Now that the Mini-Con is over - and it went quite well, as Marilyn can attest (and did, on her blog), I can finally put my comics stuff aside (well, mostly) in order to focus on my last big assignment, my Intro to Animation final. Thirty seconds of animation, set to sounds that I provide. I have a pretty good idea of what I'm doing, and the drawing part is easy; it's when I have to sit down and figure out the intricacies and quirks of AfterEffects that I have problems. Which is a significant problem, as I have to figure out the sounds and all of their cues first, before I draw anything. I wish I could go back to just making the cartoon on index cards.

Not long before Marilyn and I get to go out to California for Christmas. I can't wait, especially because we leave the night of my last day of class this semester. So it's sort of a double-bonus.

I haven't much to say other than that right now. Actually, I guess I could talk quite a bit about the Mini-Con, which I probably should do at some point, but I really should be working right now, so I'll leave that for later. Suffice to say that A) a good convention always inspires you to make more comics, which this one did, and B) animated Czechoslovakian-French co-productions are a mind-bender, especially if they're science fiction allegories about the Soviet invasion in the 1970s, and you've only had three hours of sleep in the past 48 hours when you watch it out of the corner of your eye, projected on a wall with no sound.

That's what I get for going to art school.

Anyway, the latest Wittenburg Door newsletter called my attention to a notable "South Park" episode that dealt very frankly with Scientology. As the Door mentioned, it was very brave of them to do, given the Scientologists' propensity to sue and harass their critics without mercy. You can watch the pertinent clips here:

http://www.wittenburgdoor.com/godstuff/SouthParkScientology.html

This keeps coming up. One of the frustrations of my Comics 2 class is that whenever we have a free work period, everyone talks as they work and inevitably the subject turns to religion. Since we live in America, of course, this means "criticism of Christianity". Or, as is more often the case, "criticism of the straw man/urban myth/mangled understanding of theology/caricature that I call Christianity." Don't get me wrong, I'm pleased that the opportunity to talk about Jesus continually arises. The problem is that I'm never really given a chance to rebut any of their claims. Students will go on and on about their weird idea of what Christianity is about, or their hand-me-down arguments ("The Bible isn't even accurate since it's been translated so many times..."), but the moment I begin to make a counter-point, to answer their arguement, Vincent or one of the others will say, "Well, we shouldn't really be talking about this here, let's change the subject." And then the subject never really changes; instead, someone makes a completely different charge, or just says something ridiculous ("All religions basically say the same thing, anyway."), and we start again.

As I said, I would *love* the opportunities they keep presenting to debate these things, but I'm never allowed to answer. Every time I try to pick up the gauntlet, I change the mood from "Let's all complain about Christians/Christianity" to an actual debate, and suddenly everyone is infected with a sense of false sensitivity. "Oh, wait, we don't want to offend anyone." No, you just don't want your comfortable assumptions to be challenged. It's easier to pretend that Jesus didn't say the things He's clearly recorded as having said - and level that unreasonable degree of skepticism toward Him alone and *no one else* in the historical record - than it is to consider that He did say them, and the implications are troubling.

So that's frustrating to me; for all of their talk about "scientific evidence" and "reason," they don't seem to regard it very highly when it comes to examining their own pet claims. But I was mentioning the tie-in to Scientology.

The first time this happened, the conversation had touched on what Scientologists believed, and Vincent said something brainlessly equivocative like "Who am I to call their beliefs weird? The [Catholic] Church's beliefs are pretty weird if you think about it. They're no different, really." I *strenouously* objected to this. I didn't say it at the time, but you may as well say that the Nazis' beliefs were perfectly valid. I did stress that it was a cult (and this was something they didn't like to hear - "What does 'cult' really mean, anyway?"), that it was founded by a drug addict, a con-man, and a pathological liar, based on [Crowlean] Satanist principles. Scientology kills people, and a failure to take the group seriously as a threat to society signals to me a degree of apathy and/or ignorance that...well, the future doesn't look good. Relativism will be the death of this society.

On that cheery note, I've spent more time at this than I said I was going to. So, in the words of the deaf woman that used to be on between cartoons when I was a kid, "Bye f'now." Or "shicken." Whichever sounds more appropriate to you. [There, *that's* an obscure reference only three people in the world will understand...]