Dave Sim's blogandmail #439 (November 24th, 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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STOCK INTRO INSERTION #5 - As you are reading this, Dave Sim is quickly running out of things to do on Secret Project #2 that fall into the "intellectual exercise" category and is, consequently, coming up on the point where he is going to have to decide if the project is a Go or a No Go. Fortunately, he also needs to be doing the Blog & Mail so, at least for the moment, he is able to use that as an excuse to postpone making a decision. Please stay tuned as he makes his way through the Day Prize submissions one at a time. Somewhere up ahead he has to make up his mind about Secret Project #2 – in the next week or two weeks, tops.

THE INEFFABLES: POLITICAL SCIENCE trade paperback is by Craig Bogart, another member of the Panel Collective (Tom Williams helps out with the cover colour and Dara Naraghi does the lettering on "Political Asylum"). If you're a) an atheistic secular humanist and b) a fan of early 60s Marvel Comics, this collection is for you. The Ineffables are Chet Burnett, a sometime journalist, Mason, a scientific genius animated Easter Island head, Clarity, a living piece of artwork, and the reincarnation of Abraham Lincoln (who joins in the course of the "Patriot Act" storyline). It really is extreme leftist/atheistic stuff but it's very, very funny. Funny enough that I'll forgive Craig for misappropriating a Republican President for his shenanigans! Check it out at www.theineffables.com

WEIRD MUSE MINI COMIX has hit its third issue which is Dan and Carrie Taylor's joint effort and submission for the Day Prize this year. The first page is Carrie's and includes household hints, a "no bake cookies" recipe and a cute photo of three kittens. A 7-pager by Dan, "Think Twice and Be Nice", follows. Get the whole story at http://weirdmuse.ecrater.com

A STOOPID PIGEON TREASURY collection of Stoopid Pigeon strips written by Brett Neveu and drawn by Richard Sparks. There's Stoopid Pigeon, Aubrey the Robot, Strappy (a squirrel with a bad attitude and a permanent erection), Susan, a pretty girl with a skull head, a pumpkin and Josh, a disembodied head. You know, the usual. Sparks writes in the back: "Ten years ago Neveu walked up to me and said, `We should do a comic strip called Stoopid Pigeon.' I said, `Okay, as long as it's not funny.' We did, it wasn't, and now it's today. These are real tears. Don't look at me." Actually, it is very funny but I guess Sparks has "issues" so Neveu hasn't, you know, told him yet.

Jason Butler contributes HOME a black and white digest comic that contains four stories: "The Transformation", "Crosswalk", "The Last Time" and an untitled effort. He's still a ways from hitting a professional level, but he has a lot of ability in the composition/storytelling/pacing end of things. You can see his work at www.jasonbutlerart.com

Boy, between The Ineffables, Stoopid Pigeon and now Mr. Happy Pants, this is the year for unusual groups: this time out a cartoonist named Robby who buys a movie prop from They Saved Hitler's Brain that turns out to actually be the head of a still living college student who died while dressed up as Hitler at a Halloween party, a starving lab rat with a nose growing out of his back, Donald, a fish with narcolepsy and Mr. Happy Pants a psychotic clown and the cartoonist's friend Gus. You know, the usual. Tony Miello of Wyandotte, MI draws and writes it. His website is www.boneyardstudio.com. You think Tony Miello is done with you now? Foolish mortals! No, he also has a title from Twisted Gate Entertainment called GAPO THE CLOWN. Like Crusty the Clown only a little more over the top which you can check out at www.gapotheclown.com. "There are new strips every Tuesday and Friday. And over 250 comics to read in the archives. It's be a drunken, greased painted good time." That pretty much sums it up. 5 strips to the page and 24 pages so you're definitely getting your money's worth for $3.95.

Matt Dow has some major competition in the MOST ENTHUSIASTIC NEWCOMER category with THE ADVENTURES OF MARKY #1, written and drawn by six-year-old Maddie Shires with some help from her Dad, Ian Shires and published by Dimestore Productions. So Maddie wins a special Junior Day Prize reserved for cartoonists born in this century. As does Zach Flippo even though, because he's 10 he's actually a "last century" cartoonist. We've been missing a RAM (Really Adorable Moment) at the Day Prize Ceremony up `til now, but I think handing out two Junior Day Prizes just before the Day Prize itself should do it, I think, and give me a leg up on becoming the Art Linkletter of Independent Comics.

Hey, here's another Truly Infernal Comic called TWISTED TOTS. Explicit sex and extreme graphic violence. It all started with SR & JC Griffith's Twisted Tots website, TWISTED TOTS ("Rotten to the core horror dolls custom made to scare the hell out of you. And you thought your kids were bad…Zombies, vamps, demons, evil clowns, gory and autopsy tots") http://www.twistedtots.net. Well, it seems that it wasn't perverse enough taking innocent little dolls and modifying them infernally, no, now they needed a comic-book version of them with, as I say, explicit gruesome horror and sex. I figured this would make a great follow-up to 6 year-old Maddie Shires' and 10 year-old Zach Flippo's Junior Day Prizes since there's obviously nothing you folks like better than perverse corruption of innocent images purely for its own sake. www.twistedgate.com





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If you wish to contact Dave Sim, you can mail a letter (he does NOT receive emails) to:

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P.O. Box 1674
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Kitchener, Ontario, Canada N2G 4R2

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