The SKOOKUM! Blog

Help SKOOKUM.....

2007-09-26T09:18:00.000-04:00

There is a time when a plea for help comes,
When one's all out of bread save for the crumbs.
Perhaps it is the fault of one's own,
that's why at some point we all moan.
But there always forces greater than us,
and bend to them, we must.

It started out all fun and well,
It was the manga where happy thoughts dwell.
Creating it was the best thing yet,
just that the expectations that came were never quite met.
There was a sore lack of readers, for one,
and at some point that really killed the fun.

I worked hard over time, over stone and sea,
I worked on hard even when I'm busy.
I'm glad when readers write to say,
that my manga really made their day.
Still, in the web-comic world, that's isn't quite enough,
and the reader-counter doesn't quite bluff.

I have found myself something even more involving,
it keeps me up and it's more invigorating.
I love SKOOKUM with all my heart,
it is something I am always a part.
Still the painful fact remains -
there aren't enough readers for my effort to sustain.

Perhaps, once I sorted things out a bit,
the bulb of inspiration will once again be lit.
SKOOKUM will soon return,
may all those who doubt this burn!
Let's hope that the manga will inspire a greater spark,
and not another mediocre web-comic of a monkey's fuck.
Till then, I extend my sincere thanks,
for those who held out for me and not abandon their ranks.
I'd be back soon, wait and see.
And you can trust this 'cause it came from me.

130th Street. Japan Trip! December 12th - 22nd! [PART 1]

2006-12-25T03:06:00.000-05:00

Folks,

In case you have been wondering, and I hope you DID wonder, where I have gone for the past two weeks, I was in Japan. Yes, Japan. Visiting Japan has always been one of my dreams. Not only do I have several friends there, I have always been fascinated by Japan. Personally, as a manga artist, visiting Japan is like a pilgrimmage. Almost like, you can't really call yourself a manga artist until you have been to Japan and see for yourself the very land that gave manga and anime to the world.

My friend and I arrived in Tokyo during the early morning of December 13th. Our Japanese friend, Megumi was there to receive us. She told us that Tokyo has a pretty complext railway system with over 16 railway companies providing different transportation services throughout Japan. My Japanese isn't really good, and it took me a while to be able to read the names of the stations. Most maps have English names along with the Japanese names. Most maps, however, don't.

There are generally 3 Types of transportation offered: The Normal, The Rapid and The Express. The Normal train does what every train in the world does, it moves and stops at every designated stop. The Rapid however, stops only at selected stations. It is meant for those who wish to reach far destinations faster. The Express, stops only at four stops before speeding to the designated station. The designated station is usually a HUGE station where people can make even more transfers to other destinations throughout Japan. Undoubtedly, I was utterly confused over what to take during the first day in Japan, but after endless questioning and frustrations, we managed to get around.

Our hotel was called "Hotel Dormy Inn". It is a Japanese style hotel located at the financial district of Tokyo known as Hatchobori. We had to wait till it was 0330pm before we could check in, and we used to time to explore a little of downtown Ginza. No surpirse Ginza is littered with classy French and American brands from Louis Vuitton, Dior, Chanel, and GAP. And boy were they all expensive. Yet, practically every Japanese girl was armed with at least a Chanel bag. Most of them had their Louis Vuittons. It is no surprise therefore that Japan consumes over 1/3 of Louis Vuitton's total bag production!!!!!

We stayed only a day in Tokyo, before setting out to Kyoto. That, which I will tell you more about in the next update!

129th Street. Dante's "Inferno" and Matthew Pearl's "The Dante Club"

2006-11-29T13:19:00.000-05:00

Folks,

I know once again I am late for an update. Well, at least this one is not a month's late. I am officially into my holidays and what this means to all of you is that updates is gonna come to you at a more regular basis. We might be back on track with one page a week! And on good weeks, even two updates a week.

During the past one month, in case you're wondering what I have been up to, I have been trying to complete my near endless reports and of course, reading. What am I reading you might ask? I am reading TWO authors at the same time actually. One, Dante and the other Matthew Pearl.

Why Dante? And why now? All right for those of you who doesn't have a slightest idea of who Dante is, he is poet in the 14th century who wrote "The Divine Comedy" or "La Divina Comedia" in Italian. "La Divina Comedia" consists of three parts, "Inferno" (Hell), "Purgatorio" (Purgatory) and "Paradisio" (Paradise/Heaven). The poem details Dante's trip through this three stages of afterlife. One of his most powerful and influential work is arguably "Inferno" where he details the five separate layers of hell, Upper Hell, Lower Hell, Nether Hell One, Nether Hell Two and Nether Hell Three. Each layer consists of separate circles that has punishments in store for respective sinners. The diagram above gives a rough idea of what hell looks like.

Hell, according to Dante, operates by the principle of "CONTRAPASSO", or counter punishment. The act committed by the sinners becomes the force that punishes them. For example, in the Second Circle of Upper Hell, Dante finds the Lustful. He sees people being blown about by a dark wind. When he asks his mentor Virgil why are these people being flung about in the wind, Virgil explains that these people, are the adulterers. When alive they are unable to stick to one partner. They move from partners to partners, and in death, their inability to keep "still" becomes a force that punishes them. Since they can't keep still when they were alive, in contrapasso, they will NEVER get to be still ever.

Even if one doesn't believe Dante's vision of hell, one cannot ignore the beautiful poetry in which "Inferno" is written in. The entire poem is written in "terza rima" - a poem with three lines per stanza. The last word of the first line of the stanza rhymes with the last word of the third line of the stanza. The last word of the second line of the stanza will rhyme with the last word of the first line of the next stanza.

Matthew Pearl is a summa cum laude graduate in English Literature from Harvard University, and he is a huge fan of Dante. In his work, "The Dante Club", he details a series of killings set in 19th century Boston that are modeled after the punishments written in Dante's "Inferno". At that time Dante has not yet been fully translated in America, and it is up to four Dante scholars to find out who exactly is reading Dante and carrying out the killings.

I could go on forever about Dante and how great he is - but to really experience his greatness, you need to read it. Read "The Dante Club" if you find "Inferno" too turgid for your taste. It will change your life.

128th Street. ONE MONTH LATE... But still Working it Out!

2006-10-28T10:15:00.000-04:00

Folks,

I'm ONE month late....

Something tells me that I screwed up big time - but I can't help it. Most importantly, I still manage to create a new page. I think for now, that's all that matters!

Check out the podcast for a the whole story.

Have a good one everyone!

127th Street. In Memory of Steve Irwin 1962 - 2006

2006-09-04T09:21:00.000-04:00

Steve "Crocodile Hunter" Irwin died on September 4th, Monday, 2006.

I practically grew up watching Steve Irwin's documentary programs. Of course, I didn't quite like him as he grew older. I grew a little tired of his lack of vocabulary and his rather predictable shows. However, that doesn't mean I don't appreciate what he had done for animals. In one memorable episode, he helped funded for a new pond in East Timor for two crocodiles which were practically cooped up in cages two sizes too small for them.

Some of his critics said he was merely some wannabe who's making money out of cornering frightened wild animals. I am sure the Steve Irwin way of introducing animals to an audience is not the best way. But if by doing so, it helps us to know a little more about the animal, I say that's achieving a lot.

The best bit, is, I say he died doing what he loved best. Morbid as it seems, I say it may well be a blessing. I am almost certain Irwin would not want to die any other way. Here's to the man, who died doing what he loved and believed. What he left behind is a lasting memory of the effort he put in in bringing the beauty of wildlife a little closer to the lives of children and people.

Below are the details of the accident:

CAIRNS, Australia - Steve Irwin, the hugely popular Australian television personality and conservationist known as the "Crocodile Hunter," was killed Monday by a stingray while filming off the Great Barrier Reef. He was 44.

Irwin was at Batt Reef, off the remote coast of northeastern Queensland state, shooting a segment for a series called "Ocean's Deadliest" when he swam too close to one of the animals, which have a poisonous bard on their tails, his friend and colleague John Stainton said.

"He came on top of the stingray and the stingray's barb went up and into his chest and put a hole into his heart," said Stainton, who was on board Irwin's boat at the time.

Crew members aboard the boat, Croc One, called emergency services in the nearest city, Cairns, and administered CPR as they rushed the boat to nearby Low Isle to meet a rescue helicopter. Medical staff pronounced Irwin dead when they arrived a short time later, Stainton said.

Irwin was famous for his enthusiasm for wildlife and his catchword "Crikey!" in his television program "Crocodile Hunter." First broadcast in Australia in 1992, the program was picked up by the Discovery network, catapulting Irwin to international celebrity.

He rode his image into a feature film, 2002's "The Crocodile Hunters: Collision Course" and developed the wildlife park that his parents opened, Australia Zoo, into a major tourist attraction.

"The world has lost a great wildlife icon, a passionate conservationist and one of the proudest dads on the planet," Stainton told reporters in Cairns. "He died doing what he loved best and left this world in a happy and peaceful state of mind. He would have said, 'Crocs Rule!'"

Prime Minister John Howard, who hand-picked Irwin to attend a gala barbecue to honor President Bush when he visited in 2003, said he was "shocked and distressed at Steve Irwin's sudden, untimely and freakish death."

"It's a huge loss to Australia," Howard told reporters. "He was a wonderful character. He was a passionate environmentalist. He brought joy and entertainment and excitement to millions of people."

Irwin, who made a trademark of hovering dangerously close to untethered crocodiles and leaping on their backs, spoke in rapid-fire bursts with a thick Australian accent and was almost never seen without his uniform of khaki shorts and shirt and heavy boots.

His ebullience was infectious and Australian officials sought him out for photo opportunities and to promote Australia internationally.

Irwin's public image was dented, however, in 2004 when he caused an uproar by holding his infant son in one arm while feeding large crocodiles inside a zoo pen. Irwin claimed at the time there was no danger to the child, and authorities declined to charge Irwin with violating safety regulations.

Later that year, he was accused of getting too close to penguins, a seal and humpback whales in Antarctica while making a documentary. Irwin denied any wrongdoing, and an Australian Environment Department investigation recommended no action be taken against him.

Stingrays have a serrated, toxin-loaded barb, or spine, on the top of their tail. The barb, which can be up to 10 inches long, flexes if a ray is frightened. Stings usually occur to people when they step on or swim too close to a ray and can be excruciatingly painful but are rarely fatal, said University of Queensland marine neuroscientist Shaun Collin.

Collin said he suspected Irwin died because the barb pierced under his ribcage and directly into his heart.

"It was extraordinarily bad luck. It's not easy to get spined by a stingray and to be killed by one is very rare," Collin said.

News of Irwin's death spread quickly, and tributes flowed from all quarters of society.

At Australia Zoo at Beerwah, south Queensland, floral tributes were dropped at the entrance, where a huge fake crocodile gapes. Drivers honked their horns as they passed.

"Steve, from all God's creatures, thank you. Rest in peace," was written on a card with a bouquet of native flowers.

"We're all very shocked. I don't know what the zoo will do without him. He's done so much for us, the environment and it's a big loss," said Paula Kelly, a local resident and volunteer at the zoo, after dropping off a wreath at the gate.

Stainton said Irwin's American-born wife Terri, from Eugene, Ore., had been informed of his death, and had told their daughter Bindi Sue, 8, and son Bob, who will turn 3 in December.

The couple met when she went on vacation in Australia in 1991 and visited Irwin's Australia Zoo; they were married six months later. Sometimes referred to as the "Crocodile Huntress," she costarred on her husband's television show and in his 2002 movie.

126th Street. Nick McDonell - Some People DO Get Everything.

2006-08-19T05:31:00.000-04:00

A few days ago, I picked up a novel, entitled TWELVE by a young author by the name of Nick McDonell. Maybe that was a mistake.

A mistake not because the book was bad, in fact, the book was FABULOUS. Precisely because the book's so good that I was horrified to learn that the author of the book is only 17 years-old. It gets better. Nick McDonell is currently attending Harvard - pretty much the BEST college in the United States. He's RICH 'cause his father's Terry McDonell, the Managing Editor of "Sports Illustrated". And Nick, I must add, looks like a freakin' MODEL.

This guy has pretty much EVERYTHING going for him. Wealth, intelligence, connections, talent and fame. We feel good when we see Paris Hilton, 'cause we all know deep inside she's as hollow as emptied salt shaker. However, how can we possibly come to terms with when we encounter someone like Nick McDonell? It just accentuates the fact that life is TERRIBLY UNFAIR, and that there are people who have everything is on their way to getting MORE. It's not surprising that McDonell’s fellow underage novelist Marty Beckerman called his writing “self-serving swill from a rich kid with connections.” No doubt, Beckerman's JEALOUS.... but aren't we all...?

Yes, Nick McDonell, now 21 years old, and a junior at Harvard, is about to release his second novel - " The Third Brother". It's just gonna get better for him. The New York Metro writes,

"Don't Hate Him Because He's Young, Good-Looking, Privileged, Impeccably Connected, and About to Publish His Second Novel"

And I say, shouldn't we?

125th Street. Mina Loy's "Apology of Genius"

2006-08-05T10:03:00.000-04:00

Folks,

Yeah, you guys should have seen this coming. If I'm not listening to Indie music, I'm reading poems. I don't have a lot of favorite poets, 'cause I don't read an extensive amount of poetry. Mina Loy is one of the poets I really like. Like most American poets I love, she's dead and buried, and, like most Great American poets, her poetry live on. Loy's poetry is exceptionally difficult, and I only got to appreciate her during one of my Literature classes.

This particular poem. "Apology of Genius" is an example of a pretty dense poem that simply CANNOT be understood in a single reading. I read it at least FIVE times before I could make out what she's saying.

This poem can be interpreted as Loy's apology of the artistic geniuses of the world. In simple terms, it's not a genius's fault that she is a genius. The genius is above everyone, 'cause he/she is able to see and understand things beyond common comprehension. Yet, society tries re-appropriate the genius, making him or her part of the society in which she is in. Loy's saying that is NOT possible. Even if it seems the genius has given up and has blended in, she will stand out like a luminous gem.

Hopefully, you guys enjoy the poem as much as I did.

Apology of Genius (1922)

Ostracized as we are with God

The watchers of the civilized wastes
reverse their signals on our track

Lepers of the moon
all magically diseased
we come among you
innocent
of our luminous sores

unknowing
how perturbing lights
our spirit
on the passion of Man
until you turn on us your smooth fools' faces
like buttocks bared in aboriginal mockeries

We are the sacerdotal clowns
who feed upon the wind and stars
and pulverous pastures of poverty

Our wills are formed
by curious disciplines
beyond your laws

You may give birth to us
or marry us
the chances of your flesh
are not our destiny ---

The cuirass of the soul
still shines ---
And we are unaware
if you confuse
such brief
corrosion with possession

In the raw caverns of the Increate
we forge the dusk of Chaos
to that imperious jewellery of the Universe

--- the Beautiful ---

While to your eyes

A delicate crop
of criminal mystic immortelles
stands to the censor's scythe.

124th Street. The Lake House...

2006-07-26T08:06:00.000-04:00

I was kindly invited by a friend of mine the other day, to attend the gala screening of "The Lake House". For those out there who doesn't exactly know what it is, The Lake House is a love story between two persons who live two years apart from one another. They manage to fall in love despite unable to see each other due to the apparent rift in time - so I guess, you can call this a sci-fi meets soap opera kind of movie...

Did I mention that "The Lake House" is a re-make of the Korean movie "IL MARE"? Anyway, that isn't important. What is important however, is that it stars Keanu Reeves and Sandra Bullock. Both actors had not paired up since the highly successful movie "Speed". The hype, therefore, was the fact that the actors are back working together, and hence the audience can expect some really great sparks to fly.

I must say I was really impressed with the whole time rift thing. Not sure if this is a spoiler, but the mailbox, in the movie, is a time portal in which the two lovers communicate. Remember that they are living TWO years apart from one another, so they can never meet. Their only means of communication is the letters they write to each another, and through words they are united. I am not sure if this is a conscious effort by the director, but he seems to be making a very clear point about the POWER of words. Sometimes, all one needs is really, to find the right words. Inevitable as it seems, I see this movie as an attempt to exemplify the power and the endurance of literature.

The movie makes several references to Jane Austen's "Persuasion". Although the book is well, over-dicussed, I find the conscious link to this 19th Century classic deeply comforting. It would appear that the issues that trouble people in the 19th century still torubles us now. Perhaps, "The Lake House" may be read as a statement about the relevance of literature, especially 19th Century literature.

I have not seen the original Korean version of the movie, so I don't think I am in a position to say that this is a great movie. I must say however, that I enjoyed it. If anything, it made me believe in WORDS again.

123rd Street. Nerds and Geeks.

2006-07-06T09:41:00.000-04:00

Every class and every school has them. Everyone knows at least one of them. Who are they? They're Nerds and Geeks.

In a world obsessed about looking GOOD and COOL. Nerds and Geeks become the object of everyone's disdain. It's something everyone is determined NOT to be. This is personally upsetting for me, for it just goes to show how shallow society has become. For, it no longer matters how smart you are or how good your grades are, you just have to LOOK GOOD.

Therein, however, lies the irony. If people know how looking-good is so important, for it determines the fate of your social life, why then are there still nerds and geeks? Don't they know they are being judged by the very appearence and behavor? Why continue being a nerd or a geek? Perhaps, they are the true rebels of society. An intelligent bunch who truly knows how to defy societal norms and be themselves - untouched by the corruption of mass media and pop culture. Below is an article on Nerds and Geeks in a particular American High School:

When we were in junior high school, my friend Rich and I made a map of the school lunch tables according to popularity. This was easy to do, because kids only ate lunch with others of about the same popularity. We graded them from A to E. A tables were full of football players and cheerleaders and so on. E tables contained the kids with mild cases of Down's Syndrome, what in the language of the time we called "retards."

We sat at a D table, as low as you could get without looking physically different. We were not being especially candid to grade ourselves as D. It would have taken a deliberate lie to say otherwise. Everyone in the school knew exactly how popular everyone else was, including us.

My stock gradually rose during high school. Puberty finally arrived; I became a decent soccer player; I started a scandalous underground newspaper. So I've seen a good part of the popularity landscape.

I know a lot of people who were nerds in school, and they all tell the same story: there is a strong correlation between being smart and being a nerd, and an even stronger inverse correlation between being a nerd and being popular. Being smart seems to make you unpopular.

Why? To someone in school now, that may seem an odd question to ask. The mere fact is so overwhelming that it may seem strange to imagine that it could be any other way. But it could. Being smart doesn't make you an outcast in elementary school. Nor does it harm you in the real world. Nor, as far as I can tell, is the problem so bad in most other countries. But in a typical American secondary school, being smart is likely to make your life difficult. Why?

The key to this mystery is to rephrase the question slightly. Why don't smart kids make themselves popular? If they're so smart, why don't they figure out how popularity works and beat the system, just as they do for standardized tests?

One argument says that this would be impossible, that the smart kids are unpopular because the other kids envy them for being smart, and nothing they could do could make them popular. I wish. If the other kids in junior high school envied me, they did a great job of concealing it. And in any case, if being smart were really an enviable quality, the girls would have broken ranks. The guys that guys envy, girls like.

In the schools I went to, being smart just didn't matter much. Kids didn't admire it or despise it. All other things being equal, they would have preferred to be on the smart side of average rather than the dumb side, but intelligence counted far less than, say, physical appearance, charisma, or athletic ability.

So if intelligence in itself is not a factor in popularity, why are smart kids so consistently unpopular? The answer, I think, is that they don't really want to be popular.

If someone had told me that at the time, I would have laughed at him. Being unpopular in school makes kids miserable, some of them so miserable that they commit suicide. Telling me that I didn't want to be popular would have seemed like telling someone dying of thirst in a desert that he didn't want a glass of water. Of course I wanted to be popular.

But in fact I didn't, not enough. There was something else I wanted more: to be smart. Not simply to do well in school, though that counted for something, but to design beautiful rockets, or to write well, or to understand how to program computers. In general, to make great things.

At the time I never tried to separate my wants and weigh them against one another. If I had, I would have seen that being smart was more important. If someone had offered me the chance to be the most popular kid in school, but only at the price of being of average intelligence (humor me here), I wouldn't have taken it.

Much as they suffer from their unpopularity, I don't think many nerds would. To them the thought of average intelligence is unbearable. But most kids would take that deal. For half of them, it would be a step up. Even for someone in the eightieth percentile (assuming, as everyone seemed to then, that intelligence is a scalar), who wouldn't drop thirty points in exchange for being loved and admired by everyone?

And that, I think, is the root of the problem. Nerds serve two masters. They want to be popular, certainly, but they want even more to be smart. And popularity is not something you can do in your spare time, not in the fiercely competitive environment of an American secondary school.

Alberti, arguably the archetype of the Renaissance Man, writes that "no art, however minor, demands less than total dedication if you want to excel in it." I wonder if anyone in the world works harder at anything than American school kids work at popularity. Navy SEALs and neurosurgery residents seem slackers by comparison. They occasionally take vacations; some even have hobbies. An American teenager may work at being popular every waking hour, 365 days a year.

I don't mean to suggest they do this consciously. Some of them truly are little Machiavellis, but what I really mean here is that teenagers are always on duty as conformists.

For example, teenage kids pay a great deal of attention to clothes. They don't consciously dress to be popular. They dress to look good. But to who? To the other kids. Other kids' opinions become their definition of right, not just for clothes, but for almost everything they do, right down to the way they walk. And so every effort they make to do things "right" is also, consciously or not, an effort to be more popular.

Nerds don't realize this. They don't realize that it takes work to be popular. In general, people outside some very demanding field don't realize the extent to which success depends on constant (though often unconscious) effort. For example, most people seem to consider the ability to draw as some kind of innate quality, like being tall. In fact, most people who "can draw" like drawing, and have spent many hours doing it; that's why they're good at it. Likewise, popular isn't just something you are or you aren't, but something you make yourself.

The main reason nerds are unpopular is that they have other things to think about. Their attention is drawn to books or the natural world, not fashions and parties. They're like someone trying to play soccer while balancing a glass of water on his head. Other players who can focus their whole attention on the game beat them effortlessly, and wonder why they seem so incapable.

Even if nerds cared as much as other kids about popularity, being popular would be more work for them. The popular kids learned to be popular, and to want to be popular, the same way the nerds learned to be smart, and to want to be smart: from their parents. While the nerds were being trained to get the right answers, the popular kids were being trained to please.

So far I've been finessing the relationship between smart and nerd, using them as if they were interchangeable. In fact it's only the context that makes them so. A nerd is someone who isn't socially adept enough. But "enough" depends on where you are. In a typical American school, standards for coolness are so high (or at least, so specific) that you don't have to be especially awkward to look awkward by comparison.

