Here's the thing, though... I've not read _Sandman_, or anything of Neil's other than _Good Omens_, _Smoke & Mirrors_, and AG.

[This message has been edited by JaNell (edited 07-29-2001).]

I must confess I have never heard of the dieties that you are named after. Care to talk about them?
Oh, and calling Neil "Neil" depends on the context. In a Neil Young discussion board, it would probably be assumed that Neil is Neil Young, not Neil Gaiman. Just a thought.

You can call me... Mad

Well, I was yabbering too much... but y'all can look them up on any mythology site, although I thought Jah was pretty well known, mon...

Ah... i should have remembered Ja. I stand shamed.

The (*smacks himself*) Floyd

Hello, JaNell! and Oneiromancer-

Mm, no, Teleute isn't my given name, at least not one given to me by anyone but myself. And I think your pronunciation is correct, Oneiromancer... I'm not absolutely certain since I'm not sure we ever found an exact translation for the word. Death was already taken (naturally) and since that's *my* character when my friends and I are the Endless and Co as characters, I used her other name.

Incidentally, my parents did almost name me Scout, after the girl in To Kill A Mockingbird.

But JaNell, you gotta read Sandman. Soon!!!

I'm not going to get involved in the other debate that seems to have started on here.

As far as copyright goes, I'd be wary of putting anything like that on a T-shirt without permission. Although, yes, it's a cool speech and very pertinent to the theme of AG.

But when the OFFICIAL ones come out I'll have six please. (I'm assuming they'll be black T-shirts. It seems a fair assumption to make.)

SarahC.

Its funny, I actually ahd the same idea about putting it on a t-shirt, and actually spent a fair amount of time trying to get the front cover pic on one side of a shirt and the speech on the back. I wanted it on black, which turns out to be next best thing to impossible to do in any small quantity, but because of all the work i'd done, I remembered a site i had come across called cafepress.com that lets you make merchandise with images printed on them. Well, the copyright issues hadnt occured to me at the time, although after I put the shirt online, someone elsewhere in the forum mentioned it might be a copyright issue for the image.... now I used the british image, so I'm guessing they care a bit less about what happens in america, but its probably still illegal.... but I thought fair use would cover the text on the back... Walker and I actually got into a discussion about that, he was going to look it up in a publication book he has... anyway, maybe I should take the stuff down from cafepress, and if the consensus here is that its not good, I'll heed the advice of others, but if any of you want to take a look or grab a copy before I take it down, it's located at http://www.cafepress.com/americangods . I don't think it's a big issue as long as no ones mass producing them or making any money on them or anything, but its a real issue, I dunno...

Well, as far as the Sam speech, I have to think that Oneiromancer touched on something there. I liked the speech, of course and I've actually known people that seem to have prepared such things in their minds and been at the ready to spew them, given the chance. This may be coincidence, but in Minnesota (where I briefly lived) there were many of the "feminist studies" women that I knew that had similar prepared monologues. It's not that unusual. I suppose long, cold winters give you plenty of time to work all the kinks out of your tirades in that part of the country. And truthfully, having a long, thoughtful, detailed speech ready at the helm seemed to be in character for Sam.

I can say that I felt that there was more to her character than was shown in the book. It almost felt like a movie where her bigger parts were left on the cutting room floor. Her dream seemed to be telling us something more about her, too and I suspect we are to be wondering about that, as well.

I enjoyed the speech and I enjoyed her character. Probably wouldn't want it on a t-shirt, though as I'd hate to have to stop for THAT long for people to stand there and read my clothing and then be forced to explain any points that an average dumb ass wouldn't understand. But, hey, that's just me.

-Merkatroyd

Inordinately long pauses for the sake of dumbasses.... now there's an issue I hadn't considered when I had the idea for the shirt....

Apologies if this has been posted a million times before (I just finished the book, so I haven't read the whole board yet).

Is it possible that this speech is important because it establishes Sam as the kind of person who could become Shadow's first "believer"? If we accept that Shadow is a version or aspect of Baldur, or at the very least, has some latent godlike power which would be boosted by the belief of followers - maybe the "miracle" that he performs for Sam at the end of the book is the beginnings of a new religion.

Now I have to go back reread the book from the beginning to see if this makes any sense.

Oneiromancer -- wearing one of those shirts at this very moment - nicely done!

