Dave Sim's blogandmail #463 (December 18th, 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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The World's Shortest Blog & Mail Entries

EVER as Secret Project #2 Comes to the Direct

Market

I think I can safely say that this is one of the most ambitious launches of a single title in a long time. Very complicated with lots of different aspects and permutations to it. This has to go first, then this has to happen, and then I have to do this. As soon as I come to the end of the list of things to do, I think of five more things. Being at the end of the ComicsPRO pitch is a big one for me. First of all explaining what it is that I'm trying to do and then making a case for it.

As my Diamond Brand Manager Keith Davidsen said on the phone, "Wow, I've never heard of that." when I told him one of my promotion ideas. Yeah, no one has. This was part of Secret Project #2, the intellectual exercise. "Say what if you offered the retailers the chance to do this?" Does it work on paper? Yeah, on paper it looks great, picked to click. Will it work in practice? No idea. The retailers are all very, very, very busy boys and girls these days (just ask any of them) and basically I'm trying to get them to add my black-and-white bi-monthly comic book to the gargantuan load of work that they already have to do. I completely re-did the ComicsPRO proposal from the ground up because I got it done and I went, "Right, like Brian Hibbs says it isn't focused enough. Don't examine all the ins and outs of it, just lay it out point by point." Here's what I'm going to do. It runs about 13 pages and I'm thinking, that's probably still too long. They don't have time to read 13 pages of anything. They have Diamond orders and reorders to turn in. Well, Sandeep's coming over tonight at 7 pm to download it and e-mail it to Joe Field at Flying Colors shortly thereafter after imbedding all the images that need to be imbedded. Ralph DiBernardo is looking at it right now.

(he's agreed to order at least 250 copies sight unseen and has allowed me to use his name and face – actually a really good Bruce Timm style caricature of him done by Matt Talbot -- in the PREVIEWS AD, saying that back in 1984 he ordered 150 copies of TEENAGE MUTANT NINJA TURTLES No.1 and in February of 2008 he's going to be ordering 250 copies of Secret Project #2. In his most recent fax he said that he would order even more if I'm going to be at the New York Comic Convention in April and I'm willing to sign at his booth. If anyone deserves a first look at the ComicsPRO proposal, it's Ralph).

These Blog & Mail entries would be a lot longer if I didn't have to stop and blow my nose every 30 seconds.

Dave Sim sincerely apologizes for the brevity of these Blogs & Mails and hopes to be back to his usual minimum-two-pages of blithering self by mid-February at the latest once the actual launch of Secret Project #2 has taken place

WATCH THIS SPACE FOR THE FORMAL ANNOUNCEMENT OF THE TITLE AND SUBJECT OF SECRET PROJECT #2

BOXING DAY 2007

(ER – THAT'S DECEMBER 26 FOR ALL YOU NICE NON-CANADIANS OUT THERE)

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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:

Win-Mill Productions

Or, you can check out Mars Import:

Mars Import

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