Few smart kids can spare the attention that popularity requires. Unless they also happen to be good-looking, natural athletes, or siblings of popular kids, they'll tend to become nerds. And that's why smart people's lives are worst between, say, the ages of eleven and seventeen. Life at that age revolves far more around popularity than before or after.

Before that, kids' lives are dominated by their parents, not by other kids. Kids do care what their peers think in elementary school, but this isn't their whole life, as it later becomes.

Around the age of eleven, though, kids seem to start treating their family as a day job. They create a new world among themselves, and standing in this world is what matters, not standing in their family. Indeed, being in trouble in their family can win them points in the world they care about.

The problem is, the world these kids create for themselves is at first a very crude one. If you leave a bunch of eleven-year-olds to their own devices, what you get is Lord of the Flies. Like a lot of American kids, I read this book in school. Presumably it was not a coincidence. Presumably someone wanted to point out to us that we were savages, and that we had made ourselves a cruel and stupid world. This was too subtle for me. While the book seemed entirely believable, I didn't get the additional message. I wish they had just told us outright that we were savages and our world was stupid.

Nerds would find their unpopularity more bearable if it merely caused them to be ignored. Unfortunately, to be unpopular in school is to be actively persecuted.

Why? Once again, anyone currently in school might think this a strange question to ask. How could things be any other way? But they could be. Adults don't normally persecute nerds. Why do teenage kids do it?

Partly because teenagers are still half children, and many children are just intrinsically cruel. Some torture nerds for the same reason they pull the legs off spiders. Before you develop a conscience, torture is amusing.

Another reason kids persecute nerds is to make themselves feel better. When you tread water, you lift yourself up by pushing water down. Likewise, in any social hierarchy, people unsure of their own position will try to emphasize it by maltreating those they think rank below. I've read that this is why poor whites in the United States are the group most hostile to blacks.

But I think the main reason other kids persecute nerds is that it's part of the mechanism of popularity. Popularity is only partially about individual attractiveness. It's much more about alliances. To become more popular, you need to be constantly doing things that bring you close to other popular people, and nothing brings people closer than a common enemy.

Like a politician who wants to distract voters from bad times at home, you can create an enemy if there isn't a real one. By singling out and persecuting a nerd, a group of kids from higher in the hierarchy create bonds between themselves. Attacking an outsider makes them all insiders. This is why the worst cases of bullying happen with groups. Ask any nerd: you get much worse treatment from a group of kids than from any individual bully, however sadistic.

If it's any consolation to the nerds, it's nothing personal. The group of kids who band together to pick on you are doing the same thing, and for the same reason, as a bunch of guys who get together to go hunting. They don't actually hate you. They just need something to chase.

Because they're at the bottom of the scale, nerds are a safe target for the entire school. If I remember correctly, the most popular kids don't persecute nerds; they don't need to stoop to such things. Most of the persecution comes from kids lower down, the nervous middle classes.

The trouble is, there are a lot of them. The distribution of popularity is not a pyramid, but tapers at the bottom like a pear. The least popular group is quite small. (I believe we were the only D table in our cafeteria map.) So there are more people who want to pick on nerds than there are nerds.

As well as gaining points by distancing oneself from unpopular kids, one loses points by being close to them. A woman I know says that in high school she liked nerds, but was afraid to be seen talking to them because the other girls would make fun of her. Unpopularity is a communicable disease; kids too nice to pick on nerds will still ostracize them in self-defense.

It's no wonder, then, that smart kids tend to be unhappy in middle school and high school. Their other interests leave them little attention to spare for popularity, and since popularity resembles a zero-sum game, this in turn makes them targets for the whole school. And the strange thing is, this nightmare scenario happens without any conscious malice, merely because of the shape of the situation.

For me the worst stretch was junior high, when kid culture was new and harsh, and the specialization that would later gradually separate the smarter kids had barely begun. Nearly everyone I've talked to agrees: the nadir is somewhere between eleven and fourteen.

In our school it was eighth grade, which was ages twelve and thirteen for me. There was a brief sensation that year when one of our teachers overheard a group of girls waiting for the school bus, and was so shocked that the next day she devoted the whole class to an eloquent plea not to be so cruel to one another.

It didn't have any noticeable effect. What struck me at the time was that she was surprised. You mean she doesn't know the kind of things they say to one another? You mean this isn't normal?

It's important to realize that, no, the adults don't know what the kids are doing to one another. They know, in the abstract, that kids are monstrously cruel to one another, just as we know in the abstract that people get tortured in poorer countries. But, like us, they don't like to dwell on this depressing fact, and they don't see evidence of specific abuses unless they go looking for it.

Public school teachers are in much the same position as prison wardens. Wardens' main concern is to keep the prisoners on the premises. They also need to keep them fed, and as far as possible prevent them from killing one another. Beyond that, they want to have as little to do with the prisoners as possible, so they leave them to create whatever social organization they want. From what I've read, the society that the prisoners create is warped, savage, and pervasive, and it is no fun to be at the bottom of it.

In outline, it was the same at the schools I went to. The most important thing was to stay on the premises. While there, the authorities fed you, prevented overt violence, and made some effort to teach you something. But beyond that they didn't want to have too much to do with the kids. Like prison wardens, the teachers mostly left us to ourselves. And, like prisoners, the culture we created was barbaric.

Why is the real world more hospitable to nerds? It might seem that the answer is simply that it's populated by adults, who are too mature to pick on one another. But I don't think this is true. Adults in prison certainly pick on one another. And so, apparently, do society wives; in some parts of Manhattan, life for women sounds like a continuation of high school, with all the same petty intrigues.

I think the important thing about the real world is not that it's populated by adults, but that it's very large, and the things you do have real effects. That's what school, prison, and ladies-who-lunch all lack. The inhabitants of all those worlds are trapped in little bubbles where nothing they do can have more than a local effect. Naturally these societies degenerate into savagery. They have no function for their form to follow.

When the things you do have real effects, it's no longer enough just to be pleasing. It starts to be important to get the right answers, and that's where nerds show to advantage. Bill Gates will of course come to mind. Though notoriously lacking in social skills, he gets the right answers, at least as measured in revenue.

The other thing that's different about the real world is that it's much larger. In a large enough pool, even the smallest minorities can achieve a critical mass if they clump together. Out in the real world, nerds collect in certain places and form their own societies where intelligence is the most important thing. Sometimes the current even starts to flow in the other direction: sometimes, particularly in university math and science departments, nerds deliberately exaggerate their awkwardness in order to seem smarter. John Nash so admired Norbert Wiener that he adopted his habit of touching the wall as he walked down a corridor.

As a thirteen-year-old kid, I didn't have much more experience of the world than what I saw immediately around me. The warped little world we lived in was, I thought, the world. The world seemed cruel and boring, and I'm not sure which was worse.

Because I didn't fit into this world, I thought that something must be wrong with me. I didn't realize that the reason we nerds didn't fit in was that in some ways we were a step ahead. We were already thinking about the kind of things that matter in the real world, instead of spending all our time playing an exacting but mostly pointless game like the others.

We were a bit like an adult would be if he were thrust back into middle school. He wouldn't know the right clothes to wear, the right music to like, the right slang to use. He'd seem to the kids a complete alien. The thing is, he'd know enough not to care what they thought. We had no such confidence.

A lot of people seem to think it's good for smart kids to be thrown together with "normal" kids at this stage of their lives. Perhaps. But in at least some cases the reason the nerds don't fit in really is that everyone else is crazy. I remember sitting in the audience at a "pep rally" at my high school, watching as the cheerleaders threw an effigy of an opposing player into the audience to be torn to pieces. I felt like an explorer witnessing some bizarre tribal ritual.

If I could go back and give my thirteen year old self some advice, the main thing I'd tell him would be to stick his head up and look around. I didn't really grasp it at the time, but the whole world we lived in was as fake as a Twinkie. Not just school, but the entire town. Why do people move to suburbia? To have kids! So no wonder it seemed boring and sterile. The whole place was a giant nursery, an artificial town created explicitly for the purpose of breeding children.

Where I grew up, it felt as if there was nowhere to go, and nothing to do. This was no accident. Suburbs are deliberately designed to exclude the outside world, because it contains things that could endanger children.

And as for the schools, they were just holding pens within this fake world. Officially the purpose of schools is to teach kids. In fact their primary purpose is to keep kids locked up in one place for a big chunk of the day so adults can get things done. And I have no problem with this: in a specialized industrial society, it would be a disaster to have kids running around loose.

What bothers me is not that the kids are kept in prisons, but that (a) they aren't told about it, and (b) the prisons are run mostly by the inmates. Kids are sent off to spend six years memorizing meaningless facts in a world ruled by a caste of giants who run after an oblong brown ball, as if this were the most natural thing in the world. And if they balk at this surreal cocktail, they're called misfits.

Life in this twisted world is stressful for the kids. And not just for the nerds. Like any war, it's damaging even to the winners.

Adults can't avoid seeing that teenage kids are tormented. So why don't they do something about it? Because they blame it on puberty. The reason kids are so unhappy, adults tell themselves, is that monstrous new chemicals, hormones, are now coursing through their bloodstream and messing up everything. There's nothing wrong with the system; it's just inevitable that kids will be miserable at that age.

This idea is so pervasive that even the kids believe it, which probably doesn't help. Someone who thinks his feet naturally hurt is not going to stop to consider the possibility that he is wearing the wrong size shoes.

I'm suspicious of this theory that thirteen-year-old kids are intrinsically messed up. If it's physiological, it should be universal. Are Mongol nomads all nihilists at thirteen? I've read a lot of history, and I have not seen a single reference to this supposedly universal fact before the twentieth century. Teenage apprentices in the Renaissance seem to have been cheerful and eager. They got in fights and played tricks on one another of course (Michelangelo had his nose broken by a bully), but they weren't crazy.

As far as I can tell, the concept of the hormone-crazed teenager is coeval with suburbia. I don't think this is a coincidence. I think teenagers are driven crazy by the life they're made to lead. Teenage apprentices in the Renaissance were working dogs. Teenagers now are neurotic lapdogs. Their craziness is the craziness of the idle everywhere.

When I was in school, suicide was a constant topic among the smarter kids. No one I knew did it, but several planned to, and some may have tried. Mostly this was just a pose. Like other teenagers, we loved the dramatic, and suicide seemed very dramatic. But partly it was because our lives were at times genuinely miserable.

Bullying was only part of the problem. Another problem, and possibly an even worse one, was that we never had anything real to work on. Humans like to work; in most of the world, your work is your identity. And all the work we did was pointless, or seemed so at the time.

At best it was practice for real work we might do far in the future, so far that we didn't even know at the time what we were practicing for. More often it was just an arbitrary series of hoops to jump through, words without content designed mainly for testability. (The three main causes of the Civil War were.... Test: List the three main causes of the Civil War.)

And there was no way to opt out. The adults had agreed among themselves that this was to be the route to college. The only way to escape this empty life was to submit to it.

Teenage kids used to have a more active role in society. In pre-industrial times, they were all apprentices of one sort or another, whether in shops or on farms or even on warships. They weren't left to create their own societies. They were junior members of adult societies.

Teenagers seem to have respected adults more then, because the adults were the visible experts in the skills they were trying to learn. Now most kids have little idea what their parents do in their distant offices, and see no connection (indeed, there is precious little) between schoolwork and the work they'll do as adults.

And if teenagers respected adults more, adults also had more use for teenagers. After a couple years' training, an apprentice could be a real help. Even the newest apprentice could be made to carry messages or sweep the workshop.

Now adults have no immediate use for teenagers. They would be in the way in an office. So they drop them off at school on their way to work, much as they might drop the dog off at a kennel if they were going away for the weekend.

What happened? We're up against a hard one here. The cause of this problem is the same as the cause of so many present ills: specialization. As jobs become more specialized, we have to train longer for them. Kids in pre-industrial times started working at about 14 at the latest; kids on farms, where most people lived, began far earlier. Now kids who go to college don't start working full-time till 21 or 22. With some degrees, like MDs and PhDs, you may not finish your training till 30.

Teenagers now are useless, except as cheap labor in industries like fast food, which evolved to exploit precisely this fact. In almost any other kind of work, they'd be a net loss. But they're also too young to be left unsupervised. Someone has to watch over them, and the most efficient way to do this is to collect them together in one place. Then a few adults can watch all of them.

If you stop there, what you're describing is literally a prison, albeit a part-time one. The problem is, many schools practically do stop there. The stated purpose of schools is to educate the kids. But there is no external pressure to do this well. And so most schools do such a bad job of teaching that the kids don't really take it seriously-- not even the smart kids. Much of the time we were all, students and teachers both, just going through the motions.

In my high school French class we were supposed to read Hugo's Les Miserables. I don't think any of us knew French well enough to make our way through this enormous book. Like the rest of the class, I just skimmed the Cliff's Notes. When we were given a test on the book, I noticed that the questions sounded odd. They were full of long words that our teacher wouldn't have used. Where had these questions come from? From the Cliff's Notes, it turned out. The teacher was using them too. We were all just pretending.

There are certainly great public school teachers. The energy and imagination of my fourth grade teacher, Mr. Mihalko, made that year something his students still talk about, thirty years later. But teachers like him were individuals swimming upstream. They couldn't fix the system.

In almost any group of people you'll find hierarchy. When groups of adults form in the real world, it's generally for some common purpose, and the leaders end up being those who are best at it. The problem with most schools is, they have no purpose. But hierarchy there must be. And so the kids make one out of nothing.

We have a phrase to describe what happens when rankings have to be created without any meaningful criteria. We say that the situation degenerates into a popularity contest. And that's exactly what happens in most American schools. Instead of depending on some real test, one's rank depends mostly on one's ability to increase one's rank. It's like the court of Louis XIV. There is no external opponent, so the kids become one another's opponents.

When there is some real external test of skill, it isn't painful to be at the bottom of the hierarchy. A rookie on a football team doesn't resent the skill of the veteran; he hopes to be like him one day and is happy to have the chance to learn from him. The veteran may in turn feel a sense of noblesse oblige. And most importantly, their status depends on how well they do against opponents, not on whether they can push the other down.

Court hierarchies are another thing entirely. This type of society debases anyone who enters it. There is neither admiration at the bottom, nor noblesse oblige at the top. It's kill or be killed.

This is the sort of society that gets created in American secondary schools. And it happens because these schools have no real purpose beyond keeping the kids all in one place for a certain number of hours each day. What I didn't realize at the time, and in fact didn't realize till very recently, is that the twin horrors of school life, the cruelty and the boredom, both have the same cause.

The mediocrity of American public schools has worse consequences than just making kids unhappy for six years. It breeds a rebelliousness that actively drives kids away from the things they're supposed to be learning.

Like many nerds, probably, it was years after high school before I could bring myself to read anything we'd been assigned then. And I lost more than books. I mistrusted words like "character" and "integrity" because they had been so debased by adults. As they were used then, these words all seemed to mean the same thing: obedience. The kids who got praised for these qualities tended to be at best dull-witted prize bulls, and at worst facile schmoozers. If that was what character and integrity were, I wanted no part of them.

The word I most misunderstood was "tact." As used by adults, it seemed to mean keeping your mouth shut. I assumed it was derived from the same root as "tacit" and "taciturn," and that it literally meant being quiet. I vowed that I would never be tactful; they were never going to shut me up. In fact, it's derived from the same root as "tactile," and what it means is to have a deft touch. Tactful is the opposite of clumsy. I don't think I learned this until college.

Nerds aren't the only losers in the popularity rat race. Nerds are unpopular because they're distracted. There are other kids who deliberately opt out because they're so disgusted with the whole process.

Teenage kids, even rebels, don't like to be alone, so when kids opt out of the system, they tend to do it as a group. At the schools I went to, the focus of rebellion was drug use, specifically marijuana. The kids in this tribe wore black concert t-shirts and were called "freaks."

Freaks and nerds were allies, and there was a good deal of overlap between them. Freaks were on the whole smarter than other kids, though never studying (or at least never appearing to) was an important tribal value. I was more in the nerd camp, but I was friends with a lot of freaks.

They used drugs, at least at first, for the social bonds they created. It was something to do together, and because the drugs were illegal, it was a shared badge of rebellion.

I'm not claiming that bad schools are the whole reason kids get into trouble with drugs. After a while, drugs have their own momentum. No doubt some of the freaks ultimately used drugs to escape from other problems-- trouble at home, for example. But, in my school at least, the reason most kids started using drugs was rebellion. Fourteen-year-olds didn't start smoking pot because they'd heard it would help them forget their problems. They started because they wanted to join a different tribe.

Misrule breeds rebellion; this is not a new idea. And yet the authorities still for the most part act as if drugs were themselves the cause of the problem.

The real problem is the emptiness of school life. We won't see solutions till adults realize that. The adults who may realize it first are the ones who were themselves nerds in school. Do you want your kids to be as unhappy in eighth grade as you were? I wouldn't. Well, then, is there anything we can do to fix things? Almost certainly. There is nothing inevitable about the current system. It has come about mostly by default.

Adults, though, are busy. Showing up for school plays is one thing. Taking on the educational bureaucracy is another. Perhaps a few will have the energy to try to change things. I suspect the hardest part is realizing that you can.

Nerds still in school should not hold their breath. Maybe one day a heavily armed force of adults will show up in helicopters to rescue you, but they probably won't be coming this month. Any immediate improvement in nerds' lives is probably going to have to come from the nerds themselves.

Merely understanding the situation they're in should make it less painful. Nerds aren't losers. They're just playing a different game, and a game much closer to the one played in the real world. Adults know this. It's hard to find successful adults now who don't claim to have been nerds in high school.

It's important for nerds to realize, too, that school is not life. School is a strange, artificial thing, half sterile and half feral. It's all-encompassing, like life, but it isn't the real thing. It's only temporary, and if you look, you can see beyond it even while you're still in it.

If life seems awful to kids, it's neither because hormones are turning you all into monsters (as your parents believe), nor because life actually is awful (as you believe). It's because the adults, who no longer have any economic use for you, have abandoned you to spend years cooped up together with nothing real to do. Any society of that type is awful to live in. You don't have to look any further to explain why teenage kids are unhappy.

I've said some harsh things in this essay, but really the thesis is an optimistic one-- that several problems we take for granted are in fact not insoluble after all. Teenage kids are not inherently unhappy monsters. That should be encouraging news to kids and adults both.

122nd Street. College Grad!

2006-07-06T06:32:00.000-04:00

Folks,

I am sure most of you are wondering what's Skeletor doing up there. Well, two reasons. One, I like the artist's rendition of the the classic character. Two, I wanted an ominous character to reflect what's going on in the story right now.

In other news, I have just graduated from college! I'm a graduate now!

I am having mixed feelings about leaving college. No, I didn'f love my college all that much. Yeah, I have had great times there, but most of the times there were, well, disappointing. I mean, the results I got seldom reflected the effort I put in. Initially, one gets motivated to try harder, after a while, it just gets plain frustrating. And from the frustration comes resignation. The only thing that I will miss, are the friends I've made there. They are simply AWESOME. However, friends are not the only thing I will miss about college, I will definitely miss the college lifestyle. I mean, college IS tough, but I would say working life is even thougher. The whole idea of college is precisely to prepare you for a working life. In fact, working is the thing every human being is destined for - so it is for us, the penultimate destination.

It is upon entry into working life that one becomes, finally, a true adult. It is also the time when one becomes boring and sterile; well at least for most people who are gonna spend the next 40 years hiding in office cubicles. And, that, is precisely the kind of life that I detest. I cannot see myself conforming to boring rules, perform boring tasks and think boring thoughts. Everyday is a working day, and nothing else. I always believe there is more to life, and all one has to do is to keep looking out for opportunities for one to break out of the vicious cycle of boredom! I guess that's why I love Literature - it offers an alternative view to even the most mudane of things in this world. To people who are deprived from the knowledge of literature they can never hope to see a more interesting perspective of life.

It is gonna be a challenge for me balancing a working life and SKOOKUM! But I want to believe that I can handle both 'jobs' with equal dexterity. I seldom turn away from a challenge, and this one's of no exception.

121st Street. What Were They Thinking???

2006-07-02T04:32:00.000-04:00

Folks,

Followers of the new Marvel series, "Civil War" are in for a really nasty shock. Me included. Spider-Man is gonna reveal to the world that he is actually Peter Parker!! Although it often occured to me if it was really necessary for superheros to conceal their identity, it has become a staple for superheroes, in superhero comic books to conceal their TRUE identity. A more critical reader would question what does one mean by TRUE? In this context, is Peter Parker actually Spider-Man or is Spider-Man really Peter Parker? Who is hiding who?

One may argue that this question is startlingly obvious, for Peter Parker was Peter Parker before he was bitten by that darn radioactive spider, which probably have had a bad day before it sank its fangs into Peter's pasty skin. We are not gonna into the details of the spider here since it is Peter we are interested in. Due to the fact that Peter has always been the way he is before the bite, people point out that the Peter we see, is the TRUE identity behind that mask. Or is it? What if Spider-Man is the very figure Peter is meant to become all these while? Considering this, Peter, the pre-bitten character, is but a preliminary stage of life anticipating the TRUE Peter Parker to emerge - one that is heroic, brave, witty, smart and loaded with teenage angst. Hence, Peter Parker, the nerdy photographer, is the mask, in which Spider-Man, who exudes the most remarkable quality of Peter Parker is concealed.

Maybe it is in the sub-conscious of every nerd to want to be a superhero, to want to have spandex somewhere in the closet to be worn when the time calls for it. Spider-Man is the epitome of the desire of every one who feels that he is not getting enough out of life.

Now what? Peter Parker and Spider-Man is one. What is gonna happen? The removal of the mask is always seen as a confessional act, the act to remove all ambiguity from a person - he is what you see he is. Theoretically, no, there is no such thing. We need masks, actual and imaginary, for the very simple reason that no one today can bare their soul without suffering some pretty nasty consequence. Wanna try? Try telling your boss or teacher what you truly think of him/her? That's you removing your mask, and for that you'll need to suffer the consequence. Peter, by revealing himself only serves to maks even more things than ever. Like, what's the true motive behind the un-masking? What plans does he have after his un-masking? More questions come up, and more shocking truths will need to be hidden. Hidden behind what? Masks.

120th Street. Cars - Machines Need Love Too

2006-06-13T14:12:00.000-04:00

I must admit that I wasn't all the excited about CARS the very first time I heard about it. But my impressions of it improved over time. I was a little bumped by the fact that we humanize everything we see - Racoons, Toys and now even cars!!! Do we love our machines so much that we need to make them look lovable? Truly, Humanism's dead, we're in the Age of Posthumanism....

