[Palestine, Joe Sacco]

The thing that gets me the most about Palestine is how so much of the information is new, and it shouldn't be. It really, really shouldn't be. Growing up (mostly) in the US has skewed my viewpoint on Middle Eastern conflicts without my even knowing it. I started realizing it after 9/11, and it's only gotten worse since then.

Does anyone else remember right after, when the press got released that the guys that hijacked the planes were Muslim? I remember interview with Arabic-American people being afraid to go to mosques, for fear of being attacked. There was a strong anti-Islam feeling in the air that exists even now, some seven years later. In America, it's only okay to be Christian, really. I noticed this was a problem then, when I was thirteen. How does no one realize what they're doing by living in fear of anyone Middle Eastern? The world "terrorist" is tossed around like nothing these days, and it's because if we're not in terror, we won't follow blindly.

The media here raises you sympathetic with the Israeli cause. I always read about how the Jewish were killed by Palestinians, but never the other way around. The death toll, though? Higher on the Palestinian side. When I still went to church, we learned about the "Holy Land" and how it was promised to the Israelites by their God (Zionists). And how that was right, even though that dream wasn't realized until the 1960s, and even today there's a wall and constant military control.

First of all, I could care less where your God says you can live; He's not everyone's god/s. No one can claim religious right to a territory, especially not one as profitable as the one Israel sits in now. I'm not denying Jewish people the right to a Jewish nation, but the thing is, most Jewish people have been victims of diaspora, and are spread all over the world. A nation, not a nation-state, is many people of the same heritage/culture/nationality living together. The land that's Israel has never been an all-Jewish area, and it's certainly not now, yet it's almost impossible for anyone else in the Middle East to travel to it.

More or less, it's even more people dying over land, which has happened since the start. Sovereignty and all that. Let's keep building walls, because we'll all obviously survive if we don't cooperate. It's not like the world's getting smaller through globalization or anything.

[still Fun Home, ch 1-3]

So, after careful review of what I said last time, it makes more sense to blog about Fun Home has an entire, cohesive unit on Monday. Instead, I have amusing comic book covers from Superdickery.

[Fun Home, ch. 1-4, Alison Bechdel]

I began to read Fun Home before the semester even started, so I've been excited to get to this one for months now. Quick note on it: from the very beginning, Bechdel uses text outside the panels, serving as a kind of voice over narration; I love this style. However, I'm going to hold off gushing over it until Wednesday, because I have Watchmen stills from the upcoming movie. They're next to panels from the original comics, so it's pretty cool to see how it's all shaping up.

Nixon poster

Newsstand

Gunga Diner

Treasure Island

No, I don't normally browse Maxim.com; I got linked to their Watchmen galleries through another site.

[mini comic day]

I'm working on a mini comic with Matt K, so here's a sneak preview. Matt had this great idea to take an alien and place him into our world. There's more back story than that, but I wouldn't want to spoil anything. The alien proposes social critiques without even knowing he's doing so, as he's praising our way of life here in Chambana. Besides take pictures around Champaign, primarily Green Street, here's how else I've been helping:

This is our little guy.



Here he is at a different angle.


You want to see him from behind, you say? Okay.



Or gesturing wildly?

(So blissful.)



He also sits down.



And has a prominent thumb in one panel.



Alright, looks like he's tired of this.

If you can't tell, I've been cropping out the page around him, and copying just his body onto a transparent (alpha) background. This allows us to copy/paste him into real life photographs, so we have mixed media, which is pretty sweet.

Hey, anyone own Texas Chainsaw Massacre (Part) 2? It was made in 1986 by Tobe Hooper and has Dennis Hopper in it. If anyone knows a way I can borrow it that'd be great! I have a paper on it, and someone else has it checked out from That's Rentertainment. I'd really love to not have to watch it at the Undergra/ound.

