NO REST FOR THE AWAKE - MINAGAHET CHAMORRO

The Guam Bus is the creative team that consists of myself and my two brothers. Over they years we've talk about alot of creative projects, and even started some of them, such as Battle for Kamchatka, but we haven't ever really finished any of them. We made ashcans a few years back when we had a table at WonderCon in San Francisco, and I did write the script for four issues of Battle for Kamchatka and Jack did pencil three of them, but we never actually formally published anything. Jack is back on Guam for the next few months and I am taking advantage of his presence here by making him create for me on my various Chamorro Studies and Guam Museum projects. He is also working on a one-shot comic book script I wrote last year about "Makahnan Mimu" or "Warrior Wizards" in Ancient Chamorro times. If all goes well, he should be done with the pencils by the end of next month. Here's a panel from the comic so far:

Nigapna, umakuentusi ham yan i ga'chong-hu put i sinienten-mami put i activism-mami, ya lana taimanu sesso duru yan fihu kalang machaleghua ham, put i minakkat-na hafa in tingo', yan hafa in tingo' na debi di u macho'gue. Mana'hasso gui' i ga'chong-hu put i kachido (mubi) Matrix , yan i dos na pitduras (pills) ni' Si Morpheous umofresi Si Neo. Unu na pill pau fina'nu'i hao i minagahet put i eriya-mu, i otro pau nina'bense hao ta'lo na todu maolek, ya pua laknos i chinatsaga-mu (yan i inebra-mu lokkue). Gi i che'chon-mami, fihu in siente na debi di mampos annok manu debi di un ayek. Unu para u binabayi hao ni' atadok-mu, i otro para u nina'maya' ha' ta'lo i inatan-mu. Lao sa' hafa i meggaina na taotao Guahan, manma'a'nao nu i pitduras minagahet, ya ga'o'-niha i pitduras binachet? Yanggen un atan i isla-ta pa'go, ti mappot para un sodda' un repuestas para este finaisen-ku. Para i pitdura

The gof na'chalek lao gof na'triste lokkue' book Cat's Cradle by Kurt Vonnegut ends with the following paragraph. If I were a younger man, I would write a history of human stupidity; and I would climb to the top of Mount McCabe and lie down on my back with my history for a pillow; and I would take from the ground some of the blue-white poison that makes statues of men; and I would make a statue of myself, lying on my back, grinning horribly, and thumbing my nose at You Know Who. For those of you who don't know the book, you should read it, it is a tragic commentary on everything from religion, to colonialism, to the fallacy of objective science. At this point the whole world has been radically altered by a substance called ice-nine, which when is touched to water changes its composition so that it can be solid ice even at room temperature. The protagonist is stuck on the island of San Lorenzo, surrounded by the once ocean, which is now a world of tornadoes. He ha

Despite me currently being lost in the thesis-writing dimension, the Guam Bus Comic Book Making Team, also known as Pump Fake Nation is still hard at work. In response to the feedback we got at the Alternative Press Expo (APE) last month, we will compiling the issues that we have for Battle For Kamchatka into a graphic novel and seek to publish it later on. This is exciting for me because I will be able to work freely on the comic in the next few months, and therefore hopefully get some great stories going before I have to worry about trying to sell the stupid thing. To keep track of our progress you can head over the website that i che'lu-hu Si Jack is putting together. http://www.pumpfakenation.com By the way, for those that don't know, Pump Fake Nation is me and my brothers creative company, with Jack at the helm. My imprint which Battle for Kamchatka is produced by is Panopticomix. For those of you who have asked what exactly Battle for Kamchatka is supposed to be,

I love the idea of an academic writing comic books as well. This lure is of course one of the reasons why I'm so gung ho about it. That crystal image of an academic as someone isolated high above the world in their ivory tower, laughing at the problems of those beneath them, while all the while unreflexively prescribing solutions to the ills of the world they absolutely know nothing about. This image is justified sometimes, in my opinion some professors do embody that, and take great pleasure in their distance from the world, and the simplicity of perspective that it affords them in creating scholarship and "trying to fix the world." But it need not be this way. Antonio Gramsci discusses the need for organic intellectuals, and I agree that any political struggle needs to recognize this need. Intellectuals whose capital/ intelligence is perceived to come from a different source. But in addition to this, those who are in academia must trangress the boundaries that create