Cticial theory aside, I must say that I LOVED the movie! Yeah, it was a little lame, old and slow at parts, but in its entirety, it's a really good movie. It's success lies in making objects that doesn't even look remotely human achieve a believable human face. You know it's a car that you're looking at, but the expressions, antics and movement exuded by the cars give them that magical human side. It was a little awkward during the first 5 minutes into the movie, when we reach the end, the audience are actually FEELING for the characters as if they were human. There's something utterly magical about the Pixar team, their story-telling ability far exceeds any of the major American animation studios, Disney included, that allows the audience to dig any movie they produce - regardless of the theme, characters and setting!

Oh yes, how can I NOT talk about the music? A nice mixture of American Country, Pop and Indie music (oh yes, I'm so gonna get that OST!)

Overall, it was a movie that entertained, moved and inspired. Ker-Chow!

119th Street. The Tower of Babel

2006-06-12T02:00:00.000-04:00

The picture above is entitled "Rage Over Babylon". It's a picture based on the Biblical story of the creation and destruction of the Tower of Babel. It is an entry drawn by Ziv Qual for the "Spectacular Challenge", a competition organized by the CG Society.

One of my favorite Biblical story is that of the Tower of Babel. More precisely, it is the interpretive possibilities of the story the intrigues me. For those of you who are not familiar with the story, it goes like this: In the story, humankind came together to build a magnificent tower that bridges Heaven and Earth. This tower, is called the Tower of Babel.Through this tower, human kind aspires to enter the abode of God himself. God was displeased. He destroyed the tower, gave the people of Earth different languages so they can never understand one another, and hence unable to come together and build such a tower again.

As I have said earlier, the thing about Biblical stories is that it is able to go either way you want. It can, be seen as simply a story about how we ended up speaking in different tongues, or even a warning against ambitiousness of human kind to want to enter the guarded realm of God. I however, offer THREE interpretations of the story:

1) The story shows the creative and technological powress that can be achieved through a united effort of human kind.

2) The period in which human kind came together to build the Tower of Babel is the ONLY time when there is peace and unity.

3) God, by giving people different tongues and languages only served to DIVIDE humanity, and hence, created centuries of division, wars and chaos.

The more I ponder about the story, the more it made me think if PEACE is what God really wanted for human kind? Maybe we are meant not to understand one another, maybe we are destined to wage war after war against one another 'cause that's the only way we won't come together and build something that may challenge the authority of God. Why are we made to believe that we can't create things greater than that of God, when the Bible has told us that we could?

People see the Tower of Babel as some symbol of the transgressive nature of humanity. that requires correction from God. No. The Tower of Babel is symbolic of the brilliance of humanity, the unity of human kind - a unity that we know we can never again achieve. The story, will be for me an inspiration, a puzzle and an enigma.

118th Street. Let Me Fall...

2006-06-04T02:07:00.000-04:00

There is so much magic in songs. We go back to songs at different times of our lives, and maybe at different moods, and a good song always offers us something - something that reflects what we feel at that exact moment. Some people say life is Mix Soundtrack; I couldn't agree more.

I have been writing about songs plenty of times now, and I feel that I haven't said enough. There're so much songs out there written by Indie songwriters. People don't know a lot about them, due the very fact that they are only known among a very tight and loyal fan base. Some singers deserve a lot more than that.

The song I'm gonna talk about this week is "Let Me Fall" by Bethany Joy Lenz. Lenz, if you guys are in the know, plays Hayley on my favorite series One Tree Hill. This song was actually played live in one of the episodes. Clearly, it shot Lenz to fame, for she was offered a recording contract right after the airing of the episode. Her album debuts this Fall. Here are the lyrics:

LET ME FALL

t's October again
Leaves are coming down
One more year's come and gone
And nothing's changed at all
Wasn't I supposed to be someone
Who can face the things that I've been running from...

Let me feel, I don't care if I breakdown
Let me fall, even if I hit the ground
And if I...
Cry a little
Die a little
At least I know I lived, just a little...

I've become much too good at being invincible
I'm an expert at play it safe, and keep it cool
But I swear this isn't who I'm meant to be
I refuse to let my life roll all over me...

Let me feel, I don't care if I breakdown
Let me fall, even if I hit the ground
And if I...
Cry a little
Die a little
At least I know I lived, just a little...

I wanna be somebody
I, I wanna be somebody
I wanna be somebody
I, I wanna be somebody who can face the things that I've been running from

Let me feel, I don't care if I breakdown
Let me fall, even if I hit the ground
And if I
Cry a little
Die a little
At least I know I lived...

It's October again
Leaves are coming down
One more year's come and gone
And nothing's changed at all

117th Street. Evangelion - A True Anime Classic

2006-06-04T01:43:00.000-04:00

One of the measure of a true anime classic is how people still talk about it 10 years after its original release. I must say Evangelion has a HUGE impact on me when I first heard about it during my high school days. It was actually introduced to me by my pal w'Note, who was, if I remembered clearly, obsessed with Evangelion.

Evangelion, or Neon Genesis Evangelion as purists like to call it is probably the most original anime ever produced. In fact, Evangelion achieved so much in the anime world, all the other anime produced after it helpless atttempted to mimick its startling orignality, complexity and aestheticness. Of course, most were unscuccessful. What they did however, was to highlight how influencial Evangelion is. Arguably, what gives Evangelion this powerful edge over the subsequently produced anime is its treatment of the Christian history. In the anime, not only is God real, he is an adversary - capable of sending his angels to earth to get what HE wants. Humans, having progressed techonologically is able to face God in a stand-off and at times put him in his place. In the end, God, being God, triumphs and drags humanity into the dust.

Anything thing (movies, books anime) that offers an alternative view to Christianity is automatically labeled controversial. And Evangelion is controversial. Evangelion reproduces the Old Testament God in a startling new light and perspective. I feel that Evangelion is in fact attempting to validate the existence of God. In other words, human kind prefers an ACTIVE God - one who does something whose action is a signifed for his existence. But Evangelion doesn't stop there, as most people point out, including the strip above, it is really about the exploration of teen angst.

It is amazing that teens today face the exact same problem teens faced almost 12 years ago. The desire to want to feel belonged, to want to communicate with their parents better and of course, questioning their own sexuality. I think that is what makes Evangelion endure. Times have changed, but the problems that affected people then, affects us now. We have not solved the problems that were facing us almost a decade ago, even though we like to think that we have progessed. Considering this, perhaps we have progressed scientifically, but, morally, emotionally and spiritually, we remain stagnant, unable to proceed from where we have tripped.

This, perhaps, is characteristic of the human condition. We are more often than not in doubt. In doubt of everything, especially the point of our existence. Evangelion raises the same question, but offers a solution as well. Although we can never perfectly understand the point of our existence, we can understand it better if humanity has a common adversary, Existence, becomes meaningful once set against an opposing force that threatens to destroy that existence. God and Angels are therefore sigified Other that helps humanity define what it is. We can only understand ourselves through establishing differentiating ourselves from others who are different from us.

Till the day comes when humanity needs to come to terms with a radical Other, questions like who we are, what we are or why are we alive will remain pertinent. Evangelion will remain relevant, till of course, God refuses to stay in his heaven and messes up with the world.

116th Street. Human Life Is Pure Chaos....

2006-05-25T14:30:00.000-04:00

Everything's going pretty well this week with SKOOKUM! and Morning Glory getting back on schedule - I feel good about that. However, it didn't really last for long.

A few days back, as I was trying to finish up SKOOKUM! and Morning Glory, a few of my friends called. One was asking me why didn't I like call him during the holidays for some drinks or something. I was like, I wanted to call, but I have lots of things at my hands right now. And he asks, "like what?". I was a little lost for words, as I knew he didn't think very much about SKOOKUM! and he feels that it is more important to socialize than work on something that has apparently no value.

So, I told him that I was kinda busy with some write-up I had to do for the comic company I was freelancing for (which I was, a few days back). He then asked me if there's a party coming up, and i told him yes, and that I will organize it. It happens that one of our friends are going away for a year for specialized military training and we just wanted to wish him all the best. And I had to put down everything I was working on and call all of my friends and telling them about the party. The thing is this, it is not easy organizing a part for 23 people, especially if everyone has got like diverse schedules and stuff like that. In the end of course it worked out and we settled on a date.

Not long after, I received a text message from another friend who asked me if I would like to catch a movie with her. She asked me once and I turned her down, and I had to turn her down again 'cause I seriously needed to get the pages done! So, I turned her down the SECOND time. And, I could tell that she was hurt! She said, "I thought you were always free on weekdays", Yes, but this week is an exception, I 've got a lot going for the website and I wanted to put some genuine effort into this. At the same time, I felt rotten turning her down. I made a promise that I wouldn't turn her down again. But I can't get rid of that unpleasant feeling of turning her down twice.

I was asking myself several times this week (yeah, I turned on my Indie Rock collection again*),if it's worth it? Sacrificing time with friends for SKOOKUM!? I know SKOOKUM! is what I must do... but I don't want my friends to think I'm like avoiding them all summer or something, which I am not! If anyone of you whom I know personally reads this, please I just want you to know that I NEED to finish SKOOKUM!, at the same time, I like you no less just because I'm working on my art. Please understand. Thank you!

* I was listening to Alexi Murdoch's "Orange Sky"

115th Street. We Are Not Judging You.

2006-05-23T14:32:00.000-04:00

Folks,

I cannot tell you how excited I am to have new web interface up for the SKOOKUM! Index page. It took me process of getting all the colors and effects right was rather painful, but thankfully, the result was well worth the pain I endured. Of course, I must take this chance to thank w'Note for enduring a full 30-minutes with me as we decided the right fonts to be used for the interface. Thanks again w'Note!

Not many of you know but this picture is actually inspired by the namecard w'Note designed for me. From the moment I saw the name card, i knew that I MUST create a picture that will recreate this magical wonder - a wonder that can only be brought about when these three (rather) unusual colors are blended together.

It may come across a little strange that all the characters (other than Chiriko) are looking at YOU. Yes, it is YOU they are looking it, and it is the same YOU who's reading this blog. The characters are not looking at YOU in a way that they are judging you, they are not. They are merely taking notice of OUR presence. Just as how you are looking into THEIR lives, they too wish to know a little about YOUR life.

People, more often than not, like to pass judgement. They judge people even before they fully know how the person is like. I do it all the time, and sometimes I wish I'd go easier on people and give them a chance to prove themselves. I want this picture to remind me not to judge people the way I have always done, until of course, they pass judgement on themselves!

114th Street. It's Time to Think Over Some Stuff....

2006-05-13T15:38:00.000-04:00

More often than not, I get into this contemplative mood, where I attempt to straighten out some stuff in my life. Everyone has some problems of their own, and I am almost certain that most of our lives are good - but ALL of us wants it to be GREAT. The thing is, life, is rarely great. Whenever, there are things I cannot figure out, I go to my song collection and start playing my Indie Rock collection.

It's important to play music in which you can relate to. Music has a way of bringing out emotions that cannot be brought out by any other forms of art. Words, through music, releases its TRUE potential to move one at several levels almost simulatneously.

I have been listening to Blue Merie's "Every Ship Must Sail Away", and if you can so much as to trust what I am writing, trust me when I say that it is a beautiful song. And it is the ONE AND ONLY song Blue Merie has EVER wrote. Although people tend not to trust artists that release only one track throughout their entire career, I choose to look at it differently. It is better to do ONE THING RIGHT IN LIFE, RATHER THAN NOT AT ALL. And I think Blue Merie did that, he wrote one beautiful song and he is going to be remembered for doing this one song right - it beats creating 19 other bad songs.

And here are the Lyrics:

EVERY SHIP MUST SAIL AWAY

Have you ever heard the sounds
In the shadows of a song
Have you ever felt their words
Blow right through you from beyond

'Cause years pass and people change
The bluest skies can turn to gray
And though it's gonna hurt for now
Every ship must sail away
Every ship must sail away

Oh change is in the air
And you wear it oh so well
I asked you if you cared
But if you cared I couldn't tell

'Cause years pass and people change
The bluest skies turn to gray
And though it's gonna hurt for now
Every ship must sail away
Every ship must sail away

And though it's gonna hurt for now
And though it's gonna hurt for now
And though it's gonna hurt for now
Every ship must sail away

Every ship must sail away
Every ship must sail away
Every ship must sail away
Every ship must sail away

Page 112. Japanese and Obsession with "Correct" English?

2006-04-25T11:14:00.000-04:00

I stumbled upon this on the Internet, and without any offense, I just think this ad is merely an extension of the fetish the Japanese have with the English language. Read On!

I don't know the story behind this kooky/pervy morsel. If appearances are true, it's a Japanese instructional video that teaches English phrases for picking up gaijin hotties. It could also be an excuse to drool over chicks clad in teacher and schoolgirl uniforms who say dirty words in lo-res. Perhaps one of our Japanese-speaking readers can clue us in. Link

Reader comment: Anonymous Japanese speaker says,

I think it's the intro gimmick from some porn. Check out the extremely cautious mosaicing when the girl reveals her panty-clad cockpit to Taro. I've got 1000 yen right here that says that after they move onto standard porn sex (maybe with some forced English cries of pleasure). The other proof is the "nukenagara manaberu" that the main teacher says at the start -- "you can learn while jerking off". It's not at all uncommon for Japanese porn videos to be that direct about helping the viewer masturbate. I dunno about overseas.
Also, the reason "omanko" (cockpit) is censored and "ochinchin" isn't because "omanko" is a stronger word than "ochinchin". "Ochinchin" is more like "willy" than "dick", but "omanko" really is like "pussy", or maybe even "cunt".

Reader comment: NH says,
This *does* appear to be an instructional video on talking dirty in English. I've only studied Japanese for a little while now but I gather that the female host is telling the audience ("mina-san") that she and the women behind her are "sexy teachers" ("watashi-tachi sexy sensei ga") and that they are glad to meet you. Before holding up a giant cue-card spelling out "dick" she explains that they'll begin with "simple study" ("kantana-kara-no-benkyoushimashou"). Following that, but before the totally hot conversation (or train wreck of words, but who's counting?) they go from "simple study" to.... "not-simple study." You wish I was kidding. If you're baffled by what the symptoms of a nasty case of taro could involve, you should see a doctor immediately.
Reader comment: Alex Waters, who presumably speaks Japanese and is not just pulling our cockpit, says:
It's indeed an instructional video on talking dirty in English, and it's HILARIOUS. But they encourage you to drool as well - the viewer is offered a choice of studying either conversation or "masterbation" [sic]. After the teachers introduce themselves, they inform us that in order to learn to converse, we must first study some basic vocabulary. (Note to readers: Are you SURE you know the definition of "cockpit"?) As an interesting aside, it's acceptable to talk about dicks, but all the instances of "manko" - "pussy" in Japanese - are bleeped out, and one character is censored when it's written onscreen as well.
After finishing up with vocabulary, the "Sexy Senseis" move on to real world applications - the conversation lesson! It simply must be seen to be believed. Luckily for the English speakers out there, the conversation lesson is all in English, and subtitled in both English and Japanese.

I can't WAIT to try out my new conversation skills and see if they work.

Reader Comment: Rachel
Another noteworthy detail: it's pretty clear that none of the caucasian women in the video are native speakers of English.
It wouldn't surprise me at all if they were Russian, as there's a pretty large population of women from the former Soviet republics doing sex work in Japan. But their accents didn't sound Russian, so maybe they're from somewhere else. Anyway, sexual negotiations are definitely one of the more important purposes Japanese men have for conversational English.

On the site hosting the Youtube vid, it said the women were "overdubbed", but it sounds pretty clear to me that those were their real voices; they just don't speak English clearly because it isn't their native language.

Reader comment: Mark Malamud says,
I just got back from japan, and the video appears to be a parody of one-minute instructional english videos they're showing on jr trains and subways in japan (at least on the yamanote line).

113rd Street. The Anatomy of a Shark Bite

2006-04-19T10:17:00.000-04:00

I have always been fascinated with sharks. The TRUE monsters of the ocean. Since my childhood they are living reminders of why I should not surf, dive or ever get caught in a situation that lands me in shark infested waters.

I am a lover of animals and I like to believe that in my category of animals, sharks should be included. I am personally against the eating of shark fins (though I must admit they are pretty tasty), for I think that it is undoubtedly cruel to remove the fins of a shark while it's still alive and toss the tortured struggling shark back into the ocean - where it spends it's last agonizing moments.

I have watched several documentaries to know that the evil side of sharks have been exaggerated by the media and the infamous "Jaws" by Steven Speilberg. Although the documentaries try to establish that sharks are aggressive only when they have too, that does not make me feel any less afraid of them. One notable documentary, one that I watched yesterday seems to reflect the greatest fear I have about sharks. The documentary's called "The Anatomy of A Shark Bite". The documentary relates how a marine biologist while filming a documentary with the famed Nigel Marvin about the harmlessness of sharks, ends up getting attacked by a Bull Shark. He lost his entire calf muscle as a result of the freak accident.

The sight of the the bleeding leg without the calf portion sends the reality of a shark bite back home.

Although the documentary aims to inform the viewers on how sophisticated a shark bite is, somehow, the only thing that remains is how formidable a shark bite is. It doesn't make me feel awed by sharks - it makes me fear them EVEN more! At the same time, I have nothing but respect for the Marine biologist, who dedicated his life to the study of sharks, and even the loss of a calf cannot dampen his passion to study them in full detail. How many people these days possess such passion for their occupation? I believe that there is a special connection between man and animal. Once the connection is made, nothing, even a life-threatening accident, can destroy it.

Considering this, is the human love for an animal then stronger than the human love for another human?

Page 113 Temporary Post

2006-04-18T13:56:00.000-04:00

Page 113

The Angel of History

2006-04-06T09:27:00.000-04:00

German Literary philosopher Walter Benjamin once wrote:

A Klee painting named “Angelus Novus” shows an angel looking as though he is about to move away from something he is fixedly contemplating. His eyes are staring, his mouth is open, his wings are spread. This is how one pictures the angel of history. His face is turned toward the past. Where we perceive a chain of events, he sees one single catastrophe which keeps piling wreckage upon wreckage and hurls it in front of his feet. The angel would like to stay, awaken the dead, and make whole what has been smashed. But a storm is blowing from Paradise; it has got caught in his wings with such violence that the angel can no longer close them. This storm irresistibly propels him into the future to which his back is turned, while the pile of debris before him grows skyward. This storm is what we call progress.

“Theses on the Philosophy of History,” [1940], Illuminations: Essays and Reflections, ed. Hannah Arendt, tr. Harry Zohn. New York: Schoken Books, 1968, (253-64), 257-58.

The "Angle of History" is to me particularly, an important trope that influences all of my work. The Angel, looking back at the wreckage of the past is forcibly made to move forwards towards an unknown future it cannot see. And it cannot stop moving forwards since it is inevitable. What results is a conflictous condition, desiring to salvage a past, and yet unable to move towards a progressive future.

The iPod Flea

2006-04-05T03:45:00.000-04:00

Folks.

Naw, it's not a new update, but a new hilarious video I found on the Internet. Thought it'd be nice for all of you to have a look at it!

111st Street. Guilty Pleasure

2006-03-25T06:57:00.000-05:00

Folks,

I know you guys haven't heard from me for a while, well, the truth is that I have been bogged down with all kinds of Things. Things include studying, working, and receiving friends from Japan and Solomon Islands respectively. Some people like life to be quiet and normal, I guess I like life to be intense, and I do mean very intense. I know that sometime life wears me down and there are times I feel like throwing in the towel altogether, but I definitel prefer a Busy life compared to a Bored life...

Of course, knowing me despite me getting caught up in all the things stated above, I always have time for TV. Yes, television! I am such a TV junkie. A literary education should supposedly make on HATE TV more than anything else. Besides, what's on TV other than commercials and propaganda? I know books are capable to conveying truth better than TV can, but, the one thing TV is able to give me something, I feel most books are unable to. And that is Guilty Pleasure.

As the name sounds, gulity pleasure is a pleasure one gets out of things and yet at the same time feeling guilty for getting that sense of pleasure. Human beings are FULL of inherent contradictions and I haven't known anyone who isn't contradictory in some way. Yeah, I LOVE TV shows, and feel guilty that I buy into their mindless humor and stuff - yet I can't take myself away from it!

In addition to Desperate Housewives, The OC, Lost, One Tree Hill, C.S.I, Grey's Anatomy, The Amazing Race, American Idol and The Apprentice, I am in love with the Amanda Show! God help me! Yes, I am in love with one of the LAMEST show on earth! Amanda is a moron! She's a stupid as it gets, yet it is precisely 'CAUSE her jokes are so lame to contrived that I love it! How is this possible? I don't know! It's crazy but I can't tear myself away from the Amanda show! Save me! Someone kill Amanda now! Naw! Only Joking! Where else am I gonna get my guilty Pleasure other than from Amanda?

Amanda Please! (You'll get the joke if you've watched The Amanda Show!)

I Love the Arabic Script!

2006-03-05T02:07:00.000-05:00

ديد طبيعتي:

I love the Arabic Script.

In fact, I am in love with all the major languages in the world, and for me, one of the most fascinating lanuage is Arabic. There is something mystical and artistic about the writing that always inspires me to want to know more about how this language works! In case you're wondering what it says, get an online translator!

