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EnterView Beyond the main page. By Mike Leung (leungm@diarist.net)

Gwen "Gwen's Petty, Judgemental, Evil Thoughts" FRIDAY, MAY 5, 2000   Archives Past EnterView sites. Submit Share yourself. Take Gwen. Gwen is my hero. You pretty much know who your heroes are from the hope they give you. Hope flows into the places fortunes leave. So if Gwen can't be your hero because you think she's merely a wife and mother from Austin, Texas, living in a trailer, I think you're missing out. Like a Liz Phair song, the rhythm of Gwen's entries mix a sing-song playfulness with her interests, giving them a funny, compulsive quality. In one entry, she'll begin by gently asking your permission to tell you about that sad thing from a few years ago that still haunts her, and in another, she'll bluntly tell you she had a dream where she gave John Ritter a hand job, or how cool it would be to return an author his own book, with the cheesy parts stamped with the word CHEESE, or the funny sipping and exhaling sounds her husband makes when he drinks his coffee. Things and ideas just become her playground. Mike: The environments in which you have been raised and live have been testosterone-heavy: raised with all brothers, and now a married mom with all boys. Do you have any insight about gender that most people are unaware of, and how do you think these environments affect you as a distinct person? Gwen: I believe that most non-physical differences between the sexes are a result of nurture and not nature. I also believe that the traits that make a good man are the same as the ones that make a good woman. However, I probably don't know anything that most people aren't aware of. Women and men now go to school together and work together, so it's only a very sheltered person — in America, at least — who doesn't realize these things. I'm suspicious of people who try to enforce gender stereotypes. I'll defend anyone's right to wear pink every day, but people who try to coerce or convince me to "be ladylike" are alien to me. I can't even understand their motives. I used to feel uncomfortable around very feminine women, but now I'm pretty much over that. Even though men are physically stronger, I don't fear them in the same way that I've feared women. I've been trained, however inadvertantly, to judge and get off on photographs of scantily-clad women. That's another phenomenon that occurs nationwide, though. It may be more pronounced in my case, but most women are taught to view each other as art or fantasy fodder these days, I think. At least, they are in America. Mike: I once spent six weeks outside San Antonio, Texas. In the dewy winter mornings I would see these things that looked like slugs the size of Irish setters. I was told they were jack rabbits, and they made me want to vomit. Texas also has really big cockroaches. You live in Texas. Have you seen these things? What kind of evolutionary hothouse are you people running down there? Gwen: They made you want to vomit? You silly. I don't see a lot of jack rabbits, but I had a lot of experience with vomit-inducing cockroaches in Houston. Not only did we have the huge tree roaches — we had the huge FLYING tree roaches. They always flew into my hair. It made me cry. We also had huge, flying, two-headed tree roaches. I never examined those very closely, though. I think it was the humidity that bred such things. Where I live now, in "the Texas Hill Country", there aren't as many roaches, but there are super-gigantic mutant grasshoppers and/or locusts. Those get so big... they're way scarier than the roaches. Once I destroyed an ornamental shrub in our own yard by wrecking my car into it. See, there was a huge locust-hopper on my window. I couldn't open the car door because the monster bug would have been able to touch me. So I thought I'd drive close enough to the shrub to scrape off the bug. It didn't work the first few times I tried. I panicked and ran over the plant completely. Then I had to crawl over to the passenger-side door in order to get out of the car, because the demon-spawn grasshopper was still there. My memory gets kind of dim after that. I think it's the dryness here that allows the growth of such insects. Oh, the governor just called. I can't say anything more on this subject. Mike: I liked your Jehovah's Witnesses story. Your drawings give them sort of a Wile E. Coyote flavor. They seem to have some strange power over people like your husband and me. What is the deal with these guys? Gwen: The deal is that they're never rude. People like you or my husband open the door, and they start their insidious spiel. They say, "Hi... I noticed you're working on your boat [or biceps]. Lookin' good." And you're off guard because they've complimented you. And then they never come right out and say, "We'd like you to join our cult." They act like they're only there to answer your questions about life and religion and stuff. So people like you and my husband are powerless to resist. Your alarms haven't been tripped. Unless these people call you a punk or kick you in the gut, you see no reason not to let them into your homes. You have to be a cynical, suspicious, defensive bitch to keep them outside the door. You have to have learned that strangers who approach you only do so because they want something from you. You have to have an automatic shield that falls over your face when they come near. You have to kind of, just a tiny bit, like being mean. But you should always be polite. (Remember, they know where you live.) Mike: What would it take for you to do a cartoon every entry (week)? (You'll notice that I ignored what you said about being a bitch, since it doesn't occur to me to see you that way. We'll just say that the Jehovah's Witnesses have hypnotic lightning coming out of their brains.) Gwen: More people telling me they wanted them. So far a few people have told me they liked