It's been far too long since I've posted here, and even longer since our first Comic Konga! Half a year has gone by in the blink of an eye, and so I thought it would be best to get back into blogging by jumping in at the deep end with another CK.

CK2 will begin July 7th (that's Monday after next) and run until the 11th (that Friday). The rules are the same as last time: five days, five comics (in whatever way you define a 'comic') posted to your blog or online space of choice. A free-form festival of graphic delights, hosted by your truly.

You have about twelve days so that should be plenty of time to come up with ideas, doodle, and even prepare your finished comics. If you're participating do drop me an emial or a comment here (don't forget a link to where you'll be putting the work up!).

See you then!

Yesterday was Earth Hour in several places around the world, including here in Dubai. Not much happened, though a few buildings did turn their external lights off. One lovely radio jockey suggested that the best way to spend the hour was to turn off all the lights, fire up some candles, snuggle up with your significant other on the sofa... and watch a romantic movie on DVD (preferably on your big screen HDTV).

Take that, energy conservation!

Elsewhere people in India were complaining that cities like Mumbai were not on the bandwagon, and shame on them for not participating in this noble effort. Um, yeah, except that cities in India go through almost daily scheduled power cuts, most of which last for longer than an hour. There is a prevailing view from what I can gather, that by shutting off our light bulbs for an hour every year, we will all be directly saving the earth.

This, as far as I know, is not strictly true. Most power stations around the world run on fossil fuels; in them power is generated and thrown out onto the grid. If we aren't using it, they do not actually store any unused energy in large batteries somewhere. If the power companies got together and said, "okay, in order to save the earth we're going to shut down our power supply for a few hours," everybody would be up in arms. But that's really the only way the current electricity supply model is going to help.

Then there's all the energy that went into publicising the Earth Hour event itself; multi-storey billboards, the energy to light them for days leading up to yesterday, t-shirts and caps, concerts and karaoke and whatnot. The Earth Hour site itself declares it a 'carbon-neutral' event in its faq (and also addresses the power issue with what amounts to an "Um, yeah, we know.") but doesn't say much else about it. Are they policing every floodlit billboard around the world?

I applaud the idea as a PR exercise, certainly, but I do feel that the execution is little more than a token gesture, and everyone around the world has just jumped on because it's a lazy, easy way to think we're making a difference. It's like every Indian I've met who expects the government to solve all their problems personally, in the same way a 5 star hotel might, because, "they voted. (harrumph!)"

Conservation and reduction of our energy usage is a vital thing, but we can't pat ourselves on the back and get back to our wasteful lives just because we shut off the garden light for an hour.

I was preparing the photos for this week's Ten Rupee Book Club post when I remembered that Dan was tagged with this meme, and I hadn't done it yet. The Rules:

1. Pick up the nearest book.
2. Open to page 123
3. Find the fifth sentence.
4. Post the next three sentences.
5. Tag five people and post a comment here once you post it to your blog so I can come see!

Now, having not just one but seven at hand posed something of a problem. They were all technically 'nearest' to me, and all but one of them had enough pages to satisfy criterion no. 2. None of the books had the same problem Maija encountered with Good Omens either, so I was stuck. Having to look through them for the book post anyway, I figured I'd do quotes from all seven books, subsituting a quote from page 12 rather than 123 from the one that was slim. Consider this a teaser for the whole post (which should be done by tomorrow). Here goes:

[This started out as a comment on this post on Aishwarya's blog which references this 'blessay' by the inimitable Stephen Fry, but it ran a bit too long so I figure I should post it here]

Apparently when I was younger I had a good sense of timing (in the back row of a filmi group dance performance), but this comment came from my mother, so I can't believe it entirely despite her generally pragmatic view on things.

These comments, my own hyperactive nature and my shyness led to many an afternoon spent bouncing around our cavernous Muscat house to an imaginary soundtrack and my own improvised moves. Is it any wonder that Fame is one of my favourite movies?

Then I turned 12 and dancing became that thing you did with girls you had the hots for. But this being the early 90s the jeans were tight and the sleeves pouffy, so we looked like two penguins saying goodnight (Also, Glen FRIGGIN Medeiros: argh!).

Since then Hip Hop happened (we still called it rap and R&B back in my day, younguns) and the term booty entered our vocabulary. It seemed like far too much exercise, and besides, this is the kind of stuff we in the civilised East had rightly left behind a decade ago. I was back from my short preteen sojourn into 'normal' society so I thankfully missed all of this. I do not think I would stand before you today as the crazed lunatic I am if I spent my sixteenth year bopping to Jeniffer (pre-J.Lo) Lopez's Waiting For Tonight.