بيابان لوت گرم ترين نقطه دنيا هست .دانشمندان معتقد هستند بيابان ها و كوير ها در قديم اقيانوس بودند.در كوه هاي كرمان فسيل ماهي پيدا شده.طبيعت بي نهايت وحشي و خوفناك و زيبايي داشت.غروب اش بي نظير بود.سكوت اش آرامش بخش.تا چشم كار مي كرد كلوت بود و ماسه.صداي باد كه ماسه ها رو تكون مي داد.صداي ماسه ها كه زير پات به حركت در مي اومد.در اين منطقه هيچ نوع باكتري وجود نداره و چيزي تجزيه نمي شه.نخلستان های زیبا و سبز,سبزی وسط کویر
ديد فرهنگي اجتماعي:
دويست نفر بوديم كه توي مدرسه شبانه روزي بهمون جا داده بودند.تو هر اتاق دوازده نفر بوديم.شش تا حموم داشتيم و ده تا توالت.من و مهشيد تصميم گرفتيم كه تو حياط مدرسه تو كيسه خواب هايمان بخوابيم و مي شه گفت عاقلانه ترين كار روكريدم.ولي كسايي كه كيسه خواب داشتند و نيومدند تمام مدت نق مي زدند كه جاشون گرم و كثيف و پر سرو صداست.هميشه واسه من سوال هست كه چرا آدم ها بايد اين قدر نسبت به خودشون تنبل و بي اهميت باشند و چرا نبايد به نياز هاشون احترام بزارند و ازون بدتر تنبلي خودشون رو گردن كساي ديگر بندازند؟همه ما ادعاي فرهنگي بودن و مودب بودن داريم ولي خدانكنه كمي در تنگنا باشيم همه عين حيوانات وحشي به هم مي پريم.به خاطر تحمل نكردن مدتي در صف حموم هر كاري مي كنيم.
و حركات بعضي از خانم ها كه وسط بيابون خدا زير آفتاب گرم درحالي كه دارن عرق مي كنند تافت موشون رو (كه نمي دونم چه جوري حمل اش مي كنند )در ميارن و موهاشون رو درست مي كنند.يا تو كوله اي كه اگه تنها وسايل ضروري رو بزاري پر مي شه سشوار و بي گودي ميارن ولي درعوض چيزهاي واجب رو نمي آورند و هميشه خدا آويزون پسرها مي شن والبته آقايون هم از خداشونه كه ناز بكشند!اگه اين ها بخشي از زنانه گي هست خدا يا شكرت كه من ندارم.يه چيز ديگه.ديد ما نسبت واقعيت واقعا اشتباه هست .وقتي اعلام مي شه امكانات محلي يعني قد دهات از اون جا انتظار داشته باش نه قدر يه هتل شش ستاره تو دوبي!بابا جان اومديم ماجراجويي
ديد سياسي:
ايران ما همي چيز داره.از نظر طبيعت تمام انواع آب و هوا رو داره.از نظر معادن ,تنوع اش عاليه.از نظر ميوه جات و مركبات كه خدا بده بركت همه چيز به قول خارجي ها اورگانيك هست.از نظر هنر كه نگو و نپرس.و و و و.ايران ما خيلي زيباس.خيلي خيلي.هرجايي از ايران بري نوع خاص همون منطقه فرهنگ,طبيعت,هنرو معادن داريم.با اين كه اين كشور در مقايسه با ايالات متحده خيلي كوچك تر هست ولي مي تونه با اون در اين عرصه ها رقابت كنه.امـــــــــــــــــا!!!!چيزي كه ايران ما نداره ساكنان قدرشناس,با شعور,فهميده و دلسوز هست.واقعا ما به اين خاك چقدر بدهكاريم!چقدر در حق اش ناجوان مرد بوديم و چقدر به اين خاك اهانت كريم!دلمون خوشه كه هروقت كشوري به ما اهانت مي كنه راه مي افتيم تو سايت ها و ميزان راي گيري رو تغيير مي ديم!همين!؟داريم همون كاري رو كه طالبان با مجسمه هاي باميان كرد مي كنيم.تنها فرق اش اينه كه اونا با يك بمب ظرف مدت كوتاهي آثارشون رو تخريب كرندن ما آهسته آهسته وبا خشونت بي اهميتي داريم آثارمون رو به گند مي كشيم
سپاس نامه:
اول از همه از مهشيد جونم تشكر كنم كه باعث و باني اين سفر خوب شد.دوم از تور كلوت كه واقعا مديريت عالي داشت وخيلي داره زحمت مي كشه كه مردم ايرن,طبيعت ايران رو بيش تر بشناسند.و شعار قشنگشون كه "بگذاريم در طبيعت چيزي به جز رد پاهيامان نماند"را كاملا اجرايي مي كنند.سوم هم از دست اندر كاراني كه وسايل من رو آماده كردند ممنونم مثل سعيد,ياشا,مامان مهشيد و علي

110th Street. Can A Vampire and A Werewolf have Sex? Ever?

2006-03-04T12:50:00.000-05:00

I have just watched "Underworld:Evolution."

It was not a fantastic movie, but I watched it for 2 reasons, one, I did enjoy the first movie, "Underworld" and I'm a huge werewolf fan. What was really upsetting about Underworld:Evolution is that it is not so much a movie about Werewolves VS Vampires, rather, it is really more like a very fast-paced, noisy lesson in evolutionary biology. The director is simply obsessed with inter-species sex!

And it goes like this:
[ "+" here symbolizes sex or any act that involves mutual shooting of DNA.]

Vampire + Vampire = Vampire.

Werewolf + Werewolf = Werewolf (I think)

Werewolf + Human = Human.

Vampire + Human = Human

Vampire (bites) Human = Death

Werewolf (bites) Human = Werewolf.

Werewolf + Vampire = Hybrid???

Werewolf (bites) Vampire = Death

Vampire (bites) Werewolf = Pain

Vampire + Werewolf (bites) Human = Hybrid of Vampire and Werewolf

Hybrid + Vampire = ???

Hybrid + Werewolf = ???

This list goes on. No, I am not dissing the director for dealing with this rather difficult topic, and I am glad he attempted to make a movie on this. But the movie misses the point! The last GOOD movie that dealt with the problem of Vampires and Werewolves is "Van Helsing" starring Hugh Jackman in the title role. Underworld:Evolution is simply a movie that is too concerned with the politics of sex that it forgets what the Werewolf and the Vampire stand for!

Vampires, in my opnion, represents the Rich, the cultured and basically is an allegory for the Cruel Upper Class in society. They have money, awesome technology, drink red wine and basically collects antiques. Werewolves represent the Poor, the Sexually Strong, Rough, Rude and Uncultured, and they are basically an allegory for the Lower Working Class. They live in poor conditions, and rely on their teeth and claws to get what they want. They represent the REPRESSED aspect of society - Everyone wants to be more cultured, richer and more sophisticated these days, and they begin to despise everything that is remotely animalistic or carnal or hairy which is what the Werewolf has come to represent.

This Upper Class Oppression and Lower Class Resistance is, to me at least, a good material to work with, and yet, the director chooses to focus on the really odd sex life of these supernatural beings, which is weird for me to start with... Clearly, like most movies these days, Underworld:Evolution goes for Style not Substance. Everyone in the movie, even the werewolves have a distinct way of walking! Put all of them on a runway with any Top Models you can find and you won't be able to tell the difference. Which, is cool in one way, but also disappointing as well.

WE'VE JUST BEEN HACKED!

2006-02-27T09:50:00.000-05:00

We've just been hacked by Indonesian Hackers. Why? I don't know why, but Hackers, no matter where they are from are nothing more than stinking vermin whose only end is EXTERMINATION. They exist to get exterminated.

SKOOKUM! will be back up, really soon!

109th Street. On Thinking....

2006-02-14T23:54:00.000-05:00

One of the answers offered by philosophers on why the world is so whacked up, lies in the fact that people do NOT THINK LONG ENOUGH about things. If people were to stop and really, really examine every aspect of their actions and their thoughts, we probably won't need to spend so much on weapons of mass destruction any more. Think about it - would anyone be alive if ALL of the weapons of mass destruction go off at once?

Yet, people think philosophy is all about making things harder than they really are. Yes, I don't deny that; having not done very well for philosophy at college, but thinking back, we can't all be philosophers. Philosophy, I must admit reveals itself to those who is somehow meant to do philosophy; for people who somehow understand the complex mechanics of it. Not every one is granted that access. Fundmamentally however, I suggest that all philosophy is about thoughts, it is all about thinking and re-thinking about the world today. No, we cannot survive if all we do is sit and think and not do an ounce of work. I don't think philosohy is encouraging suicide, but it wants us to be more aware about the choices we make. Being able to see a problem is half the battle won; solving the problem is full victory. People in order to 'win' need to see that there's a problem in the first place.

Even if thinking can't help us solve everything, it can help us solve the problem of being too reckless in things. Recklessness kills rationality and results in tons of problems and troubles one can easily avoid, which is made unavoidable 'cause one doesn't think one's actions through long enough.

Me? I think, I think too much sometimes.

108th Street. On Music...

2006-01-31T12:18:00.000-05:00

Folks,

Recently, I discovered by chance, a great CD named "The Greatest" by the band CAT POWER. Despite it's cheesey name, this band truly delievers. Old smoky tunes, with a delicate touch of Old Memphis, all reminiscent of the slow movement of the American mid-West. It's the kind of CD you want to hear after an incredibly busy and stormy day, or if you just want to relax the over-worked brain.

The lyrics of the first song, aptly named 'The Greatest" goes like this,

"Once I wanted to be the greatest
No wind or waterfall could stall me
And then came the rush of flood
Stars of night turned deep to dust"

It is amazing how certain songs or pieces of music can so accurately describe one's feelings at each given moment. Music is able to move one, emotionally, much more potently than any form of art can. It is music that is able to transform such incredibly simple lyrics to something that can mean so much to one.

I have always wondered why this is so, but till now, I cannot find an answer to this, I just know that music has the ability to transcend certain emotional boundaries words cannot express. Music is like beauty - you'll need to experience it in order to understand it. For as powerful as words are, it just can't capture the true ESSENCE of music. Music is meant for the ears, and it will always be so, no organ can appreciate music like the ears can, and what passes through the ears, is translated into the most unimaginable miracles of life that makes our lives so much more livable.

I may regret all my life that I cannot play a single music instrument, if given a second chance, I would certainly want to learn the piano or the guitar or even the flute - anything, as long as I can play music. I think people will agree with me that MUSIC is one of the most important necessities of everyday life, which explains the huge amount of piracy that has been going on. I'm not on some Anti-Piracy mission, but I believe in paying for talent.

If you think a particular singer or band is talented, please, please buy their album, support their music and their creativity. It means a lot more especially to a band who is struggling to make itself known! Time to accumulate more good karma for al those who have been ruthlessly downloading free songs!

Then again, you SHOULD download songs from the following artits:

1. Britney Spears
2. Lindsay Lohan
3. Hilary Duff
4. Ashley Simpson

These singers have ZERO talent; they can't sing and they can't compose to save their lives. They don't deserve the price that's tagged at the back of their album. Then again, we need them so badly, for there can only be good music when there's an abundance of bad music around!

Have a good one everyone!

107th Street. Everything's Bursting with Energy!

2006-01-28T14:48:00.001-05:00

Folks,

The thing about being in the final term of college is that everything begins moving at an incredible speed - almost blowing your mind in the process. I experienced that maddening rush and I could hardly keep my head above the incredible torrent of energy. Yes, I'm sorry guys, I've been so BUSY that I don't have time for myself, let alone SKOOKUM!

Then again, here it is! The good news is as you're reading 108 is about to be completed, so the next page is gonna be on time, so that's a comfort for all of us I think. Of course, I'd need to prepare all of you for more irregular updates to come, and I will try to CHURN out as many pages as I can before I get out of college and start making some really important decisions in life! You know what I mean...

I do hope all of you have been enjoying this so far! Have a good one guys and come back next week for more wholesome SKOOKUM!

107th Street. Everything's Bursting with Energy!

2006-01-28T14:48:00.000-05:00

106th Street. Porcupines and Condoms!

2006-01-07T13:10:00.000-05:00

My friend Kim-Wen has just returned from a hike in South Africa, he learnt of my passion for animals and wildlife and he chanced upon a quill of a porcupine on the jungle floor during one of his hikes. The chance of one picking a quill from the body of a porcupine is about 1:100. Porcupines are extremely defensive creatures and anyone attempting to attack the porcupine (or touch it for that matter) will find that they’ll be leaving with nothing but a handful of quills painfully embedded in their skins.

However, like how snakes moult, porcupines will shed their old quills and have newer and sharper quills growing back. The quill in which Kim-Wen brought back from me had to be either of the old quills which is dropped by the porcupine, or it’s one of the quills that was brushed off the attacker’s body. And contrary to popular belief, porcupines can’t shoot their quills at their attackers. Either case, the quill which I got is really sharp! I can’t imagine having this stuck to my skin!

One top of the quill, which, I liked very much, Kim-Wen, of all the possible things he could get, got me a condom. However, it was not just any condom, it’s a SOUTH AFRICAN condom. What’s the difference? Well, South African condoms have a much wider rim or girth. Yes, it’s really much bigger than any other condoms in the world. Kim-Wen noted, having seen a few himself, that South Africans have really HUGE penises. He admitted that it was a bruise to his male ego when he caught a side of those monster penises… proving once and for all that we are NOT all made equal.

The weird thing is that Kim-Wen chose to give me the huge condom in front of four other girls. Initially, the girls squealed in disgust, but later, I think they were all enthralled by Kim-Wen’s description of the huge African penises – well, whoever says size doesn’t matter?

Porcupine quills and condoms… who could have thought they make great gifts?

2006. 2nd Anniversary of SKOOKUM!

2006-01-02T13:58:00.000-05:00

January 5th, 2006

Happy 2006 Everybody!

I know that I missed last week’s update, and for that I am terribly sorry about that. Like everyone else, I was celebrating Christmas and the New Year. This year’s Christmas celebrations at w’Note’s house were awesome! Not only did we have a pretty unusual dinner consisting of salmon and whelks (Gosh! Still can’t believe I ate those on Christmas!) we had a simply mind-blowing Berry Cheese cake as desert which simply added such a wonderful touch to the already very enjoyable celebration! Crazy as it seems, we actually watched Kill Bill Volumes 1 & 2 after dinner. No, it certainly isn’t the typical feel-good Christmas movie, and no, we’re not psychotics. It’s just that we want to watch something impressionable on Christmas. Especially when I am still haunted by the experience of my mind going numb after watching the horrible “Elf” last year!

To top it all off, we caught The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe the very next midday (not before we had an awesome lunch at Carl’s Junior)! It was such a good movie, it’s gotta be the only movie this year that truly moved me at several levels! I know the reviews for the movie weren’t exactly hot, but the movie really worked for me and I thoroughly enjoyed myself.

On the whole 2005, ended with a very pleasant note, although I have met with some personal disappointments which made me depressed for a while, I must say 2005 was just as thrilling as all the other years were.

I could only wish that 2006 could be just or even more thrilling than 2005 have been.

Yes, I reckon all of you know that January 5th is the official SKOOKUM! anniversary, and as of today, SKOOKUM!’s TWO. It certainly does not seem that two years had passed, especially for me when I haven’t even scratched the surface of what SKOOKUM! is about anyway. Drawing SKOOKUM! for the past two years have been an incredible journey for me, not only have I felt that I have improved artistically, I feel that it has become an anchor of my life; when times I get lost in life’s maze, I know that I’d always have SKOOKUM! to remind me that there’s always something more to life.

I am glad that w’Note too shares my sentiment and told me how much SKOOKUM! has too, become a part of his life. Nothing pleases me more than knowing that SKOOKUM! has made some small impact on people’s lives. I get all excited whenever readers are able to relate with some of the characters or some part of the story, for it shows that the story or the characters of SKOOKUM! is actually speaking to the readers. It is not just a story found on the Internet, it is something that you can relate with, and it is something that represents a small part of your life. I do not want SKOOKUM! to be just my story, hopefully, everyone can feel that they own some part of SKOOKUM! after all, everything on the Internet is meant to be for everyone.

I used to have really high hopes and expectations for SKOOKUM! and I think right now I still have, just that I have developed far more realistic expectations for SKOOKUM! Long time readers will notice that SKOOKUM! has moved from a Three times a week update to a Twice a week update and finally to a Once a week update, and lately, sometimes it’s Once every fortnight. As I mentioned many times before, webcomic artists have their lives too and I am trying my best to be a more social person, and I am not afraid to admit that I have been hanging out with my new friends quite a lot. I am not sure what my schedule is gonna be like next year, but what I do hope is that I will be able to more punctual for the updates. I respect all those webcomic artists who are able to churn out three or more pages every week. I don’t think I have the energy to do that, I wish I did, but no. My primary aim for now is really to get more readers. I mean, it couldn’t hurt right? Other than creating a great page every time and finishing this work, there is nothing that I really ask of SKOOKUM!

My RESOLUTION for this year, for SKOOKUM! especially, is that I want to move the plot much, much faster. I have been a little dowdy last year and SKOOKUM! has admittedly been on the slow. I have received comments telling me that the slow pace of the story is making them lose interest. So, for the benefit of current and future readers, I very much hope to accelerate the story and push it to its climax as soon as possible.

I am sorry that I couldn’t find the time to have a nice anniversary update this time, since I was spent doing up the Christmas Special, but who knows? Maybe we’ll get one next year or something. Every year I give away some juicy spoilers for the readers, well, I decided that I won’t do that this year, I prefer to hold all of you in suspense till it is time to reveal everything.

To all of you who’s reading this, THANK YOU.

Have a good one everyone.

Christmas Special 2005. Amidst the Falling Snow

2005-12-22T13:36:00.000-05:00

Remember your first encounter amidst the falling snow? Snow absorbs sound, so when it falls, everything is enveloped in a blanket of silence. I have been thinking a lot about moments lately; how a single moment changes the course of everything. What do you remember in that one moment when you see the snow falling from the heavens? Some people only remember the bitter cold, but others remember that one moment of wonder, before that feeling of wonder eventually wears off. That is characteristic of moments – they never last long enough.

I didn’t make it for a Christmas Special last year (I made it for the Thanksgiving Special instead) and I felt it is time to create a Christmas Special for all the awesome readers out there! You know who you are… The theme for this Christmas Special is “moment”. Why? For it is not everyday you see Yoruki, Miles, Joan, Junko, Machiko and Saru-Ji celebrating one joyous moment together. The thing I love so much about Christmas is that people are generally more genial during Christmas; people are in the mood to give and share. Similarly, the characters in SKOOKUM! briefly forget all the shit they gotten themselves in and chooses to get together to celebrate Christmas.

As we are lost in the wonder of Christmas, we should at the same time consider all the graces we have received in the throughout this year. I am certain that we did not get everything we hoped for, but we should not lose sight of the things that were actually bestowed upon us that were denied from others. I have been meeting a lot of people all over the world lately, and the stories I heard were always somewhat similar, people gained something and they lost something at the same time. It is true however that some people gained more than others, but oh well, we only have ourselves to blame if we are not as cunning, scheming and malicious as the other guy. I learnt that while people respect you for being good, it never truly pays to be good; unless of course, in the afterlife.

I really hope you guys dig the Christmas Special, and prepare yourselves as SKOOKUM! enters its Second year in the running. Actually, it hasn’t really been a FULL year, considering all the time I was late for updates as well as the technical difficulties we faced which put us in a hiatus. I wanna promise a more vigorous SKOOKUM! come 2006, and I hope ALL of you stay tuned to the events that are about to unfold.

Happy Holidays!

104th Street. For You Grandma

2005-12-15T07:02:00.000-05:00

My grandma passed away last week.

She was 76.

I was generally distressed over her passing for I loved her dearly. However, in comparison to my Dad’s passing, I felt that I could handle my grandma’s passing better. As they say, the first cut is the deepest. I was glad that my grandma passed away rather peacefully, and that my mum and her siblings (my uncles and aunts) were around when she left this world for a better world.

It is never easy to handle a death of family, the trauma and the painful thought of never seeing that person again. Everyone was telling me that I should not feel too sad for my grandma, for after all, she did live to ripe old age, and that it would in fact be more painful for her to continue living and suffering the pain of her illness. I understand their logic perfectly, and I know that that is the truth, but still, how can I come to terms with the fact that the person is no longer there? That the person no longer exists physically in your immediate surroundings?

It is never an easy thing. As I helped out at my grandma’s wake I pondered often about the very fragility of life; with our very mortality. Our entire life seems to be dictated by moments. One moment someone’s there, the next the person’s gone. There are time moments change everything, and out of a sudden you’re faced with an entirely new situation in which you must come to terms with… Maybe that’s why we need religion, to BELIEVE that there is always more to life. Even so, religion does not always provided answers to everything, at least that’s what I feel.

Still, it is the looking forward to something better that keeps religion alive. As Douglas Adams in his book “The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy” writes, the one thing that makes life pleasant is having something to look forward to. Unless you’re Virginia Woolf who believes that there is no afterlife and that death is the ultimate end, then you either got to make the very, very best out of your life or end up bitter and miserable. Questions remain, and nothing is answered. Probably that’s why we need philosophers.

I love you grandma. And I’ll Miss you so.

Just When You Thought New Zealand Sheeps were Great

2005-12-08T04:29:00.000-05:00

Be thankful you're seeing only ONE doing it. Wait till you see all 3 million of them doing it. It's Raining Crap Man! It's raining crap!

A Dream Date Gone Terribly Wrong

2005-12-08T04:26:00.000-05:00

Here's one lady you WON'T want to date. No Kissing. No Oral. No Anal. Just plain staring.

103rd Street. In The Mood For Luxury

2005-12-02T09:10:00.000-05:00

I was reading a special edition of Time Magazine’s Style and Design for Winter 2005, which is incidentally not about what’s up in the world of fashion and design, but it is really about the best products to get and give for Christmas this year. The only problem apparently is that all of the products featured in the magazine are LUXURIOUS goods, which means you can forget about getting any of the featured items in the magazine if you are not willing to part with $5,000 or more.

The Style and Design magazine if anything, offers a perspective of what it means to live luxuriously. Clearly, what is meant my luxurious has changed over the years. Currently, as Fendi’s CEO Michael Burke notes, luxurious today doesn’t mean being the biggest, it’s about being “intimate and unique”. Luxury is therefore, able to own something that says a lot about you, and at the same time gives you a mark sense of distinction that few (or none at all) share. More inescapably, luxury is a mark of wealth; luxury is what you get when you are rich.

The Style and Design Magazine therefore performs an additional function, it makes people who are not exactly really, really rich to aspire towards what it means to live the life of the rich, to live the life of luxury. People feel compelled to get the goods featured in the magazine because they feel that by getting it, they are much closer towards living life luxuriously. The product has moved from being a product of desire, it has become a product that determines a lifestyle, notably, the lifestyle of the bourgeois class.

There is nothing wrong with the bourgeois way of life, in fact all of us are in one way or the other living the bourgeois life! Reading literature, sipping coffee in cafés, attending functions and conventions – all these are a mark of a good life, and that is exactly the mantra of the bourgeoisie, to live a good life. Problems only occur when people aspire too desperately for a bourgeois lifestyle, and they begin to bend laws just so that they could taste luxury. These people become the thieves, the robbers and the deviants of our society. These people are not monsters, on the contrary, they are products of the society; the same society that teaches people to live life luxuriously.

We recognize what it means to live luxuriously, but what’s crucial at this point is that we too know when to step back and look at it perceptively, that even though what we see in the magazine is desirable, it is not something that we should enslave ourselves for. Is having really awesome cell phones, handbags and watches the ONLY way in which we can determine luxury? In that case, everything is material, and the root of human happiness is material goods. Somewhere deep in ourselves we know that is not true. Sure, the material stuff is important, I am not going to deny that, but that is, and should not be the sole importance of our life. Very simply, what is the point of getting a Vertu cell phone worth $8,600 if there is NO ONE you can talk over the phone with? As we look deeper, the luxury goods only mean something if there are special people you can really share it with.

102nd Street. Back On the Job!

2005-11-25T12:45:00.000-05:00

Folks,

After almost two months of burdening w'Note with the tedious job of coloring, Page 102 marks my return and the resuming of my responsibility of coloring SKOOKUM! It feels good to be back, just that it took a while for me to get used to the WACOM again. In a way I miss it... I think it has a lot to do with me not touching for two months. But once again, thanks to w'Note for taking on the coloring during the time when I buried up to my neck with papers and examinations. Thanks man!

