Dave Sim's blogandmail #254 (May 23rd, 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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Ever since he had rediscovered

the `leningrad' font it had seemed to dave sim that even something as innocuous as a letter from

scott berwanger

dated 3-1-07

regarding his

progress on

Anubis

Had suddenly

assumed quite

nearly

mythic

& kirbyesque

proportions!


Dave Sim:


Don't know if I'll need to buy the copier. Maybe it's better to travel light. Might just run out to Office Depot now and again to make my minis, and that'll be all. You know…getting ready for Expos. Need to learn absolute self control. Don't want to work too hard. Gotta keep the seven-day rhythm. Promise that the writing in Anubis will be more naturalistic than this. Sometimes it's nice to just sit in the dark and do nothing. Love doing Anubis even when it's painful. Scratching at Bristol vellum with a Brause #66 can be a bitch at times. Like the idea of boxed mini-comics just as well as being at the drawing board. The new paintings are not for public viewing. Fame is useless and ephemeral. Anubis is my message, my gift to the world. No need to broadcast that. Too personal. To be quiet and unobtrusive is best. Will send comics someday.


S.


Why did typing in Leningrad

Compel him to speak of himself in the third person

?

how did he know that attempting to answer scott berwanger's letter in Leningrad

just wasn't going to work out

?

could the answer be something as simple as all of those trailers for grade-B horror movies he had seen in his youth

?

anubis!

The suspense is killing me!…Er…

Him!




Okay, let's all just…you know…settle down. It's all just good "fun with fonts" until someone gets his eye put out. Very clever way of filling up a lot of space in a hurry, but you can only do it once before everyone is going to catch on and by that time everyone thinks Dave Sim has gone nuts (again). He…that is…I never actually refers to himself…uh…me…in the third person unless he's making a point about Dave Sim as an intellectual concept, as in Foolish Dave Sim the Evil Misogynist. Also, there is nothing easier than enlarging fonts, particularly Leningrad which is big and blocky to begin with. Clicking on "Leningrad" and then changing the 12 to a 72 is something you can do (referring to yourself in the second person) without so much as changing your facial expression by the width of a micron. It would be interesting (in a way) in our world which is so super-sensitive to any evidence of aberrational behaviour which might…lead to something…to see how many people would consider typing in 72 pt. Leningrad to be a sign of being mentally unbalanced.


"It was downright creepy. He would be sitting there typing all of these things in 72 point Leningrad and…and…there was no sign of any emotion on his face. Absolutely none. I'd feel like grabbing him and shaking him and saying `DUDE! YOU'RE CREEPING ME OUT!' I mean, I use italics and sometimes I'll…I'll capitalize them like when I wrote `DUDE! YOU'RE CREEPING ME OUT!' but that's as far as I'll go. But, 72 pt. Leningrad…"


Who are you?


"Pardon?"


Who are you? Presumably Dave Sim is by himself when he's typing this stuff, so I was just wondering who you were…typing in italics and putting your words in quotation marks and writing that Dave…that is…I am `creeping you out?'"


`why can't you all just leave me

alone?'

Okay, okay, now I'm scaring you. Let's move on to a letter from David Carrington, dated 27 February. Scott sent his letter 1 March—two days later—but for some reason Scott's got here first. I've really got to stop goofing around like this or the gap between when letters are sent to me and when I'm able to run them is only going to get wider than the two-month gap that has already opened up. It's 1:30 on Saturday and Sandeep's going to be here at 3:30 to download all of this so I better get a move on. I'm also going to give him my storyboards for the trailer for the movie and get him to download the script to send to Christina at the Cartoon Network. And while he's at it, I'm going to get him to download the first fifty-some-odd-pages of my unfinished novel to send to Neil Gaiman to see if he knows of an agent I could flog it to and through. I haven't had this sensibility of a hungry street hustler since the mid-to-late 1970s. It's probably not as healthy as fresh vegetables, but it feels pretty good.


Dear Dave:


How are you doing? I heard you had the flu. I hope you're, you know, feeling better. It amused me that I get an email from Jeff Seiler requesting information about whether I'd be among those notified in the event of your incapacitation, health-wise, just at the time you feel a little sick. I don't want to sound unsympathetic to your ailments, but "60 is the new 40" after all (I'm joking!) and I figured you'd pull through. Your illness, though, which seems to have been very strange, did (perhaps) have the ultimate effect of that email, which prompted me to finally compose and send a letter to Wilf Jenkins making official before God and the Canadian court system that I'm throwing my hat in the ring, for the sake of your wishes being carried through if you're unable to express them yourself. Only God knows how this will eventually play out, but it is a signal honor to take part, even though, from where I'm standing, your mind is as made up as mine is concerning what the decision should most likely be.


