Webcomics
If you want to read a fun (and cheap) web based comic book check out The Right Number by Scott McCloud.
I ran into this comic in a round about way. First I was browsing Friendster.com for new friends, if you can believe it, and I was reading about someone who liked Neil Gaiman. That reminded me to check out his blog. From there I learned about BitPass and how Scott McCloud is using it to distribute his comic webComic The Right Number.
BitPass is a prepaid mircopayments system that lets web content creators charge small amounts for things of value, albiet small value. I jumped right in. Got ten bucks in BitPass credit and bought The Right Number for $0.25. I sure hope that BitPass or something like it will catch on and encourage mircopayments.
Following the same thread I ran across CafePress.com which lets bloggers (anyone with a webpage) have their content manufactured for their audience. CafePress takes a cut and bloggers develop another revenue stream.

Martin Luther King, Jr.
I was happy to run across some reminders of Martin Luther King, Jr. today. The first showed up on This American Life, the second at the Indian Express, and the thrid over at the BBC.
At TAL’s Kid Logic Episode a father is explaining to his very young daughter first about the Christmas holiday and the teachings of Jesus and later about Martin Luther King Day and King’s teachings. (Listen to it here. Move slider to about 13:05 mark.)

Checking the news I bumped into the small quote, “In 1965, Martin Luther King recalled that during his visit to India he was introduced by a principal of a Dalit school in Kerala as an ‘untouchable from the United States.’” This led me to Pamela Philipose's cloumn Dream On, for the Future. She mentions that tomorrow is the anniversary of King’s “I have a dream" speech (listen to it here) and tries to convince her readers that the dream is for everyone. Unfortunately, the only response to the article says, "I say King belongs to Negros only.....not us Indians...." Its sure to me that we have a long way to go.

The next article I saw was more pessimistic. In An unfulfilled dream, T Rasul Murray, a witness and organizer of the March on Washington finds that little has changed in 40 years.

It seems to me that King will always be a leader to emulate. That in fact injustice should be opposed with love. When more people look to solutions that include self-sacrifice and forgivness we will have real hope for the future.

Bruce Mau is one of the people at MASSIVE CHANGE that is trying to point out what we are doing to the world and what we could be doing.

Love. Sex. Life.
Do relationships that start with lighnting bolts last? This American Life had a Valentine's Episode that tried to pick out stories of love that lasts; rather than love lost.

I've been bombarded with tragedy all day. Reeling from stories of ethnic and religious strife in Pakistan, the oppressive atmosphere of sexual assault in Gao Xingjian's Soul Mountain, and from Margy Rochlin telling the story of her father Fred Rochlin on This American Life (listen here).

Hearing and reading I fidget with anger. I feel compelled to embrace more and more tragedy. Like it’s a crime to ignore it. As though I participate in causing the harm by not stopping it. It crushes me, hurts me. I'm whole. Not being annihilated. Not subject to unimaginable injustice; attack, murder, rape, and war.

And yet I am subject to injustice. I live in an unimaginably unjust world. Filled with all manner of evil and cruelty. I am disappointed. Cheated. I can’t imagine that this is how thing were meant to be. What does it mean to set things right? What will I do? I feel unable to do anything. I want everyone to equal but I am afraid to renounce my privileges. White. Male. American.

I must do something.

I try to keep a notebook of terms and people I come across and don't know anything about. It’s a bit like a personal dictionary. It turns out to be a document recording my ignorance. Albeit, a partial record. So I'm always looking for good sources of biographical material on the net. I found a good source for authors at the BBC while looking for Zadie Smith.

She shows up in Episode One of The Whole Wide World talking about her multicultural origins and their expression in the new globalism. After listening to her I got recommended by Amazon to buy her book White Teeth and that same day I came across an article in Newsweek called A Slacker's Delight which mentioned White Teeth. So I caved. I bought White Teeth (and Autograph Man, for good measure.)

Its funny, this book was a best seller, won all kinds of first-book awards, and was broadly marketed in 2000 and I never heard of it until a few weeks ago when I get this hat-trick of late stage documentary marketing. I had to buy it. Synchronicity and all. I want to write, "It’s a good book" and be done with it. I enjoyed reading it and I recommend it to anyone who is interested in updating their views on, so called, post-colonialism.

I've been dwelling on the purpose of this web log. There are a lot of things that are appealing about it to me, but I feel like I need to make it more focused. I need to make it more readable; not that I have any audience. So far I have been relating the trail I've followed to some cultural consumeable and left the reader to decide if its a path they might want follow. I want to rework this approach. Try to highlight an interesting piece of media I've come across while describing how I became interested in it. I'll see how this turns out and make course corrections as i go.
Peace,
Paul