July 20082 July 2008 Dear Mr. Kreider, Your web page says that you're "on
vacation" this
week. How exactly do you Thank you,
6 July 2008 Dear Mr Kreider. Those sketchbook outages are not something to spring on a man without prior warning for sobriety Love them! Also love your lighter lines lately in general. Should that not have been a "westwaining oWder" a couple weeks back though? Deeply disturbed at your wack of wespect for westwaining owders your
7 July 2008 Mr. Kreider- I recently received a fine birthday gift, in the form of Mr. Tehn. I have composed a Rubai upon the occasion. It is entitled: Mr. Tehn in the Dressing Room He has great hopes
that a loose-fitting tunic I hope you enjoy it. Sincerely,
9 July 2008 Hi, Tim. Great comic and commentary this week! I am of the same naive opinion about science - though I have the opportunity to feel like I'm making a difference. My beautiful and intelligent wife was unfortunately raised with a creationist point of view, though excelllently educated otherwise. Though there's been a bit of tension, I was able to make it through and help her get some of the awesome ideas that make up science - natural selection, astronomy, and all the fun cool shit. I hear ya, man. David Attenborough's documentaries are a great bridge. Anyway, I wanted to call your attention to NASA's photo of the day website - if it's not on your daily list, it should be! It's a mix of super cool astronomy and meteorology photos with short explanations, but they have Hubble photos, snapshots from the Space Shuttle, weird weather phenomena like sundogs and the green flash, etc: http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/astropix.html Thanks again for your brilliantly vicious work! TJ
10 July 2008 Dear Tim Kreider, Your comic and artist statement
this week were two of the best things you've produced
in a while (not to say your other comics weren't
great, but I enjoyed
this one much more). It's been my reasoning for a while that it's instinctual
for humans to create a God figure to rationalize and explain things they
have yet to learn. A psycological security blanket
that keeps them from having to
think to hard. And it's my belief that as societys progress and more is learned,
that these gods be dropped and science take their place. In recent years,
the numbers of athiests have risen exponentially,
which I think proves my point.
Unfortunately, there will always (probably) be a group of people who simply
are to insecure, and need a God to make them feel validated and safe. I'm
fine with that, but when they start asserting there
beliefs forcefully and often
times stupidly, they've become a force against modern progress. I don't often
find people who have similar thoughts on this topic, so it was refreshing
to read your work this week.
10 July 2008 Dear Tim, I'm not going to spend much time on this email as I doubt you will either. I only want to write about your artist's statement. The panel can be excepted for space constraints. It is pedantically simplistic and demeaning to someone of your obvious intelligence to lump every American who doesn't agree with your political and spiritual and scientific positions into one stupid and dumb "they." Seriously? Powerful prose, sharp wit, and the best you can come up with is to rant against that mythical beast, "most people" and "they"? You can do better. (And as someone employed in science: 1. Good luck finding scientists who can agree on almost anything, much less what you seem to assume - lack of religion = liberal politics. 2. Some of the most best scientists I've met are also intensely religious. Reconcile that with your simplistic world.) best,
11 July 2008 Dear Mr. Kreider, How wonderful to see the Large Hadron Collider featured in your fine drawn serial! Like many, I eagerly await the start of data-taking -- not because of the potential for the return of the Elder Gods, but because I do theoretical physics on Higgs, supersymmetry, etc. and the SSC was canceled during my first year in graduate school. This one is going on the office door. Regards,
14 July 2008 As someone who has studied economics and politics
since he was ten, I can tell you that your comic
is almost dead on about everything. Keep up the good
work.
16 July 2008 Tim, JJ from Columbia, Maryland here. I, too, and an anti-Bush obsessive, artist, musician, blah blah blah... I've been reading your strip for a while now, and I get a big fucking kick out of it, so I couldn't let the "chicken" + "ass" panel go by without alerting you to some songs you might like. Years ago my cohorts and I recorded some songs, and one was called "Asschickens". I'll attach the song. It's about what you think it's about. More recently,
my brother
and I have
launched
an online
campaign
of wiggedness
in music
called "PUMMELER".
