Dave Sim's blogandmail #290 (June 28th, 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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It's Darrell Epp! Canada's Not-So Littlest Poetry Hobo Week here on the Blog & Mail. We're sending in a Ringer to insert Maurice Duplessis references (en Francais!) into Darrell's latest poems and chipping in for a College Street in Toronto mail drop in a transparent attempt to get him a Governor-General's Award for Poetry this year. Either that or a Canada Council Grant or a Senate seat. We asked about Speaker of the House but that was a little pricey. Anyway – now, HEEEEERE's DARRELL!


"Interesting to hear about that movie producer encounter, and I was very pleased to hear that you didn't lowball yourself. Artists are always so quick to fall to pieces/fall to their knees when faced with a Big Shot Hollywood Producer, but people shouldn't worry about making an outrageous offer, since these are the sharks that have the big money. Remember the story about when Hollywood offered Raymond Chandler the job of writing the screenplay for DOUBLE INDEMNITY. He psyched himself up and went in and said, `All right you bastards, but I won't take anything less than a thousand dollars, and it won't be finished until next Friday, take it or leave it!' And the money men are, like, `What are you talking about?' and offered him $1300 a week for five months. And he's, like, "Um. Right. That's what I meant to say."

That's a great story. I hadn't heard that one before. I really think that YHWH is behind everything that goes on in Hollywood so there has to be some potential pay-off for he/she/it for you to get work out there. You have to pass the "smell test" – testing positive for adultery, infidelity, alcoholism, drug addiction, megalomania, criminal exploitation, compulsive lying, disloyalty or various other psychoses in really interesting combinations – in order to even get a day pass. If you're actually normal and happy and well adjusted the whole environment is completely impervious to you. So, yes, I always treat any Hollywood overture the same way that I do any form of low-grade demonic possession: play along while sticking to my own side of the fence and eventually they'll get tired and go away in search of easier and more interesting prey. They're nothing if not predictable.

"I hope you aren't just answering all your letters on your blog now. I still like getting `real' mail. I'll try to write a longer letter soon. Nice to hear you are doing well. I hope you can come to Hamilton in the summer. And my King Street address will expire May 1."

You mean "526 King St. East"? The only address that I have for you (and which you never write on your actual letters, anyway) writing this June 4? Well (Gosh darn it) the way I look at it, there is no sacrifice too great for THE LIFE AND TIMES HINTERLAND WHO'S WHO OF THE CANADIAN POETRY LEGEND THAT IS DARRELL EPP so I will be mailing out TWO copies of this Blog entry: one addressed "Darrell Epp, c/o Hamilton, Ontario" and another with just the little drawing David Collier did of you taped to the envelope where the address would ordinarily go over a small photo of Sheila Copps. Let me know whether you get one or both of them. Or you can just tune in to the Blog and Mail June 28th.

HEY! THAT'S TODAY!

Okay, this is my last-ditch attempt to finally achieve some small measure of Canadian fame as THE GUY WHO INTRODUCES THE POETRY BY THE LIFE AND TIMES HINTERLAND WHO'S WHO OF THE POETRY LEGEND THAT IS DARRELL EPP!

Here's a good one:

Living With Melanie

Now

"i don't want to take the pill anymore" she

says. tomorrow's garbage day if we don't

clean up now the trash will just sit here all

week long, there's a banana peel on the floor.

i wish one of us i don't care who would take

out the garbage. i wish i was reading raymond

chandler right now. i wish he'd written more

books. who do i wish i was? robert mitchum.

Then

melanie and me went up to the roof and

danced like robots, it's harder than it

sounds. The constellations were better

than fireworks, we wished we could fly.

later there was no hard news anywhere,

the britney spears haircut was on every

channel as I wondered: why don't any

girls think the three stooges are funny?

Hey! I think I'm going to write my own poem:

Darrell's Poetry

i'd run a lot more of darrell's

poetry if i didn't have to keep

changing his i's and the

first word on each line

from upper to

lower case.

the poetry is wonderful

it's playing badminton with

the computer that is getting

me down.

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

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