[ch 1-11 & ch 12-end of Stuck Rubber Baby by Howard Cruse]

This blog covers two days, because I forgot to update for last Wednesday, and I won't have any time to do it before Monday. I still don't have much to say about Stuck Rubber Baby except that I really can't take the art. If it was just a "normal" novel, I'm betting I could handle it. As is, I'm too distracted by the bad!illustrations. For instance:

pg 149

The men and women look the same! Her hair and dress is the only thing really separating them. All of the characters are the same brand of large and ugly. I like interesting, aesthetically pleasing art, not mediocre pointillism. I'm glad we're moving on to Fun Home soon; I actually like that one. I suppose you could rationalize that Cruse is saying something powerful about gender roles and sexuality by minimizing the difference between genders. I don't think he is, though.

Completely unrelated, The Hush Sound's new album Goodbye Blues came out, and Panic(!) at the Disco's (Pretty. Odd.) got leaked a week early. (I'm sure Trace is going to say something about this, too.) The Panic album isn't really noteworthy. I'm glad I downloaded it before I'll receive the actual CD by mail, so I won't be so disappointed. Goodbye Blues, however, is incredible. It's a stellar follow up to their previous albums, So Sudden and Like Vines. They're a small band from Chicagoland made up of young kids who deserve your support, seriously. I'm embedding their latest music video, for "Honey," below, and if you like the music, you should think about buying (not just downloading!) their albums. They play in the Chambana area fairly frequently, too.

[ch 1-11 of Stuck Rubber Baby by Howard Cruse]

Knowing I'll be out of state in less than four days is doing wonders for my concentration. This week, I can't help looking at everything as a To Do list, and as soon as I finish everything on it, I get to board a plane. It's a long To Do list, and it's hard to care about any of it right now.

For my Creative Writing class, I have a 12-20 page story due today. Mine's 17 and a couple lines. It's about assassins. Well, it's about a small assassin agency that's also an independent publishing firm (their cover). I cut it off at 17 pages, because a new character was getting introduced, and, really, no one in that class needs to read over 20 pages. There wasn't a good place to cut it off within three or four places at all, so I faked a lame ending. I feel like I need an author's note on the end or something, to explain that away.

The midterm for Post-Colonial Lit is today. I kind of studied. I'm not that worried, since it's predominately an essay test. You can BS your way through any essay test as long as you know how to write. Plus, the material we've covered so far isn't at all complicated. It an interesting class, I'm just used to 3- and 400 level English classes now.

Spanish is just Spanish still. The first paper for film was due last week, thank God, so I don't have to worry about it now. And in this class, I just have to read Stuck Rubber Baby and worry about the mini-comic. Since we're covering the same section on Wednesday, I'm not completely through it for today. I'm a little bored by it, too. I'm not a fan of historical fiction. I never have been. I always thought the American Girl historical books were so awful. I like history, and I like fiction, but the two together? No. Not my cup of tea.

I'm working with Matt (K) for the mini-comic, and his idea is really cool. We got some basic shots of bars, alcohol, kids talking, and Matt pretending to be a bum on Saturday. I have some fairly intensive graphics work to do for it tonight. I've been trying to work on it the past couple days, but I've been so swamped it's been impossible. It looks like it's going to all come together really well, and we should be completely done or at least mostly done by Break. It'll be nice to have one less thing to worry about.

Oh, and Daylight Savings Time?


By the way, has anyone else noticed that one of the suggest labels/tags is "scooters?" What the hell?

[Portraits from Life, David Collier & Paul Arthur, second half]

Thanks to "Easy-E," I've realized that I knew close to nothing about LSD. I knew mescaline had something to do with cacti, but all I knew was that LSD was acid. Wikipedia says that LSD (lysergic acid diethylamide) is, of course, closely tied with the late-1960s hippie movement, due in large part to doctors Leary and Alpert secluding themselves to study the drug. Instead, they became modern gurus, and coined the famous phrase, "Turn on, tune in, drop out." Before that, LSD was used to give religious experiences, or to study mental health. LSD can be swallowed, shot up, or blotted onto the tongue (using blotter paper). It is not known to be an addictive substance, and many people stop taking it due to "bad trips."


Children were given LSD as experimentation prior to 1967 (when it was still legal).


British soldiers were given LSD. I'm not sure why, but it's worth watching. Unsurprisingly, they have issues working both the radio and the rocket launcher.


Paul McCartney reacting to the backlash he received after answering a question honestly. He kind of bashes the media for spreading the story, saying that they're increasing the likelihood of fans trying LSD more than his honesty is.