We got
some attention
in the
local media
for our
song "Ovechkin" as
the Capitals
made their
run to
the Other song titles include "Sleestak Attack", "Fuck Dat Pussay", and "Hang Up And Drive" (currently not up). Enjoy... http://www.myspace.com/pummelermusic I almost emailed you earlier when you were talking about Stevie Wonder helping your moods, as Stevie has always done that for me. So much so that I got a tattoo of him on my leg for inspiration. Saw him at Pier 6 last summer, and he was fucking incredible. 3 hours, never missed a note, never took a sip of water. He's inhuman. Hope you enjoy the music, and keep cranking out those strips. JJ
16 July 2008 Tim, Actually pretty good one this week. I also
remember much of your early work not I also googled Wittgenstein and got his article
in Wikipedia. He seems to have Marty F
I was a little freaked by the Wittgenstein / Hitler thing too. Good thing the poor guy is dead now, so if he ever ran for US President we'd not be subjugated to attack ads to the effect (Stentorian voice) "Wittgenstein was a SCHOOL CLASSMATE of one of the world's most genocidical dictators! If he was HIS friend, how can we trust HIM to deliver a balanced budget, stop gay marriage in its unholy trcaks, and win the war on terror?"
16 July 2008 "I expect to publish my collection of the
last four years¢ cartoons and essays, Fuck Them
All: A Chronicle of the Era of Darkness, Volume II,
sometime next year after the Bush regime has been
driven from office."
16 July 2008 Tim, The "asterisked" ( How appropriate, ASS-terisk.) footnote about anal sex on the first date with someone who will later prove to be insane. It is within my experience, a truism. I present my ex-wife to the court as exhibit "A". Fortunately, I have been ignorant of her whereabouts since 1984. One good thing about that ominous year. [Name withheld just out of common decency]
18 July 2008 The other day I was driving east on I-90 from Seattle and stopped at the rest area just past Cle Elum. Most rest areas serve free coffee, but this one also served free popcorn. I decided to ask about the unusual item on the menu, and the man informed me that "it's a republican thing." It was then that I noticed that the rest area was staffed by the Kittitas county republicans. This made me think 'What have the Republicans ever done for us?' and it seemed to me that one answer to this 'Life of Brian' question would be 'provided popcorn and coffee to motorists who follow the American tradition of driving in the face of the environment, gas prices, etc.' Of course they have also provided us with many other wonderful things such as making sure we have gasoline for a little while longer, population control, and so on. Anyhow, I thought you might like to know that popcorn is a republican thing. - Ann
20 July 2008 Mr. T. Kreider: I have just recently stumbled upon
your web
site after Googling 'feed the cats.' A gut feeling
instructed me to click on the Archives, and,
boy, I
must tell you something: When you have titles to
click to get to a certain cartoon, and the title
is THE
EXACT SAME WORDING as the punchline of the cartoon,
(as in "Your Feelings Suck" and "I
don't give a shit,"), the emotion that is hoisted
upon the first-time viewer is one of disappointment
and ennui, as if one has already been told, weeks
in advance, what one will receive at Christmas. (Well,
no, not really. Sometimes that gives you a feeling
of excited anticipation, depending, of course, on
what the gift is.) I would suggest you change the
wording of the titles, post haste, to, for instance, "Something
about Feelings," and "Something about Giving" respectively.
Then at least the reader can still be excited about
Christmas, and wonder animatedly and excitedly about
what could be on offer.
20 July 2008 Hi Tim, It's not often that I see a picture of a dude and ask myself "did Tim Kreider draw that?" So there you go.
22 July 2008 Dear Mr. Kreider, I kind of feel like I should call
you Tim, but that would be rude as we haven't ever
met. The reason I'm writing you today is honestly
probably something you've heard a thousand times
before, but I figured it wouldn't hurt to tell you
again.