Still, Hip Hop isn't all bad, really*.

*(okay, so my definition of hiphop is not very traditional)

I don't dance anymore. I haven't had the opportunity, and ten years of being generally inactive means I wouldn't want to attempt it without getting into better shape, or I'll risk major (or at least irritatingly long-lasting) injuries. The urge is still there, and I suppose if I were to reclaim my body-as-temple and pursue a sport, it would be some kind of mad and wonderful mix between parkour and, um, this.

I would be so legend.

V

Now this just isn't fair. Somewhere in Italy is a fantastic looking monastery up for sale. It's got eleven bedrooms, twenty-six hectares of land, a stable converted into a restaurant with a professional kitchen, and it was recently fully restored.

It costs about three-and-a-half million dollars, and you might think that's a lot of money, but really, it's a steal*. You know what I could get for that much in Dubai? A decent four bedroom villa in a cubbyhole 'planned' community. In India I may manage to get a three bedroom apartment in South Bombay. God only know what kind of matchbox that money would buy in London or New York.

*(Not that I have the money, and any attempts to amass such an amount would require actual stealing, hehe).

Beyond that, the property is clearly begging to be turned into a quiet out-of-the-way hotel. If I tried to open something of a similar size in Dubai I would need about five times as much money, and about ten times for Bombay. And none of them would have the kind of view this place has.

Of course, if it seems too good to be true then it probably is, otherwise why would such a tempting looking thing be unsold, and that too found on the freaking interwub?

Ghost Infestation. Has to be.

....Still, very, very tempted.

V

Oh my.

Steven Brust, he of the magnificent Vlad Taltos books, has just released a Firefly novel.

The best thing is, My Own Kind of Freedom is a fanfic. Yup, completely unauthorised, and released under a Creative Commons licence. Apparently it 'demanded' to be written, which always results in the best stories, I find.

Your moral and religious standpoint on Fan Fiction may preclude you from greeting such news with joy. Me? New Steven Brust work. New Firefly work. For FREE. How can that be a bad thing?

V

Usually these sorts of things get plugged in the "Things that Catch My Eye in Feeds" section that's under the big orange RSS graphic (and indeed it is), but I felt that in this case, a link deserves further highlighting.

So click here for Rachel Papo's beautiful photo-set on the women of the Israeli Air Force, Serial No.3817131.

V

Comic Konga has begun!

I figured I'd start out simple with a one-panel. My first idea was to have the same idea done over three or four panels but I think the joke doesn't really need anything more than one.

This was done in pencil, coloured in inkscape and put together in the GIMP. Word balloons in Inkscape. It's a bit of a fractured process, I know, but I prefer the quick flexibility of laying down colour shapes in a vector program but need the layer manipulations of a bitmap one like GIMP to keep it looking natural.

(Yes, I know it's 4 am. Still technically Monday, though)

Well, folks, less than 24 hours to go before Comic Konga! begins! I hope you're excited and if you're participating, I hope you've got a bunch of ideas (or better yet, finished comics) already! Truth be told I haven't begun work on my finished comics yet. I do have a few of the ideas chalked out and I know what tomorrow's comic will be... now I just have to do it!

In case you feel so inclined to announce your Comic Konga! participation on your blogs, I've provided a couple of versions of the logo for you to use:

The one on the left is a transparent background PNG, 240x240. On the right is a GIF of the same dimensions with a white background. Feel free to right click and 'Save as...' (or your browser's equivalent) and put it up in your site's sidebar or into your Comic Konga! posts. Feel free to resample or resize it to fit your blog (I kept it large so that it would shrink down well).

Comic Konga! Logo (Plain SVG version)

If you like, I've provided a plain SVG version of the logo. You can use Inkscape to view it, but I think even other programs like new versions of Adobe Illustrator support this vector file standard. With the vector version you can export the image at higher (or lower) resolutions, or even put the logo into the comics themselves.

In case there were any doubts, you can begin to post your comics whenever Monday is in your timezone. Just putup one every day until Friday. I'll also be collecting links to all the participants's daily entries the next day(so Monday's comic will be collected on Tuesday afternoon GMT), and of course there will be a final list of links after Comic Konga concludes on Friday, 02 November.

I encourage all of you to check out the other entries; to comment on, link to and pick your favourites. Mostly, don't be disheartedned if you haven't begun... there's still a while to go and a great comic doesn't need to worked on forever.

Good luck!