Hey strega, kewl, glad you like it... I don't own one yet myself, but I may order one on a gray t-shirt just to have it, I dunno... I only wear black forthe past few years, but when I work out I wear gray sometimes, cant decide though if I go back to wearing colors at some point, which i'm more likely to want.... which did you get, white or gray? Dunno...

Why did I want a Sam/Shadow fling going on?

Would that have been so wrong..seriously.

Finney, I agree with you there. I wanted a Sam/Shadow fling, too. When I pick it apart and make it less than romantic, I think I wanted it to happen because Shadow needed the energy that Sam seemed to have. She was so spunky and full of ideas and Shadow seemed almost brooding and quiet that I thought they'd do well for each other. She also so readily accepted him for what he was. I was really disappointed at the end when he gave her the flowers and left. I very much wanted the two of them to get together. I felt that she was what he needed in his life. I mean, really, where else is he going to find someone that he can tell his story to and have them help him to understand it all? Dunno...just thought there would be more to it with Sam and Shadow. Maybe that's the boy meets girl, boy gets girl fantasy in me, though.

-Merkatroyd

got white. should have purchased the grey. but still love it -- especially the added-on "is nothing sacred?" on the front. i have made my fellow Gaiman fans here quite envious!

Heh, are you being a good girl and sharing with your friends? If you tell them the address, they can get their own, or do you want to keep it unique and protect such information? :-) If it were a darker gray I think I'd definitely get it, I'm afraid this gray looks too light, sort of like its just dirty or something, not a real rich full gray....

I got one of the shirts also & I loved it. However the 1st time I washed it it faded out really bad & now you can hardly read it.(The front picture, not the back.)

Hmmm... sorry to hear that Booknutt, maybe talk to CafePress, maybe you got a bad one? they should be proof against washign, but, oh, actually, maybe washing it inside out would help... a lot of shirts i have with designes reccomend that... but maybe if you tell them they'll send you a new one?

ok i read this(AG) book at my uncles house. after i was done reading it, i raided my uncles bookshelf for books to read on the plane back.
he gave me john gribbin's "_in search of schrodinger's cat_".
the titles theory goes somthing like this:
*note: this is what i got from it, not a word for word thing*
theres a cat in a box and theres a hammer and a vial of poison. theres a 50\50 chance that the hammer will fall and break the vial, killing the cat. and ya dont know for sure unless: *GASP* you open the box and look...
ok it sounds realy dumb but its a metaphor for the polarity of atoms or somthing. ya dont know if its a positive chage or a negitive charge.
untill *GASP* ya look at it under some kind of microscope that would tell you the charge.
its kind of saying that nothing realy exists till you look at it. the book took many pages to say this and it said it over and over again many diffrent ways.
anyways if ya read her speach you might notice a part where she talks about somewhere theres a box with a cat in it that will be 2 kinds of dead unless someone opens the box and feeds it.
i didnt notice the connection till i read the speach aloud to my friends and renemberd reading the theroy the day after i read the book...
kinna funny huh?
would of put this in annotations, but didnt want to start a new thread just for this, and this thread needs help to get back on track to talking about sam and her wonderfull speach.
*i hope all the nit-pickers erase their posts from this thread. make a new thread about copywrite violations. and another thread to talk about your dumb shirts. when this happens i will erase this astrik part*

quicker than i could bat my eye...

Heres my two cents:

I think that the I belive speach is a creed. Which is defined as a formal statement of religious belief; a confession of faith.
A system of belief, principles, or opinions. There are lots of people that have their creeds memorised. In my youth I attended a Catholic grammar school and had to learn something called "the Apostles Creed" which starts out "I belive in the Father almighty..." Basically it is sort of like a list poem, or prayre, or prose, that lays outh the things that you belive in.

Knowing what little I've read about the character, Sam, and having attended college coincedentally in Madison WI where ther are lots of girls just like Sam, it wouldn't suprise me if it was some exercise that she wrote up for a womans studies and/or art therapy course and had memorised it becasue it was important to her. So basically I feel that it fits well with her character to have a speach like this memorised and ready to perform at will.

Although I don't really feel it was delivered in exactly the correct spot in the story or relationship. It seemed like it may have been a bit too much personal information at one time.
Especially since moments before revealing such personal information, she said "If your going to kill me please don't hurt me." It just seemed as though she just switched gears from not trusting this on-the-run-former-convict-suspected-murderer to opening up to him like he was a very dear friend.