Dave Sim's blogandmail #238 (May 7th, 2007)

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Fifteen Impossible Things to Believe Before Breakfast That Make You a Good Feminist

1. A mother who works a full-time job and delegates to strangers the raising of her children eight hours a day, five days a week does just as good a job as a mother who hand-rears her children full time.

2. It makes great sense for the government to pay 10 to 15,000 dollars a year to fund a daycare space for a child so its mother - who pays perhaps 2,000 dollars in taxes - can be a contributing member of society.

3. A woman's doctor has more of a valid claim to participate in the decision to abort a fetus than does the father of that fetus.

4. So long as a woman makes a decision after consulting with her doctor, she is incapable of making an unethical choice.

5. A car with two steering wheels, two gas pedals and two brakes drives more efficiently than a car with one steering wheel, one gas pedal and one brake which is why marriage should always be an equal partnership.

6. It is absolutely necessary for women to be allowed to join or participate fully in any gathering place for men, just as it is absolutely necessary that there be women only environments from which men are excluded.

7. Because it involves taking jobs away from men and giving them to women, affirmative action makes for a fairer and more just society.

8. It is important to have lower physical standards for women firepersons and women policepersons so that, one day, half of all firepersons and policepersons will be women, thus more effectively protecting the safety of the public.

9. Affirmative action at colleges and universities needs to be maintained now that more women than men are being enrolled, in order to keep from giving men an unfair advantage academically.

10. Having ensured that there is no environment for men where women don't belong (see no.6) it is important to have zero tolerance of any expression or action which any woman might regard as sexist to ensure greater freedom for everyone.

11. Only in a society which maintains a level of 95% of alimony and child support being paid by men to women can men and women be considered as equals.

12. An airline stewardess who earned $20,000 a year at the time that she married a baseball player earning $6 million a year is entitled, in the event of a divorce, to $3 million for each year of the marriage and probably more.

13. A man's opinions on how to rear and/or raise a child are invalid because he is not the child's mother. However, his financial obligation is greater because no woman gets pregnant by herself.

14. Disagreeing with any of these statements makes you anti-woman and/or a misogynist.

15. Legislature Seats must be allocated to women and women must be allowed to bypass the democratic winnowing process in order to guarantee female representation and, thereby, make democracy fairer.

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Continuing with the filing

Of the SPACE 2007 ephemera

In the Cerebus Archive

Okay, we've got three contributions from Matt Dow, including

a Holiday Message from The Folks at Matt's Mouse Skull Entertainment where Matt has his Iguana and Beer characters dressed as Abraham Lincoln and John Wilkes Booth. And then he also gave me

"Boner the Runt Dog: The Lost Episodes" (#'s 27 through 30 and a photocopy of the version of Boner that I sent him which is now officially "Boner the Runt Dog" episode #31). Since Matt and his wife Paula are the only two who have read my movie treatment that I did for Don Murphy where I included Boner the Runt Dog, seeing Matt and Paula always recalls my movie to me. I really do have to incorporate the gag that cracked me up in Salt Lake City and get this out to Kathy at the Cartoon Network as a proposal. I mean, it's a movie, it's not a cartoon but maybe that's just weird enough to work since the storyboards I did for the trailer are basically cartoon-like. Must look into having Sandeep scan the stuff in and make a presentation package. That "Boner the Runt Dog" might not perish from this earth and

Racecar Comics #3 ("Great New Logo! Same Crappy Humor!") featuring "Who will be the next Mouse Skull Idol?" Knowing Matt, my money is on "Fluffy the Jungle Bunny" ("Hahaha `Jungle Bunny' `cause he's a rabbit from the Congo! Ha ha ha!"). This the same week that Don Imus lost his job. How gutsy you can be when you have absolutely no audience to speak of? Pretty gutsy.

Had breakfast with Matt and Paula on the Monday after the show before they started the long drive back to Wisconsin. Ended up having breakfast at Steak `n' Shake. I had never even heard of Steak `n' Shake and here it is open 24 hours a day and serving a perfectly serviceable breakfast. Say what you will about Corporate America they have perfected the perfectly serviceable meal at an affordable price. So unshakeable is my confidence in Corporate America that I pushed it a little bit buying my Sabbath meal at Wal-Mart (which is right across the street from the hotel), buying cole slaw, pasta salad (with broccoli and cheese) and Melon Medley at their deli counter. All three had that faintly musty taste that vegetation gets when it is a little slow getting to you and/or is stored in oil-drum sized containers. Good theory, but Wal-Mart should probably not go anywhere near fresh deli-style vegetable dishes. On the other hand, I bought a dozen whole wheat dinner rolls Monday night when Bob and I got back from The Allen Memorial Museum in Oberlin, Ohio (more on this later) and they were absolutely fresh and flawless to munch on as I watched the D-Rays embarrass the New York Yankees 10-8. Is there anything more enjoyable than watching the Yankees get embarrassed by someone? They're in last place right now but they never stay there for long. Have to enjoy it while I can.


To future generations: this is the reason for the Wal-Mart sales receipts in the exhaustive file of SPACE 2007 ephemera.