I've been in email contact with the other gentlemen involved (albeit several months ago), and they were happy to have me on board. I really can't believe there're only four guys who, as you say, "will admit to belief in God and not being feminists." (Well, I can believe it, but it is surprising that such supporters of your work wouldn't leap at the opportunity to do you a significant service at your request.)


For me, it was very much along the lines of the request to the Friends of Lulu to solicit the female comics professionals among their membership to see who would be willing to sign a petition opposing censorship that the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund could use (Remember, kids, the 25th of the month is coming up on Friday when we mention that Feminists Get A Free Ride in Our Society by pointing out that nary a word has been heard from Jackie Estrada and Heidi Macdonald or the current FOL Board of Directors since last month on my request). I take it as a given that there will be pretty much of a non-response but the extent of that non-response is the real eye-opener. If society starts going back in sensible directions it could look ridiculous to future generations of God-fearing non-feminists or…as the atheistic feminists obviously hope…if they just keep ignoring me, Dave Sim, the fear of God and opposition to feminism will just go away. I would imagine that the fact that only four volunteers could be found would be very encouraging to them.


That Yahoo Message Board (which I'm not a part of—I read about all this through a posting at cerebusfangirl.com, which has, unfortunately, moved beyond the modest little site it once was) has always been something of a maze for me whose contours and detours are known intimately only by those posting messages, seemingly every hour of every day.


You're not the first person to point this out. I certainly don't doubt the CONSCIOUS sincerity of the Yahoos in general – I spent a great deal of time with the Senior Yahoos at SPACE and I always enjoy doing so: they're certainly far more of a family to me than my family ever was (don't read too much into that, Yahoos, I'm far from a big fan of families) – but it does seem to me that the structure of the Newsgroup was probably conceived on the ___ level specifically to neutralize me and the Cerebus Project. Here's how I see it working:


Obviously with Cerebus coming to an end, something needed to be done in the context of the Internet since they (or perhaps more accurately They) were already fully into Everyone Pile On Dave mode. The danger was over-doing it. It's one thing to have a consensus view opposing someone, it's another thing to be in an Everyone Besides This One Individual Get The Boots In and Stomp This Individual which is what They had been doing to me for ten years. It was all They could do, as an example, to cobble together a half dozen people from everywhere in the English-speaking world in early 2004 willing to even attempt to write about Cerebus coming to an end for publication. Gimme and M…Gimme an A…Gimme an R…Gimme a T…Gimme a Y…Gimme another…uh…another…uh…Tell you what, let's put together a newsgroup of people who are all devoted Cerebus fans. But let's make sure that they're all people who are basically incapable of staying on a subject and let's make sure that they're all completely willing to ignore feminism as a subject. They'll talk about virtually anything else at excruciating and meticulous length. And we'll set it up in such a way that anytime the subject of feminism or anything else comes up it immediately vanishes into this weird structure that this newsgroup will have. So, on a percentage basis, anyone hearing about this Cerebus thing and this Dave Sim thing and get curious about it and Google it will basically turn up the fact that he's a misogynist and his work is a misogynist work and then if they try to find out what people are saying about it Right Now, the search engine will turn up the discussion group and…if we use the people I'm thinking of…the odds will be about one-chance-in-two hundred that they will find anyone on there at any time talking about Cerebus. So the casual net surfer, looking for a point of egress will be forced to conclude: the book is evil, the author is evil, and even his most devoted fans don't talk about him or his book anymore. And even if they happen to hit that one in every 200 postings that actually talks about him or his book if they go back later to try to find it, they don't have a prayer and, presumably, if they try, let's say, two or three times to try and find it all they're going to find is talk about Star Wars or Watchmen or Batman or what was on TV last night. With any luck at all, the vast majority of Googlers will "take the hint" and that will eliminate the vast majority of people wanting to find about Cerebus and Dave Sim who will all conclude that there's no "there" there.


