Feedback starting January 14, 1998 My comments are in [red brackets]. From: "charles e thrift sr" <cthrift@mediaone.net> Subject: sleeze will not please Date: Fri, 16 Jan 1998 22:47:56 -0500 well at least if i get fired for what is on my web page then i will have God to thank .   He is in control and He does all things well .   you deserved to be fired if you pander crud .   we all deserve hell but God has chosen a few . not many smart, mighty, good or even righteous . just us crud panderers etc .  it is all God's choice altogether . and for some reason he delights in taking messes like me and teaches us to love messes like you . especially when you don't want, need or deserve it .   don't you want your life to have meaning ? or you just want your life to mean 'make believe' .  don't be decieved any longer . http://www.ccse.net/~cthrift Paste that address on your forehead and in your palm for LIFE Good people don't need Jesus - It's us bad guys that cry to Him EncycloDigitaLogics (C) Copyright 1982-1997 Chuck E. Thrift Sr. [Whoah.....] ? From: "sobel" <sobel@always-online.com> Subject: Sailing against the wind Date: Fri, 16 Jan 1998 19:42:47 -0500 I read about your plight in the Sun Journal, New Bern, NC today (16 Jan). Your prose needs some work although I'm confident I'll never find your works next to Hemingway or Steinbeck. You got SCREWED brother! Why not tell those two loose ends (your students or co-workers) to lighten up and forget it. You did NOTHING worng. Tell 'em bad taste in this country is not a crime and go on with buisness. I'm sorry this happened to you but 1984 is here about 14 years late. Let me know how you make out. Date: Fri, 16 Jan 1998 18:47:35 -0500 (EST) From: coolbreeze@netonecom.net (BRADLEY J. NICHOLS) Subject: GET OVER IT ALREADY!!! Now that you've gone public with your sob story do you feel better? You portray yourself as the victim but I really think you're milking this for all it's worth. If you never wanted such reactions, maybe you should have paid more attention as to what you were saying. People are not looking at you as the victim, people are wondering why you continue to bring attention to yourself when you already look like an ass. [NetOneCom.Net is a local provider. So this guy is a local. Gives you an idea of what sort of people I'm dealing with up here, eh?] Date: Fri, 16 Jan 1998 18:04:29 -0500 (EST) From: Patrick E Swickard <swickape@nextwork.rose-hulman.edu> Subject: Screwed Cameron: I read about your little webpage incident in the newspaper, so I decided to find your page and see what people were so upset about. I am sort of a connoisseur of weird stuff on the web, so I wanted to see how shocking your stories were that you could actually be *fired* for writing them. I halfway expected to find some of those horribly twisted snuff sex stories that I have run across before. To my surprise, I found nothing on your page any more offensive than some of the stuff I have on my page, even after reading all your fiction. It really pisses me off that someone could be fired for writing *stories* and putting them on their personal webpage. Somehow I don't see "Well, Cameron, your coworkers read your stories and got freaked out" as being a valid reason to fire someone, just as I doubt your boss would've given you a juicy bonus if I had called up and said, "Boy, Cameron has some pretty whiz-bang stories on his personal web page that he designed for his own personal use." I'm sure you're probably getting loads of email in response to the newspaper article, so my little contribution won't be much; however I felt it was necessary to write to you and maybe counterbalance whatever narrow-minded idiots may be writing to you telling you that you deserved to be fired. Good luck finding a job, and I hope you find a decent lawyer to sue the hell out of your employer. Somebody needs to protect our rights, whether threatened by the government or intrusive employers. P E Swickard Date: Fri, 16 Jan 1998 17:57:35 -0500 From: Bob Chatelle <kyp@ultranet.com> Organization: Boston Coalition for Freedom of Expression Subject: Hello from Boston Hi, Cameron -- This is Jim D'Entremont. I'm Director of the Boston Coalition for Freedom of Expression. We're an informal affiliate of the National Campaign for Freedom of Expression, based in DC. I share this email address with Bob Chatelle. We just came across your case in a routine scan of wire service reports pertaining to censorship incidents. Your kind of situation is always frustrating for us, since the First Amendment is on the side of your employer. That does not, however, make their response to your website morally right. I'm not sure if there's anything we can do in this instance, but if there is, let us know -- you have our support. Best of luck, Jim D'Entremont Date: Fri, 16 Jan 1998 13:49:37 -0800 From: Michael Brotherton <mbrother@igpp.llnl.gov> Subject: My Support Dear Cameron, I read with shock an article on www.cnn.com about your firing. As a part-time writer, I found it especially disturbing. This is a form of censorship that punishes artists who must make a living with a day job. That means most artists. You may not think of yourself as an artist, but you are for being a writer, even if it is just a hobby. Fiction is a strange art, moreover, in which everyone understands that the events being described are not real. Well, almost everyone. The publishing industry considers posting stories on a webpage as publication. Your situation would imply that under this terrible law, narrow-minded folk could take offense at anything anywhere and get people fired over it. I have a few horrific science fiction stories published in obscure places, and am trying to sell more. That this could threaten my career in astronomy is a ludicrous concept. Anyway, I agree with you that a pseudonym is a poor solution. A better solution is a broad, thoughtful education for everyone free of religious and politically correct biases. I wish you luck with future employment. Cheers, Mike Brotherton From: David Sutera <EUSDASU@am1.ericsson.se> Subject: Um Date: Fri, 16 Jan 1998 13:43:34 -0600 I'm sure you weren't fired for those stories. They are badly written and stupid, not offensive. FYI cows are female. Quit crying and get a job. From: "Carl Gustaf Kreuger" <kreuger@online.no> Subject: Personal reflection Date: Fri, 16 Jan 1998 18:53:25 +0100 Hello, My name is Carl Gustaf Kreuger, a Swede living in Norway. I saw your article on the internet and got surprised that someone can get fired for so to say no reason at