You're an amazingly funny cartoonist. I was referred
to your website a week ago by an online friend and
have since read through everything (comics, artists
statements, crap you've linked to in those statements)
that Not to say that it wasn't difficult to get though at times. There were times that I was reading (the leadup to the 2004 election being the most memorable) and I was thinking to myself "oh that poor, poor man, he doesn't even know yet". Which is of course ridiculous, of course you know that Bush won the '04 election, of course you know that we've been subjected to 4 extra years of draconian idiocy. But you didn't know then, and reading your artists statements all full of hope that maybe, just maybe this nightmare could be over finally was kind of painful because I knew what was coming. I knew the utter deflation that was around the bend. And then it happened and you bitched defeatedly at the bastards in the "flyover states" for being ignorant redneck idiots. And while I live in one of those states (Indiana to be precise) I didn't hold you any malice for doing so, after all I bite my tongue and curse inside my head whenever I see a "Support the Troops" ribbon (or a depressingly common one now that simply states in jingoistic vagueness "Support America" as though anyone who doesn't vote for the next homo hating bigot is somehow a traitor). Anyhow, enough of that depressing bullshit, as I was saying, I found your work to be strikingly witty and extremely well done. If for some unknown reason you find yourself stranded in the desolate corn strewn wasteland that is Indiana, feel free to email me (or just post it on your comic) and I'll show you around to the one drinking establishment we have in this state that isn't either a sports bar or a hick dive playing Toby Keith 24/7. Thanks for all the laughs (and the tears too) Sincerely,
24 July 2008 Thanks for making me laugh , you're one of the good guys. My friend from Sweden (by way of Pakistan) enjoys your comics, too. She can't marry me because I'm not Muslim. Doesn't that just totally suck? If only more Pakistanis read your work... J. Feezer
24 July 2008 Hey there, Long time reader, first time writer. I enjoy your comic tremendously, as I feel it's one of the few political comics these days that's not pulling any punches. The one thing I want to write in about is your recent comment - "Of course Iran isn't helping matters by firing off missiles and making with the supervillain rhetoric about wiping Israel off the map." I agree that Iran is acting with a lot of bombast, and not particularly helping defuse any situations here, but the comment about "wiping Israel off the map" is something I keep seeing that is in fact one of the most dangerous mistranslations I've ever seen. The problem is, and it's been a bad problem in this country for a long time now, our ability to translate Middle Eastern languages SUCKS. The idiomatic phrase "wipe off the map", as far as I understand it, doesn't actually exist in Farsi. What Ahmadinejad actually said was something closer to "the current Zionist regime in Israel must be brought to an end", with the emphasis on "current regime", referring to the hawkish factions that have come to prominence in Israel since the assassination of Yitzhak Rabin. It's more akin to saying "we've got to get Bush out of office" than it is to "let's push the country into the sea". And it's something that the entirety of Western media has run with - even otherwise responsible publications who usually do their research correctly. It makes me sick and sad - but when I was taking Arabic in school, even after 9/11, there were only twenty students in the class at a major American university, and about half of them dropped out. We don't really understand
what they're saying. We don't want to understand
what they're saying. Bush
and McCain in particular wouldn't even understand
why we need to learn to speak Arabic, Farsi, etc.
- but we've recently given airtime to a terrorist
faction on the U.S.-sponsored Al-Hurra network
because the network managers didn't speak a word
of Arabic. Thanks for the rest of your work. Sincerely,
25 July 2008 Dear Mr. Kreider: I have been a monstrously huge fan of your work since about 2004. I'm writing to correct a small error you made in Panel 2 of your most recent cartoon: Because he was tortured in Vietnam, John McCain is physically unable to lift his arms above his shoulders, thus rendering him unable to pull off a Nixon pose. The best he could do would probably be to put his arms out at a 90 degree angle perpendicular with his spine. Being the America-hating liberal/heartless bastard that I am, I think that this could look pretty hilarious if he were rendered in your style attempting to do so with his "Popeye" expression: http://punchup.files.wordpress.com/2007/06/john_mccain.jpg Thanks for everything you do; I really enjoy Wednesdays a lot more than I normally would. Yours,
26 July 2008 I'll tell you what uplifting thing you can draw if that day comes, Tim. You can draw the little kid who watches it on TV and quietly resolves to take up the mantle, eventually becoming the nation's first black president.
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