Dave Sim's blogandmail #297 (July 5th, 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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25 JUNE 0731 EST - Well, it had to happen eventually. The NATIONAL POST finally printed one of my letters to the editor. The subject was actually a pencilled commissioned drawing that I did for Mark S. (a copy of which Jeff Tundis has been patiently sitting on for a couple of weeks now waiting for me to mention it) of Cerebus and Yoda. Mark had sent an e-mail to Ger with the request and Ger had told him that he thought there was a very slim chance given my opinions of Yoda as a character (that I thought he had pretty much ruined STAR WARS in the second film by attempting to make me believe that Fozzy Bear – with a less intelligent command of the English language -- could also be a Jedi Master). That of course is my AUDIO opinion which is different from my VISUAL opinion. My VISUAL opinion of anything having to do with STAR WARS is that Al Williamson used his best stuff on the comic strip adaptation so even if I haven't seen what he did, I know that I'm competing with him when I draw anything related to STAR WARS. So, um, "bring it on". Particularly when you're paying $400 US for pencils only 9" X 12".

http://www.cerebusart.com/Commissions/Yoda.htm



ALTERNATE CAPTIONS:




My biggest mistake was in thinking that I would use Canada Post instead of FedEx which is the hard and fast rule about commissioned drawings around here. "When It Absolutely Positively Has to Get There the Next Day" being less of a concern in a country dominated by Marxist State Monopolies than "When It Absolutely Positively Has To Get There Period". I had actually talked myself into using Canada Post, reasoning with myself that I was being way too hard on our Marxist State Postal Monopoly which is more of a last refuge for overstuffed labour unions (even though postal traffic is only a fraction of what it was before the advent of FedEx and the Internet, if the Canadian Association of Inside Postal Workers and the Canadian Association of Outside Postal Workers has laid anyone off in the last ten years despite eliminating Saturday delivery and expanding the length of time it takes to deliver a letter from one Metropolitan area to another I'll buy each of them a donut) than an actual public service. Hey, unreasoning grasping Marxists are people, too, right? They have families to feed, too, right?


So, let's give them the benefit of the doubt and make full use of the House Than Andre Ouellet Built (or, rather, found more interesting ways to overstuff). Canada Post USA Expedited here I come (to the opening martial strains of "O Canada"). Mark S. (famous last words on the phone the weekend of March 30): "I can't wait to see it."

23 May 07

Re: Ignorance is Canada Post's bliss, Andrew Coyne 23 May 2007

The situation is worse than Mr. Coyne portrays it.

On March 30 I mailed a standard business envelope to Camden, Maine that weighed 314 grams via Canada Post's "Expedited Parcel – USA" service, purporting to take seven to nine business days at a cost of $12.14. When it hadn't turned up by mid-month in April, I was informed that the Expedited rate "isn't guaranteed" and the package wasn't deemed to be officially missing until April 22nd. All hope was given up on that date.


My Maine correspondent notified Canada Post—by e-mail, fortunately—that the package had finally arrived this week, seven weeks after departing Kitchener, Ontario, with no sign of tampering, being detained at Customs or any indication where the package had been all that time.


Canada Post, in turn, notified me—by phone, fortunately. I was gratified to find that they didn't request the $32 back that I had been paid for my "missing item" claim two weeks ago.


Dave Sim

Kitchener, ON


25 JUNE 0751 EST – Okay. Time to hit the showers and then it's (coincidentally) off to Canada Post for my once-a-week visit. When I get back, I'll type the letter as the NATIONAL POST printed it for your compare-and-contrast dining and dancing pleasure here on the Blog & Mail.


Okay, I'm back with a short sidetrack to address my David Peterson MOUSE GUARD fiasco (see July 2 entry for details)


25 JUNE 1112 EST – Here's how the letter appeared on the NATIONAL POST editorial page (right under one from Robert E. Waite, senior vice-president, stakeholder relations and brand) (seriously, that's his title) (Canada Post):


The situation with our postal service is worse than Mr. Coyne portrays it.


On March 30, I mailed a standard business envelope to Camden, Maine, which weighed 314 grams, via Canada Post's expedited Parcel-U.S.A. Service. When it hadn't turned up by mid-month in April, I was informed that the expedited rate "isn't guaranteed" and that the package wasn't deemed to be officially missing until April 22, three weeks after it was mailed. All hope was given up on that date.


My Maine correspondent notified Canada Post that the package finally arrived this week, seven weeks after departing Kitchener, Ont. There was no indication where it had been during that time.


Dave Sim, Kitchener, Ont.


I thought it was probably a mark of how wealthy the average POST reader is that the reference to $12.14 was dropped. I'm probably just old but the idea that 12 bucks doesn't get you guaranteed delivery to anywhere in anything less than three weeks is really the thing that boggles my mind.


After a month of the piece being MIA I called Mark and told him I was doing him another one, traced from the photocopy I had made of it. He said he'd pay me something more for the second one if the first one turned up and I told him, basically, don't be ridiculous. It was my choice to use Canada Post and if I was going to learn my lesson it was better to do so on a $400 pencil sketch than on a $3500 painting. I told him to frame them together if the second one came in and will them back to the Cerebus Archive where – as I hope they would for Mark – they would make a nice conversation piece. When the letter was printed, I also sent Mark a tearsheet suggesting that he frame the whole page (there was a nice nearly full page shot of Miss Canada in a skin-tight Toronto Maple Leafs outfit right next to my letter) (hubba hubba and Go Leafs Go!) and include it in what is now becoming, I'm sure, the Cerebus and Yoda Room in his house.


Okay, back to the overnight cable traffic at


Tomorrow: YIKES! 25 JUNE 1134 HOURS EST


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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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