all. My personal belief is that it all comes down to differnces between men and females. I worked as a dentist in a small community in western Sweden. I had no complaints on my job whatsoever, just the opposite. All of a sudden I was declared as "persona non grata" by female assistants. They said it was because I use snuff (a kind of chewing tobacco). They couldn't fire me, but I quit volontarily and got another job in another town. Later on I found out that my female cooworkers never liked my way of dressing (clothes and haircut etc.) and definetly not my kind of humor. But why not tell me? The answer is that women talk to each other about almost anybody, but not directly to the person who is the "target". The person who has become a target becomes "demonized" without even knowing it. "Everybody thinks so, therefore it must be true" is a common phraze. Now they need a excuse. In my case they choosed the snuff, in your case it could have been your homepage and the novels. Too many women compared to the number of men at the same workingplace is never good. What the real reason is in your case I don't know, but it might be a minor bagatell or even something that never has been said, but has become a planted truth within a circle of jeaulous or evil-thinking women. They just needed something to "verify" their (mostly nonsense) beliefs. Then your novels came as a gift from heaven and they saw the possibility to get you on that. It is easy for them to exaggerate and say they are afraid of you and so on. You are chanceless. The big problem is what to do about it? I don't even know if I am right. But I think I am, at least in my case. Whatever you do, don't give up on your novels. Keep writing them, and you and only you have to decide whether or not it is wise to put them on the net. Since none of your "private products" has ever interferred with your job I can't even see the slightest reason of firing you. P.S. Anna Holt, our former minister of justice in Norway, writes novels and books about corruption within politicians, about fictive murders, detailed intrigues and sex, describing sex-acts with words almost unprintable etc. and she is very popular. She left her job because of illness, not because she writes nasty books. If she didn't get sick, she would still be the minister of justice in Norway. Good Luck and all the best wishes from me. Don't give up! Carl Gustaf Kreuger Date: Fri, 16 Jan 1998 18:48:39 +0100 From: Per Einar Watle <watle@online.no> Subject: Support!! Hi! My name is Per Einar Watle,and I'm a 26 years old guitarist from Norway! I would just like to give you my support about your storywriting. I must say I'm truly SHOCKED by the behaviour of your chief and female co-workers! They can't have been reading much in their lives..... I am also a devoted Stephen King reader, and he seems to be a normal, OK guy....... And how about Shakespeare?? Well, I just wanted to make my contribution and wish you good luck for the future, I'm shure that a much better job will fall into your hands after this thing blows over!! By the way; I think your stories are both original and funny!!!! Happy writing and good luck! Sincerely, Per Einar Watle From: mellanie@infobahn.com Date: Fri, 16 Jan 1998 11:47:31 -0600 Subject: FAN MAIL I wish I could offer you something more than moral support. Don't stop writing, and please consider publishing. Sincerely, Mellanie Date: Fri, 16 Jan 1998 09:01:13 -0800 From: Ken Strandberg <kens@translogic.COM> Organization: Translogic Technology, Inc. Subject: (no subject) I have to agree with you that getting fired sucks and should be illegal. I've read your fiction. Nothing offensive there. Nothing entertaining either. Looks like three years of English didn't help much. You certainly look talented as a web designer though. You'll undoubtedly find work again, if you're looking. Date: Thu, 15 Jan 1998 23:53:46 -0700 From: "Joseph N. Hall" <joseph@5sigma.com> Organization: 5 Sigma Productions (http://www.effectiveperl.com) Subject: The dangers of fiction ... Imagine if you had been J. G. Ballard. Actually, in that case, after 20 or 30 years of starving, Steven Spielberg would be making your quasi-autobiography into a movie. But "Why I Want to Fuck Ronald Reagan" hasn't been filmed yet, and neither has "The Assassination of John Fitzgerald Kennedy Considered as a Downhill Motor Race." One of my Clarion classmates wrote some fairly twisted short fiction. I liked it. On the other hand, he told us about an experiment he conducted. On the theory that women wanted truthfulness from men, he introduced himself to a number of women in bars and told them straight away in as many words that he wanted to "fuck". Some didn't slap him right away but most did, and none of them ever did (with him) what they were both going to the bar for. So he concluded, as have billions of men over the centuries, that the direct approach is not the appropriate one. Whether there's a moral in this for you, I don't know, but if you want to make a living as a fiction writer, there's nothing wrong with having some on your web site. Except that then nobody will buy it. But suppose you want to make a living in some other way. -joseph Clarion '85 Date: Wed, 14 Jan 1998 10:45:57 -0800 From: Le <leteatum@admin.con2.com> Subject: sorry you got the axe! Cam, I find it rather frightening that one can be terminated from one's job for some one's "fear" of you because of something that you do in your own time, with your own resources, and is not illegal, immoral, or fattering! The fact that you were terminated because of one person's inability to distinguish fantasy from reality puts in question the company's (and the personnal department's) judgement and opinion of your worth. Maybe it is better for you to be moving to another position, with a more enlightened corperation. I have had my own "vanity site", ( so termed because I sell nothing, and use it merely as a "RANT" location), but I share that URL with very few people from my job, because of the conservative (uptight), fearful of any potentially negative attention my organization COULD receive. I know/knew this before I set up the site, I live with it. The only "policy" that exists, currently, (to my knowledge), is that we are tracked if we use the internet from the job location. Tracking is who, where (what job location), when, how long you are "out there", where and what sites did you visit, and why. In closing, I would like to wish you luck in moving on, and offer you a sage piece of wisdom,: SUE THE BASTARDS! L.E. Teatum, RN