I tried to do an end-run around that with the 5 Questions Answered Once a Month but that fell prey to the structure of the Newsgroup as well. They're on there somewhere, but if you just click on the discussion group there's nothing there to tell you where to find them. You're told where to find them if and when you sign up as a member.


So I mulled that over.


And that was when I came up with the idea of doing a blog in the "Headline Spot". As soon as you go to the Discussion Group, that's the first thing that you see. I knew I was on the right track when I suggested it to Gerhard and he told me it wasn't possible to do. There is no headline spot. Just forget about it. You know, with an edge of irritation that I knew had nothing to do with the suggestion itself but which had a great deal to do with the vested self-interest of Them, the ___ Feminist Team. The assertion that there was no headline spot was so transparently false I knew that I was on the verge of cracking my way through the Berlin Wall They had constructed.


And when I talked to Jeff Tundis, of course, his conscious awareness of how the Internet works and what can be done and what can't be done and the fact that Dave Sim was expressing an interest in having a daily presence superseded the ___ which would ordinarily control him. As I said, I hadn't even finished asking him if it was possible and his fingers were flying across the keyboard making it happen. After that, it was a simple matter to have the Fifteen Impossible Things to Believe Before Breakfast posted every day with the Blog & Mail and I was way out ahead of the problem and metaphorically kicking their Feminist ___ asses on a daily basis.


But still, among that legion of devotees: only us four. And more, the other guys have a far more personal relationship with you and are far more devoted to the Cerebus project than I am. I'm not sure if it matters to you, but I doubt it. Have you got any questions for me? My cell phone number is [deleted] for the record. Is there anything I can do for you, or is there any other requirements of me to be, in your eyes, a member of the Committee?


Anyway. I've been enjoying the "Blog and Mail" and I'm looking forward to the next collection of Collected Letters. I sure was surprised to see your "blog" come about, because I thought you wanted nothing to do with anybody, if you could help it. But, hey, I can dig it.


Actually, as I think you'll see from the above discussion of the subject, the "Blog & Mail" is at essence just a counter move on the Internet to what I see as the ___ idea behind the Yahoo Discussion Group. Like using a bishop to put "Their" Queen in jeopardy on a daily basis. That's the core idea behind the move. Outside of that core it's really just a matter of doing Collected Letters on an on-going basis but collectively and in public rather than individually and in private. I can write about what's going on in my life, what I'm writing and drawing, who is willing to write to me in my "pariahdom", what they have to say to me, what I have to say to them, what I'm thinking about and what I think is going on and Going On.


It seems to be working in a promotional sense. People who read what I have to say can see that I'm not crazy – at least not in the sense that the people on the Comics Journal message boards keep trying to make "stick" – and I have many interesting opinions on comic books and a forum to discuss them at length so that they get circulated indirectly and (I suspect, in the long term) helps me to help influence the direction of the direct market and the comic-book field.


And then there's the core within the core – I can write about faith in God on a regular basis and expose people to the intellectual side of faith in God who have only been exposed to the "The LOWER-ED LOVES YEW" side of religious faith. I dare say for a lot of Blog & Mail readers, reading the Sunday Edition every week is the closest they have ever come – or might ever come – to religious observance. The journey of a thousand miles must begin with a single step.


No, I have no questions for you. Whatever crisis there might be up ahead, I would rather put my life in the hands of anyone who is willing to profess faith in God (and non-faith in feminism) than in the hands of anyone else. My assumption is that if God intends to spare my life and His adversary puts me into any kind of serious jeopardy where I'm not able to speak for myself the mere fact of you four's faith in God will mean the right chess moves on this level and on the ___ level will be made at the right time. The whole "take no thought for what you might say…" just listen to that quiet, still, inner voice while the crisis is unfolding and let God speak to you and through you. I believe that this is the sensibility behind the oft-repeated assertion in the Koran "Of those who plot, God is the best at plotting".


Go ahead, YHWH, make my lunch.


Welcome to the Committee…and thank you.


Tomorrow: Actually three weeks from now from where I am, David Carrington gives us the lowdown on Army life at Fort Monroe, Virginia. And then? Who or What is

Ditko37?

And, hey – no fair googling!

There's more

Leningrad for you

(Dah dah Canada! Nyet nyet, Soviet!)

In today's

Blog &…

Maaaaiiilll

(But, with any luck,

I'll be over it

three weeks from now)

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REPLIES POSTED ON THE CEREBUS YAHOO! GROUP
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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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