Developmental challenges...

So I've been trying to watch a video of Rich Stevens of Diesel Sweeties and Meredith Gran of Octopus Pie on YouTube. I'm writing a chapter on webcomics for a book on political cartoons, and what was really interesting for me was Rich's comments about the limitations placed on cartoonists in the print medium - and how liberating the web is by contrast. I thoroughly agree. However, and this is the bit I think is bizarre, the use that cartoonists make of that freedom is often not particularly innovative or radical. There are few anarchist comics that I'm aware of, or even comics that comment on the political - even in the sense of the politics of the everyday, critiquing culture or capitalism or any of the structures and rules that frame our society. I've been scouring the net for examples of webcomic artists and writers challenging 'the man', or 'the woman', or the corporation, or the government... or anybody really. While blogs have been used, with some degree of success, for activism and advocacy, there seems to be fairly little happening on the webcomic scene. Now a big part of this, I'm sure, is that as the mighty John Allison claims, he produces entertainment, not art - so the impetus to challenge the status quo that comes with producing 'art' is perhaps not as clearly articulated or even consciously understood as part of the cartoonists raison d'etre. Perhaps that's a good thing. I don't know, I suspect not. Perhaps it will come with the expansion of the webcomics realm. Perhaps as the landscape of the web includes more webcomics in it, there will emerge an underground movement, if you will allow me a gloriously intellectual reference to 1970s cinematic Italian Communism - a small mole may emerge and thus the whole edifice of capitalism (or in the Italian case Fascism) will collapse - and the glorious revolution will unfold! Or not.

Anyway, unfortunately I don't have my own house yet or my own internet connection, so it's taken me the better part of two days to watch the one hour video. Watch two minutes, pause it, let it load for twenty, watch another four minutes, pause it, let it load, watch another minute... all day. The experience of watching sucked, although the video is pretty rad - especially for someone with my interests.

That's one of the things that is a challenge about being here, especially for a web junky like me - not having fast downloads, waiting for minutes at a time while my 9 tabs open very, very, very slowly. And evidently it's good at the moment. It will get worse when the kids are here en masse. Yikes.

Anyway, other than the slowness of my interwub (it's like communing with a slightly dopey puppy - fun for a little bit and then very, very tedious), most things are slowly happening. Things just take longer here. Plus not having any transport or commercial ventures near enough to walk to is a little bit tough. Still, thems the breaks. I've also discovered I have attained a Gen Y attention span and am finding my teaching prep incredibly difficult! What is with that?