them. I wouldn't want to make everyone else wait for them to download, though. Maybe I could do them on separate pages, though. (Guys never believe me when I say I'm a bitch. Not at first, I mean.) Mike: You know, I just absorbed what you said about most non-physical differences between the sexes are a result of nurture and not nature... that the traits that make a good man are the same as the ones that make a good woman. It would never have occured to me to think that. Maybe this is an indication of a fault within me, but I usually consider the traits that make a good person show in how well they express their dreams. To me, the choices people make reveal something about how they take care of themselves (exhibiting abusive behavior itself being the worst punishment a person can suffer). Is there another point of view for me to consider? Gwen: Well, there's mine! I don't think that strength, compassion, honesty, or loyalty belong to one sex or another. To me, a weak woman and a self-centered man are equally annoying. Right now, in our culture, it's something of a fad to raise girls to hate themselves. Women who abuse themselves or who choose to live with abusive mates are reflecting their upbringing — not their sex. Mike: Speaking of self-centered men, what's the status of the guy trying to rip-off your trailer humor? It looks like this guy is trying to put down the lifestyle, then has the nerve to rip-off material from someone he considers himself better than. Is it too late for people to get in on the spamming of this guy? (Jackie has all the relevant info here.) Is there anything left unsaid about this topic that needs to be mentioned? Gwen: As of this moment [21 April], his server admin is waiting for me to mail him proof that I wrote my trailer pages before they were posted on this other guy's site. It's surreal to me that I even have to gather such "proof". When I first started my website, I figured that the worst I'd ever have to face would be people spam-mailing bits of my pages to each other without giving me credit. But then this happens... It really freaks me out that someone would use my work and then have the nerve to protest and make such a big stink when I asked him to stop. I'd think it'd be easier to just write your own material. I'd never ask anyone to spam this guy, because I'd hate for him to have his local police department emailing my readers. It makes me sad to get email from the Alexandria, VA, detective because I know I'd be incredibly pissed off if I found out that my tax dollars paid our city cops to email women whose websites had been plagiarized. I'd be so upset, I'd start typing long sentences with no semblance of grammar whatsoever. Mike: I know you like the [Japanese Cartoons]. Do you have a favorite Pokemon? My favorites are the useless and euphoric Clefairy, because all they do is run around and shout "Clefairy! Clefairy!" and the manic-depressive, breast-like Pikachu. When I see more than one Pikachu, I lose control. Gwen: You make me suspicious of my own love for Jigglypuff, who is certainly more mammariesque than Pikachu, my second fave. I can't remember what Clefairy looks like, but I can say with certainty that I only love Jiggly, Pika, and that blue guy with the black and white spiral on his gut. I saw every single Pokemon one day when I was looking for characters to make into cross-stitch patterns. And like you, I love Jessie. I've only ever seen two episodes, but the one in which Jessie starts hitting on some doctor ruled my world. She reminds me of Alexandra from Josie and the Pussycats, but she's less inhibited. Mike: Tell me about your readers. Gwen: I can tell you about the ones who write to me. They're mostly women. Some of them have gone through a bunch of difficult crap in life and they appreciate knowing that they aren't the only ones. Some of them have boring jobs and a need to snicker at their desks. Some refuse to believe that I live in a trailer in BFE instead of in some big city. Some of them live in trailers in BFE. I have a few guys who write and tell me nice stuff, too. I think they must be the same kinds of guys as my dad and my uncles — they don't mind sitting in the kitchen with the women during barbecues, because they know that's where all the juicy stuff gets discussed. I'm lucky to have all these people giving a crap about my babbling. It means a lot to me. Mike: Tell me about your favorite place to go on the web. Gwen: Well, it's black and white and cinnabar all over...* Just kidding. Some people would say it's pornographic, but... Just kidding. Forums (fora) rule my world. I guess I'd have to say the Mediarama bulletin boards, at inquisitor.com, are my faves. That's where I met some of my best online buddies. I started hanging out there because Inquisitor was where Daniel Drennan was posting his famous wrapups of Beverly Hills 90210. And I noticed that the boards were filled with adults (as opposed to teenagers) who liked to watch the show and make catty remarks about it. So I started talking to people there three or four years ago, and the rest is history. I guess. I don't even watch 90210 anymore. I just hang out in the other sections of the site and shoot it with my peeps. Sometimes I prefer to play Diablo online, though. Not only do I get to kill monsters with my big sword — I also trade profane barbs with thirteen-year-old Dutch boys. So it's a toss-up, really. Mike: Do the Dutch boys ever offer to sell you drugs, or buy sex from you? Gwen: No. Sometimes they offer to let me perform fellatio on them, though. One helped me kill Diablo himself. Then he had to go because his mom had dinner ready. Hey, in case anybody's still reading this and likes Diablo — I'm in the crypt of Hellfire now. It's really difficult. I kicked everybody's ass in the hive, though. My warrior is hot. I named him Hello Kitty. *Complimenting the interviewer isn't necessary, folks. I can't handle the joyful emotions.