The little experiment that this website was, I have noticed, has recently begun to spin out of control and take on a life of its own. Somewhere along the line, this little strip I did for my own amusement every few days became something slightly larger.
I started out with the sole intent of putting something up on my personal page for my friends to look at. At some point (presumably when I wasn't watching) it moved out of its comfy confines, found itself its own domain name, built its own website, spawned sub-features, and managed to snag a daily audience which seems to hover around 600 or 700 people these days. Just recently, it started selling t-shirts and displaying ads.
That's kinda fucked up, if you ask me.
If someone has any sort of an explanation, I'd be happy to hear it. I have no idea as to what could have possibly caused this to happen. I've been tossing around a few narcissistic theories, but nothing definite comes to mind.
In my eye, it seems that at its basest, most rudimentary level, Goats (as an entity, rather than the comic strips themselves) is about communication. Don't get me wrong here -- I'm not encouraging any sort of healthy behavior where people are being honest and open with each other, or discussing their purposes in the grand scheme of the cosmos, or anything intellectual like that (it just ain't natural).
I'm simply saying that it has become some sort of thing that people identify with, and latch on to, which is what's supposed to happen with any good meme. I do a strip, people read it, they find something in it that affects them. Goats isn't likely to bring about cosmic awareness, but there's some definite characteristic it posesses that people have congealed their collective mind around. It's probably something extremely base, like a group psychosis or some sort of mass penchant for taping babies to celings, but I'd like to think that there's a tad bit more to it.
But it's not really the strips themselves that I'm referring to when I talk about communication; the strips are pretty much one-way, from me to you, and don't affect me all that much. It's the letters that get to me. It never ceases to astound me that people actually take the time and energy to send me their thoughts.
Lately, though, I've been getting what seems to me to be a ridiculous amount of mail. Not that I don't enjoy getting it, or responding to it, but the quantity and intensity of the mail has been increasing at an astounding rate.
Words have more weight than we grant them. There's a book that I've been reading called 'Sexing the Cherry', by Jeanette Winterson, where one of the characters encouters a town where the words of the townsfolk float up into the sky and form a hard, suffocating crust. This crust can only be removed by special cleaners, who float up into the air in baloons to sweep away the words.
We don't usually think of the things we say as physical things, as objects with effects on the world around them, but they might as well be. It's something i'm beginning to realize as of late, as I find that those words i've been putting out there have affected people, and the things they write back are affecting me in ways I don't fully comprehend, both emotionally and intellectually. It's a bit scary.
But it's also damn fun. I'm having a great time, things are feeling pretty damn exciting now, and something tells me that the interesting stuff is just starting. I'm kind of curious to see what happens. It makes me wonder if having a child is a similar experience -- having an entity that you've created find its own self, and then come back and affect your self in unpredictable ways. Kinda like that kid that shot up his parents in Oregon the other week* -- what a shocker that must have been for mom and dad.
*disclaimer: nothing that jon says, writes or does should be taken seriously or misconstrued as containing any value or worth, and should not be followed as advice, taken to heart, or ingested orally.
Anyways, I could go on (as I fear i already have), about things like the imperfections of words as communications tools, and how words are more the servents of memes than they are of the hosts that memes feed upon, but basically, I'd much rather waste the next few paragraphs plugging the new Goats: The Store.
We're offering two fine shirts to start, hopefully to be expanded to four or five in the future, once we gauge the reaction to these initial ones. Buy them both. Buy them for friends. Buy them and use them as dishtowels, tourniquets, bandages, i really could care less. Just buy them and send me your money.
Speaking of comunication and sending me money, we've had an initial flurry of orders arrive in the last coupla days, and I've been pleasantly surprised to find that many of the envelopes are creatively decorated in the slightly psychotic fashion that's characteristic of many Goats fans. (One reader even sent me a CD of her favorite band, Moxy Fruvous -- a band i was unaware of until now... I'm listening to the album as I type this, and lemme tell you, I'm at the next NYC show they have. They're a bit of a mix of Barenaked Ladies and Cracker and some other snack foods. And I swear they had an accordion somewhere in some of their songs... check 'em out. And I seriously encourage all of you to send more gifts. But I digress...) Anyway, let's have a contest. The most creatively decorated shirt order/envelope gets it's creator their choice of an additional free shirt, an original Goats cast drawing, or a beer (on me) at the Peculier Pub.
All entries should be submitted by the next readme, which will probably occur early next month.
-jonathan rosenberg, cartoonist extraordinaire
june 05, 1998