The school semester have officially ended for now, and I must say I have known quite a lot of interesting people both in class. Being in a graduating class somehow has a whole new meaning altogether. People don't usually know each another well during college, unless of course, if they had went to the same High School or they knew each other before they entered collegue. Generally, it is HARD to make good friends in a college; there are so many different classes going on, people having totally different schedule from on another and so on. It is only when one reaches the graduating class that one finally well, start to form strong friendships. There are 49 students in this year's graduating class, and we see each another practically everyday for the same lessons.

Somehow, you recognize who are the people who belong to your academic circle, and that is a start, really. In a way, it is also frustrating, since come next semester, most of us will be working on our respective Honors Theses, which means we'll probably have less time to see each other, and to have lunches and so on.

There is a regular pattern in this that I find so frustrating- just when you are really starting to make good friends, it is time to say goodbye, and move on. Of course, truly strong friendships last no matter which circle you move on to, yet, there is still a need to feel the tension of departure and the unpleasant process of saying goodbye. Thinking back, I wonder how many goodbyes I have said....

The temporality of experience, it perhaps what makes it a human experience. Eternity is not meant for mankind. It is through transcience that we learn our place, and learnt to appreciate life for all its temporal, but always so magnificent gifts...

Have a good one guys!

101st Street. The Problem with Poetry

2005-11-18T01:22:00.000-05:00

Why doesn’t one read a poem? Because
there are words I cannot understand.
Why doesn’t one read a poem? Because
it takes too long to reach the end.
Well, this is a poem, and it’s done.

As a student of English Literature, I see the importance of poetry and the status of it as being quintessential literature. The common misconception people have with Literature students is that they then to spend hours after hours reading poetry, and therefore, every student of literature is able to understand every single useless unintelligible poem out there in bookstores. Well, there are some amongst us who are really good with poetry; they are like structure detectives, able to pick out the imagery, the iambic beat and all the conventions guarding poetry as a discipline. Not me. I am able to appreciate poetry, but I am just not very good at handling the crazy array of imageries or structures.

It is without a doubt that poetry is falling out of favor with the reading public; not only do most people not read poems anymore, but poetry as a genre, does not sell. The novel as an art form takes over poetry as being the more accessible genre for most of the reading public. None of you should feel bad about this, for even for students of literature, we tend to want to read novels more than poems, other than a very, very few selected ones among us who has a fetish for poetry. One of the main difficulties when it comes to the genre of poetry is that it is an art form that is highly individualized. The poet writes about what he feels, what he sees, and what he thinks. The fact that very individual sees a certain thing differently it is especially hard to understand what the poet is EXACTLY seeing (or feeling) at the exact time of the writing of the poem.

At the same time, poems remain as one of the most succinct forms of writing today; no form is able to convey so much information in a very little amount of words. All it needs is really careful and slow reading of each poem to see the images the poet offers in his poem. That’s what poetry demands of you: very slow reading of each line, let each line sink into your consciousness. Given the fast paced mode of life we have today, can we really afford the time?

I would not say that this is the end of poems, I would say that poetry as a discipline is reincarnated into the modern forms of song lyrics. Yes, lyrics owe its form to poetry; each line of a lyric to a song has in itself its own rhythm that matches the musical tune of the composer. And rappers are the only singers these days who sings in rhyming couplets. See? All these are structures of poetry in a new, acceptable modernized form! Now, how about giving poetry its proper due?

Boondocks

2005-11-06T10:33:00.000-05:00

Watch this. On Adult Swim. Period.

The Lion King.... In Kingdom Hearts II

2005-11-06T10:19:00.000-05:00

I practically suck at every game EXCEPT Squaresoft/Disney's Kingdom Hearts, which I tend to excel in. Why? I don't know. I was rather unhappy, for one thing, that Simba, my favorite character from my favorite Disney animated moive was featured only as a Summon. I mean for probably the BEST animation Disney ever made, to have a its main character to be nothing more than a subject one calls out by whim, isn't the flattering. Squaresoft later reveal that it had wanted to feature the Pride Lands as one of the worlds Sora and his gang travels to, but Disney was a little anal about Squaresoft's proposal.

In Kingdom Hearts II however, our wishes are fulfilled - yes, Pride Lands is one of the featured worlds Sora will travel to along with Mulan's world and the world of Pirates of the Carribean. This is wild. Attached are the forms Sora, Donald and Goofy will take so as not to upset the "world order" in which they are determined to maintain. Sora takes the form of a juvenile lion, very much like how he took the form of a Merman in Alantica in KH1. I find him really adorable! And funny at the same time! Simba looks gorgeous in the game, and he takes on a majestic form he truly deserves!

There is just so much to look forward for when the game releases on the PS2 platform in December 22nd, 2005. All you gamers out there prepare to blow it big on this game! I know I am.

100th Street. The Hundredth Page!!!

2005-11-03T07:42:00.000-05:00

It’s a tradition; a very informal one if I may add, for webcomics to celebrate their One Hundredth Page. Comics don’t do that and certainly not mangas (for each volume has nearly 230 pages or more). Why then is the hundredth page so important? To understand its importance one will first need to understand the nature of webcomics and Internet content as a whole. Time carries a whole different meaning in the Internet world; people hate spending too much time on one particular site, unless of course the content is entertaining enough for them to forget the time spent on viewing the site.

People generally has very little patience when it comes to Internet content. Four seconds is the limit one gives to convince oneself if the site is worth reading or viewing. Four seconds is also the same amount of time people take to read ONE page of a webcomic. Time becomes a extremely precious commodity in the virtual world precisely because there is so much to look or explore. In preference for other sites, people often completely ignore sites that don’t interest them enough. As a result, the creator eventually loses interest in maintaining the site, especially when no one’s looking anyway, and the site disappears, without a trace.

When books get thrown, scattered pages remain, when toys get thrown, plastic part get left behind. What does a webcomic leave behind? Nothing but free bytes for the web-host. You see, where do webcomics go when they die? As a virtual product, they leave nothing behind, except traces of memory for those who have seen it. The perishable quality of a site necessarily points at its own unworthiness, but it also points at the “unreal-ness” of it. It exists like it was never here. Hence the quest of each site, is not only to leave a notable impression on people, but also really to last as long as possible in the virtual world; a world that has no tangible importance.

For a webcomic, to reach 100 pages, is itself a kind of achievement; moving from 2-digits to 3-digits. Numbers attest to the longevity of the work, and demonstrates not only the will of creator, but ALSO the readers who made this progression possible. Everything in the Internet world is based on the concept of interactivity – both the creator and the reader share a mutually important relationship in keeping the site alive and running.

It is not easy for SKOOKUM! to reach its 100th page, and I know it got there through the efforts of not only the support from readers but more importantly and primarily, the support I got from my pal w’Note. I would NEVER be able to reach the 100th page this soon without his help, support and sacrifice he gave through the run of SKOOKUM! Yes, in fact he is the one who colored the page, and it gives me honor to dedicate the page to him. Thanks a million!

Merci beaucoup pour ton aimable aide, je l'apprecie reellement

The Onion: "Guy In Philosophy Class Needs to Shut The Fuck Up!"

2005-10-30T10:28:00.000-05:00

I love Philosophy.

I love it enough not to utterly hate it. It however, remains in my mind one the most DIFFICULT discipline to master in. I love getting into engaging arguments and all, but I am never far from it completely baffling me. Here, The Onion, America's top satiric papaer takes on the know-it-all brats in Philosophy class:

Guy In Philosophy Class Needs To Shut The Fuck Up
September 28, 2005 | Issue 41•39

HANOVER, NH—According to students enrolled in professor Michael Rosenthal's Philosophy 101 course at Dartmouth College, that guy, Darrin Floen, the one who sits at the back of the class and acts like he's Aristotle, seriously needs to shut the fuck up.

His fellow students describe Floen's frequent comments as eager, interested, and incredibly annoying.

"He thinks he knows about philosophy," freshman Duane Herring said. "But I hate his voice, and I hate the way he only half raises his hand, like he's so laid back. We're discussing ethics in a couple weeks, but I don't know if I can wait that long before deciding if it's morally wrong to pound his face in."

"Today he was going on and on about how Plato's cave shadows themselves represent the ideal foundation of Western philosophical thought," said freshman Julia Wald moments after class let out Monday. "I have no idea what Plato's ideal reality is, but I bet it doesn't include know-it-all little shits."

Wald added: "If he uses the word 'dialectical' one more time, I'm going to shove my copy of The Republic down his throat."

Although he demonstrated a familiarity with Peter Singer's view on famine relief during a discussion of John Locke's theory of property, Floen is reportedly unfamiliar with the theory of cramming it for a change and giving someone else a chance to speak.

"Just last week Professor Rosenthal was talking about Russell's Paradox, and that jackass starts going off: 'But what about Heraclitus' aphorism: Everything flows, nothing stands still?'" classmate James Luers said. "At first I was like, 'That's totally irrelevant,' but then I was like, 'Well, actually, it does apply to the nonstop flapping of your trap.'"

Among the 40 students who regularly attend Philosophy 101, the one who has endured the most suffering is freshman William Deekes.

"Some people know Darrin as just 'that guy in philosophy class who needs to shut the hell up,'" Deekes said. "I, however, also know him as 'the douche in African history who seriously needs to chill' and 'the a-hole in environmental sciences who could really use a girlfriend.'"

"I enrolled in this course because I was fascinated by the question of God," said sophomore Miriam Blank. "After spending six hours a week in the same room as that unbearable windbag, I think I have my answer. Life is as long as it is cruel."

The outspoken student has not gone unremarked by the course's professor.

"Mr. Floen is a valuable contributor to our in-class discussions," Rosenthal said. "His tendency to question and challenge everything before him captures the very essence of philosophy itself."

Rosenthal added: "Having said that, I do wish he would occasionally do me the valued service of shutting his damn cake hole."

99th Street, Prelude To Our First Hundred

2005-10-28T13:16:00.000-04:00

Folks,

Thanks so much for hanging with me all these while, as you can see SKOOKUM! is currently in its 99th page, and next week SKOOKUM! hits its first HUNDRED. Yes, It's 100. Well, I am definitely happy about it, and relieved too, that I am fianlly breaking the double-digit barrier and moving on the the 3-Digits arena. You'll get more of my contemplative rumblings next week.

This few weeks have not been the easiest weeks to pass, as not only did work got tougher, so did the competition. I mean it kinda sucked when some of your closest classmates are doing better than you are, and you're left wondering what did they do that you clearly didn't do... or what they didn't do, that apparently you did? I am lost to whether I am really stupider than some people in class, or is it just that they are capable of giving better answers in their assignments.

That's something problematic about school work that I cannot come to terms with, that is, does Passion for a subject mean anything at all? Passion for the subject means nothing at all, it seems.... I can feel so damn passionate about my assignment and in the end I didn'e score as well as the guy who clearly treats the assignment, as well, another plain assignment. They say in the absence of everything, passion will ensure that you will go on. How true is that??? I have seen truly passionate people at school doing not so well at all! How does the education system reward people with passion? Or does it in the end boils down to who can give the CORRECT answer, stripped of passion or love and purely mechanical and pretentious?

I don't know, after weeks after weeks of frustration and stress, I really don't know how to get out of this mental mess I got myself in....

Anyway, enough of my endless rant, it's that I am in a mood to let it all out on the computer screen. Do come back next week for more SKOOKUM!

Later!

How Do You Know If You Are In Middle Earth

2005-10-21T14:15:00.000-04:00

The Lord of the Rings is more than just a movie and a book, it's an ICON of our time. All ye Balrogs out there hold your step!

Scrapped Princess

2005-10-21T14:01:00.000-04:00

I used to be sceptical about watching Scrapped Princess, for I have this impression that it is probably about a whiny girl who has nothing better to do except getting herself tangled in love triangles and stupid situations that can be avoided even by a fool.

I was wrong the moment I watched the first episode. Well, yeah it is about this intensely whiny and spoilt girl, but more importantly it is about MAGIC. You see the protagonist, Pacifica Casoul is the Scrapped Princess, the one who will cast doom and poison to her world. It is later revealed that she is the only one who is able to resist the power and authority of the God Mauzel, who is also the One God in the Land. There are also other forces of Magic like the one possessed by Pacifica's foster sister Racquel, whose magic stems from the power of the God Browning, who lost the war against Mauzel and exists only as a magical entity.

It gets even more complicated from then on, where the audiences get introduced to Mauzel and her four angels known as Peacemakers. The central idea surrounding the anime is how justifiable is God in taking full control of the lives of Humans? Yes, this topic about free-agency had been dealt quite a lot of times; the message remains the same in the anime, but the presentation is refreshing and a pleasure to watch.

What I love most about the anime is the ending. It has one of the BEST endings in the entire anime world. It's not enigmatic like WOLF'S RAIN, too corny like HOUSHIN ENGI, too loaded like GASARAKI. It is a happy ending, and best thing of all, it attempts to answer all the questions it raises in the anime. The answering is not perfect, but it is a good and well-thought-through attempt.

I give this anime 9/10.

Harold Pinter Wins Nobel Prize for Literature 2005

2005-10-21T10:23:00.000-04:00

This was announced last week, and i still cannot get over the shock that Harold Pinter of all writers and playwrights won the Nobel Prize for Literature!!! Not to say I don't like his writing, in fact I do. There is something sparse yet magical about his plays, not to mention that it can be awfully perverse and strange. He is famous for his "pauses". His play goes something like this:

Boy: You know what?

(pause)

Boy: Do you?

(pause)

Girl: I don't like butter.

(pause)

Boy: What about butter? I asked you if you knew what I am thinking.

(pause)

Girl: Butter.

(pause)

Boy: (pause) Yeah.

Though I am OVER-SIMPLIFYING the complexity of Pinter's plays, this is essentially the shape of his plays. As you can see it is highly stylized and it looks like no other play in the world. In fact, I dare say his style is so unique that it is almost recognizable everywhere.

The thing is, It is just that there are so many authors who deserve to be honored with the Nobel prize for Literature, and I am not sure if Pinter got the prize because he is like, one of the last remaining great playwrights alive. Maybe I am reading too much into this but, when I compare J.M Coetzee, winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2003 and good ol'Pinter... the discrepency is just huge.

Not to mention that people will start buying really costly editions of his plays now....

Official Enya Album Cover

2005-10-17T10:02:00.000-04:00

The above is the Official Album cover for Enya's latest album Amarantine as released by Barnes & Noble. For those who have been keeping track of Enya's discography will instantly tell that this is probably Enya's most stripped-down, unusual and well, plain cover.

Yes, at first I didn't really like the cover, it looks too well, UN-ENYA to me. Then, I read the members' postings in UNITY (Official Forum on Enya) and I realize that well, if Enya is trying to do something entirely new this time round, something that she has not done before, I can say she succeeded very well indeed. I mean, she looks like some Goth Chick, with blood red skirts and black hair and a funky necklace. She is moving from New Age Priestess to New Age Goth-Punk Godess. So it can't be a bad thing.

Though.... I would REALL prefer something MORE New Age like in nature... then again, like the other forum members, I respect Enya's decision and taste!

98th Street (Every Webcomic Artist's Dream Studio)

2005-10-17T09:22:00.000-04:00

The above picture is by Stacy Michalcewicz, portraying how a webcomic artist's studio SHOULD look like. And I am in agreement with her. You see, unlike traditional manga artists, all they need is a ton of Screen paper, ink bottles and G-Pens. Every aspect of a webcomic artist's life has a direct co-relation to something electronic.

I am still doing the old way of first inking than scanning it into the computer. For the more professional webcomic artists, all they do is to sketch on paper and ink the entire page on the Wacom, and then color it. The results are far better, and somehow they get better loved by readers... well that's not always the case. Megatokyo INSISTS on using the age-old pencil and shading techinique, and somehow, there is something charming (not spectacular) about his work that appeals to his readers. That however, doesn't mean he is free from the enclacves of technology. Take away his Powermac G4, and you pretty much taken away his life's work - that's how it is with webcomic artists.

The one thing I truly like about Michalcewicz's work is the attempts she makes to put such a futuristic and positive light to the life of a webcomic/ Digital illustrator. Why shouldn't she? Sure these guys does things for FREE, but I mean after all, these people are attempting to use the Internet as an entirely new medium to purport a new way to read comics altogether. I cannot believe however, that there are some people I know who still see webcomics like something that HAS necessarily to do with sex, porn and hentai. We are moving on! That is not to say however that webcomics hate comic books or manga books - as I said before, most webcomics see the comic book as the final stage of its evolution, that it is something it would have to be one day, either at conventions or stores, if it truly wants to be recognized by the mainstream readers.

However, what cannot be denied is a certain versatility, a certain twisted wickedness that is able to be put across in a webcomic that somehow gets lost when put in print. Of course, in the World of the Web, everything is possible, the only limits you place on yourself is the limit of your imagination and a certain government who'll be glad to chew on your butt if you get too radical and leftist.

97th Street (Enya's NEW Album - Amarantine)

2005-10-11T14:08:00.000-04:00

Thanks to w'Note's help SKOOKUM! is back on schedule again; though it is no longer the two updates a week schedule, like we had before, it is really something to get like one fully colored page a week. In this week, like most readers of SKOOKUM! had kinda foresaw, the friction between Junko and Yoruki intensifies, and yes, you can be sure that neither party are holding back their bitterness and anger.

In happier news, my idol Enya is FINALLY releasing her 7th album - AMARANTINE. What you see is the exclusive cover of the album which is scheduled for release this November. It takes Enya 4 - 5 years to produce ONE album, most fans would have lost interest, but not Enya fans. We love her precisely because she takes so much care and love to produce each and every album. To hear the release of a new album from her is like a red letter day for all of us. The wait is ALWAYS worth it. And by the looks of the cover and the Persian inspired name, I believe I can expect a very different Enya this time round.

The letter you see is a letter from Roma Ryan, the lady responsible for writing most of the lyrics to Enya's songs, she KNOWS all of Enya's fans are waiting for this special moment, and she is especially nice to post a very special handwritten letter to all of us. I cannot express how happy I am to hear this news, for it has been a full year or so since I heard anything new from Enya; the last being her Japanese song "Sumiregusa". This is news indeed. I wish I could do something special on the SKOOKUM! site, to make it Fall themed (like Enya's album cover) to celebrate the release of her album. Or do a special art piece or something.... But I have a couple of killler papers I NEED to complete, which erases any possibility of me doing anything special....

The least I can do is this: ENYA RULES!!!!!!!!!! WOOOOOOH!

Have a good one everyone, and BUY her album!

96th Street (The w'Note Exclusive)

2005-10-06T07:36:00.000-04:00

For the first time in 3 weeks I made it for an update! This would not be at all possible without the help of my pal w'Note, who has decided to take over the coloring of SKOOKUM! till late November. With the help of w'Note, all ye readers out there can expect more timely updates - a good timing too, for we are expecting yet another conflict to arise.

To many a fight between Junko, Machiko and Yoruki is impossible... well till now, as I mentioned earlier, there is nothing more fragile than the fragility of goodness. It takes just a little prick, and all hell breaks loose. The same thing is about to happen to these three persons. I know I am giving away far too much here, but I thought it will be nice to let you guys into the increasingly complex world of SKOOKUM! Anyway, I am not giving everything away, if you know SKOOKUM! well enough something unexpected is bound to happen, and I am keeping mum on this one.

By the by, I received a call from my friend last week who told me that he had recommended SKOOKUM! to his girl. He told me that at first she was amazed and interested, all till she saw Joan and her gargantuan boobs. She told my friend that Joan is the most horrible character she had ever seen and it somehow affected her liking for SKOOKUM! I was not upset that she finds SKOOKUM! sick or anything, I was actually happy.

You see, it is better for me to receive a REACTION, yes, a reaction from people rather than to have no reaction at all. The whole point of an artistic work is to affect people, and get their reaction. The problem is Joan is SO POPULAR with the other readers.... so I guess you can't please everyone. But I am glad tht my friend's girlfriend did enjoy the first few pages of SKOOKUM! That for me, is enough.

Later guys!

95th Street

2005-09-29T13:39:00.000-04:00

Folks,

Before I start, I must say that it was definitely NOT easy for me to churn out this page. Well, in fact it was pretty difficult, considering that I still have a novel not read and that I am presenting on four texts to my professor tomorrow as well. The important thing is, that I do something for SKOOKUM! At least that is off my mind, for now. I don't want anyone to think that SKOOKUM! is stopping in any way, it will not stop till it reaches the end of the story.

The past two weeks had been particularly eventful, in a sense that it had robbed me of all time to catch a proper breather. Part of the delay of Page 95 was due to the Webcomic Telethon, which, thankfully has ended with a nice satisfying bang. There's so much I wanna share with you guys about, but time is working against me. All I can say now, is that, please don't lose hope in SKOOKUM! It may be slower now, but slowly and surely, the story will unfold, as it had already began unfolding. I will try my very very best to get a page up a week.

Till then. Thanks for reading - that itself is the greatest gift you have for me. Have a good one guys!

Ever Wondered about the Universe?

2005-09-25T04:59:00.000-04:00

The above photo is taken from the NASA site, and explanation for the photo goes:

Staring across interstellar space, the alluring Cat's Eye nebula lies three thousand light-years from Earth. A classic planetary nebula, the Cat's Eye (NGC 6543) represents a final, brief yet glorious phase in the life of a sun-like star. This nebula's dying central star may have produced the simple, outer pattern of dusty concentric shells by shrugging off outer layers in a series of regular convulsions. But the formation of the beautiful, more complex inner structures is not well understood. Seen so clearly in this sharp Hubble Space Telescope image, the truly cosmic eye is over half a light-year across. Of course, gazing into the Cat's Eye, astronomers may well be seeing the fate of our sun, destined to enter its own planetary nebula phase of evolution ... in about 5 billion years.

The one thing that came to my mind was that well, Earth's going to the pits in 5 billion years time. It's a long time. But what if they are wrong, and the sun goes down on us faster than our humble astronomers say it will - what will happen then? The Universe is so wide that it is so terribly hard to say what will happen next. So is this it? Human existence's all written in the stars?

But we don't think about it precisely because we feel so helpless against the unfathomable vastness of the Universe. However, somewhere in us, we KNOW that it is there, and we are at its mercy... well, most of the time, we have better things to think about. Leave the Unviverse to the Astronomers, Cosmologists and Physicist, and hopefully, they'll save up if the Universe do so much as hiccup on us.

Sigur Ros

2005-09-23T10:27:00.000-04:00

This week had been hell of a week for me, as I tried to finish my paper. Topics for essays are getting increasingly hard, and it is now so much harder to impress and score - hence I need to put even more effort to impress my professors enough for them to give me a, well, pleasant grade. As you may realize that had been NO update at all this week, the update will come soon, trust me.

