i was thinking about the devastation caused by the tsunami — 120,000 people dead in a matter of a few days — and i was thinking about what i could do to help using my position as a member of student government

i then realized that — and this is by no means meant to discount the severity of the current disaster — tens of thousands of people, at an average rate of 24,000 (according to the hunger site) people die per day from hunger

that is to say, every five days, 120,000 people die from hunger

tsunamis, earthquakes, fire, floods — these are things that we can never prevent, we can only deal with them after the fact

but things like hunger, malnutrition, lack of clean water, disease– these are all things that can and should be prevented before hand

yes, two people died in somalia because of the tsunami, but odds are they would’ve died from hunger, warfare, disease or polluted water anyway

why does it take some major act of nature for us to focus more on the plight of the poor and misplaced? why must our charity be reactionary in nature? and most importantly, what can we really do?

if we want to live our lives, we can’t constantly fret and be concerned about the people “over there”

it’s all fine and dandy when something like this occurs, then we can turn our attention to it for a few days — it stays on the radar, it stays on the news, because it’s hollywood … a tsunami, an earthquake, a tornado, a flood — these are all things that could very perceivably happen to us, or at least, we can see ourselves as the protagonists in a movie about such things

but can you truly envision yourself dying from hunger? from a second-rate instant-cure disease like malaria?

i know i don’t take the time to think about it, i’m probably more guilty of such behaviour than most people

but it really is something to think about

every five days, 120,000 people die from hunger — it doesn’t take american bombs or south-east asian tsunamis to do it

i once had a dream where i was in a hilly region (i could tell by the way the buildings were arranged)

my viewpoint was from the top of a hill looking into a town

and there were nazi flags hanging from some of the buildings and nazi insignias sprayed around

i recognized the region as northern india, some place like kashmir (i’ve never been there so i have no idea why)

and in case you may think that i was confusing the nazi swastika with the hindu swastik — that’s when the german tanks rolled into town

i think i was involved in some kind of resistance against the germans

now i know that the second world war hadn’t spread as far as india, and so i woke up and thought that was an odd dream

but that was long before i read about this

i’m weary and my pen nib is scared

and that’s odd because nibs shouldn’t have emotions

i’m scrubbing it with an old toothbrush — one my uncle used when he came to canada on a trip

i just finished redrawing the first panel of my diana comic and i like the new rendition, and the new background effect, much better; and so i photoshopped it in

i want to sleep — i usually (usually? that’s a laugh) go to bed by 6:00 a.m. and it’s now 11:00 a.m. — people keep asking me if i ever sleep

i once had a dream that was a black and white comic — this is long before i even knew about sin city — it had panels, it had sound and motion effects … i don’t remember much of it

comics — i could go on for a long time speaking about the various aspects of comics but most people’s eyes would glaze over

sometimes you repeat a word so much that you start to doubt if it is a real word, you roll it over your tongue and try to savour its cadences but all you taste is a funny feeling; you repeat the word to yourself and it seems to be the most ludicrous thing you’ve ever heard — is it really a word? — you check the dictionary and it just blows your mind that there it is, right there, these letters arranged in this order placed in this context

i want to draw more comics and i want to do unexpected things with them

after my “no man’s land” strip people were caught by surprise by the diana comic — it wasn’t expected — it wasn’t humourous and that seemed to be out of vein of my usual activities

i like doing unexpected things

after i’m done washing these pen nibs i’m going to sleep

and then one of the nibs breaks — not the nib itself but the brass reservoir control on it breaks — and that hurts because it’s a good nib and a replacement is going to be expensive and i wonder if art stores have boxing day sales

it strikes me then, that not it but the other nib was the one that was scared

and that’s odd because nibs shouldn’t have emotions

i certainly need some sleep

(click on thumbnail)

for diana (though, not about diana), thanks to payal for her help…

so adam recently asked me why i don’t update my blog more often

it’s a good question

i think it’s a combination of the fact that few people read it, there’s too much spam on it, and that i don’t know what to say

of course, most people who know me know that i have plenty to say

i suppose when i started the blog it was because it was a cool thing to do and because i needed a place to rant

the latter role has been taken up more and more by friends, with whom i engage in discussion and to whom i make long-winded rants (mostly on msn)

that is, just a couple of people, mostly sanjeyan (when he’s on this plane of existence) and yaser

having said that, i will copy here a post i made on a message board about the loss of suprnova.org:

i am shocked and dismayed at the news of suprnova going down

there is really little any of us can say that could sum up this loss

it was suprnova that gave us the bittorrent outlet — it took us in after kazaa and p2p became slow and onerous

it was suprnova that gave us our first comics and introduced us to z-cult

it was suprnova that embodied many of our hopes and dreams of a free planet ruled by the people and not the corporations

alas, another blow, but “we must go forward, not backward, upward, not forward, and always twirling, twirling, twirling towards freedom” (simpsons)

amen

(z-cult is a comics bittorrent community)

the mpaa and riaa have been going after bittorrent sites now that they’ve taken care of kazaa and other p2p networks

they simply don’t understand that they can’t stop the revolution

something funny that the mpaa’s director of “antipiracy” operations, john malcolm, said:

These people are parasites, leeching off the creative activity of others…

for a second there i thought he was talking about the bloated corporations that garner insane profits from motion pictures and record sales, the ones that stunt creativity and undermine independent creators

i guess he didn’t see the irony of his statement