Dave Sim's blogandmail #312 (July 20th, 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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Dear Mr. Tundis, Sir:


Well, I've been at this two and a half days now so I'm ready to stoop low enough as to actually use a cover letter for a FedEx package as part of the Blog & Mail instead of putting it over in "Correspondence 53A" where it belongs. Hope you are the same.


Sandeep's sister I assume KNOWING that I would need him to e-mail the Blog & Mail to you this week has planned her wedding ALSO for this week just to, you know, irritate me. I will now demonstrate that I am a much larger person than that by wishing her and her husband a long and happy life together. One of the miracles of masculine friendship that it only took me a little over twelve years of knowing Sandeep and a wedding for me to find out that he has a sister. When he gets back, I must make a point of asking what her name is.


I run out of Blog & Mail's on Monday (although I believe you got an incomplete July 2 with the last batch) and Sandeep will be in Cambridge through then and possibly over at his parents' place after that eating a) high off the hog and b) free off of all those reception leftovers for a couple of days. If he doesn't he's a bigger fool than I have taken him to be heretofore and I hope he saves me some smoked salmon or a side of beef or something.


With that in mind I'm sending print-outs with this of the July 2, 3 and (just in case the curried chicken and jumbo shrimp hold out that long) 4 postings on the assumption that scanning printed text and grafting it onto the Internet in digital form is as easy as Steve Peters says it is. Feel free to firebomb the www.awakeningcomics.com website if that isn't the case. I know he would do the same for you if the situation was reversed. I'll try and get hold of Sandeep on Monday or Tuesday so, don't bother scanning in the 4th's posting until we find out if that's needed or if he can just e-mail it to you. It's also that peculiar time of year where I only have today or tomorrow to FedEx this. Canadian FedEx will be closed on the Canada Day holiday Monday and won't deliver anything they pick up on Friday and American FedEx will be closed for the 4th on Wednesday and won't deliver anything they pick up on Tuesday.


I don't know why the world can't just do what I do and work 14 hours a day six days a week. Maybe it has something to do with this "getting a life" thing I keep hearing about. Another Internet fad?


Enclosed please find a sample Chester Brown panel with Greek lettering by yours truly constituting a first look at my COMMENTARIES ON THE GOSPEL ACCORDING TO MARK (with comic-strip illustrations by Chester Brown) for inclusion with the JULY 8 Posting. You will notice that I intentionally didn't clean the glass on the photocopier thus giving you the once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to digitally clean up all of that dust and crap including the slipshod whiting-out job that I did of Chester's original lettering on the original photocopy. A momentous event in the life of any man and you are to be congratulated.



Enclosed please also find my guest badge from the Paradise Toronto Comicon. I wasn't actually a Guest of Honour on the original list (I don't know what the rest of us are in that case – Guests Without Honour?) so this seems like a suitably pretentious way to decorate the entry for JULY 10 which will also boost my Canadian content for the month so the CRTC hopefully won't revoke my artistic license when it comes up for renewal in '08. As you can see from the back of the badge it is unlawful to duplicate or resell it. So what am I bid? Just kidding. If you can send this back at some point it will find a happy home way at the back of drawer number six in the Cerebus Archive.







Enclosed also please find the coloured and logoed cover for THE COMIC EYE which you said hadn't yet been posted at Mark Innes' BLIND BAT PRESS the last time I spoke with you but which was probably posted there shortly thereafter once again making me look like the Luddite So Far Behind The Learning Curve That I Might As Well Be A Throwback to Another Age that I, in fact, am. I actually had a larger, clearer version than this which is sure to turn up as soon as I get back from the FedEx drop-off box. The advantage of this one is that it has mark's website address at the bottom sparing you the trouble of having to forge a link to it which I am sure would consume several hours at the least and which is probably no more difficult than a mere keystroke, but then it's the thought that counts even with us Luddites.



Enclosed also please find two cassette tapes which contain (as far as I know) the only extant interview with Gene Day which were entrusted into my care at the Toronto show by James Waley. The sound quality is supposed to be absolutely awful but I figured if anyone could fix that it would be you. No rush on it and I'd appreciate an opinion on whether it's interesting enough to send to Craig for transcription and possible inclusion in FOLLOWING CEREBUS. At the very least it would be nice to give it to the indyspinnerrack guys and/or to Margaret for cerebusfangirl.com or your own site if you're so inclined.


While I'm just chewing up Blog & Mail space here in such a cheesy fashion, was the complete rendition of "My Way" on the '06 Shuster Awards DVD I sent you? I couldn't help but noticing that the :09 version on YouTube outranks all of the other Dave Sim clips over there by at least a thousand "hits" (although why folks aren't breaking down the doors to get at that hot footage of you and Other Jeff and Margaret and Matt and John playing Diamondback in a Motel 8 lobby is as complete mystery to me as I'm sure it is to you). Assuming this actually has something to do with the quality of my singing and isn't just a testament to the vast size of Heidi Macdonald's audience (a dubious prospect at best), I thought we might run it up the cybernetic flagpole and see who clicks on it. Anything over 200 hits and I'm bringing my tux next year and singing "Under My Skin" to Liana K while leaning on the Sock..


Once again, hoping you are the same, I remain yours, for the most part, sincerely,


Okay That Takes Care of Friday the Twentieth


Tomorrow: If This Be Saturday, This Must Be HIP FLASK.



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