I have been watching quite a lot of music videos lately via iTunes. Other than the fact that I do enjoy watching music videos, I am actually looking for new artistes to buy. Yes, nothing excites me more than to discover a new genre or a new artiste that I may have missed. The awesome thing is, that I watched this video called "Hide and Seek" by the UK band Imogne Heap. This song was the exact same song used in the climatic season finale of The O.C Season 2. Imogen Heap had belongs to a rather new (and odd) genre known as Electronic. I cannot exactly tell you what does Electronic sounds like, but as the name suggests, it combines traditional music to merciless electronic manipulations.

The result? A fascinating blend of music that is haunting, strange, uncomfortable, and yet, beautiful and melancholic. All at the same time. The beauty of the genre and of the song emerges once you get the "inner" tune in which the entire song builds itself around. No, it's not like Bjork, it in fact is an easier listen compared to Bjork's abstract vision.

Of course, I couldn't find the band after making a trip down to HMV.... Yeah, I'm consumed with disgust, but not all's lost as I found a NEW band - Sigur Ros.

Sigur Ros (pronounced si-ur ROSE) is an Icelandic band based in the UK, and I must say I have never heard anything like their music. They are classified under Rock, but there is something unearthly about their music, strange movements from piano to a sudden surge of strong voices mixed with the powerful strum of guitar. No this is not Electronic either. As Sigur Ros says, they want to share the music complexity of Icelandic music with the world, and yes, they sing in Icelandic. The good thing is however, they offer Icelandic-English translations on their website, and even a factual page on how to speak Icelandic. You should check it out here:

http://www.sigur-ros.co.uk/

Plus, of course FREE downloads of some of their most complex work; it is a great introduction to their work, though you really ought to star buying a copy or two of their albums. They do sound a lot like New Age, but they insist that they're Icelandic Rockers. Oh well, the debate of genres will never end.....

Webcomic Telethon II

2005-09-17T00:34:00.000-04:00

Yes, my submission was accepted by Blank Comics' Webcomic Telethon. What you see above is my submission, and for my faithful readers, they will immediately know that it is a re-working of one of my pages in the Archive. You can read this page along with the other 1,289 comics at:

http://www.webcomictelethon.com/d/1279.html

As of now, the webcomic telethon raised a total of $27,800. That's right, TWENTY-SEVEN THOUSAND. That's the spirit of the webcomics community, and all in the name of charity.

The donation drive should be ending any time soon, and if you have not made a five-dollar donation, maybe it's a good idea to do it now.

Later guys!

The Webcomic Telethon by Blank Label Comics

2005-09-13T10:31:00.000-04:00

For TWO days only The folks over at Blank Label Comics ( a webcomic group) have decided to run a charity drive with contributions from webcomics artists to raise as much money as possible for the American Red Cross in aid for the victims of Hurrican Katrina.

Webcomic artists contribute one page strips or comics in hope that it will motivate viewers and readers a like to make a minimum donation of $5. This is not the first time the webcomic community had stepped up to offer their help for a good cause.

The most memorable event occured no more than 4 months ago, when readers and creators of the webcomic community raised a startling total of $34,000 to save the debt stricken organisers of Connecticon. Let's hope the response will be as spectacular this time round.

As I type this a total of $2,300 have been raised over a period of 8 hours, to read the participating webcomics, or if you wish to make a $5 donation, please go to:

http://www.webcomictelethon.com/

Yes, readers, I TOO had contibuted a comic. HOWEVER, I was a little late in submitting it to BLC... so they may not have it up after all. That however, is not important, what's most important is that readers and viewers contribute generously for a good cause.

Later!

Michael Moore and the Katrina Aftermath

2005-09-11T08:35:00.000-04:00

I have a confession to make, that I have always been intrigued by the Far-Leftist Michael Moore. It is hard to find another Bush hater like him around. What's more amazing is that all his crazed rantings make sense; well, most of the time.

The devastation of New Orleans, had inspired Michael Moore to forward this letter to all the voters of President Bush. While I know it is NOT RIGHT for me as a neutral webcomic artist to sorta participate in ANY political propaganda, I just thought it might be useful to think over what Moore has written. After all, it is just an opinion.

The excerpt below is taken from a fellow blogger at http://barkbarkwoofwoof.blogspot.com

Michael Moore says:

On this, the fourth anniversary of 9/11, I'm just curious, how does it feel?

How does it feel to know that the man you elected to lead us after we were attacked went ahead and put a guy in charge of FEMA whose main qualification was that he ran horse shows?

That's right. Horse shows.

I really want to know -- and I ask you this in all sincerity and with all due respect -- how do you feel about the utter contempt Mr. Bush has shown for your safety? C'mon, give me just a moment of honesty. Don't start ranting on about how this disaster in New Orleans was the fault of one of the poorest cities in America. Put aside your hatred of Democrats and liberals and anyone with the last name of Clinton. Just look me in the eye and tell me our President did the right thing after 9/11 by naming a horse show runner as the top man to protect us in case of an emergency or catastrophe.

I want you to put aside your self-affixed label of Republican/conservative/born-again/capitalist/ditto-head/right-winger and just talk to me as an American, on the common ground we both call America.

Are we safer now than before 9/11? When you learn that behind the horse show runner, the #2 and #3 men in charge of emergency preparedness have zero experience in emergency preparedness, do you think we are safer?

When you look at Michael Chertoff, the head of Homeland Security, a man with little experience in national security, do you feel secure?

When men who never served in the military and have never seen young men die in battle send our young people off to war, do you think they know how to conduct a war? Do they know what it means to have your legs blown off for a threat that was never there?

Do you really believe that turning over important government services to private corporations has resulted in better services for the people?

Why do you hate our federal government so much? You have voted for politicians for the past 25 years whose main goal has been to de-fund the federal government. Do you think that cutting federal programs like FEMA and the Army Corps of Engineers has been good or bad for America? GOOD OR BAD?

With the nation's debt at an all-time high, do you think tax cuts for the rich are still a good idea? Will you give yours back so hundreds of thousands of homeless in New Orleans can have a home?

Do you believe in Jesus? Really? Didn't he say that we would be judged by how we treat the least among us? Hurricane Katrina came in and blew off the facade that we were a nation with liberty and justice for all. The wind howled and the water rose and what was revealed was that the poor in America shall be left to suffer and die while the President of the United States fiddles and tells them to eat cake.

That's not a joke. The day the hurricane hit and the levees broke, Mr. Bush, John McCain and their rich pals were stuffing themselves with cake. A full day after the levees broke (the same levees whose repair funding he had cut), Mr. Bush was playing a guitar some country singer gave him. All this while New Orleans sank under water.

It would take ANOTHER day before the President would do a flyover in his jumbo jet, peeking out the widow at the misery 2500 feet below him as he flew back to his second home in DC. It would then be TWO MORE DAYS before a trickle of federal aid and troops would arrive. This was no seven minutes in a sitting trance while children read "My Pet Goat" to him. This was FOUR DAYS of doing nothing other than saying "Brownie (FEMA director Michael Brown), you're doing a heck of a job!"

My Republican friends, does it bother you that we are the laughing stock of the world?

And on this sacred day of remembrance, do you think we honor or shame those who died on 9/11/01? If we learned nothing and find ourselves today every bit as vulnerable and unprepared as we were on that bright sunny morning, then did the 3,000 die in vain?

Our vulnerability is not just about dealing with terrorists or natural disasters. We are vulnerable and unsafe because we allow one in eight Americans to live in horrible poverty. We accept an education system where one in six children never graduate and most of those who do can't string a coherent sentence together. The middle class can't pay the mortgage or the hospital bills and 45 million have no health coverage whatsoever.

Are we safe? Do you really feel safe? You can only move so far out and build so many gated communities before the fruit of what you've sown will be crashing through your walls and demanding retribution. Do you really want to wait until that happens? Or is it your hope that if they are left alone long enough to soil themselves and shoot themselves and drown in the filth that fills the street that maybe the problem will somehow go away?

I know you know better. You gave the country and the world a man who wasn't up for the job and all he does is hire people who aren't up for the job. You did this to us, to the world, to the people of New Orleans. Please fix it. Bush is yours. And you know, for our peace and safety and security, this has to be fixed. What do you propose?

I have an idea, and it isn't a horse show.

Yours,
Michael Moore

New Orleans after Katrina

2005-09-09T09:38:00.000-04:00

Tennessee Williams once wrote, "....New Orleans.... is poor but unlike... other American cities, it has a raffish charm. The sky ... is a peculiarly white tender blue, almost turquoise, which invests the scene with a kind of lyricism and gracefully attenuates the atmosphere of decay."

The above quote is taken from Tennessee Williams' play, A Streetcar Named Desire, which is set in New Orleans. Williams is attracted to the amazing charm the town possesses, but is also aware of the sense of decay that is present in under the facade of the town. A town of diversity and of soul. It's a place that can be deeply troubling for some, but that doesn't make it less a home for the spirited residents of New Orleans.

New Orleans have had its toll in of tough times in the past years, but that does not make it a less beautiful town; in fact it serves up some of the best food in the United States. This September, Hurrican Katrina took it apart, and had in drowned underwater.

Save New Orleans, save the people, save the culture. Please donate to the American Red Cross.

94th Street (persistence)

2005-09-06T05:13:00.000-04:00

September 6th, 2005

It is time at last for another update! If you must know I had sacrificed an entire night’s sleep just do get all the proper coloring done. Things have been going rather tough lately, but I guess it will be all right as long as you guys enjoy the page. That, I think is what gives me the most satisfaction, and that too is what made me carry on.

I was having a conversation with a friend the other day as we were in discussion over our texts in the student lounge. He asked me if I am still carrying on my webcomic drawing. Of course I am (as all you guys can clearly see). He proceeded asking if it is wise at all to carry on drawing despite the fact that the semester had grown so much tougher. I was immediately on the defensive, but I chose to look at this argument in two ways. I replied that, even though I am drawing, I am drawing much less, and I will never compromise my schoolwork for my webcomic; even though both are objects of my passion.

My friend’s enquiry put me into a lot of doubt. For he has a point that the time used up for SKOOKUM! could definitely be used to read or re-read all the other readings I have for class. I may even read ahead and hence gain a better understanding of the lesson. Why do I have to struggle weekly just to balance both things? My friend is putting forth a clever suggestion that in sacrificing webcomic drawing, I may ultimately do much better for the Honors degree and gain a better chance to get into a better Graduate School.

Sounds logical.

The question remains then, why did I choose to continue on with SKOOKUM!? I understood the rationale of my friend’s proposition, and I think it is logical that I give SKOOKUM a time-out. However, I feel that I have a better reason why I should keep SKOOKUM! going. You see, I don’t want to graduate like 1000 other students with just a degree with Honors; and all that you got out of school life, summed up by the neat scroll in your hands. There is so much more to college life, and I don’t think a sterling degree is everything. I want to know that other than what I learnt, I have created something in the midst. I have the chance to create and to EXPRESS something, I have called my own, and best of all, I have had the opportunity to share it with the world. That is the kind of memory I wish to have, together with the neat scroll in my hands.

College is a time of opportunity, and if one does nothing but bury oneself in books and nothing else, one is basically losing the one important chance in life to find out what one is good at other than writing scholarly reports, and boasting to others. If the exploration is not done now, there may no longer be a better time.

Later guys!

Having a go at Islamic Culture

2005-09-03T13:28:00.000-04:00

Ok, the truth is out, I am in the Islamic Culture studies class, partly for the university's requirement that I take a culture study of some sort. I was contemplating between Indian and Islamic studies, and finally went with the latter. There were several reasons in play here, but for now, let's just say that the conditions were perfect for me to take Islamic cultural studies.

To take Islamic studies is to put suddenly put in a awkward and terrible light. My own mother almost fainted when she heard about my decision - thinking I have suddenly decided to become a radical and start gunning people down. It is HARD not to associate Islam with terrorism, and that is what I am trying not to do. I want to believe that I still have a liberal mind to accept that everything, including Islam has two faces and two sides, that not all Muslims are terrorists.

As part of the Islamic class, we were all invited to have dinner at a renowned Arabic cafe, where Arabic music would be played live. Of course, we will have to write a paper on our thoughts about the food, music and so on, but I am always open to new expereinces, and this IS my first time entering an Arabic cafe.

We were ushered to the second level of the café, upon our arrival at the café by the waiters. What greeted us was a room soaked in hues of red, there were circular tables laid and there the perimeter of the room was filled with cushions. These are not the normal kinds of cushions for they come with backings and mobile armrests. Arabic music was playing continuously at the background, which, if anything really helped enhanced the mood of the room. The beauty of this room is that upon entry and settling upon on the many comfortable cushions, one feels transported, transported into a culture of the exotic.

It was not long when dinnertime was ready, and the spread was at once familiar and unfamiliar. For there was a particular dish that looked suspiciously like tuna, but turned out to taste otherwise. There were several other foods that looked familiar, but at the same time I had a hard time exactly making out what the foods were. The desert, which came in the form of a rectangular cake with a nut in the center, got to be my favorite for the night. Sure it was really sweet, but the sweetness does not cause upset to either the tongue or the stomach, in fact it was a kind of lingering sweetness that has a very slight hint of jasmine in it. No, I do not what it is called, but I do know I did have quite a number of that.

I always have had an impression that Arabic music is somewhat mystical, profound and, well, quiet and calming. This is the first time I have seen a live performance by a group of Arabic musicians, and they showed an extremely energetic and spirited side of Arabic music. I was surprised to see the violin and a synthesizer being used, and I think this is partly due to my own stereotype of what instruments Arabic music utilizes. In addition to the fast booming music, there were four male dancers who danced to the pounding rhythm of the music. I cannot tell the significance of the dance movements in relation to the music and the lyrics, and it would have been awesome if I did; for apparently there is something going on between the dancers, as if they are re-enacting a story or a festival.

There best was yet to come when we were treated to have a try at shisha, a traditional Middle-Eastern smoking contraption, also known as Hookahs in the United States. Unlike cigarettes, shishas have a pleasant fruity fragrance to it; that which I can never really make out the reasons why. I was never a smoker, but I was tempted to have a go at it. Being utterly inexperienced, my first draw of smoke ended in an embarrassing fit of cough. That, however, did not deter me from having further tries. The smoke made my throat feel coarse and dry after each draw, but I enjoy having the fruity aftertaste in my mouth. I agree with my friends that shisha smoking is great way to bond with people. Four or more people sharing a shisha pipe and challenging one another to exhale as much smoke as possible after each draw from the shisha pipe. This is definitely a great way to spend this evening, and any evening. The surprising thing is a wave of calm seems to sweep over me with the as I smoked. I was unsure if this is the effect of the shisha or is my brain just playing its usual mind games with me.

The evening had been truly and utterly awesome. I have learnt and seen so much in one single day. I have tasted Arabic food, seen and heard Arabic music and had a chance to inhale shisha. What can I say other than that it had been an intense ride for all of my senses.

Wordsworth...

2005-09-01T09:56:00.000-04:00

There will be times when I will go online and read some great poetry, and one of my favorite poets online is Willliam Wordsworth. If you don't know (and I guess you won't know) Wordsworth is a Romantic Poet, and by Romantic, I DO NOT mean he is all lovey-doey. In English Literature, Romantic and Romanticism is a characteristic period in the various form and movement of English Literature.

Here is one of my favorite sonnets:

CALM is all nature as a resting wheel.
The kine are couched upon the dewy grass;
The horse alone, seen dimly as I pass,
Is cropping audibly his later meal:
Dark is the ground; a slumber seems to steal
O'er vale, and mountain, and the starless sky.
Now, in this blank of things, a harmony,
Home-felt, and home-created, comes to heal
That grief for which the senses still supply
Fresh food; for only then, when memory
Is hushed, am I at rest. My Friends! restrain
Those busy cares that would allay my pain;
Oh! leave me to myself, nor let me feel
The officious touch that makes me droop again.

In simple terms, I think you can tell that Wordsworth is reflecting on the idea of calmness in pastoral England, considering that he lived in Lake Country as he wrote the bulk of his poems, the near idyllic image of clam nature, or horses grazing, must have been a common sight.

What strikes me is that he is able to translate the "calmness" he feels onto paper, and I feel calm even I read his sonnet. That feeling roused principly in the choice of words like "dimly", "blank" and "heal". All these words associated with level of comfort, of emptiness minus the complications and something that ultimately seeks to heal, to dress and recover, possibly the soul.

Beautiful, beautiful poem

Yes, I am still here.

2005-08-31T20:36:00.000-04:00

I am absolutely sorry about the silence this whole week, and no, I'm not gone or kidnapped or anything, and to reasssure you, I have decided to put a posting.

It's just that I have been so terribly busy this whole week! With presentations and recitations and so on! Currently, I am doing a course on Modern Japanese and Asian Literature. I realize it is not easy understanding these texts since they are coming from a very different cultural perspective. At times these texts are extremely anti-Westerm, so models of Western literary citicism doesn't really apple to them at all.... yes, the struggle continues!

Page 94 is almost ready, and all I really need to do is to color it up and it will be ready for upload!

In the meantime, all you, be nice and take care

Later!

93rd Street (Tuesday and Friday)

2005-08-20T10:50:00.000-04:00

All of you must know by now that SKOOKUM! will be updated twice a week, specifically on Tuesday and Friday. At the same time regular readers will also have realised that for the past month or so, that had not been the case, meaning, SKOOKUM! had only been updated ONCE a week, either on a Tuesday or a Friday. I have been meaning to apologise and appeal to your higher reason to understand that I do have quite a lot of things at hand that required my attention.

Now, being in my senior year, I do find the task of updating twice a week extremely taxing on me. Reason being that college has just become so much tougher due to the fact that I am now in my senior year. I have long heard about the horrors of being in the senior year; that people tend to lose every ounce of free time they have to the unreasonable amounts of readings that is to be done. While, that is certainly an exaggeration, what is true is that I DO have tons of readings to do, not to mention tons of essays to write.

I intend to take a week off SKOOKUM! while to see to the fact that I finish all of my readings as well as read ahead so to ensure that I get to dedicate more time in the completion of a page. Well, actually, I already did… noting that there was no update last week! Well, I have to take another week off, just to ensure that I am on firm ground with my classes and research. And I will try to promise that Page 94 will come up better and more enjoyable, given that I now have more time to work on it. Well, I know it is never a nice thing to keep readers waiting a week later just for one page. It is a bad idea and most readers will tend to be put off rather than impressed by it. Which makes me feel that the chief antithesis of webcomics is College itself! Then again, maybe it is just me, for I can’t decide which is more important to me: My Work or My Education?

By the by, I do hope you enjoy Page 93! As you can see, I have grown more adjusted to the tablet, I am not entirely fluent at using it yet, but I sorta figured out how to use it to create better lightings and effects. For once I did enjoy the entire coloring process! I can’t wait to experiment with other coloring techniques that I hope will sit comfortably with all of you! The sad thing or course is that Yoruki has gone anti-social yet again!

Later guys!

iPod

2005-08-19T18:37:00.000-04:00

I have gotten the precious precious precious iPod nearly two weeks ago, but it took me a while to find the image above, which is taken from the website of a very talented freelance Japanese illustrator who likes to be known as Miyahan. He is the owner of Miyahan's Web World, which consists exclusively the games he wrote, pictures he taken and more importantly, the illustration he produces. He produces some really really good works, which includes Anime illustrations so good that they are no different from those produced by the animation studios. Check out his Web World at:

www.miyahan.com

Incidentally, I am using his wallpaper (not this, but another one!) as my Desktop picture, seriously, it looks good. The catch is however, that the entire site's in Japanese, so some knowledge of the language would be more than useful.

But I digress...

Back to my iPod... well, what can I say except I LOVE IT SO MUCH! There's something about the iPod that enchances to quality of the songs it plays. As if it contains some intelligent chip that recognises if a song requires more bass or tremble, and adjusts accordingly. I may seem to be exaggerating, but I am not! I feel for some reason, songs tend to sound better and more importantly, clearer when played through an iPod compared to a discman.

Although I am an Apple User/Fanatic/Supporter, I was thinking that maybe the other MP3 players have the same characteristics as well, namely, the ability to enahnce to listening pleasure of the user. It is certainly a must for me these days. Then again, it is scary that we are attaching so much emotions to inanimate electronic things! As I believe, we may really be entering the age of Posthumanism, where we start assigning identities to entitites.... We treat our personal computers like our closest kin, and we cannot pass each day without having some form of contact with an electronic device.

The electronic device has therefore assumed the role of a human being, and in fact, it has become capable of providing more joy than a human being (at times). Posthumanism is not a myth, it is already here; and I think we should embrace it, especially when we have advanced to a stage that it is no longer impossible to deny the integral part computers and devices have in our puny human lives.

Torn Between Duties

2005-08-16T11:40:00.000-04:00

Page 93 has been penciled and inked, what's left is the tedious part of coloring. There are times when it is exciting to balance college and web-manga drawing, but there are times when it can reach a unmanageable level. Well, I think it just did. College in Senoir Year is unlike any other year. It seems that every other guy/girl is dying to get into Graduate School, and they are trying all kinds of ways to make sure they are the star undergrad of the year. Some people even resort to personal attacks, they try to put you down, so you will forever live in the illusion that they are better than you are. Those Fuckers...

In happier news, I have been (as usual) surfing the Internet a bit, and I stumbled upon this webcomic called "FAIL" by Nate Wootters. The drawing's average, but this guy has an unusal talent for humor. Check it out here:

http://fail.keenspace.com/

The photo above is taken from his site, where he pokes fun at the description behind a packet of dog food. I liked it so much that I have decided to put it here; so as to give you a taste of his humor.

That's all for now... back to my readings.

SquirrelWorks: BattleGate

2005-08-14T12:36:00.000-04:00

The webcomic community is increasing everyday, with up to 5,000 webcomics and counting, it is probably not an exaggearation that webcomic reading and creation is fast becoming a leading form of entertainment in the Internet Age. I managed to stumble on this truly awesome comic by Chirs Moujaes called "BattleGate".

What is so special about BattleGate is that it gives the readers the impression that the entire comic has been drawn and rendered in color pencil. For some reason, there is something special about traditional media that gives that special "feel". It is exactly this "feel" that made me love Battle Gate so much.

In addition, he has a style of drawing like no other, a hybrid between American strokes and Japanese style. It is simply beautiful! I know I should sorta tell you what it is about, but I really want you to go and check it out yourself. Do so at:

http://www.squirrelworks.com/zones/battlegate/current.html

Good art; Great Story. Whatcha waitin' for?!

Onmyo Taisenki

2005-08-14T08:06:00.000-04:00

I have been watching this new anime called "Onmyo Taisenki", which means "The Great Battle of Darkness and Light". I saw some pretty cool character designs with awesome coloring, so I thought this gotta be one of the "A" Grade anime to be released of late.

