Dave Sim's blogandmail #285 (June 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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Before A.P. Fuchs checks in, this is a good chance to mention that a grand time was had by all at the First Annual Canadian Graphic Novelists Birthday Dinner (yes, we will be lobbying Parliament to make it an official holiday, possibly taking the place of the Two-Four Weekend holiday Monday) exactly one month and one week ago on May 16, Chester Brown and Rob Walton's mutual birthday with my own falling on the 17th. I stayed at the King Edward Hotel and while Chester was waiting in the lobby, one woman rushed up to another and gave her a big hug and said, "Happy Birthday!" Then the Toronto Star editor showed up and it turned out that it was also HIS birthday. I had phoned Siu Ta to ask her the name of the Greek restaurant she and John and Han and I had dinner at on the Danforth and the address if she could find it. It turned out to be 516 The Danforth. Get it? May 16? 516?

We were a table that was all guys – Chester, Rob, me, James Turner and Suley Fatah (of the DRAWING THE LINE benefit comic)—and one female, Suley's wife Julie Eng. The next table was all females and one guy and they were celebrating a birthday as well. Then there was another table celebrating a birthday.

It was all getting just a little too creepy around the edges.

The capper on the night came when Julie, who is a professional stage magician (magicianess? Sorceress? I'm trying to avoid calling her a witch) did some impromptu card tricks and sleight of hand. I always think if I'm that close, I'm going to be able to see how it's done. The capper on the capper came when she fanned out the cards and told me to pick one. Okay, so I pick one (look at it) I look at it. It's the two of hearts. (put it back in the deck, don't let her see where) I put it back in the deck and don't let her see where. Actually, I'm lying, I pretended to put it back in the deck and hung onto it, but everyone ratted me out – so much for masculine loyalties – so I put it back in the deck and didn't let her see where. So she sifts through the cards and turns one of them face up. The three of diamonds. (is that the card?) Uh, no that isn't the card. She sort of turns and looks at Suley and says "You have to give me better signals." Then (like she's had an afterthought) she's goes rooting through her purse (see?) and she pulls out the local weekly newspaper (see?) and she pages through it slowly (see?) until she finds another smaller newspaper inside and the headline on the little newspaper reads "Julie Eng fails to find DAVE SIM's TWO OF HEARTS on Chester Brown and Rob Walton's b'day!"



Now how are you going to top that? Hanh? You can't. You can't beat that with a stick.

I mention all this because, coincidentally, tonight (God willing) I'll be at the Extreme Magic show at Centre in the Square right here in Kitchener with Suley and Julie. I don't know if they have any tickets left at the box office, but if you're reading this in Kitchener you can always try to get in because the prices are pretty reasonable.

SINCERE APOLOGIES – THAT WAS LAST WEEK (THE 16TH BUT EVERYTHING GOT BUMPED A WEEK BECAUSE OF FOLLOWING CEREBUS WEEK

I got mine in the fourth row way, way on the outside. I figure from way over there, looking at them from the side, with the performers playing to the folks in the upper deck…

…I'll be SURE to see how it's done!

A.P. FUCHS WRITES:

"Dear Dave:

"How have you been? The last I wrote you was July, 2006, so quite sometime ago. Man, has it been that long? Guess so.

"Anyway

"I'm about 30 pages away from completing COLLECTED LETTERS 2004. I would have been done much sooner but had misplaced the book for several months and finally recovered it about a week ago. Very intriguing material all around. One thing that kept popping up in your letters was the question of when/if the mail would taper off and you'd finally have some actual retirement time. Aside from this letter taking up space in your mailbox, has your letter-answering load lightened since, say, May of 2004? I know it hasn't dropped off altogether since you now post at Dave Sim's BlogandMail (speaking of which, is that where I should find a reply to this letter, if you do reply? I must admit, I don't check the blog all that often, namely due to there not being enough hours in the day to read through everything.)"

The letter answering has lightened considerably and I think that's attributable to the Blog & Mail. It scares the cookie dough out of practically everybody to think that I might answer their letter here. Which is very peculiar since no one ever had that reaction to being published in Aardvark Comment (which I'm sure had an exponentially higher readership than the Blog & Mail even at the book's lowest circulation). There is just something about Being On Television that absolutely gives folks the heebie-jeebies and to most people, that's what the Internet is: television for Not Famous People. And because most of them have read Cerebus they think of me as a Famous People. So, it's like being on Letterman or something. Dave's going to embarrass me in front of the Whole World. And, like, the Whole World is Jeff, Margaret, Matt Dow, twelve retailers and the occasional ex-girlfriend who wants to make sure that I'm suffering without her. (Yes, I am. LOOK! LOOK! I'm suffering, I'm suffering! As the t-shirt says, "I'm so miserable without you it's almost like having you here!") (of course I have to believe that that's what the Whole World consists of or I'D start getting the heebie-jeebies). And, yes, this is the only place that I answer the mail now. I used to write and tell people they were going to be on the Blog and Mail and send them a print-out but, hey, I'm already working twelve hours a day (nineteen last Saturday), so who needs the aggravation? If I was smart I'd send them a print-out and tell them it was going to run "soon" and then not run it for three weeks so they start to get the Blog and Mail habit and soon need their Blog & Mail "fix" even after the item about them ran.

Naw, like you say: there's not enough hours in the day.

"Things have been going well over on my end. Just the other week my wife and I found out we're pregnant with our second child."

You're BOTH pregnant? With the SAME child? That's…why, that's…AMAZING! How does that work exactly? Do you carry it for four-and-a-half months each? And how do you manage the hand-off? I bet it's like the Quarterback Sneak in football, isn't it? You both stay hunched way over and then…

I'M KIDDING, I'M KIDDING! Congratulations to both of you. (See why no one wants me to print their letter on the Internet?)

Tomorrow: The Sunday Edition

Monday: A.P. Fuchs comes back for more punishment And I finally get a letter printed in THE NATIONAL POST!

IN STORES 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

Looking for a place to purchase Cerebus phonebooks? You can do so online through Win-Mill Productions -- producers of Following Cerebus. Convenient payment with PayPal:

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