Dave Sim's blogandmail #434 (November 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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What would a session of Blog & Mails be without poetry by Darrell Epp? I'd use the "day without Anita Bryant" line but I used that one last time.


Purgatorio


after church a shivering junkie

curses me for looking at her.

she's lost her incisors and other

things. on the way home i see

the green on the leaves bleed

into red. a prayer just won't

come. the tap in the bathroom

never stops dripping like a

countdown to i wish i knew

what. i look under the bed for

dust bunnies and vampire bats.


For the Days


when nothing's done for the first time.


traffic's so slow even the

snails are passing me now. i'm late horny hungry. the

antenna's gone, my radio's

caught between two stations, heavy metal on one, tomorrow's

genocide on the other. I adjust

the dial like surgery, like it matters.


i know this song I know it from before—


you think you got it rough, said

the spider to the fly, try being a

calendar salesman in january.


The Pie in The Sky


both our dirty forks

lying in the sink their

handles overlapping

to form a flattened x.


a room away after

playing naked twister

we dream of a road

leading to a city built on

a cloud where nobody

ever has to kiss a lover

goodbye since everything

hasalreadybeenpaidfor.


Ask Your Pharmacist


it's the longest night of the year

and I need to hear her approaching

footsteps like a toothache needs a tooth.


i see an empty hotel room, the fact that

there's no record of the catastrophic

winter nights we spent there bothers me

more than world wars 1 and 2 put together.


i see a strange man holding a cup of coffee,

smiling at her with dazzling too-white teeth.


if only (big if) I could remember how to

spell xanax backwards, the gates might hold.


The Skunk


A dead skunk on the road split

in half by a truck delivering

citrus all the way from florida

the driver didn't even notice i

just get a glimpse between a

nano- and a split-second but

i can't stop thinking about the

millions of tiny insect ghouls

already rushing to the scene

of the crime and the children

left behind to grow up with

no daddy that's no picnic just

read the papers…--driving

requires a lot of concentration

i focus my eyes just

blink blink drive blink drive.


Saturn Ate His Children


The days bleed together, maybe if we'd given

them different names i might have had a chance.


we carpool together, the subdivision slows

us down. i turn to you and say, `do you often

find yourself thinking about saturn's rings?'


`um, not lately,' you say, without a trace of

mockery so polite it hurts, `why, what's up?'


so i risk it, i tell you about the day i found out

they weren't solid smooth discs you could walk

across but just pieces of ice and rock of random

sizes with irregular spaces between them, i can't

explain how disappointed i was it hurt so bad just

one more straw for the camel's back and what am

i gonna do with all this straw anyhow, my mouth

opens and just closes it's humiliating to even try,


sometimes. you say, `i think i know what you

mean.' hope rises. `you do?' `yeah' you say,

`i always thought i'd be rich by now, myself'

as we pull into the parking lot condors screaming

above us, no, not even, just a stupid discount 747.


A Mystery


how to walk, how to talk, how

to wear a suit, how to shoot,

film noir really can teach a man

everything he needs to know.

most folks say double indemnity

but i say out of the past; it makes

me sadder. it's sweet perfection

but a mystery nags, if i could ask

robert mitchum's character one

question it would be: why did you

so yearn to be joe average with

a stepford wife and a house in the

country, instead of remaining the

coolest hard-boiled dick

in the world? i don't understand.

why not just do what you're good

at? why not just be who you are?




Tomorrow: oh heck i don't

know. that's a month from

now for

me.





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Kitchener, Ontario, Canada N2G 4R2

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