It turns out that behind the wonderful character design and the more than awesome coloration and 3-D graphics is but an overused and recycled storyline. This anime has its roots in Pokemon and Digimon; it is all about summoning monsters from weird hand held machines (Sounds familiar?) And the best thing of all, these monsters gotta keep fighting to gain experience points... no they won't evolve or something, but both the monsters AND their masters will gain new skills.

The only thing saving this anime is that animation is really cool, and the monster Byakko looks really cool! Another thing, the monsters are based on ancient Japanese monsters. What made me feel queasy is that the protagonist, like the one in "Sonic X" is some freakin' washed-up geek with a character weaker than Barbie. That is just plain irritating!

For those who like loud music, bright colors, awesome action, brainless flicks in the tradition of Pokemon/Digimon this is the anime for you!

92nd Street (New Tablet. New Start?)

2005-08-09T16:24:00.000-04:00

Folks,

I have gotten myself a Tablet. A WACOM Graphire 3 Tablet.

Well, it is something that I should have gotten before I started SKOOKUM!, so I am 92 pages late before I realise that I really need a tablet to do more effective coloring. Price of the tablet was a major concern, it is still a major concern, which was why I got the Graphire 3 and NOT the famous WACOM Intuos Tablet.... That would be THE tablet to get, but it comes with a hefty price that I am not sure will sit happily with my funds! Well, it is a start.

Contrary to believe, the WACOM tablet ISN'T the easiest thing in the world to use! In fact it took me a full hour to get used to how the entire thing works. It is so sensitve and has 512 points of pressure - I think it is more of a hassle than a help to a novice for I find myself clicking on things I certainly did not intend to click. I think the Photoshop took a while to get used to it as well. However, once I gotten over the initial discomfort, it became a joy to use, and for once coloring is FUN. The Pen thankfully comes with left/right click function, so it was easier for me to change brushes, which is crucial when it comes to coloring with the tablet.

As Professor Robbie Goh noted, the devil is always in the details. It is the details and the attention paid to it that makes a difference in so many things in the world! The Tablet, of course is used to accentuate the details in a piece of work, and it is hte details of the manga that I am trying to perfect.

I must admit, that despite the use of the Tablet, the page still doesn't look impressive enough, for I have only started to explore the ways in which I can use the Tablet to create more amazing and unsual effects. For now I am still kinda stuck with cel-shading, and I am hoping to do MORE than just that with the WACOM tablet; which will mean that future updates will be delayed.... I know this may be upsetting, but I think a continual improvement is a must. I hope all you guys understand.

Later guys! Thanks for reading!

Disney's Tarzan 2

2005-08-07T11:59:00.000-04:00

Disney's Tarzan, released way back in 1999, had always been one of my favorite Disney animated movies, and I was actually surprised that it took Disney this long to release Tarzan 2, which details the adventures of Young Tarzan, and explains how he became the man he eventually became. I mean this is a good idea, people always like to know a little more about their favorite characters and how they came to be the way they are.

I had been reading online reviews and most of the reviews were good, so I thought it couldn't hurt to try it, after all, Young Tarzan DOES look really cute on the cover, and for once Disney knows how to cash in on the cute, young characters it has in its collection of works. I was however still hesitant on buying it, for I could have bought other really cool and exciting looking anime for the same price! I was seriously having second thoughts of purchasing the DVD.... but I did it in the end. I felt I needed to renew my faith in Disney once more - after all I grew up with Disney.

Well...

For starters it is a good straight-to-video movie, not the best, but it is a very digestable piece of animation, the art's great and I can see the tremendous amount of effort the animators put in in coloring every vine and tree that it looks as good as the 1999 original. The storyline however, is kiddy at its best, and it is so apparent which age group Disney is targetting at. No one older than 15 should watch this; Unless you're a great Disney fan like me who appreciates every artistic detail in Disney animations... Of course, there are the usual lessons in most Disney animation, and for this one, the message is, blending in isn't always the best way out.

Sometimes instead of blending in and do what others do may not always give one the best result. Tarzan tried so hard to be an ape, but he is not, so instead of keep trying to be an ape, he learn that he can still pass off as an ape, but he has to do things that is extremely un-ape like. And in doing that he stands out and fares better than all the other apes.

Well, so long for that important lesson.... in the end, well, I feel just nice and comfy, just not blown away like the other Disney movies would do to me.

BUZZCOMIX'S BACK!

2005-08-02T10:18:00.000-04:00

The once magnificent and influential Buzzcomix maakes a comeback after an absence of over 3 months.... It used to be the top of its game till its disappearence that many webcomics (SKOOKUM! included) left the system and signed up under other Webcomics voting sites like Top WebComics and Webcomics List.

This time Buzzcomix returns with a Version 3.0, will it reclaim the title to its former glory as THE voting site webcomics desire to be on? Or have they simply, moved on?

Only Time will tell. Check it out at www.buzzcomix.net, and don't forget to VOTE for SKOOKUM!

Below, is the opening note by the Buzz Boss:

Welcome to buzzComix v3.0!

BuzzComix has been through a lot in the past 3 months - and no one knows it better than you guys. I've had some frustrating times these last couple months, but I can only imagine how frustrating it must have been for you guys - with little explanation and so much downtime. There was actually a week where I was very close to just throwing up my hands and closing shop.

But you guys were there to encourage me and keep me going. I'd specifically like to thank Fuitad and Threeboy for encouraging me to continue. It was with the buzzComix community in mind that I endevoured to code buzzComix v3.0.

It was clear the old system wasn't working. My old host would shut down the site without any warning and had very little information on how to fix the site. Then all the databases of the site disappeared with no explanation. It was clear that the host wasn't going to work out in the long run.

When I made the decision to switch to a new host and code version 3.0 (instead of just give up), a number of things were clear. The site would have to be 100% rewritten. BuzzComix was the first website I'd ever designed and the coding showed it. The backend was very amatuerly written and poorly designed. It was also clear that I had to automate EVERYTHING. When somebody (namely me) had to manually reset the list, or add ads to the ad cycle, or reset passwords - I would inevitable get lazy and things would get left undone. I had to make sure everything would be automated in version 3.0 to ensure that the site's quality never wavered.

Lastly it was clear I would have to overcome a major hurdle to get webcomics to return to buzzComix is the numbers they used to. Many had justifiably gotten very frustrated with the spotty service and left buzzComix for lower caliber toplists. I decided to win back the audience in three ways. First, only the best quality. When I re-wrote the page I made sure the code was 100% perfect. Every feature was watertight and rock-steady. I also realized I would need to compensate my users for the spotty service and nearly 3 months of downtime. So I gave everyone 3 months of Premium Membership. Thirdly I wrote in a number of new, cutting-edge features. This is not the first time buzzComix has had to face some discouraging odds - but everytime it has, it has overcome by being the best and offering features no other toplist had. This is why I added groups, automated advertising, gift certificates, enhanced avatars, improved FAQ, group searching, jumped Fav*s, and buzzBux.

So all I ask is that you give buzzComix another chance. This is literally a fresh-start for buzzComix and I hope you all come along for the ride.

EDIT: Obviously there will be a few kinks to be worked out these first few days, so bare with us

91st Street (Yeah, I'm Late)

2005-07-30T16:29:00.000-04:00

I am glad I manage to get Spidey to convey how surprised he is to see an update on SKOOKUM! (you gotta go to the blog in order to see the picture!) Yes, I am terribly late for this update, needless to say, college's responsible, but I shall not dwell on that any longer. The fact remains, better late than never. Heh.

In case you're wondering what's all these numbered streets is about, I have decided to title every update from now on after a street in Manhattan, New York, starting from 90th Street and so on, as a dedication to the city, which lost the Olympic bid for 2012... but that doesn't make it a less remarkable city. Hope this translates across well.

Well then, this is the confession page. We all have one time or the other, confessed our feelings to the one we love or like, the moment when the words spill out can be extremely tense and uncomfortable. When the words finally come out, waiting for the response is even more excruciating, for what comes after is the truly decisive moment that dictates whether we will get the happiness we sought. There is a lot of stake in one single confession, because we do have a lot to lose if anything doesn't work out.

Now that Yoruki has confessed to Chiriko, a lot of things will be thrown off balance. Will Joan give up on Yoruki or will she continue to contest with Chiriko over Yoruki. The greater problem is that Chiriko has NEVER explicitly shown that she likes Yoruki at all. How will she react in front of her friends? We must consider that like most confessions, a lot of people's feelings and expectations are at stake. In fact, people usually don't end up as good friends once a confession is made and refused. This cirumstance do remind me a little of my own confession, and as you all have guessed, it didn't end well....

Look out for the next page when you'll get to see the result of the confession!

College, Late Updates and Ryu Fujisaki

2005-07-27T10:05:00.000-04:00

I am all drained from my Summer School, where I finished in six days what normal students finish in four months, it is intense, but I learnt a lot of skills and best of all gotta know some really great people - this gotta be one of the best classes I had so far. Sometimes, a good lecturer and a nice bunch of classmates are all you need to make everything look wonderful. I had to get up at 5am everyday and I have lessons from 8:30am to 5:30pm, but so what? I am happy!

The bad thing is that the SKOOKUM! schedule is really screwd due to my Summer School and I know my readers are very very unhappy indeed, especially with the fact that the slowness problem has not entirely been solved. An update is coming really soon, I am getting down to penciling the page! Nothing's more frightful than a Blank Page!

In other news, One of my favorite Manga-Ka Ryu Fujisaki has finally released Vol 4. of his HIT manga "Waq Waq", I AM HIS GREATEST fan, and he has one of the most distinct styles in the Japanese manga industry and he is always someone I look up to and wish so much to emulate. Due to has recent gigantic successes, he is releasing the Commemorative Edition of his masterpiece "Houshin Engi" released back in 1996. The new Edition features never before seen pictures and paintings in a stunning A5 size.

Go get it everyone!

Ueki no Hou Soku

2005-07-22T10:26:00.000-04:00

Finally, an anime storyline that is close to SKOOKUM! Set also in a school context, Ueki Kousuke has the amazing ability to transform rubbish into Wood! His friend Sano Seiichiro has the ability to change paper into Metal and his rival, Rober Hydn has the ability to change thoughts into reality! And like most animes, they are stuck in a bout where they pit their abilities against one another.

Below's the synopsis in Japanese:

火野国中学に通う1年C組・植木耕助は、表向きは担任の先生、実は神候補のひとり・小林先生（通称　コバセン）から“ゴミと認識した物を木に変える能力”を与えられる。
　ある日の試験中、たまたま植木の能力を目のあたりにした同級生の森あいは、植木に怪訝な目を向けて正体を暴こうとつけまわす。しかし植木の自己犠牲的な“正義”の行動を目にしていくことにより、いつの間にか植木の理解者になっていく。
　そして能力を与えられた植木は、小林先生を含む１００人の神候補たちによる、“中学生に世界を託して、どんな法則を持つ奴が世界を変えるのか見るバトル！”に巻き込まれていく。そのバトルで優勝した中学生には、手にした者が好きな才能を書き込める“空白の才”が与えられる。
　この奇想天外のバトルには、“ゴミを木に変える能力”を持つ植木の他にも、“理想を現実に変える能力”“手ぬぐいを鉄に変える能力”“ビーズを爆弾に変える能力”といった驚異の能力を持った難敵、強敵がぞろぞろエントリーしてくる。そして“空白の才”が悪の手に渡るのを阻止しようとする植木の前に立ちはだかる。果たして植木は世界一の中学生になることができるのか・・・!?

Guidelines for Entering the American Comics Industry

2005-07-21T08:34:00.000-04:00

I managed to sutmble upon the official site in which Dark Horse Comics publish their standard guidelines for submission of work to the company. I don't do American comics at all, but I have been tempted to try, just that I am such a "manga-person" that I think the switch to American Comis style would be a little demanding for me. Nevertheless, I did learn quite a lot from the publishing guidelines, which I believe can be applicable to any other publishing house.

As a favor to all of you I have decided to lift the entire page, and place it on the blog, if you take it PLEASE acknowledge that Dark Horse Comics is the original owner of thie written piece of information.

Here we go:

Welcome to the Dark Horse Comics Submissions Guidelines. This page will explain what you must include when submitting your materials to Dark Horse Comics. If you read through this document and still have questions, please visit the Submissions portion of our Frequently Asked Questions.

Dark Horse Submissions Policy

In the past, Dark Horse has asked submitters to include a self-addressed, stamped envelope with their submissions so that the submission — along with a response form — could be returned to the author. Effective July 1, 2002, Dark Horse will no longer request SASEs, and will cease sending written responses for unsolicited submissions. From the aforementioned date onward, creators should only expect to hear from a Dark Horse editor regarding their submission if an editor wishes to hire them for work. Submissions will no longer be returned to the sender.

Dark Horse still welcomes your submissions, and all submissions will still be reviewed, just as they always have been. The only difference is that submissions can no longer be mailed back to the sender. The reason for this change in policy has primarily to do with the growing number of submissions; Dark Horse simply does not have the resources necessary to respond individually to each submission. Submitted samples are often kept on file for future reference, but only those creators for whom Dark Horse has immediate work will be contacted.

We appreciate how difficult it can be to break into the comics business or to get the attention of an editor, but an editor’s primary duty is to maintain his or her portion of the company’s publishing schedule, and that job leaves little time to review submissions. We, as a company, are still interested in seeing work from new creators, but we don’t want to promise a response which we may not have the resources to send.

PROPOSAL AND SCRIPTING GUIDELINES FOR WRITERS

Aspiring writers, do you need some guidance on how to format your script? Download our script format guidelines in Microsoft Word format or PDF format.

To submit a written proposal to Dark Horse, the following material must be included:

1. SIGNED SUBMISSION AGREEMENT
Dark Horse has the highest regard for creators and for the ownership of original properties, and this agreement should in no way be misconstrued as license for Dark Horse to appropriate your creations. This agreement protects Dark Horse from any liabilities involving coincidental similarities to works-in-progress or other submissions. It is only required for original stories, scripts, series proposals, and characters. You do not need to sign it if you are only sending art samples or previously published script samples. Story proposals or scripts arriving without a signed agreement will be destroyed without review. Obtain a copy of the agreement here. A new agreement must be submitted with each new idea, proposal, script, etc. and must be signed by all involved creators and copyright holders.Please note that Dark Horse does not review unsolicited scripts, story ideas, or proposals pertaining to properties currently published by Dark Horse or any property not owned by the submitter. Such material will be destroyed without review.

View or download a copy of the Submissions Agreement

2. COMPLETE SYNOPSIS
Succinctly tell the entire story—beginning, middle, and end, omitting unnecessary details. A short-story synopsis should be no longer than a page. A synopsis for a series (limited or ongoing) or graphic novel should be about two to five pages. Indicate issue breaks where applicable. A synopsis should say exactly what happens and how, noting plot and character specifics. Do not leave the resolution of the story in question. This should be the most straightforward presentation of the story as possible, as the synopsis is often the make-or-break point for a proposal.

3. FULL SCRIPT
You must include a full script for any short story or single-issue submission, or the first eight pages of the first issue of any series, unless you are a published professional, in which case, you should include samples of previously published work. You can download a sample script on which to base your script format on here. If the work is already completed—story, art, and lettering—copies of this may be sent instead. When preparing to send your story, consider the following questions: Are my characters believable and consistent throughout the script? Is the plot clear and easy to follow? Is all the necessary information—including subtext, symbolism, essential background detail, communicated clearly to the artist? Does the script allow the pictures to tell the story rather than relying on captions or other forms of exposition? Does the story work as a comic book, taking into account the conventions and the language of the medium?

Notes:
# Do not send scripts or story proposals for any title currently being published by Dark Horse. Dark Horse's agreements with its licensors and creators prohibit Dark Horse editors from reading such submissions. Such submissions will be destroyed unread.
# Please send submissions to:

Submissions
c/o Dark Horse Comics
10956 SE Main Street
MIlwaukie, OR
97222

# We do not publish page rates. If an editor is interested in working with you, you will work out a financial deal at that time.
# If a submitted project has an artist collaborator, samples of the artist's continuity work (not just pin-ups or character illustrations) must be included.
# We accept proposals for both limited series as well as ongoing series.
# Do not send samples/proposals via facsimile (fax) or email. All such submissions will be destroyed without review.
# Do not make telephone follow-ups to check on the status of your submission. It is now Dark Horse’s policy to respond to submissions only if an editor wishes to hire the creator.

*****************************************************

GUIDELINES FOR ARTISTS

1. SEQUENTIAL ART
Consider carefully what you are sending. An editor wants to see that you can draw sequential art, not pinups. Five or six consecutive story pages is usually adequate. Include quiet scenes as well as action, utilize a wide variety of faces, figures (male, female, normal people as well as "super" characters, etc.), and well-realized settings. Ask yourself the following questions: Does the angle you've chosen take full advantage of the dramatic potential in a scene? Do the backgrounds establish where the characters are in relationship to their surroundings and to each other? Is there a well-defined foreground, middleground, and background? Is there a clear, readable story even without word balloons or captions? Have you left adequate room for the dialogue and captions?

2. COVER ART/PIN-UPS
Please submit only up to five covers/pin-ups. Be forewarned that it is extremely rare that we would hire someone solely for cover work or pin-ups. Also, you must include a signed copy of the Submissions Agreement if you are submitting any artwork featuring a character of your own creation.

Notes:
# Never send original art. Send photocopies only. Make sure the photocopies you send are clean and sharp and easy to "read." Be sure that each page has your name, address, and phone number clearly written somewhere on it.
# Please send submissions to:

Submissions
c/o Dark Horse Comics
10956 SE Main Street
MIlwaukie, OR
97222

# We do not publish page rates. If an editor is interested in working with you, you will work out a financial deal at that time.
# Do not send samples/proposals via facsimile (fax) or email. All such submissions will be destroyed without review.
# Do not make telephone follow-ups to check on the status of your submission. It is now Dark Horse’s policy to respond to submissions only if an editor wishes to hire the creator.

*****************************************************

GUIDELINES FOR INKERS

1. SEQUENTIAL ART
Consider carefully what you are sending. An editor wants to see that you can ink sequential art, not pinups. Five or six consecutive story pages is usually adequate. Include quiet scenes as well as action, utilize a wide variety of faces, figures (male, female, normal people as well as "super" characters, etc.), and well-realized settings.

Notes:
# If you would like sample pages to ink, please send a large 11"x17" self-addressed stamped envelope to:

Inking samples
c/o Dark Horse Comics
10956 SE Main Street
MIlwaukie, OR
97222

# Please send submissions to:

Submissions
c/o Dark Horse Comics
10956 SE Main Street
MIlwaukie, OR
97222

# Never send original art. Send photocopies only. Make sure the photocopies you send are clean and sharp and easy to "read." Be sure that each page has your name, address, and phone number clearly written somewhere on it.
# We do not publish page rates. If an editor is interested in working with you, you will work out a financial deal at that time.
# Do not send samples/proposals via facsimile (fax) or email. All such submissions will be destroyed without review.
# Do not make telephone follow-ups to check on the status of your submission. It is now Dark Horse’s policy to respond to submissions only if an editor wishes to hire the creator.

*****************************************************

GUIDELINES FOR COLORISTS

1. SEQUENTIAL ART
Please submit at least 5 pages of sequential art. We would also be interested to see how you handle different types of storytelling. For instance, how would you color 5 pages of Hellboy as opposed to 5 pages of Usagi Yojimbo? Editors are looking for colorists who can work in many different styles and moods and accurately aid in telling a story through the use of color.

2. FORMAT
We can accept files in any standard format such as JPG, EPS, TIFF, etc. However, all files MUST be CMYK. Files can be either 72 dpi or 300 dpi and it's recommended that file dimensions are no smaller that 7" x 10". Files may be supplied on CD or Zip disk. Please include a resume of past work history (if applicable) and a cover letter.

Notes:
# Feel free to scan any black and white comics if you are in need of pages to use if you are in need of sample pages. An example of a popular black and white comic is Usagi Yojimbo.
# Please send all coloring submissions to:

Production Manager
c/o Dark Horse Comics
10956 SE Main Street
MIlwaukie, OR
97222

# We do not publish page rates. If an editor is interested in working with you, you will work out a financial deal at that time.
# Do not send samples/proposals via facsimile (fax) or email. All such submissions will be destroyed without review.
# Do not make telephone follow-ups to check on the status of your submission. It is now Dark Horse’s policy to respond to submissions only if an editor wishes to hire the creator.

*****************************************************

GUIDELINES FOR LETTERERS

1. SEQUENTIAL ART
Please submit at least 5 pages of story to show diversity of balloons and sound effects, as well as font choice. In addition, please show exmaples of italicized and bold text.

2. TITLES
Please include examples of titles in your submissions. By titles, we mean story/story arc titles not logos.

3. FORMAT
We can accept files in any standard format such as JPG, EPS, TIFF, etc. Files can be either 72 dpi or 300 dpi and it's recommended that file dimensions are no smaller that 7" x 10". Files may be supplied on CD or Zip disk. Please include a resume of past work history (if applicable) and a cover letter.

Notes:
# We prefer black and white or grayscale submissions rather than color. It is easier to determine your skill if we aren't distracted by coloring.
# Please send all lettering submissions to:

Production Manager
c/o Dark Horse Comics
10956 SE Main Street
MIlwaukie, OR
97222

# We do not publish page rates. If an editor is interested in working with you, you will work out a financial deal at that time.
# Do not send samples/proposals via facsimile (fax) or email. All such submissions will be destroyed without review.
# Do not make telephone follow-ups to check on the status of your submission. It is now Dark Horse’s policy to respond to submissions only if an editor wishes to hire the creator.

*****************************************************

Submissions Agreement
Dark Horse Comics, Inc. - 10956 S.E. Main St. - Milwaukie, OR 97222

I am submitting to you the following materials ("the Material"):

____________________________________________________________ ____
(list title and description here)

in accordance with the following agreement:

1. I represent and warrant to you, your successors, and assigns that the Material is original with me and that no other persons other than those who have signed this agreement have collaborated with me in creating and developing the Material.

2. Your consideration of the Material and any negotiations between us regarding the Material shall not be deemed an admission of the novelty or originality of the Material.

3. You may retain a copy of the Material and I release you from any liability for loss or damage thereto.

4. I hereby grant you the right to use the Material provided that you shall first conclude an agreement with me for such use or you shall determine that you have an independent legal right to use the Material or any portion thereof which is not derived from me either because the Material is not new, novel, or original or has not been reduced to concrete form or because other persons (which may include your employees and other persons presenting materials to you) have submitted similar or identical suggestions, features, and material which you have the right to use.

