Dave Sim's blogandmail #403 (October 19th, 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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A package from Jay Tracy at Universitat Zurich/Psychiatrische Universitatsklink. University Psychiatric Clinic/Zurich.

"Oh, HERE's good news," I thought ruefully. "What? Did Zelda leave them my address?"

Well it turns out that it is good news. Here's what Jay had to say for himself:

Well, that's twenty minutes of my life I'll never get back. Typed the whole thing and at the end of his letter he asks me not to quote him directly. D'OH.

Anyway, he sent a Cerebus Archive Testimonial letter on his Universitat Zurich Abteilung fur Psychiatrishe Forschung stationery. Can you imagine? The socialistas will have absolute KITTENS! THE UNIVERSITY OF ZURICH, COMRADE! QUICKLY WE MUST BUILD AN ENTIRE NEW WING TO HOUSE THIS…whatever you call it…ARCHIVE!

But that's not all. He also sends along two photos of issue #300 on James Joyce's grave. Quick like a bunny I ran to the photo section of the Archive. Just I suspected! I didn't HAVE any photos of issue #300 on James Joyce's grave (I had one next to Joyce Randolph's urn, but that's another story) and NOW I HAVE TWO OF THEM!






And a postcard from Zurich! So THAT'S what it looks like! It looks like…like… half of London, England before the Fire of 1666 only with mountains! I HAD NO IDEA.



And he also sends a copy of CEREBUS READERS IN CRISIS autographed and with his page hand-coloured by himself. Not only autographed by him, but by Billy Beach and Mike Kitchen. Yes, it's the ultra rare

"MORE Limited Than the "Special Limited Edition" MORE well-travelled than most human beings SLIGHTLY more entertaining than the obituary section IT'S the Canada/Italy/Swiss edition of CRIC #2!"

He also sent along a quote from the newest issue of Robert Kirkman's THE WALKING DEAD #39, in which (in the letters column) "one of the best and most popular comic book writers" says in answer to a fan letter that asks "You said you hope to go to 300 and beyond. Is that an open reference to the standard set by Dave Sim?" To which he replied: "Of course. That's the benchmark set for creator-owned series, right? Sim and Gerhard are the best."

And the following excerpt:

13 was across the street, in Ultraverse. Ultraverse sold second-hand comics: X-man and She-Hulk, Count Zero and RoboBabe. Donnamatrix meets Dr. Strange.

"I'm dead," he whispered, and steadied himself against a comic rack. Aquavixen v. Animalman. "I'm dead".

He reckoned he was dead ten times over. Crash would kill him for this but not today and not tomorrow. Crash wouldn't kill him today because Crash was in bed eating hospital food.

[…]

Grendel and Cerebus, Venom and Magma. 13 looked through the dark glass of Ultraverse, across the market street: PriceSlash. As instructed, he had left the orange van in the yard of the dead garage in Basing Street.

Now according to Jay, this so far as he knows is the only time that CEREBUS has ever been mentioned in a mainstream novel (and by an award-winning and world-famous author). I imagine he's right. First person who can write and tell me what book it's from and what the author's name is (Jay, obviously, is disqualified) wins a copy of the NEIL GAIMAN, GUEST OF HONOR ashcan from the 1993 Chicago Comicon featuring contributions from me, Scott McCloud, Mike Dringenberg, Todd McFarlane, Colleen Doran, Rick Veitch, Michael Zulli, Jill Thompson, Eddie Campbell, Steve Bissette, Mark Buckingham, cat yronwode AND Larry Marder. Find out why Neil left a phone message for me when I faxed him that the DAVE SIM CELEBRITY ROAST book was cancelled saying "I find that very reassuring. It's as if some semblance of sanity that briefly went missing in the world has been restored." See, Neil thought it would be fun to get all of his close friends to do one-page strips about Neil for this ashcan and then sell a bunch to benefit the CBLDF. He won't make that mistake again. Just to give you a rough idea, mine was the NICE one.

And on top of all that, he's offered his early CEREBUS page (issue 8 page 11) to the CEREBUS ARCHIVE in his ARCHIVE letter.

Who would have guessed that there could be that much good news for Dave Sim in an envelope from a University Psychiatric Clinic in Zurich? Thanks, Jay!



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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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Or, you can check out Mars Import:

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Or ask your local retailer to order them for you through Diamond Comics distributors.