I of course mean “take no prisoners flamefest”. One of the other people on the board made a comment that I found particularly idiotic, so I sent off a vitriol-dripping rebuke to said user. At the time of course I didn’t realize that said user was comic book legend Mark Evanier (Groo, Dungeons and Dragons). When I learned who I had sent the letter to, I felt humiliated. I would never have been such an ass if I had realized that the person on the other end was someone whom I admired. It’s one thing to disagree with someone, but it’s quite another to speculate on that someone’s carnal relations with goats.
On that day, I pledged to be respectful in all my internet communications from that time forth. It really is true that on the internet no-one knows you’re a dog. It’s also sometimes true that no-one knows you’re Mark Evanier.
I didn’t intend to ramble on for quite so much. I’ll have a new comics link for you tomorrow.
July 3rd, 2008 at 8:04 am
I don’t remember the e-mail at all. That is to say, I have no idea which vitriol-drenched message it was, and I don’t remember any of them. So consider yourself forgiven and stop being haunted by it.
July 3rd, 2008 at 3:59 pm
Thank you. One neurosis down, several thousand left to go.