Then we've got two print-outs from the Internet that someone gave me. Jeff Seiler? Tundis? One on Norman Mailer from The Sunday Observer for 4 February 07 written by Robert McCrum entitled "Alpha Mailer" (I wonder if that's as clever as it looks or if it's just a clichÈ at this point—like the articles on me entitled "Original Sim") and another on Woody Allen written by David Segal called "Cloud in the Silver Lining" from the Washington Post, July 26, 2006. Both very gratifying and I devoured them waiting for Bob to come and get me for the drive up to Oberlin. Gratifying mostly because I'm 50 and not 70 like Woody Allen or 84 like Norman Mailer and I still have a couple of decades before I'm dealing with the things they're dealing with. Very readable. Reminds me that if I was hooked up to the Internet I could check every day to see if anyone had written anything new on Norman Mailer and I'd probably never get anything done as a result.


Mapquest! Okay, these are a little out of order. This is one of those things that boggles my fifty-year old Luddite mind. You just type in where you are and where you want to go and the computer spits out a map and directions on how to get there. In this case practically a straight line north, as Bob said, past every place that Mid-Ohio Con has been held, as the crow flies practically to the North Shore of the United States, on Lake Erie. I imagine the AAA isn't selling too many maps these days.


To future generations: this is what people were using before cars were programmed to just follow the route on their own.


My introductions for all of the nominees for the Day Prize. You can see that they're numbered and go out of order (1 is followed by 5 is followed by 3, etc.). Bob had already put together the Power Point slide show of Day Prize nominee covers with the titles in alphabetical order. I'm not sure if it would have been easier to have him re-do the running order on the Power Point or to have me re-do the order of my introductions but with the Day Prize ceremony scheduled to begin it was pretty obvious which one it was going to be.


To future generations: this was when the tail began to wag the dog. The thing that is done by hand has to be modified to conform to the computerized thing. Oz the Great and Powerful has Spoken!


Boarding pass for AC 7892. Still just Air Canada. "Air Canada Jazz" limited to the graphics on the fuselage. Spit out by computer at the airport after it took a quick scan of my passport. Formerly boarding passes for international flights used to read "Docs OK"—that is, Documents OK—which always used to crack me up. "Doc's OK and so are we!" Now it just says (under "Remarks"): DOK. That's only a "remark" in computer frames of reference. Sad to see the passing of ol' "Doc". He used to be OK and now he's gone. Speaking of which, why do they still tell you that you're on a "non-smoking flight" as if there's any other kind in the twenty-first century? Or that you can't smoke except in designated smoking areas as if those still exist anywhere?


Sales receipt from the Giant Eagle Store at 2801 North High Street for two boxes of Organic Mini-Wheats, Orange Juice and Lactaid (which resembles milk about as much as its name does). Only in the Great Republic could you have something called a Giant Eagle Store.


Mighty Guy Summer Fun Spectacular by Tim Corrigan. I forgot to mention that I pulled all of my graphic novels and anthologies and comic strip and cartoon collections out and put them in alphabetical order. Couldn't decide if Mighty Guy was a graphic novel or an anthology. Finally decided to file them as anthologies. Looking forward to reading this one. I'm also looking forward to reading


Ad Hoc which was given to me by writer Steven C. Harrison. He was there right at the beginning when I thought SPACE was just going to consist of me sitting and talking with other exhibitors. It was an on-line strip so it was interesting talking about his experiences with that. How he got up to 10,000 on-line readers but when he went away for a week his readership plummeted so the next time he told them when he was leaving and when he was coming back so the drop wasn't nearly as severe and bounced back sooner. Had it up with a new page three days a week (which seems to be the standard for the most ambitious on-line cartoonists) and this is a beefy book. Had trouble pulling the whole thing together towards the end and still hasn't figured out how to get people to buy the collected version.


What was interesting was that he lived near Sergio Aragones when he was out living in California and he told me that Cerebus was one of the books that Sergio gave him to study when he was first talking about doing a comic book. Coincidentally when I had been watching the Eisner documentary (as I said to people later) I found it disorienting to see that many people who hate my guts that large on the silver screen. Neil Gaiman and Michael T. Gilbert were in there and I thought, "Well, okay, not everyone hates my guts." When Sergio came on the screen I didn't know what to think. Does Sergio hate my guts? So it was an interesting coincidence to have Steven tell me what an enthusiast Sergio was about my work. I really do have to write Sergio a letter and tell him how much I liked the Solo issue he did for DC. He's tied with Paul Pope and Darwyn Cook for Dave's Favourite Solo Issue.


Neither Mighty Guy nor Ad Hoc is signed. I always try to remember to get the books signed if only because an institution is more likely to take an actual book as part of an Archive if it's signed. Otherwise it's just going to go to the church rummage sale.

Tomorrow: What else have we got here?

There's MORE for you

In Today's Blog &

MAAAIIILLL!

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If you wish to contact Dave Sim, you can mail a letter (he does NOT receive emails) to:

Aardvark Vanaheim, Inc
P.O. Box 1674
Station C
Kitchener, Ontario, Canada N2G 4R2

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