5. This Agreement shall be construed solely under Oregon substantive law (except where the Supremacy Clause of the Constitution of the United States requires federal law to apply). The parties having chosen the substantive law to apply, no other choice of law (including Oregon's) applies. Any dispute shall be settled in the state of Oregon; if dispute resolution is required, it shall be conducted in Oregon. A party may enforce any settlement or arbitration in any other forum only in accord with applicable law. Any dispute between us which cannot be settled by the parties in a reasonable time shall be submitted to arbitration in Portland, Oregon, in accordance with the rules and regulations of the American Arbitration Association. I agree that any claim against you, your employees, officers, directors, or shareholders based on the Material must be brought within one year after the date of your first publication or other relevant use of the Material.

6. In the event of any dispute that requires dispute resolution, the prevailing party shall be entitled to receive reimbursement from the nonprevailing party for all mediation, arbitration, and other legal costs, expenses, and fees, in addition to any other recovery or award.

7. This agreement constitutes our entire understanding and my signature and the signature of any person who has collaborated with me in the creation or development of the Material shall constitute agreement to the terms and conditions set forth herein. This agreement may be changed only by a written instrument signed by you and me. This agreement also applies to any other material which I may submit to you unless it is agreed by us in writing to the contrary. The invalidity of any provision of this agreement shall not affect the remainder, which shall continue in full force and effect.

__________________________________________________________ Signature

__________________________________________________________ Street Address

__________________________________________________________ Name, Please Print Clearly

__________________________________________________________ City, State, Zip Code

__________________________________________________________ Date

__________________________________________________________ Telephone Number

NOTE: In case of collaboration, each collaborator should sign and provide the above information.

PORTFOLIO PREP 101

Attention aspiring artists!

If you're planning to show us your portfolio during a convention, PLEASE read through our Portfolio Prep 101 tutorial. It's full of information on what our editors look for during portfolio reviews and it's recommended that you follow these guidelines!

ARTIST'S PORTFOLIO REVIEW PREP CHECKLIST

Showing your work to an editor for the first time - especially in a convention setting - can be an exhausting, nerve-wracking event. It's likely you'll have to wait in line for several hours with other people who are vying for the same jobs as you, watching as, one by one, those in line ahead of you take their turn. By the time you reach the head of the line, you may be tired, hungry, or dying to use the restroom. You may be nervous, excited, or filled with dread - all natural reactions to being in a situation in which you're submitting your work to a stranger for judgment. It's not unusual to discover afterwards that you failed to voice all of the clever things you were going to say, or that all of the questions you had planned to ask were forgotten. (For this reason, you should write them down ahead of time and consult your list at the end of the review.)

Likewise, the editor may be tired as well. He or she has perhaps seen dozens of portfolios already that day and has repeated the same advice to probably ninety-nine percent of those who have come before you.

Put it all together and it's a recipe for miscommunication, conflicting expectations, and possibly dashed hopes. Below are some steps you can take to create the best possible experience for both yourself and the editor, and to ensure that the hours you've put into preparing your work and waiting in line are worth the effort.

BEFORE YOU GET IN LINE, ANSWER THESE QUESTIONS HONESTLY:

Have you shown your work to:

your parents?
your friends?
your teachers?
and especially to professional artists attending the convention?

Has the consensus been that your work is of professional quality?

If the answers to those questions is no, then we strongly advise you not to go through the process of showing your work.

Consider this: an editor's job is to find artists whose work is polished enough that they could start on a professional assignment today. An editor can look at your work and assess whether or not your samples demonstrate that you have what it takes to be a professional comics artist. If your work is not yet of professional caliber, most editors are not qualified to tell you specifically what you need to do to raise your skills to a professional level. They are project managers, not teachers.

Unless you have people honestly telling you that you're working at a professional level, instead of wasting your time waiting in line for an editor to tell you that you're not ready for professional work, avail yourself of the many professional artists that attend major conventions. Most will have their original work on display, and are often happy to discuss specific techniques, how they developed their skills, what kind of classes or schools they attended, etc.

Becoming a professional comics artist doesn't happen overnight. It requires a lot of dedication and hard work. Until you've studied the craft and learned the essentials, you have nothing to gain by showing your work to an editor.

For many aspiring artists, showing ones work to an editor seems to have become an end in and of itself. Unfortunately, those artists are usually disappointed by the experience because they have not thought through what their goals should be when showing their work.

WHAT YOUR GOAL SHOULD BE IN SHOWING YOUR WORK:

To get a job drawing comics.
If your work is not yet of professional quality, you're not ready for a job and should not be showing your work.

Treat the portfolio review experience like a job interview. Would you apply for a job as a brain surgeon if you weren't already a qualified brain surgeon? Of course not. Comics artist is a job, just like any other, with its own set of necessary skills and qualifications. Come to the interview prepared to show that you're qualified.

Now, if this is your first time showing your work, the odds are stacked against you walking away with an assignment, but you can still learn and benefit from the experience.

WHAT YOU SHOULD EXPECT:

Two to ten minutes of an editor's time. Period.
The editor will look at your samples and discuss them with you. He or she will tell you what they like about what you've done, as well as areas they think you could improve upon. They may invite you to send them more samples in the future. There is a very, very slim chance that the editor will like your work enough that he or she may offer you a job on the spot, but don't expect it. Look upon this as your first opportunity to develop a professional's "thick skin." Editors are often harried and tired at conventions, and they aren't always at their best. If you receive brusque treatment, don't take it personally. Keep in mind that the editor's primary job is to find creators who are accomplished enough to take on an assignment right now - not a year from now. Most will give you a fair assessment of your work, but if you're looking for advice on how to draw and/or a detailed critique, show your work to friends, family, teachers, and other artists, especially professional artists who are also attending the show.

WHAT TO BRING:
Pencillers:
Five or six consecutive story pages showing panel-to-panel continuity.
Pick a story or sequence that shows your range: a quiet scene followed by an action scene; scenes that demonstrate how you handle a wide variety of subject matter, including regular people, street scenes, cars, buildings, trees, animals, etc. The more range you can demonstrate, the more likely you are to land a job. You may bring more work to show, but don't count on the editor looking at every single page you've ever drawn. Show only what you feel to be your best work.

The script or plot from which you worked.
If you drew your story sequence from a written plot or script, bring it along. The editor may not ask for it, but if they want to compare what was asked for in the script with what you've drawn, you'll be able to show them.

If you also plan to show inked work, bring good, readable copies of the pencilled pages.
If your inks aren't of professional quality, you're better off not showing them. Concentrate the review on what you do best. No editor expects you to be accomplished in every aspect of the field. Show only what you feel to be your best work.

If you wish to show pinups or other single-page illustrations, show them last - after your story pages.
While it's true that editors hire artists to produce covers and the occasional pinup, the vast majority of work available for artists is drawing story pages (the average comic book has 22 pages of story and one cover). An editor needs to know you can tell a story with pictures. Show only what you feel to be your best work.

An envelope containing copies of the work you're showing with your name and contact information on every single page.
The editor may or may not ask you to leave copies of your samples. If he or she does, you'll be prepared.

Inkers:

At least six story pages showing panel-to-panel continuity.
Pick a story or sequence that shows your range; scenes that demonstrate how you handle a wide variety of subject matter, including regular people, street scenes, cars, buildings, trees, animals, etc. The more range you can demonstrate, the more likely you are to land a job. If possible, obtain pencils from a variety of artists of varying styles. Show only what you feel to be your best work.

Good, readable copies of the pencilled pages from which you worked.
An editor will absolutely want to compare your work with the original pencils.

An envelope containing copies of the work you're showing (and copies of the pencils) with your name and contact information on every single page.
The editor may or may not ask you to leave copies of your samples. If he or she does, you'll be prepared.

WHAT TO DO:

Use the time you spend in line to prepare.
Hopefully, you will have prepared your portfolio before ever getting into line for Portfolio Review, but while you're waiting, take another look at it. Make sure that it is well organized and that the pages you wish to show are in the front of the portfolio and in the correct order. Talk to the people in line ahead of you and behind you. You're going to be there awhile, so you may as well take advantage of each other's knowledge and experience. Compare experiences, share tips, and critique one another's work. It's not altogether improbable that the person sitting next to you may one day be a fellow professional, a collaborator, or a helpful contact.

Treat the review session like a job interview.
You don't have to dress up, but be neat and clean. Speak clearly. Make eye contact. Let the editor know you're engaged in the process. Try to relax. If the editor didn't want to look at your work, he or she wouldn't be there.

Listen to what the editor has to say.
That's the reason you've been waiting in line. Take notes if you want. Don't be afraid to ask questions if you don't understand what point the editor is trying to make or the terminology he or she uses.

Let the review end when it's over.
Yes, this is your big chance, but remember what we said about not setting your expectations too high. If the review session appears to be at an end and the editor has not offered you a job, it is permissible to ask him or her if they'd like to see more of your work (assuming you've brought more to show), or if you can send additional samples in the future. But don't overstay your welcome. Other people are in line waiting for their turn.

WHAT NOT TO DO:

Don't apologize for your work.
If your portfolio is unorganized, or you don't have any story pages to show, or the work is only half finished, then do apologize for wasting the editor's time. However, if you've done your prep work and you've waited in line, let your work speak for itself and allow the editor to get on with the review.

Don't defend your work.
Any comments the editor makes will be directed at specific aspects of your work, not you. Listen to the editor's comments and try to learn from them. If an editor makes critical comments about your work, don't try to "explain" them away. Those initial context-free reactions are valuable, because that is what a professional editor is honestly "seeing" when they're looking at your work, regardless of what you intended. If you disagree with the editor's assessment of your work, let it go. Find another editor to whom you can show your work. Arguing with an editor will not change their opinion of your capabilities, and it certainly won't get you any closer to a job. Sure, some editors are jerks (just as some artists are), but there also exists the possibility that he or she knows what they're talking about.

Don't force copies of your work on the editor.
If the editor doesn't ask you to leave copies of your work, take the hint. If you force the issue, the editor will most likely accept the copies, but they will end up in the garbage before the end of the convention.

Don't call the editor after the convention.
The only time it is acceptable to phone an editor after showing them your samples is if they told you they had a job for you. Other than that, restrict your contact to mailing new sets of samples (for God's sake, don't send editors the same pages they saw at the convention unless they've asked you to!).

The most important thing to remember when showing your work to an editor is that this is your first contact with a new aspect of the comics industry. If you've been a life long comics fan, this is your opportunity to see things from the side of the people who create comics for a living. Even if it's just for a few moments, you've been invited behind the scenes. Take advantage of the invitation, use the opportunity, and learn from the experience.

FOR WRITERS

We've saved writers for last because, unfortunately, conventions are not ideal places to present stories or scripts to editors. Art can be looked at and evaluated in a few seconds; reading a script takes time - more time than an editor has available at a con. Writer's guidelines can be found here.

Here Comes The Rain....

2005-07-19T11:33:00.000-04:00

Rainy days always make me think. Of everything literally. I like rainy days.... Unless I am caught in one while being outside...

Ahh... rainy days.

90th Street.

2005-07-18T15:38:00.000-04:00

It was tough, but I finally got Page 90 up! I am in a experimental mood once again, and the panels are filled with skies, gradual colors and weird designs. I like to experiment with colors and blend them into the comic just to see how it will turn out. This is pretty useful, especially when one gets a little tired of drawing backgrounds again and again. It is in this sense that a webcomic remains different from a manga; even in experiment, things always tend to look a little better on the web than on page.

As usual, my writing cells always seem a little fried after I finished a page! Webcomics take up a huge amount of my energy and I always feel drained after each upload. The strained feel is of course, mixed with a sense of relief, for at last I have fulfiled by duty and produced a page for the readers. I am aware of course, that there had been complains about the slowness of the website, which is a problem for surfers tend to have very low patience treshold. DO understand however, that we are in a new circumstance and it takes a while to get used to. The initial slowness may be due to the new demands the site now places on the hoster. Problems will always crop up all over the place, even in the most perfect system. I only ask for some patience while w'Note and the Tech team take time to figure things out.

If this is your first time here.... well, welcome to the SKOOKUM! Blog site. You can be sure, if anything, blogs are never slow, just that they don't contain a lot of substance, this one included.

Buzzcomix Returning Soon.

2005-07-17T10:46:00.000-04:00

SKOOKUM! was originally registered under the Buzzcomix voting system, till it died on us sometime in mid-May. Soon after we turned to Top Webcomics, and soon became listed in their website.

However, the creator of Buzzcomix had returned recently and explained that something had gone wrong with his web-hosting service and ALL the records and code had been deleted. Right now, he is still recovering from the massive lost of information and work, and is planning on a come back.

If it returns, there is high chance that we may leave the Top Webcomics voting system and return to the Buzzcomix voting system. For some reason, we tend to get more publicity under Buzz... Or perhaps we will have BOTH voting systems on our webcomic!

By the by:

PAGE 90: 35% COMPELTED

Oh My God, Harry's Back

2005-07-17T07:55:00.000-04:00

That's right, as I type this , millions after millions of Harry Potter fans are probably sticking thier noses between the pages of the latest book in the Harry Potter saga: Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince.

No, I have not read it yet, hell, I haven't even bought the book. Well, I used to be a solid Harry Potter fan, till for some weird reason I am no longer as enthusastic for Rowling's book. It all began in my European literature class when Dr Dawson compared J.K Rowling's novel to Feodor Dostoevsky's "Crime and Punishment". He said both are long books and are also page turners, the difference? The latter has more substance. And it is true, I LOVED "Crime and Punishment", and I felt gulit by the fact that I was missing out so much great works of literature for a children's novel... which is getting draggier.

Do not mistake me, I DO think J.K Rowling is a good writer, and I think she should be read, just that I don't think her book should be worth more than a Neil Gaiman novel/graphic novel! Gaiman's my favorite Gothic/fantasy/comic write and is just a good writer, as Rowling, and he is going for only US$19:95, while Rowling's going for US$29...

I gonna be really bad (my apologies Rowling) and wait till it gets cheaper. In the meantime there are loads of great fantasy writers out there waiting to be read and enjoyed, and they're going for only US$6.95 for a paperback. Yippee.

Bean There, Sun That.

2005-07-16T04:27:00.000-04:00

I was asked by a friend of mine to design a character, (more like a mascot I think...) for his new Soy Bean Stall, named "Sunrise Bean"! I was surprised at the fact that my friend had decided to jump on the business bandwagon despite the fact that he is an engineer. He reasoned that a business is the only way to get rich in the shortest amount of time. For now, I have to agree with him.

This gotta be the first time I tried my hands at designing a NON-HUMAN character for commercial use, it was a fun experience, and I must say that the skills I had learn while drawing SKOOKUM! did come in handy while I designed the character. I did a total of 4 characters, and the one you see above, is the one that was finally chose for the stall's logo. My friend told me that although the design stays the same, the colors had been altered to fit the signboard of the stall; he promised me send a photo of it sometime next week.

Just as I thought things were over, he approached me once more asking me to draw 10 more pictures of the same character in different poses! As much as I was excited, I was worried if I could meet the dateline, for my Special Term at school is starting soon, and seriously had to get the new page ready for upload.

Crud....

A Word about China, from my friend Susan Tart

2005-07-15T11:51:00.000-04:00

Susan was my Mentor during my stay at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. She has such a wonderful personality that it is impossible not to love her! She's funny friendly, wild, and basically anything you are looking for in a friend. Early this year, she has chosen to have her Study Abroad program in Beijing, China, for she is in love with Chinese culture and language. Of course.... China did not turn out as rosy as she thought it might be. Below is her last letter about the fascinating land before she returns to the good ol' United States:

At first I wasn't sure how I should end the last "this is China" email. China is too huge to categorize into one country and is developing at such a rapidpace that there is no way to sum it all up (for example, if you travel to Yunnan, you'll see nothing but a bunch of rice fields, ethnic minorities, and backpackers smoking the ganja growing on the rooftops of the natives'
houses).So, instead of trying to impress all of the intelligent, deep thinkers
that want a final analysis of China, I have written a few of the perceptions
I have concerning the "real" China...

1. In case anyone ever wonders why a guy and a girl might be holding
hands,
they will wear the same outfit to let everyone know that they're a
couple. I
haven't decided if this is cute in an Asian way, or just flat-out
wrong.

2. Restaurants are run like a Navy ship, and at least twice a day all
the
employees have to line up, do roll call, and get yelled at by the
manager.
They also march and take part in group chants. I have yet to figure
out the
connection this has with preparing food.

3. To combat China's unemployment problem (due to the overpopulation
problem),
the Chinese government is trying to employ as many people as possible.
Therefore, it is not unusual to count six women trying to clean up one
itty-bitty spill on aisle two of the grocery store (two of which won't
even
have mops but some sort of straight stick-like contraption that is only
making the spill worse). It's also not rare to see all these people
walking
around with mega chopsticks picking up trash. They're not too
efficient, but
I almost feel like it's my duty to help these people out and litter.

4. In China, babies don't wear diapers, they wear pants with the
bottoms slit
open. What's more, if they need to use the bathroom, the parents will
just
have them do the infamous "Chinese squat" on the sidewalk (grass if
you're
lucky) in public. Not that there's anything wrong with pooping the
natural
way or anything, but this just kind of makes me wonder how many times
I've
actually stepped in dog poop...

5. For a country whose government discourages religion, an absurd
amount of
Chinese people celebrate Christmas. Christmas lights and decorations
are
left up year-round. Christmas songs without the lyrics are played
practically everywhere you go. So if you visit to China, be prepared
to hear
Jingle Bells being played on the bus, The First Noel being played in
the
supermarket, or a Chinese pop song about a cute guy being sung to
Winter
Wonderland.

6. The women wear high heels everywhere they go. I even saw a few
women
wearing heels hiking the Tiger Leaping Gorge...which is why the Chinese
women
have moved up to 6th place on my list of international heroines.

7. Foreigners and Chinese aren't allowed to attend church together, nor
are
they allowed to sleep in the same hotels together. This isn't a
problem
unless you're stuck looking for a hotel at midnight and you keep
getting
rejected b/c you're not Chinese (of course that would have been me).
I'm
over it now, but I do feel sorry for all the mixed marriages out there.

8. There is no concept of a line. None. End of discussion. (However,
pushing, skipping, cheating, and any other devious tricks to get ahead
of the
person in front of you are perfectly ok.)

9. Every time an ATM is refilled with money, a van full of army men
with huge
guns pulls up and everyone must stand a certain distance away (I don't
know,
perhaps a street or two over?). I don't know what it's all about, but
I will
admit it's rather intimidating.

10. China is not really Communist. Yes, the government is very
paranoid, and
except for the whole freaky ATM ordeal, I never saw anyone on the
street
corner with a machine gun ready to blast the next person who spoke
above a
whisper (or is it just me that had that perception?) The press is
still
highly controlled, but the government is actually trying to incorporate
quasi-capitalism into its economy. Apparently what the word
"communist"
means in English and Chinese are two totally separate meanings.
Interestingly enough, the Chinese people don't understand how it could
possibly have a negative connotation in English, and they think that
everyone
should just stop hating. Hahaha

*Crazy China...*
I traveled with a few friends to the grasslands and desert in
Inner
Mongolia one weekend, where we stayed with a Mongol family and slept in
one
of their yurts. One of the traditions of the Mongol people is to sing
a song
and offer really harsh liquor to guests at greetings and before every
meal.
At first this seemed like a great tradition, but after about the third
time,
it was nothing but rough. We watched a dance performance that night,
which
was also pretty cool, but the entire time there were fireworks being
set off.
For some odd reason, we kept getting hit by these fireworks...in the
head, on
the arms, allover...they just kept falling right out of the sky and
attacking
us. If they hadn?t of hurt so much, it would have been freakin
hilarious.
I'm not sure what the celebration was for, but it got to be so bad at
one
point that even the dancers had to stop the show. Talk about crazy
(especially after being forced to drink liquor all day long).
The next day we went to the desert, which was only a few hours
away.
Now, I've never been to a desert before, but from everything I've ever
heard
about the desert, it's usually hot and dry. So of course the one day
out of
the year that we're there it is pouring rain. In fact, it was more
like
quick sand than a desert, and the Volvo that we were promised would be
a Jeep
definitely got stuck in the mud. Oh well, at least now I can say I've
gotten
to ride a soggy camel.

*Food Update:*
-Sheep Stomach: really, really nasty. The Inner Mongolians live off of
sheep,
and while we were there we were served sheep meat and sheep stomach for
every
single meal--I'm talking, breakfast, lunch, and dinner. Not only that,
we
later found out that our food was cooked on top of sheep manure~Yummy.
-Pig Skin: somehow congealed in a burgundy jelly-type of tofu--also
really,
really nasty.
-Pigeon (popular dish in Hong Kong): I can't believe I ate the dirtiest
bird
alive and it was oh so good!
-Chicken Claws: I don't understand how people can crave these--they're
a bit
sour, but at least the claw nails ended up being un-sharp.
-Ostrich meat: tasted like beef jerky...only this was good.
-Dog: I finally ate dog the very last night I was in China. And,
believe it
or not, it was the most expensive item on the menu. I'm not sure what
kind I
ate, but the owner of the restaurant told me it was "big dog". It
looked and
tasted exactly like pork meat, but after only one bite the guilt set in
and I
turned from SuperSuzy into Wimp of the Year--I gave the rest of my
dinner to
the restaurant owner. :P

OK that's it ~miss you all.

Sushi (Susan Tart)

I am ALLERGIC to Blogs! Used to.

2005-07-14T12:15:00.000-04:00

I something important to confess. I AM SEVERLY ALLERGIC TO BLOGS.

Yes, that is true, I can never understand the logic of having a blog in the first. Seriously, why would I want to know what this person did on this day and what he did on the next? Blogs only make sense for those who are famous, where fans will flock to the blog to read up on what theur idol is up to. Neil Gaiman who has thousands of fans NEED a blog to satisfy the hungry fans on what he is up to or better, where he is.

Blogs make sense as well to the friends of the blogger, friends whom the blogger either does meet often, or doesn't bother to meet often. Who ever reads a blog unless we know the person personally?

So after I have said all that, I am contradicting all that by writing a blog, since I am not (very) famous, nor do I need to tell my friends what I am up to, since I could easily tell them via the cell phone!

This Blog as the title suggests works in conjunction with the SKOOKUM! webcomic. Yes, this blog, for those in the know, makes up for the rants I use to make after each new update I make on the. Rants have to be remoived to fit into the new symmetry of the new website that made its debut early July this year. I have hesitated over the the blog, for I don't want to be 'just another' blogger. The word 'blog' sounds offensive as well, it sounds like the sound you make when you try to get something nasty out of your throat.

So, once again, this blog will make better sense if you have read the new update prior the blog. The blog however, will second as a news center for SKOOKUM!. New about update or changes in plot plans or anything regarding to SKOOKUM! will be posted in the blog. Of course, I will use the blog to record little bits of nonsense I see around me.

Now I need to get over my allergy....